openIndiana Reviews

Summary: I still find OI an awesome OS and would recommend it to the user that wants to live on the edge and learn how to get things done without necessarily having a solution handed to them. It harks back to a time when different platforms used specific sound, video and graphic formats. More work could be done, but I'm going to use this as my desktop because it covers my needs beautifully.

Positive: As a past SunSparc and Solaris user I knew what I was getting into when I tested the latest version of OpenIndiana Hipster. OI is a solid, powerful and very stable system that was designed as a server. However, that never stopped me using it as a desktop back in the CDE days and I use Mate on Linux, so I can't complain about it's current looks and features. A large enough suite of apps is also available, including, LaTex, Firefox, Librewolf Browser, Abiword and Libreoffice. I also found that all of the Firefox extensions I use on Linux were also available on this platform and worked seamlessly. Even my NVidia card worked out of the box. Frankly, at times I forgot I wasn't using Linux or FreeBSD.

Negative: Nevertheless, I cannot recommend OI as a drop-in replacement for either Linux or FreeBSD or for inexperienced users because this OS is not noob territory, it is very command line dependent and requires a learning curve. For example, there is no graphical software repository. Everything is done via the standard pkg or the non standard pkgin package managers via the terminal. Coming from Unix, I don't mind at all, but I can see that users coming from Windows will never adapt and others will find this frustrating. What make it worse is that proprietary codecs are either not available or don't work. I tried. This means no MP4, no DRM and hit and miss YouTube playback.

Summary: For the person who want to learn this operating system will be very difficult, and frustrated way to accomplish any level of expertise.

Positive: It supposed to be Unix, as we know from Sun Microsystem's time. this operating system should be an opportunity to learn major base to developed something reliable and good.

Negative: It does not support network interfaces very well. it does not support existing - well known and recently produced - pc brands. as an example i can point on hp compaq pro 6305 sff, or Dell Optiplex 755 series. difficulty to use certain commands. nobody wrote any book about operating system. none of the usb created .iso work for me. only dvd. documentation from oracle? to descriptive and not enough useful for the practice. too many features are hidden.