Project Indiana preview available
I just saw the news that the developer preview of Sun’s Project Indiana is available for download. Here are a couple of quick thoughts:
- The link for the ISO image points to Sun’s new version of the their download center, which means you just click on the link and it starts downloading: no login and license clicks are required. I’m glad they fixed this (the previous user experience was clunky at best), although it will be a while before all of Sun’s downloads are using the new version.
- It has the normal live CD experience where it boots into a usable desktop with the standard apps you would expect. There is also a link to run the installer if you want to install the bits on your hard drive.
- The installer was a great leap forward from the current Solaris 10 version. There were only a few screens and it was a smooth process.
I’d definitely invite anyone curious about the future of Solaris usability to take a look.
For people unfamiliar with Project Indiana, here is the sound bite from the main project page:
Project Indiana is working towards creating a binary distribution of an operating system built out of the OpenSolaris source code. The distribution is a point of integration for several current projects on OpenSolaris.org, including those to make the installation experience easier, to modernize the look and feel of OpenSolaris on the desktop, and to introduce a network-based package management system into Solaris.
The resulting distribution is a live-CD install image, and is fully permissible to be redistributed by anyone. It will also have the capability for developers to create their own, customized distribution based on Project Indiana. The first official release is due Spring 2008.