Two months back, I had gustily bought the news of the free Sun Solaris media kit which consisted of a set of 3 DVDs which contained the Solaris OS for the Sparc and Intel architectures as well as Java software goodies. And as a follow up, I had posted a couple of photos of the media kit I received as well. Now it is OpenSolaris which is handing out free DVDs. But the OpenSolaris give away is more exciting for a number of reasons.
The OpenSolaris media kit, which they chose to call the starter kit consists of a set of two DVDs and a mini book. You heard right, they have also included a booklet which contain a collection of tutorials and documentation which will be of use to OpenSolaris neophytes. The DVDs will contain apart from the Solaris Express, the community built images of three distributions of OpenSolaris namely Nexenta OS, Belenix and SchilliX as well as OpenSolaris source code. You will also find the Sun Studio compilers included in the offering. You can order your copy of the starter kit here. I may also add that you need to register first to place the order.
In all respects these are very good times for Solaris users as Sun Microsystems is going on a limb to sustain the excitement towards its software products by developers and users alike and ensure that its legacy does not wither away. A good move in these fast changing times. Now I am waiting for the day when they will release Solaris under the GPL v3 license.
