Is opensolaris for home use
 

It has been a long time that I have opensolaris 2008 and still I have not been able to install multimedia codecs on it. And it was quite late that I came to know that it is UNIX and not Linux.

I really like the interface but I am quite curious to know if it was really made for home users or it was just made for servers and admins.
I am reading google searches lot of it.

I really don't expect a lot from an OS, just that it should play multimedia and everyday use like office. But no codecs have kept me away from it.

If I am able to do that, I would really like to use OpenIndiana which is its fork.

@kedarp:

UNIX and Linux are not seperate. UNIX is a collective term used to represent all Unix based operating systems, and Linux varients are also among those.

However, if your purpose is only to play multimedia and use tools like office and not any experiments, programming, scripting or any admin sort of work, then I'd suggest you to go with Ubuntu or Solaris 11.1 (or any pure Linux based disrto that you like).

As you said you like it's interface, so I guess you like it's desktop. It's nothing but Gnome, and you will get same kind of interface (desktop environment) in Ubuntu or any other latest varient also.

I had also been used OpenSolaris few years back when it was released, but I didn't find it much interactive or anything new in it. In my opinion, if someone really wants to use Solaris (with it's full features), then better go with Solaris 10+.

This isn't strictly speaking true and there are differences between Unix and Linux though ,granted, Linux is a Unix clone.
From my (admittedly not huge) experience Linux tends to be easier to set up for things like Multimedia, due largely to the bigger community.
As I recall OpenSolaris uses Gnome of the "old type" so a Linux distro with MATE available should look similar, I think?

I am already using Ubuntu as you can see at the left of my post. I really don't need a OS for my system.

It is the best GNome interface I came across IMO. It has got a different feel and I like it.

Oracle is responsible for the end of OpenSolaris, and a lot of chaos in OpenSource world. So I decided not to use Oracle software.
And then Solaris 11 would never be a choice. Though I use Java as I don't have any other choice for it.

I think OpenSolaris has got other problems with it. My audio device is also disabled. I think it was preferably made for SPARC architectures.
May be Sun did not include all the hardware drivers in 2008.11.

You can install it on Linux Gnome 2 desktops, that's what I'm often doing when I use Ubuntu or Red Hat / Oracle Linux distributions.
http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php?content=70212
http://www.ramoonus.nl/2012/03/12/ho...gnome-updated/

There has been two releases of OpenSolaris since 2008.11 and the latest one was forked to the OpenIndiana project. You might have a look to it.

That is funny
 

Thanks for the Nimbus theme. But I prefer

Another thing that is woth noticing that I got while googling that the audio device is enabled in OpenSolaris when it is run from Live CD.
Whereas when it is installed, the audio device is disabled.

I checked that and audio device is enabled 'out of the box' in Live CD. But in the installation, it is disabled.

You prefer ?

[quote]
Thanks for the Nimbus theme. But I prefer
[/qoute]

Missed that.
I prefer the default theme Ambience on Ubuntu 10.10. It looks cool.
Nimbus does not look that good Ubuntu as it looks on OpenSolaris.
I think the default theme always looks good on any distro.
Few others that look good are themes like New Wave, Radiance that
have been in Ubuntu since long time.

That's odd. The theme look exactly the same for me Ubuntu vs (Open)Solaris.