OT - was Re: [ILUG] OpenSolaris 2009.06 software repositories.

[Ivan Griffin]

Hi Darragh,

OpenSolaris is a fine system (ZFS with time-slider and DTrace are 
*amazing* technologies), but it definitely has some drawbacks as 
a desktop when it comes to media playback. For some reason, it is very 
difficult to find a per-compiled binary of VLC for it, for instance.

The only one that did exist, on a site called Living With Solaris 
(http://lifewithsolaris.jp/) was removed due to license or copyright or 
codec patent concerns or some other such reason.


However, whilst I don't know specifically about the applications you are 
interested in, but it is worth bearing in mind that there are additional 
opensolaris.org repositories that you can enable above and beyond the 
rather limited default.

See https://opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?messageID=368337&tstart=0

Specifically:

--- <snip> ----
Repository Description

http://pkg.opensolaris.org/release - The release repository is now the 
defaultauthority for new users of OpenSolaris. This repository will be 
slower evolving, receiving milestone updates every 6 months with a new 
release of OpenSolaris. Significant bug fixes, security updates and new 
software may be provided, prior to these milestone updates, that users 
may install.

http://pkg.opensolaris.org/contrib - The contrib repository is a new 
repository allowing community members to contribute software, in the form 
of binary packages, that haven't yet been included in the release 
repository. This repository may act as a staging location for inclusion of 
sofware into the release repository at a later stage based on a review of 
quality, and usefulness.

http://pkg.opensolaris.org/dev - The developer repository is a new 
repository acting as a staging repository for the next version of 
OpenSolaris. This repository, updated on a bi-weekly basis, will contain 
the latest and greatest software available for OpenSolaris but may not 
have the same level of quality as the release repository.

http://pkg.sun.com/opensolaris/extra - The extra repository is a new 
repository, hosted on sun.com, which provides software that cannot be 
re-distributed due to licensing eg. VirtualBox and Flash plugin for 
Firefox. Users will be able to access this repository free of charge, 
through an updated certificate that they can pass on to their package 
manager for authorization.

https://pkg.sun.com/opensolaris/support - The supported repository is a
repository providing the latest bug fixes and updates. Users will be able 
to access this repository if they have a current support subscription from 
Sun.
--- </snip> ----

Also, see https://pkg.sun.com/register/status for access to
https://pkg.sun.com/opensolaris/extra


Best Regards,
Ivan


On Mon, 29 Jun 2009, Darragh wrote:

> Good evening,
>
> I'm faced with the horrible task of finding a distribution that ticks all my boxes after the really bad accessibility due to Pulseaudio in Ubuntu 9.04.
>
> I'm liking OpenSolaris at the moment but the packages it comes with seem to be quite limited either in enabled functionality or  in the available options when installing new packages.
>
> Take example Totem, it doesn't support playing media over a Samba share out of the box.
> It doesn't come with a torrent app out of the box either and although I understand that their trying to keep the footprint of the installed system very low, I haven't found one in the list of available applications in the software install tool either.
>
> I might explore Fedora 10 but unlike Ubuntu, OpenSolaris or OpenSuSE I cant install that independently as there is no software based synthesizer available for the screen reader during installation so it turns me off.
>
> Any suggestions welcome.
>
>
> Darragh
>
>
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