Walkthrough to Opensolaris 2008.05 RC2

You can download a test image of Opensolaris 2008.05 Release Candidate 2 (the distro formerly and still better known as Indiana). It starts to look really good.

Just to give you a short impression of OpenSolaris 2008.05 i´ve prepared a short walktrough to the installation of the distribution, albeit it´s so simple you won´t need one.The URL of the torrent is available in this announcement mail in the indiana-discuss forum. Please read this announcment completly. But now to the walkthrough….

1. At first, Opensolaris 2008.05 starts with a standard GRUB.

1. Before starting up the graphical desktop, the system asks for the keyboard layout and the language of the live system boot.

1. The graphical Desktop based on Gnome starts up.

1. Now the Licence Agreement appears, read it and then close the window.

1. Now you can play around with the desktop, but i will proceed with the Harddisk install. Please click on the “Install Opensolaris” icon.

1. Okay, the installer starts with some explanations. Press “Next”.

1. Choose your installation disk. It defaults to using the the full disk for solaris. At the moment, the installer installs Opensolaris on only one disk.

1. Now have to choose the timezone. We´ve added a world map for easier selection (okay, i find it harder, but your milage may vary. The people like it)

1. For this installlation i´ve choosed English as the language for the installation.

1. Now the system ask for some basic data: root password, an inititial user account and a name for the server.

1. The system summarizes your settings. Please press “Install”.

1. The system starts to install. You can leave your machine alone for a while and drink a coffee. On my virtual machine on Parallels this took 20 minutes.

1. Now press reboot.

1. Okay, the GRUB again, but now it´s the grub installed on the harddisk.

1. The system starts up in text mode and parses the SMF manifests.

1. The login screen appears. Type in your login …

1. … and your password.

1. Now you have your Opensolaris Desktop installed on your system. Play around with it :) Test it and send bug reports to us. If you’d like submit issues, please feel free to use defect.opensolaris.org, under the distribution/opensolaris product

1. But i want to point you to an important tool: Please click on System -> Administration -> Package Manager. This is the graphical tool to install software on your system. But wait until the update announcement mentioned in the mail

1. With the Package Manager you can install additional software on your system. It´s really similar to tools like synaptic , the graphical apt front end.