Comparison of OpenSolaris distributions

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.

General

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;12 years ago (2012-10-31)) [±]	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	r151054 (May 5, 2025) [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;16 months ago (2024-04-28)) [±] [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

Technical

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

Package management and installation

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

See also

• Free and open-source software portal

• Comparison of operating systems
• Comparison of open-source operating systems

References

1. "Nexenta Documentation". 1 May 2020.
2. "NexentaStor". 27 November 2013.
3. "OmniOS Release Notes". Archived from the original on 4 May 2013.
4. "OmniOS Community Edition r151054".
5. "OmniOS Approach".
6. "OpenIndiana - Release 2024.04" . Retrieved 1 May 2023.
7. "About OpenIndiana" . Retrieved 2 November 2020.
8. "Download SmartOS" . Retrieved 3 December 2020.
9. "SmartOS - Joyent". www.joyent.com.
10. "Changes in 0m35 prerelease". 20 August 2024. Retrieved 18 October 2024.
11. "Tribblix". www.tribblix.org.
12. "v9os". sourceforge.net.
13. "v9os" . Retrieved 2 November 2020.
14. "Hardware Requirements - SmartOS Documentation - SmartOS Wiki". wiki.smartos.org.
15. "OmniOS Package Repository". OmniTI. Retrieved 21 September 2017.
16. "OpenIndiana Package Repositories". OpenIndiana. Retrieved 8 May 2020.
17. "Software Overlays" . Retrieved 29 October 2021.