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Toshiba To OEM Laptops With OpenSolaris

Posted by kdawson on from the good-news-for-lem-fans dept.

ruphus13 writes to tell us of Sun's latest attempt to drive OpenSolaris adoption. The company has inked a deal to pre-install OpenSolaris on Toshiba laptops. "Slowly but surely, major laptop vendors are taking to the idea of shipping systems with pre-loaded open source operating systems. The latest case in point is Toshiba — one of the longest-standing players in the market for portable computers — and its new plan to pre-install Sun Microsystems' OpenSolaris on its laptops. The machines are supposed to ship in early 2009."

7 of 226 comments (clear)

  1. I really like Solaris but... by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why go with Solaris and not Linux?
    In terms of usability and functionality for a Laptop Solaris would be at a disadvantage to Linux and even Windows. Unless you job is to write and compile and or run Solaris X86 Apps. Then you are in general at a disadvantage to Linux which has more application written for it, communicates very well with Solaris Based Type Networks, As far as End User is concerned Linux and Solaris really look so much alike that it wouldn't be much of a learning curve.

    Solaris is superior as a server OS. But for a desktop Laptop OS... Why?

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    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    1. Re:I really like Solaris but... by thetoadwarrior · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Sun wants OpenSolaris to expand into the desktop market and perhaps they paid Toshiba enough and or Toshiba trusts Sun to support the OS more than other companies.

    2. Re:I really like Solaris but... by David+Gerard · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Depends. We use a lot of Sun boxes and a lot of Dell boxes. Solaris 10 on a Sun box (even an x86) is way easier to administer than Linux - particularly when things go wrong. The OS indicates problems very nicely in messages and syslog, better than RHEL does.

      The downside is that modern open source software is too often written by coders who think "cross-platform" means "works on Fedora and Ubuntu."

      So we end up doing things like running Solaris 10 on Dell boxes and RHEL on Sun servers ;-)

      Sun's hardware is competitively priced and their service is really good (I'm in London), so we're very happy to stay with Sun boxes even running Linux.

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  2. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  3. Re:Solaris to beat Linux by Ethanol-fueled · · Score: 5, Interesting

    OpenSolaris automatically detected my HP Photosmart printer by name and instantly installed the proper driver while displaying a nice, comfortable, professional-looking message window. That alone should win over skeptical Windoze fanatics.

  4. Re:Hot New Enterprise Dev environment for '09 by Zemplar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I use OpenSolaris for development on my ThinkPad T61 laptop and it's an excellent platform and ideal combination. For one required Windows development app (project dependent), I run XP as a VirtualBox VM and it works better and faster than if XP were installed to bare metal. ZFS is really slick. Turning ZFS compression=on means more laptop hard drive space AND faster performance since the HDDs are relatively slow (even my 320GB 7,200 rpm) and now having to read/write less to disk.

    Sun's new packaging system, IPS, and the new repositories are growing with software selections and software is as easy to manage as Debian's apt-get.

    Anyone here that thinks OpenSolaris will fail obviously hasn't used it. Give it a try and I bet a large portion of you Slashdot Linux zealots will move to OpenSolaris or at least give it the respect it deserves.

  5. Re:Solaris to beat Linux by rbanffy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Actually, by being licensed under GPLv3, I think OpenSolaris is a morally superior choice.

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    http://www.dieblinkenlights.com