 Visitor Reviews |
OpenIndiana
|
Reader supplied reviews for OpenIndiana
Average rating
4.1 from 14 review(s)
Version: 2022.10
Rating: 1
Date: 2023-09-10
Votes: 6
|
Actually Security Release 2023.05
The latest release is apparently a 'security release' that deals with severe security Issue in illumos-gate (the underlying illumos kernel/operating system).
I downloaded the USB image & DDd it to a USB pendrive. It would not boot.
Derp: it's a '.usb' file: 'OI-hipster-gui-20230502.usb'.
I renamed it as a '.img' file & DDd it a USB pendrive. It booted.
It booted, and booted, and booted, .........., & went round & round in a boot loop, that destroyed GRUB, & nearly destroyed my boot sector and BIOS! It was no longer possible to boot from a USB pendrive. That's how bad it was.
This is little short of a bare-metal attack.
Fortunately, I was able to recover my engine, using the Dell/Ubuntu OEM recovery disk, and I discovered that the recovery disk can also be used to recover data, even from an encrypted /home folder, as long as you know the passphrase. Don't go straight to reinstall mode. Go to the drive address, and cancel, to go into a live session, whereby data can be recovered. This should be made more obvious. I discovered this by accident. (BTW, my data is always backed up, in triplicate.)
But I digress: apologies.
The fundamental point here is not only that the underlying illumos-gate is unsafe, but also that the 'security patch' effectively turns it into malware, on a Heartbleed level.
Fortunately, I am an advanced operator, who knows how to take time, and not go for the first solution & risk losing data. Less experienced operators would probably have lost their data.
Fundamentally, it is utterly heinous that OpenIndiana would release such an obviously untested update.
But then, they obviously do not even know how to suffix their file names.
I do not recommend OpenIndiana, to the extent that I consider it to be malware, & I would award it -10 if DistroWatch allowed.
|
Version: 2022.10
Rating: 10
Date: 2023-07-24
Votes: 46
|
Just installed the latest OpenIndiana Hipster on my Thinkstation p520 with nvidia p1000: everything works right out of the box. Surprisingly, basic desktop apps are up to date: at the time of writing Firefox is 115.0.2, Thunderbird is 102.13, python is 3.10.12 and Libreoffice is 7.5.4.2. The Hipster repo has ~1K packages, while pkgsrc has >25K available.
ZFS and boot environments give trouble-free updates (I mean it!); virtualization support is first class with zones (aka containers), which are baked into the system. I think OI is mostly an OS for servers/workstations although it can certainly be profitably used for desktops, with several limitations in terms of apps availability (eg, I haven't checked a/v capabilities).
OI is based on illumos, which is itself the open source descendant of Solaris (aka SunOS). Both OI and illumos are actively developed. If your hardware is compatible give it a go. OI is a 'proper' Unix, enterprise system: it enables you to get your stuff done with little fuss.
Of course, I am writing this review from Firefox on OI!
|
Version: 2022.10
Rating: 10
Date: 2023-07-21
Votes: 13
|
OpenIndiana is great if you had some experience with Solaris, want to avoid systemd, like using the MATE desktop environment, and have compatible hardware to install it on. So for me this OS is a 10/10. If it didn't exist, I would probably be using Devuan if I needed Debian packages or Artix if I wanted Arch rolling release...
It installed and worked with everything on a ThinkPad T530. It worked on a Dell Latitude D630 except for the Broadcom wireless card which had no driver. Users with Intel integrated graphics or NVIDIA GPU, Intel wireless, and slightly older hardware will have a higher chance of successful installation.
You can boot from live disc, do a graphical install, and have a working system with MATE desktop very quickly. NVIDIA driver 470.x is installed so GTX 6xx and newer work. Don't bother running Firefox or Thunderbird while booting from the live install disc, they will crash but run fine afterwards on the installed system.
