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What's New in OpenSolaris 2008.11

1. Introduction

OpenSolaris 2008.11 is the latest release of the OpenSolaris Operating System, a powerful and complete operating environment for users, developers and deployers. OpenSolaris prides itself on being a secure, stable, and highly scalable system. OpenSolaris OS is open source software, and freely re-distributable and provides all the tools users expect from a modern computing environment both installed by default and available on our online network package repositories.

Download OpenSolaris 2008.11 today.

2. What's New for Users

2.1 On the Desktop

2.1.1 GNOME 2.24

In October, the GNOME community released the latest and greatest version of the free and open source desktop environment, including hundreds of bug fixes and user-requested improvements. Many of these, but not all, have made it into OpenSolaris 2008.11 - for a detailed list of improvements, check out the GNOME 2.24 release notes.

2.1.2 View changes to your files over time

Automatically snapshot your personal files at regular intervals with the ZFS file system. Once snapshots have been taken, use the Time Slider feature in the file manager to browse changes to your files over time, view them and recover changes. For more details, check Erwann Chénedé's blog

2.1.3 Plug and print!

A new Print Manager has been included in this release to help manage the printers used on a daily basis. Automatic detection of locally attached USB printers has now been added, with CUPS support planned for a future release. For more details, check out the Presto Project and Ghee Teo's blog.

2.1.4 Safer browsing with Firefox 3

Browse the web with the best Firefox release yet! Faster, more secure and customizable.

Explore all the features, including the Awesome bar, with the latest Firefox 3 release, and all the add-ons that are available with this web browser.

2.1.5 Open Music with Songbird

Songbird, a free software media player and web browser built on Mozilla's XULRunner platform, has been added to the software package repository. Explore the add-ons allowing you to extend Songbird's functionality and customize your media playing experience!

To run Songbird, you will need to install the SUNWsongbird package from the repository.

2.1.6 Desktop search

Tracker is a tool designed to extract information and metadata about your personal data so that it can be searched easily and quickly. By using Tracker, you no longer have to remember where you've left your files. To locate a file you only need to remember something about it, such as a word in the document or the artist of the song. This is because as well as searching for files in the traditional way, by name and location, Tracker searches files' contents and metadata.

Tracker supports a variety of different file and media formats, including emails and instant-message conversations.

2.1.7 Be productive with OpenOffice.org 3

OpenOffice.org 3 is the latest release in the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. OpenOffice.org 3 brings to you a whole host of new features including improved import filters for Microsoft Office 2007 formats and PDF editing in a fresh new look!

To run OpenOffice.org, you will need to install the openoffice package from the repository.

2.1.8 Collaborate with Gobby

Gobby is a collaborative editor supporting multiple documents in a single session and a multi-user chat. Allow users to connect to your session, choose a colour for themselves and start sharing!

2.1.9 Download torrents with Transmission

Transmission is an easy-to-use BitTorrent client that's now available for OpenSolaris. Open your torrent file and start your download!

2.2 Suspend and Resume to RAM

Suspend your laptop to RAM with the latest OpenSolaris 2008.11 release!

Limited support has been added for a number of platforms by default, listed below, to suspend and resume from RAM. With a simple keybinding, or closing of the laptop lid, watch while your system goes to sleep! Other platforms may work depending on your hardware. Check Randy Fishel's blog for more details of a suspend and a resume how-to, and to check if your platform is supported.

The GNOME Power Manager monitors your system, alerting you to low battery status and adjusts screen brightness. Try out the Power TOP utility to see how effectively your system is taking advantage of the CPU's power management features!

2.3 Image Packaging

The Image Packaging System, IPS, has continue to evolve since it first appearance in OpenSolaris 2008.05. IPS now supports improved search, mirroring of network repositories, and the addition of the first phase of a client API.

2.3.1 Package Manager

The Package Manager has undergone a significant level of improvements, with support for adding new package authorities, management of boot environments allowing you to quickly activate and switch on package upgrade, improved search and performance, and better classification of packages.

2.3.1 Get Notified of Updates!

A new update service has been added for OpenSolaris 2008.11, notifying users when package updates are available from the network package repository, allowing them to easily download and install them onto their system.

2.3.2 New Repositories = New Software!

In co-ordination with the OpenSolaris 2008.11 release, a set of new repositories have been launched, containing additional software packages. The new repositories can be added under the Settings > Edit Repositories menu item in Package Manager, or using the pkg set-authority command-line.

2.4 Accessible Install

Support for an accessible install has been improved in OpenSolaris 2008.11, allowing users to start the LiveCD environment with a screen reader (using the eSpeak speech synthesis engine) or a screen magnifier from the GRUB screen. This feature is the first phase of work that we hope to include in subsequent releases to improve the user experience for those with special needs

2.5 Network Auto-magic

Several improvements have been made to automatically detect and conntect to a local network. With more and more wireless drivers now supporting WPA modes, OpenSolaris 2008.11 gets closer to "just works!".

2.6 Improved Hardware Support

2.6.1 SD and MultiMedia Card

Support has been added for being able to read SD card and MultiMedia card media directly from your laptop slot for some models. A good way to know if you're laptop is one of them is to search for pciclass,0805 in the output of prtconf -vp.

