OpenSolaris, the operating system created by Sun Microsystems, has finally reached its first stable release, 2008.05. I think this is one of the most awaited operating systems by developers, sysadmins and users who are interested in developing and improving operating systems.

OpenSolaris 2008.05 comes packed with features that you will surely like if you fit in the above categories. A brand new Image Packaging System (IPS), ZFS as the default filesystem, and DTrace enabled packages so you can keep an eye on everything and squeeze the juice out of your system. The powerful bash shell is one of the GNU utilities that made their way into OpenSolaris 2008.05, and many other tools from the GNU world.

The single LiveCD install image will allow you to take a look at the complete operating system in a matter of seconds. If you like what you see, then you can install OpenSolaris 2008.05 on your computer. IPS, the new package management system, will allow everyone to install packages from network-based repositories. What's so special about the ZFS filesystem, you might ask. Thanks to it, you will have an environment that allows you to rollback your entire system to a previous state. The users with slow Internet connection were not left out: they can order a free CD from OpenSolaris' website.

OpenSolaris 2008.05 is only available for x86 platforms. If you have a different type of system, you will have to wait a little bit longer until a release for your platform is created. OpenSolaris is based on Solaris, an operating system that was originally created by Sun in 1991. Solaris is a version of System V Release 4 Unix. The OpenSolaris project was started at the beginning of 2004, by a team made of persons that covered different aspects of OpenSolaris, such as licensing, governance, source code analysis and management, marketing, etc. The Solaris source code was opened up gradually, beginning with DTrace, a tracing tool that's used to tune a system for optimum performance and utilization.

Most of the code is released under the CDDL license, which is based on the Mozilla Public License (MPL) 1.1. CDDL is an open source license since 2005, when it was approved by the Open Source Initiative. The files released under CDDL can be combined with proprietary and/or open source software.

Download OpenSolaris 2008.05 right now from Softpedia.