What is OpenSolaris

What is opensolaris?

Opensolaris is three things:

1. A codebase that consists of most of Sun Solaris. (Some elements which could not be open-sourced are not included).
   
2. A community that has formed around the codebase.
3. A new distribution, called OpenSolaris (note subtly different use of case).

Where can I access these 3 elements?

The codebase and community are both based at opensolaris.org. The OpenSolaris distribution is based at opensolaris.com.

What is "Solaris Nevada"?

Nevada is the codename given to what will eventually become the next version of Solaris, a.k.a. Solaris 11. You can get a fortnightly snapshot of the current progress in the form of Solaris Express Community Edition (SXCE). See our Distributions Page for more information.

Where does Solaris 10 fit in?

Solaris 10 was released before the opensolaris codebase was released. The source code that was released on opensolaris.org is different to the source code used for Solaris 10 - it does not contain the source code for everything in Solaris, and it has also changed since Solaris 10 was released.

Some features developed under the opensolaris umbrella do find their way back into Solaris 10, but this is not guaranteed. For example, ZFS was developed for opensolaris, but it has been "backported" to Solaris 10. The new CIFS server for opensolaris, which does not rely on Samba, was also developed on opensolaris, but there are no plans to backport it to Solaris 10.