2.6.2 Audio Support

Many more laptops will now have working audio with the introduction of a newer audiohd driver. Work continues to improve the next generation audio experience as part of Project Boomer.

2.6.3 Graphics Card Support

A number of new graphics cards are now supported out of the box

Direct Rendering (DRI) support is now provided for more models of Intel graphics and some models of ATI Radeon which enables 3-D acceleration and visual effects. Check the OpenSolaris DRI Project for more details.

The bundled nvidia accelerated graphics driver has moved support for a number of devices into the legacy R173 driver. Users of these chipsets will run by default with the bundled nv open source driver. If full 2-D/3-D acceleration (and other advanced features) is required, uninstall the NVDAgraphics package and install the R173 legacy driver from www.nvidia.com.

2.7 A Fast, Graphical Reboot

While not enabled by default, fast reboot is now available with OpenSolaris 2008.11 shaving many seconds off a full reboot. Check out Sherry Moore's Blog for details on how to enable this feature. Coupled with the introduction of the first phase of a graphical boot hiding away those boot messages, the user experience for OpenSolaris keeps getting better and better!

2.8 A Familiar Environment

Familiarity with other operating systems was a key goal for the OpenSolaris 2008.05 release. We've continued on this goal with the introduction of top, sudo and slocate. Many missing man pages have now been provided to help you learn about your OpenSolaris environment!

3. What's New for Administrators

3.1 Open Storage

OpenSolaris 2008.11 is the world's first open source operating system for your storage needs.

3.1.1 COMSTAR

The first phase of Project COMSTAR has been included in OpenSolaris 2008.11, allowing you to turn any OpenSolaris host into a SCSI storage device or target, accessible by any initiator hosts. Only Fibre Channel is supported at this time, however the iSCSI port provider will be provided in the developer repository soon. Check out the COMSTAR Administration guide for more details.

3.1.2 Storage Profiles

A new set of storage profiles has been added to OpenSolaris 2008.11, for convenience to those trying to either set up a Network Attached Storage (NAS) system, or Multi Protocol storage server.

Install the storage-nas package profile to include packages allowing you to set up an NFS server, iSCSI target, SMB/CIFS compatibility, NDMP management and Virus Scan Service. While much of the open source world depends on the Samba project for Microsoft interoperability, OpenSolaris has its own kernel-based solution.

Install the storage-server package profile includes all the software in the NAS profile, along with many other packages that are part of the open storage platform, including fibre channel, multipath support and administration.

Check out the OpenSolaris Storage Community to get the latest news and information about storage.

3.2 Automated Install

The automated installer is a new enterprise technology providing support for network and local installations of OpenSolaris 2008.11, where one installation specification can be applied to multiple systems. Create an installation service, available on a webserver, for client machines to contact to find an install manifest that matches the client's machine specifications. Check out the Getting Started with the Automated Installer guide for more details.

To run the automated installer, you will need to install the SUNWauto-install package from the repository.

4. What's New for Developers

4.1 Developing with NetBeans 6.5 IDE

Simplify your OpenSolaris development with NetBeans IDE 6.5! Featuring support for C/C++, Java, and numerous dynamic language, Sun's award-winning open source IDE enables developers to rapidly create web, enterprise, and desktop applications on or for OpenSolaris.

To run NetBeans, you will need to install the netbeans package from the repository.

4.2 Developing with Eclipse IDE

Alternatively, you can also try the Eclipse IDE by installing the eclipse package from the repository.

4.3 Improved Web Stack

The OpenSolaris Web Stack has been improved with not only new versions of existing components, but the addition of several new frameworks such as Drupal and Django. Several frameworks have also added DTrace probes, allowing you to dynamically trace your web application for improved performance! several

4.4 Distribution Constructor

The distribution constructor is a command-line tool for building pre-configured, bootable OpenSolaris images. The tool takes an install manifest file as input, and outputs an ISO image that is based on the parameters specified in the manifest. Developers can modify the content of the ISO image, selecting and adding additional packages to the image, and changing the default system settings in order to create a custom, redistributable ISO or USB image. Check out the Getting Started with the Distribution Constructor guide for more details.

To run the distribution constructor, you will need to install the SUNWdistro-const package from the repository.

5. Internationalization

5.1 Input Methods

SCIM (Smart Common Input Method) has been added as a new input method choice to support Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Amharic, Arabic, Thai, Vietnamese, Russian, Nepalese and Indian languages like Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu.

5.2 New Languages

New language support for Indonesian, Khazak, Malay, Ukranian and Vietnamese has been added.

6. New Packages

The following list of packages have been newly added to the repository since the release of OpenSolaris 2008.05 that you can now enjoy with OpenSolaris 2008.11. This list does not include a set of packages that have been updated since OpenSolaris 2008.05.

7. Coming up in OpenSolaris 2009.04

Even though OpenSolaris 2008.11 has just released, we're already looking forward to our next release that's due out in April 2009. Look out for great new projects like Crossbow for network virtualization and resource control, virtual consoles and the introducion of SPARC support for OpenSolaris, along with continued improvements for familiar projects like network auto-magic, package management, automated install and a host of new software on our network package repositories.