Security features
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Technical variations of Solaris distributions include support for different hardware devices and systems or software package configurations. Organizational differences may be motivated by historical reasons. Other criteria include security, including how quickly security upgrades are available; ease of package management; and number of packages available.
These tables compare each noteworthy distribution's latest stable release on wide-ranging objective criteria. It does not cover each operating system's subjective merits, branches marked as unstable or beta, nor compare Solaris distributions with other operating systems.
Basic general information about the distributions: creator or producer, release date and latest version, and so forth.
| Distribution | Developer | First public release | Based on | Latest release date | Status | Purpose | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BeleniX | ? | ? | OpenSolaris, GNU | 0.7.1 / July 19, 2008 | Discontinued | ? | Gratis |
| Nexenta OS | Nexenta Systems | 2005 | OpenSolaris, GNU, Ubuntu | 3.1.3.5 (October 31, 2012) [±] | Discontinued | ? | Gratis |
| NexentaStor | Nexenta Systems | ? | Nexenta OS | 5.3.0, May 2020 [1] | Active | “Enterprise Grade Unified Block & File Storage” [2] | Commercial |
| OmniOSce | OmniTI / OmniOSce Association | 2012 [3] | illumos, GNU | r151050 (May 6, 2024) [4] | Active | “Produce a self-hosting, minimalist Illumos-based release suitable for production deployment” [5] | Gratis |
| OpenIndiana | illumos Foundation et al. | 2010 | illumos, OpenSolaris, GNU | Hipster 2024.04 (April 28, 2024) [±] [6] | Active | “Ensure the continued availability of an openly developed distribution based on OpenSolaris” [7] | Gratis |
| SmartOS | Joyent | ? | illumos, GNU | 20201203T165910Z, Dec 2020 [8] | Active | Cloud computing (“converged container and virtual machine hypervisor” [9] ) | Gratis |
| Tribblix | Peter Tribble | ? | illumos | 0m35, Aug 2024 [10] | Active | Tribblix is an operating system distribution derived from OpenSolaris, OpenIndiana, and illumos, with a retro style and modern components (“” [11] ) | Gratis |
| v9os | Alexander Eremin | ? | illumos | 2018-10-01 [12] | Active | “Server-only, IPS-based minimal SPARC distribution of illumos” [13] | Gratis |
| Distribution | Developer | First public release | Based on | Latest release date | Status | Purpose | Cost |
| Distribution | Supported architectures | Install-time desktop environment selection |
|---|---|---|
| BeleniX | x86, x86-64 | KDE, Xfce |
| Nexenta OS | x86, x86-64 | GNOME |
| NexentaStor | x86(-64?) | ? |
| OmniOS | x86, x86-64 | none |
| OpenIndiana | x86, x86-64 | MATE |
| SmartOS | x86-64 [14] | none |
| Tribblix | x86-64, SPARC | Xfce |
| v9os | SPARC | none |
| Distribution | Supported architectures | Install-time desktop environment selection |
Information on features in the distributions. Package numbers are only approximate.
| Distribution | Approximate number of packages | Package format/tools | Default installer | Graphical installation procedure |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BeleniX | ? | RPM | ? | ? |
| Nexenta OS | ? | APT | ? | ? |
| NexentaStor | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| OmniOS | 1032 [15] | IPS | Kayak | No |
| OpenIndiana | 4600 [16] | IPS | Caiman | Yes |
| SmartOS | ? | pkgsrc/pkgin | N/A (live system) | N/A |
| Tribblix | 130 [17] | SVR4 | N/A (live system) | N/A |
| v9os | ? | IPS | ? | No |
| Distribution | Approximate number of packages | Package format/tools | Default installer | Graphical installation procedure |
| | This section is empty. You can help by adding to it. (February 2013) |
A Linux distribution is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and often a package management system. They are often obtained from the website of each distribution, which are available for a wide variety of systems ranging from embedded devices and personal computers to servers and powerful supercomputers.
Solaris is a proprietary Unix operating system originally developed by Sun Microsystems. After the Sun acquisition by Oracle in 2010, it was renamed Oracle Solaris.
pkgsrc is a package management system for Unix-like operating systems. It was forked from the FreeBSD ports collection in 1997 as the primary package management system for NetBSD. Since then it has evolved independently; in 1999, support for Solaris was added, followed by support for other operating systems.
These tables provide a comparison of operating systems, of computer devices, as listing general and technical information for a number of widely used and currently available PC or handheld operating systems. The article "Usage share of operating systems" provides a broader, and more general, comparison of operating systems that includes servers, mainframes and supercomputers.