Postinstall, I ran 'sudo pkg update' to get all the latest packages. OI nicely creates a clone after every update (maybe because of ZFS) so you can boot from the previous environment if needed. You can run 'sudo pkg uninstall firefox' and 'sudo pkg install librewolf' as I did. Also installed libreoffice, claws-mail, gimp, wine, etc. just as easily. Everything I need was in the repo.
|
Version: 2022.10
Rating: 8
Date: 2023-03-06
Votes: 3
|
After some small problems with this update the OI systems runs fine and rock solid. I don't use MATE, but the ctwm instead, which makes the system slightly faster.
Together with the pkgin-framework I have all the applications I need.
It's a nice alternative Unix system, however newer versions for Firefox would make live easier.
Unfortunately OI is a little bit exotic system and the nummber of acive programmers may be limited. Nevertheless I hope it will have a long life and a good future. For me using OI is not a waste of time, I have learned a lot about Unix/Solaris and still have much fun.
|
Version: 2022.10
Rating: 1
Date: 2023-01-22
Votes: 0
|
Live environment boots in VirtualBox but not in Parallels.
Both Firefox and Thunderbird crashes on launch.
I didn't even bother to install.
This OS is a waste of everybody's time.
|
Version: 2022.10
Rating: 1
Date: 2022-12-12
Votes: 6
|
I tried to install several PCs, but I haven't found compatible hardware yet. Openindiana may be an excellent operating system for servers, but for most desktop users, it is unavailable. It would be good if there was a list of supported hardware. The Illumos Org. list contains only componens and is unusable.) Sorry, currently this is half-dead project. Developers may invest a lot of work to develop the Hipster release, but does it make sense? Mny people want to try this vey interesting distribution, but it's like the Holy Grail...
|
Version: 2022.10
Rating: 1
Date: 2022-12-08
Votes: 0
|
I don't know why this distro still exist, it as a lot of obsolete softwares/packages, it's based on Solaris which is dead (at least for desktop usage) and you have no choice of desktop environnements (KDE Plasma 5 and GNOME Shell doesn't exist and Xfce is obsolete)
I think they should do a real upgrade so it became better
The installation is also terribly slow, Firefox and Thunderbird give Seg faults when are launched, the support is dead
It there anything to say other than that ? No search another Linux or BSD distro
|
Version: 2021.10
Rating: 1
Date: 2022-01-31
Votes: 1
|
The installation of OpenIndiana destroyed my Windows backups.
My fault. I should have removed the USB HDD.
|
Version: 2021.10
Rating: 8
Date: 2022-01-26
Votes: 1
|
While the live image has some problems with running application such as firefox or the pkg manager, these problems are not present in the installed system. These issues may be due to lower amounts of system RAM being present - after all, Live systems really do require a fair amount of RAM just in storage space, not counting actually temporary memory usage for applications in addition to that.
The system itself is quite stable and reliable once installed. Some of the applications are slightly behind current releases, but given the GNU toolchain and userland, you can compile and update these quite easily. Overall, it's a pretty good system and a definite competitor for replacing Linux on my desktop. I will note, that it is not as fast to boot or shutdown as an equivalent system, although I've found this to be true of most Unix systems.
|
Version: 2021.10
Rating: 1
Date: 2021-12-27
Votes: 8
|
From the live image:
Running Firefox --> segmentation fault.
Running Thunderbird --> segmentation fault.
Running "sudo pkg update" in a terminal --> ends up with pkg telling there is a bug in itself.
Sorry but at this point it's just unusable. Please at least test your software once before releasing it.
|
Version: 2021.04
Rating: 3
Date: 2021-12-06
Votes: 6
|
I'm all for trying new stuff, just for the experience and have literally tried every distro on distrowatch over the last 20 years before finally settling on MX Linux as my home desktop. Reading the other reviews it seems way above my pay grade geek wise and the final straw came from the FAQ's on their site.
