Comparison of OpenSolaris distributions explained

Technical variations of Solaris distributions include support for different hardware devices and systems or software package configurations. Organizational differences may be motivated by historical reasons. Other criteria include security, including how quickly security upgrades are available; ease of package management; and number of packages available.

These tables compare each noteworthy distribution's latest stable release on wide-ranging objective criteria. It does not cover each operating system's subjective merits, branches marked as unstable or beta, nor compare Solaris distributions with other operating systems.

General

Basic general information about the distributions: creator or producer, release date and latest version, and so forth.

Distribution	Developer	First public release	Based on	Latest release date	Status	Purpose	Cost
	BeleniX			OpenSolaris, GNU	0.7.1 / July 19, 2008
	Nexenta OS	Nexenta Systems	2005	OpenSolaris, GNU, Ubuntu
	NexentaStor	Nexenta Systems		Nexenta OS	5.3.0, May 2020^[1]		“Enterprise Grade Unified Block & File Storage”^[2]
	OmniOSce	OmniTI / OmniOSce Association	2012^[3]	illumos, GNU	r151050 (May 6, 2024)^[4]		“Produce a self-hosting, minimalist Illumos-based release suitable for production deployment”^[5]
	OpenIndiana	illumos Foundation et al.	2010	illumos, OpenSolaris, GNU			“Ensure the continued availability of an openly developed distribution based on OpenSolaris”^[6]
	SmartOS	Joyent		illumos, GNU	20201203T165910Z, Dec 2020^[7]		Cloud computing (“converged container and virtual machine hypervisor”^[8])
	Tribblix	Peter Tribble		illumos	0m35, Aug 2024^[9]		Tribblix is an operating system distribution derived from OpenSolaris, OpenIndiana, and illumos, with a retro style and modern components (“”^[10])
	v9os	Alexander Eremin		illumos	2018-10-01^[11]		“Server-only, IPS-based minimal SPARC distribution of illumos”^[12]
Distribution	Developer	First public release	Based on	Latest release date	Status	Purpose	Cost

Technical

Distribution	Supported architectures	Install-time desktop environment selection
	BeleniX	x86, x86-64	KDE, Xfce
	Nexenta OS	x86, x86-64	GNOME
	NexentaStor	x86(-64?)
	OmniOS	x86, x86-64	none
	OpenIndiana	x86, x86-64	MATE
	SmartOS	x86-64^[13]	none
	Tribblix	x86-64, SPARC	Xfce
	v9os	SPARC	none
Distribution	Supported architectures	Install-time desktop environment selection

Package management and installation

Information on features in the distributions. Package numbers are only approximate.

Distribution	Approximate number of packages	Package format/tools	Default installer	Graphical installation procedure
	BeleniX		RPM
	Nexenta OS		APT
	NexentaStor
	OmniOS	1032^[14]	IPS	Kayak	No
	OpenIndiana	4600^[15]	IPS	Caiman	Yes
	SmartOS		pkgsrc/pkgin	N/A (live system)	N/A
	Tribblix	130^[16]	SVR4	N/A (live system)	N/A
	v9os		IPS		No
Distribution	Approximate number of packages	Package format/tools	Default installer	Graphical installation procedure

See also

• Comparison of operating systems
• Comparison of open-source operating systems

Notes and References

1. Web site: Nexenta Documentation. 1 May 2020.
2. Web site: NexentaStor. 27 November 2013.
3. Web site: OmniOS Release Notes. https://web.archive.org/web/20130504013330/https://omnios.omniti.com/wiki.php/ReleaseNotes#r151002. dead. 4 May 2013.
4. Web site: OmniOS Community Edition r151050.
5. Web site: OmniOS Approach.
6. Web site: About OpenIndiana. 2 November 2020.
7. Web site: Download SmartOS. 3 December 2020.
8. Web site: SmartOS - Joyent. www.joyent.com.
9. Web site: Changes in 0m35 prerelease . 18 October 2024.
10. Web site: Tribblix . www.tribblix.org.
11. Web site: v9os. sourceforge.net.
12. Web site: v9os. 2 November 2020.
13. Web site: Hardware Requirements - SmartOS Documentation - SmartOS Wiki. wiki.smartos.org.
14. Web site: OmniOS Package Repository. OmniTI. 21 September 2017.
15. Web site: OpenIndiana Package Repositories . OpenIndiana . 8 May 2020.
16. Web site: Software Overlays. 29 October 2021.