[LUAU] GNU/Solaris: OpenSolaris + Debian

[Hawaii Linux Institute]

A few months ago I participated in a heated discussion about combining 
the OpenSolaris kernel with the Debian distribution system (thus, the 
name GNU/Solaris).  The general understanding was (according to my own 
interpretation anyway), this is a great idea and there should be no 
compatibility problem wrt CDDL (even Sir RMS said so).  But the main 
issue boiled down to this "minute" nitty gritty: who's going to do it?  
(Let's not forget that we are dealing with a clueless company called 
Sun.  Or should I say, clueless Sun's management?)

However, thanks to the power of open source licensing, Sun or no Sun, a 
group of Debian oldhands were able to quickly put together a distro that 
tries to accomplish exactly that:

http://www.gnusolaris.org/gswiki

Also, if you are interested in screenshots, please visit:

http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=495&slide=5&title=nexenta+os+pre-alpha+1+screenshots

I have downloaded and played their very first "pre-alpha" (emphasis 
added) release (as of 11/03/05).  This is definitely a very exciting 
development.  I plan to keep a close eye on it, & anyone interested 
please feel free to drop me a line. Anyway, I can't hide my excitement.  
Wayne

BTW, there is also a Gentoo-like approach to play OpenSolaris (or more 
particularly, the GNOME-based Java Desktop System): Basically you 
download and install the basic OpenSolaris/Solaris isos and the Studio 
10 compiler from Sun, then use the pkgbuild tool to manually build a 
most up-to-date JDS desktop (based on GNOME 2.12) from its source.