"We do not, as yet, support USB 3"
That's a pretty basic requirement for a modern OS, especially with USB 3 first appearing in 2008. I more or less got my head round 'slices' and other quirks of BSD, but Solaris looks a bridge too far for me.
|
Version: 2020.10
Rating: 3
Date: 2021-05-09
Votes: 20
|
I really want to love this OS as it's a continuation of Solaris which I always respected... but its lackluster. Hardware driver support lacking is the largest con, but honestly I think the biggest hurdle for me was the branding (call me a shallow snob) but the name Indiana doesn't inspire.. really anything in me. And calling the release "hipster"... I rolled my eyes, no one... NO ONE has any positive associations with anything related to hipsters. All of this especially coming from an OS with a great name such as Solaris. I guess my experiences with Solaris was always on Sun hardware so I am not thinking in the frame of this is designed to run on a wide variety of machines. But for the love of God, they should rebrand and try to gain some excitement about the project...
|
Version: 2021.04
Rating: 1
Date: 2021-05-03
Votes: 7
|
Downloaded the latest version for a test spin. On my older Athlon 6000+ machine it booted up OK (live DVD) but there were many drivers missing or not compatible. I couldn't even get my USB WiFi dongle to be recognized so I could download drivers, so did not go any further.
Next, I booted my much newer Ryzen V machine with the live DVD and I could get through the language and multi-user selections fine, but soon after the machine would restart in the middle of the boot process. Tried several times with the same result.
It's a shame, I really wanted to give this one a try, as I always liked OpenSolaris before it was discontinued.
|
Version: 2020.10
Rating: 8
Date: 2021-04-23
Votes: 0
|
Seems very solid. Not enough programs to run on it. All the commands seem to be polysyllabic. A little slow for a FreeBSD user. I am thinking of using it for office work when I figure out how to use usb storage, etc.
|
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Latest Reviews
Project: OpenIndiana
Version: 2022.10
Rating: 1
Date: 2023-09-10
Votes: 6
|
Actually Security Release 2023.05
The latest release is apparently a 'security release' that deals with severe security Issue in illumos-gate (the underlying illumos kernel/operating system).
I downloaded the USB image & DDd it to a USB pendrive. It would not boot.
Derp: it's a '.usb' file: 'OI-hipster-gui-20230502.usb'.
I renamed it as a '.img' file & DDd it a USB pendrive. It booted.
It booted, and booted, and booted, .........., & went round & round in a boot loop, that destroyed GRUB, & nearly destroyed my boot sector and BIOS! It was no longer possible to boot from a USB pendrive. That's how bad it was.
This is little short of a bare-metal attack.
Fortunately, I was able to recover my engine, using the Dell/Ubuntu OEM recovery disk, and I discovered that the recovery disk can also be used to recover data, even from an encrypted /home folder, as long as you know the passphrase. Don't go straight to reinstall mode. Go to the drive address, and cancel, to go into a live session, whereby data can be recovered. This should be made more obvious. I discovered this by accident. (BTW, my data is always backed up, in triplicate.)
But I digress: apologies.
The fundamental point here is not only that the underlying illumos-gate is unsafe, but also that the 'security patch' effectively turns it into malware, on a Heartbleed level.
Fortunately, I am an advanced operator, who knows how to take time, and not go for the first solution & risk losing data. Less experienced operators would probably have lost their data.
Fundamentally, it is utterly heinous that OpenIndiana would release such an obviously untested update.
But then, they obviously do not even know how to suffix their file names.
I do not recommend OpenIndiana, to the extent that I consider it to be malware, & I would award it -10 if DistroWatch allowed.
|
Project: OpenIndiana
Version: 2022.10
Rating: 10
Date: 2023-07-24
Votes: 46
|
Just installed the latest OpenIndiana Hipster on my Thinkstation p520 with nvidia p1000: everything works right out of the box. Surprisingly, basic desktop apps are up to date: at the time of writing Firefox is 115.0.2, Thunderbird is 102.13, python is 3.10.12 and Libreoffice is 7.5.4.2. The Hipster repo has ~1K packages, while pkgsrc has >25K available.
