With the release of OpenIndiana version oi_151a, the developers of the Solaris 11 compatible operating system have followed up their first release with one that replaces Oracle's OS/Net operating-system and network component with the Illumos kernel. This new edition of OpenIndiana also includes emulation and virtualisation support through the inclusion of the open source QEMU emulator and the KVM kernel-based virtual machine.

The Spec Files Extra repository (SFE) can be accessed over the internet and contains additional free software: from the Apache web server to the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), MySQL, PostgreSQL and Python. Firefox is also available, as are KDE, Thunderbird and Adobe's Flash player. 32- and 64-bit versions are now available for downloading for desktops and servers; the 32-bit version contains a GNOME environment. The planned SPARC version is yet to come.

In the summer of 2010, Oracle switched from OpenSolaris to Solaris as the Enterprise OS for its customers, which led to the creation of the OpenIndiana fork and project. OpenIndiana is, like OpenSolaris before it, mostly licensed under the CDDL.

(djwm)