OpenSolaris is a discontinued open-source computer operating system based on Solaris and created by Sun Microsystems. It was also, perhaps confusingly, the name of a project initiated by Sun to build a developer and user community around the eponymous operating system software.
Technical variations of Linux distributions include support for different hardware devices and systems or software package configurations. Organizational differences may be motivated by historical reasons. Other criteria include security, including how quickly security upgrades are available; ease of package management; and number of packages available.
OS-level virtualization is an operating system (OS) virtualization paradigm in which the kernel allows the existence of multiple isolated user space instances, including containers, zones, virtual private servers (OpenVZ), partitions, virtual environments (VEs), virtual kernels, and jails. Such instances may look like real computers from the point of view of programs running in them. A computer program running on an ordinary operating system can see all resources of that computer. Programs running inside a container can only see the container's contents and devices assigned to the container.
Nexenta OS, officially known as the Nexenta Core Platform, is a discontinued computer operating system based on OpenSolaris and Ubuntu that runs on IA-32- and x86-64-based systems. It emerged in fall 2005, after Sun Microsystems started the OpenSolaris project in June of that year. Nexenta Systems, Inc. initiated the project and sponsored its development. Nexenta OS version 1.0 was released in February 2008.
Ports collections are the sets of makefiles and patches provided by the BSD-based operating systems, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, as a simple method of installing software or creating binary packages. They are usually the base of a package management system, with ports handling package creation and additional tools managing package removal, upgrade, and other tasks. In addition to the BSDs, a few Linux distributions have implemented similar infrastructure, including Gentoo's Portage, Arch's Arch Build System (ABS), CRUX's Ports and Void Linux's Templates.
BeleniX is a discontinued operating system distribution built using the OpenSolaris source base. It can be used as a Live CD as well as installed to a hard disk. Initially developed as a Live CD along the lines of Knoppix to showcase OpenSolaris technologies, Belenix went on to become the initial base for Sun's OpenSolaris distribution. A number of technologies pioneered in the Belenix project have gone on to become full projects in their own right within the OpenSolaris ecosystem.
Solaris Containers is an implementation of operating system-level virtualization technology for x86 and SPARC systems, first released publicly in February 2004 in build 51 beta of Solaris 10, and subsequently in the first full release of Solaris 10, 2005. It is present in illumos distributions, such as OpenIndiana, SmartOS, Tribblix and OmniOS, and in the official Oracle Solaris 11 release.
These tables compare free software / open-source operating systems. Where not all of the versions support a feature, the first version which supports it is listed.
GNU variants are operating systems based upon the GNU operating system. According to the GNU project and others, these also include most operating systems using the Linux kernel and a few others using BSD-based kernels.
Lynis is an extensible security audit tool for computer systems running Linux, FreeBSD, macOS, OpenBSD, Solaris, and other Unix derivatives. It assists system administrators and security professionals with scanning a system and its security defenses, with the final goal being system hardening.
Sun Open Storage was an open source computer data storage platform developed by Sun Microsystems. Sun Open Storage was advertised as avoiding vendor lock-in.
The Image Packaging System, also known as IPS, is a cross-platform package management system created by the OpenSolaris community in coordination with Sun Microsystems. It is used by Solaris 11 and several Illumos-based distributions: OpenIndiana, OmniOS, XStreamOS and a growing number of layered applications, including GlassFish, across a variety of Operating System platforms. IPS is coded in the Python programming language.
Illumos is a partly free and open-source Unix operating system. It is based on OpenSolaris, which was based on System V Release 4 (SVR4) and the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Illumos comprises a kernel, device drivers, system libraries, and utility software for system administration. This core is now the base for many different open-sourced Illumos distributions, in a similar way in which the Linux kernel is used in different Linux distributions.
OpenIndiana is a free and open-source illumos distribution descended from UNIX System V Release 4 via the OpenSolaris operating system. Forked from OpenSolaris after OpenSolaris was discontinued by Oracle Corporation, OpenIndiana takes its name from Project Indiana, the internal codename for OpenSolaris at Sun Microsystems before Oracle’s acquisition of Sun in 2010.
SmartOS is a free and open-source SVR4 hypervisor based on the UNIX operating system that combines OpenSolaris technology with bhyve and KVM virtualization. Its core kernel contributes to the illumos project. It features several technologies: Crossbow, DTrace, bhyve, KVM, ZFS, and Zones. Unlike other illumos distributions, SmartOS employs NetBSD pkgsrc package management. SmartOS is designed to be particularly suitable for building clouds and generating appliances. It was originally developed for and by Joyent, who announced in April 2022 that they had sold their business supporting and developing of Triton Datacenter and SmartOS to MNX Solutions. It is open-source and free for anyone to use.
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