ZFS and boot environments give trouble-free updates (I mean it!); virtualization support is first class with zones (aka containers), which are baked into the system. I think OI is mostly an OS for servers/workstations although it can certainly be profitably used for desktops, with several limitations in terms of apps availability (eg, I haven't checked a/v capabilities).
OI is based on illumos, which is itself the open source descendant of Solaris (aka SunOS). Both OI and illumos are actively developed. If your hardware is compatible give it a go. OI is a 'proper' Unix, enterprise system: it enables you to get your stuff done with little fuss.
Of course, I am writing this review from Firefox on OI!
|
Project: OpenIndiana
Version: 2022.10
Rating: 10
Date: 2023-07-21
Votes: 13
|
OpenIndiana is great if you had some experience with Solaris, want to avoid systemd, like using the MATE desktop environment, and have compatible hardware to install it on. So for me this OS is a 10/10. If it didn't exist, I would probably be using Devuan if I needed Debian packages or Artix if I wanted Arch rolling release...
It installed and worked with everything on a ThinkPad T530. It worked on a Dell Latitude D630 except for the Broadcom wireless card which had no driver. Users with Intel integrated graphics or NVIDIA GPU, Intel wireless, and slightly older hardware will have a higher chance of successful installation.
You can boot from live disc, do a graphical install, and have a working system with MATE desktop very quickly. NVIDIA driver 470.x is installed so GTX 6xx and newer work. Don't bother running Firefox or Thunderbird while booting from the live install disc, they will crash but run fine afterwards on the installed system.
Postinstall, I ran 'sudo pkg update' to get all the latest packages. OI nicely creates a clone after every update (maybe because of ZFS) so you can boot from the previous environment if needed. You can run 'sudo pkg uninstall firefox' and 'sudo pkg install librewolf' as I did. Also installed libreoffice, claws-mail, gimp, wine, etc. just as easily. Everything I need was in the repo.
|
Project: OpenIndiana
Version: 2022.10
Rating: 8
Date: 2023-03-06
Votes: 3
|
After some small problems with this update the OI systems runs fine and rock solid. I don't use MATE, but the ctwm instead, which makes the system slightly faster.
Together with the pkgin-framework I have all the applications I need.
It's a nice alternative Unix system, however newer versions for Firefox would make live easier.
Unfortunately OI is a little bit exotic system and the nummber of acive programmers may be limited. Nevertheless I hope it will have a long life and a good future. For me using OI is not a waste of time, I have learned a lot about Unix/Solaris and still have much fun.
|
Project: OpenIndiana
Version: 2022.10
Rating: 1
Date: 2023-01-22
Votes: 0
|
Live environment boots in VirtualBox but not in Parallels.
Both Firefox and Thunderbird crashes on launch.
I didn't even bother to install.
This OS is a waste of everybody's time.
|
Project: OpenIndiana
Version: 2022.10
Rating: 1
Date: 2022-12-12
Votes: 6
|
I tried to install several PCs, but I haven't found compatible hardware yet. Openindiana may be an excellent operating system for servers, but for most desktop users, it is unavailable. It would be good if there was a list of supported hardware. The Illumos Org. list contains only componens and is unusable.) Sorry, currently this is half-dead project. Developers may invest a lot of work to develop the Hipster release, but does it make sense? Mny people want to try this vey interesting distribution, but it's like the Holy Grail...
|
Project: OpenIndiana
Version: 2022.10
Rating: 1
Date: 2022-12-08
Votes: 0
|
I don't know why this distro still exist, it as a lot of obsolete softwares/packages, it's based on Solaris which is dead (at least for desktop usage) and you have no choice of desktop environnements (KDE Plasma 5 and GNOME Shell doesn't exist and Xfce is obsolete)
I think they should do a real upgrade so it became better
The installation is also terribly slow, Firefox and Thunderbird give Seg faults when are launched, the support is dead
It there anything to say other than that ? No search another Linux or BSD distro
|
Project: OpenIndiana
Version: 2021.10
Rating: 1
Date: 2022-01-31
Votes: 1
|
The installation of OpenIndiana destroyed my Windows backups.
