Feature Story

By Robert Baty

July 31, 2007 -- When Sun executives gathered recently at a software town hall in San Francisco, the meeting may have taken place in California, but the topic was Indiana. Project Indiana, that is.

Planned as an open source binary distribution of OpenSolaris, Project Indiana is expected to create a user base and grow mindshare for OpenSolaris by combining what people like about Linux--the distribution model, community, and packaging technology--with the unique technological features of the Solaris OS.

New Releases Every Six Months

Project Indiana will provide users with frequent releases of the binary distribution--with the first coming in Spring 2008--following the GNOME release cycle to offer the most up-to-date desktop experience.

New downloads will be available every six months and developers will get the latest innovations in advance of the next release of the Solaris OS. The distribution will feature easier installation via a single CD, network-based package management, and ZFS as the default file system, which makes storage systems more reliable and easier to manage.

A Two-Tier Distribution Model

Project Indiana will help create a two-tier distribution environment, or one Solaris with two distributions: Enterprise customers will get the commercial version of the Solaris OS, which will maintain its current long release cycle, and developers and early adopters will get the latest innovations via the OpenSolaris binary distribution. Sun expects that the binary distribution would be used for one or two releases and then customers would move to the enterprise product over time.

Closing the Familiarity Gap

Increasing awareness of the Solaris OS is key to the success of Project Indiana. The project aims to familiarize Linux users with the unique, compelling features of the Solaris OS that no other operating system can provide, such as DTrace, which lets administrators identify performance bottlenecks.

Ian Murdock, Sun's chief OS strategist, believes that Project Indiana is intended to not only bridge the gulf between developers and Solaris, but also to provide them with an easier user experience. To that end, Project Indiana will change the install procedure to make it more automated and graphical.

The combination of a more familiar distribution model and the unique features in OpenSolaris will undoubtably encourage developers to shift to the Solaris environment.

Growing the Ecosystem at the Grassroots

At its core, Project Indiana is a grassroots project based on community involvement and consensus. By focusing on the user experience and providing wide distribution, Sun hopes that Project Indiana will grow the OpenSolaris community.

While the source code has been in the community for some time via OpenSolaris, Project Indiana will release the binary version as well so the community can help grow the open source platform and reorient Solaris around the Linux distribution model. By having an open source binary out in the community, larger numbers of people will be able to help use, test, and improve the product.

Learn more about Project Indiana and join the discussion at OpenSolaris.org.