Comparison of OpenSolaris distributions
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 | 5.0.3, April 2017 | “Enterprise Grade Unified Block & File Storage” | |||
| OmniOS | OmniTI | 2012 | illumos, GNU | “Produce a self-hosting, minimalist Illumos-based release suitable for production deployment” | |||
| OpenIndiana | illumos Foundation et al. | 2010 | illumos, OpenSolaris, GNU | “To become the de facto OpenSolaris distribution installed on production servers where security and bug fixes are required free of charge” | |||
| SmartOS | Joyent | illumos, GNU | Cloud computing | ||||
| v9os | Alexander Eremin | illumos | 2017-01-14 | “Server-only, IPS-based minimal SPARC distribution of illumos” | |||
| 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 | |
| OmniOS | x86, x86-64 | none |
| OpenIndiana | x86, x86-64 | MATE |
| SmartOS | x86-64 | none |
| 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 | IPS | Kayak | No |
| OpenIndiana | 4600 | IPS | Caiman | Yes |
| SmartOS | pkgsrc/pkgin | N/A | N/A | |
| v9os | IPS | No | ||
| Distribution | Approximate number of packages | Package format/tools | Default installer | Graphical installation procedure |