My fault. I should have removed the USB HDD.
|
Project: OpenIndiana
Version: 2021.10
Rating: 8
Date: 2022-01-26
Votes: 1
|
While the live image has some problems with running application such as firefox or the pkg manager, these problems are not present in the installed system. These issues may be due to lower amounts of system RAM being present - after all, Live systems really do require a fair amount of RAM just in storage space, not counting actually temporary memory usage for applications in addition to that.
The system itself is quite stable and reliable once installed. Some of the applications are slightly behind current releases, but given the GNU toolchain and userland, you can compile and update these quite easily. Overall, it's a pretty good system and a definite competitor for replacing Linux on my desktop. I will note, that it is not as fast to boot or shutdown as an equivalent system, although I've found this to be true of most Unix systems.
|
Project: OpenIndiana
Version: 2021.10
Rating: 1
Date: 2021-12-27
Votes: 8
|
From the live image:
Running Firefox --> segmentation fault.
Running Thunderbird --> segmentation fault.
Running "sudo pkg update" in a terminal --> ends up with pkg telling there is a bug in itself.
Sorry but at this point it's just unusable. Please at least test your software once before releasing it.
|
Project: OpenIndiana
Version: 2021.04
Rating: 3
Date: 2021-12-06
Votes: 6
|
I'm all for trying new stuff, just for the experience and have literally tried every distro on distrowatch over the last 20 years before finally settling on MX Linux as my home desktop. Reading the other reviews it seems way above my pay grade geek wise and the final straw came from the FAQ's on their site.
"We do not, as yet, support USB 3"
That's a pretty basic requirement for a modern OS, especially with USB 3 first appearing in 2008. I more or less got my head round 'slices' and other quirks of BSD, but Solaris looks a bridge too far for me.
|
Project: OpenIndiana
Version: 2020.10
Rating: 3
Date: 2021-05-09
Votes: 20
|
I really want to love this OS as it's a continuation of Solaris which I always respected... but its lackluster. Hardware driver support lacking is the largest con, but honestly I think the biggest hurdle for me was the branding (call me a shallow snob) but the name Indiana doesn't inspire.. really anything in me. And calling the release "hipster"... I rolled my eyes, no one... NO ONE has any positive associations with anything related to hipsters. All of this especially coming from an OS with a great name such as Solaris. I guess my experiences with Solaris was always on Sun hardware so I am not thinking in the frame of this is designed to run on a wide variety of machines. But for the love of God, they should rebrand and try to gain some excitement about the project...
|
Project: OpenIndiana
Version: 2021.04
Rating: 1
Date: 2021-05-03
Votes: 7
|
Downloaded the latest version for a test spin. On my older Athlon 6000+ machine it booted up OK (live DVD) but there were many drivers missing or not compatible. I couldn't even get my USB WiFi dongle to be recognized so I could download drivers, so did not go any further.
Next, I booted my much newer Ryzen V machine with the live DVD and I could get through the language and multi-user selections fine, but soon after the machine would restart in the middle of the boot process. Tried several times with the same result.
It's a shame, I really wanted to give this one a try, as I always liked OpenSolaris before it was discontinued.
|
Project: OpenIndiana
Version: 2020.10
Rating: 8
Date: 2021-04-23
Votes: 0
|
Seems very solid. Not enough programs to run on it. All the commands seem to be polysyllabic. A little slow for a FreeBSD user. I am thinking of using it for office work when I figure out how to use usb storage, etc.
|
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