Savouring Open Solaris

Open Solaris


Thanks to the virtual box, I got to sample Open Solaris. Yes, it is not the latest, greatest version but it is the only image I could find for the Virtual box.

I love the azure blue background. The GUI and the layout have a striking resemblance to Ubuntu Linux. The distro comes with firefox, thunbderbird and a number of games and many of the other applications found in Linux distros. One other gizmo on Open Solaris a windows-like task manager. Well, for now, I'll stick to Linux, Mac and Windows

Read more...

Sun VirtualBox

Sun Virtualbox
another
Have you ever wanted to savour a flavour of Linux, Windows or the Chrome OS  without the hassle of a complete installation? You could get another computer and install the new operating system on it. Another option is to boot off a USB drive or a live CD. This mechanism of sampling a new operating system through a flash drive or a live CD is particularly popular in the Linux world.

The sun virtual box offers yet another option, virtualization. This means you can run one operating system (termed the 'guest') from inside another system( the host) . Using a pentium 4 system running Ubuntu, I can sample several operating system and even use features not installed on my system, thanks to an install of the virtual box. With Sun VirtualBox the guest operating system runs just like any other application in the host system. VirtualBox is available as an install for both Linux and Windows.

First download and install Sun Virtualbox on your system.Then head over to this site to download an 'image' file of the guest operating system. This Lifehacker article is a great guide to run your guest operating system on your machine using VirtualBox.

There are some disadvantages to using VirtualBox. Firstly you may not get some guests running at all. Sometimes, specfic applications inside your guest operating system may not work at all.

Finally, the guest operating system usually runs slowly. If you want to check out the performance of an operating system, VirtualBox is not where you should test it.

Read more...