Sun's OpenSolaris platform aims to supply a user-friendly desktop distribution of the open source Solaris operating system. The third major OpenSolaris release, version 2009.06, was made available last week. It introduces support for SPARC hardware and also brings improved Windows interoperability and advanced virtualization capabilities. Along with 2009.06, Sun is also announcing the first-ever release of the OpenSolaris ARM port, which could bring the operating system to mobile devices.

Sun first began a serious community-building effort around OpenSolaris with the emergence of the Project Indiana initiative in 2007. Indiana was established to help grow OpenSolaris mindshare and make the underlying technology more accessible to regular end users and developers. During the early development stages a very strong emphasis was placed on ease of installation and delivering a strong package management experience. Sun recruited Debian founder Ian Murdock to get the job done.

We reviewed the first official release in 2008 and found an impressively solid out-of-the-box experience with a high-quality installer that rivals Ubuntu for ease of use. There were a lot of pieces missing, however, particularly hardware compatibility and graphical configuration tools. The second release, 2008.11, addressed the most significant early problems and brought some really impressive features like the ZFS time slider.

Our biggest complaint with the 2008.11 release was the lack of prepackaged software. Software availability has improved modestly according to the numbers provided by the package management tool. The 2008.11 release offered 1,500 packages and the new version bumps it up to 1,700. This an improvement, but it's still dwarfed by Ubuntu's 26,000 packages.

In practice, the repository has got most of what you will need to do software development, especially if you are working within the boundaries of Sun's ecosystem. As we noted in our 2008.11 review, you can get a project up and running with NetBeans in a matter of minutes after you install OpenSolaris. The most glaring omission from the 2008.11 repository was GVim, which I'm pleased to report is now included.

One of the most significant improvements in the new version of OpenSolaris is the introduction of Project Crossbow, a powerful framework for network virtualization and resource control. It lets you compartmentalize Web services in separate virtualized network stacks, making it possible to get extremely fine-grained control over the network resources allocated to individual Web services. Sun suggests that this technology is extremely effective for configuring specialized QoS behaviors and ensuring that high load on one service won't impact others running on an individual box.

Multimedia also got a boost in this release with the addition of Codeina, a tool for obtaining GStreamer codecs. It provides users with the ability to legally obtain patent-encumbered codecs by buying licensed copies from Fluendo.

The time slider, which is probably my favorite OpenSolaris feature, got several enhancements in 2009.06. The new version has a button for manually initiating a snapshot and has support for deleting snapshots. There is also a new tool for exploring the version history of an individual file.

OpenSolaris ARM port

Another intriguing announcement is the availability of an OpenSolaris port for the ARM architecture. Sun first started talking about bringing OpenSolaris into the mobile space in 2007 when Project Indiana was beginning to heat up. The new ARM port could soon make this a reality.

"The OpenSolaris Operating System has many features well suited for embedded systems now and in the future. The kernel is fully preemptable and multithreaded, it provides real-time capabilities, and the modular architecture is highly configurable," the OpenSolaris ARM project page says. "Because of these advanced capabilities, we feel there are interesting opportunities to extend OpenSolaris to new platforms, such as the ARM architecture."

The initial release for ARM is based on version 2008.05 of OpenSolaris, so it doesn't include the latest stuff. It is built to run on NEC's NaviEngine 1, a multicore ARM11 SoC that is primarily designed for car computers and portable navigation devices. Although the OpenSolaris ARM port is still at an early stage of development, it's likely that some of the folks at Sun are already salivating at the prospect of eventually being able to provide an end-to-end open source mobile platform built entirely with Sun's own technologies, ranging from an OpenSolaris kernel to a JavaFX user interface.

The OpenSolaris 2009.06 release is another step forward for the project and its new feature set reflects its growing viability as an end-user platform. The OpenSolaris ARM port is also a promising development that illustrates the growing versatility of the operating system. To get more details about OpenSolaris 2009.06 and to download the release, see the project's official website.