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Using OpenSolaris UNIX for the first time in ages. This is a very good OS.

I have just installed OpenSolaris UNIX in VMware. First impressions really are good; the LiveCD environment works very well indeed. The Gnome desktop is a breath of fresh air compared to the crap Unity desktop that comes with Ubuntu 14.10. Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 is the default web browser; this is due to the fact this is an older ISO that I installed. But this still works well for my needs. Compared to the Windows file-system; ZFS offers snapshots and the Time Slider application that comes with OpenSolaris when enabled will regularly take snapshots of your files to protect against data loss. This does not compensate for the absence of a regular off-site backup plan though. But this is something that Linux should have. If Linux had the ZFS file-system or something like it; then it would be even better for an enterprise environment. I am not sure if Red Hat Enterprise Linux has ZFS yet; but this is something that the developers should look into. The mount command gives quite verbose output on OpenSolaris.

homer@hal9000:~# mount
/ on rpool/ROOT/opensolaris read/write/setuid/devices/dev=2d90002 on Thu Jan  1 10:00:00 1970
/devices on /devices read/write/setuid/devices/dev=4a00000 on Wed Jun  4 11:12:47 2014
/dev on /dev read/write/setuid/devices/dev=4a40000 on Wed Jun  4 11:12:47 2014
/system/contract on ctfs read/write/setuid/devices/dev=4ac0001 on Wed Jun  4 11:12:47 2014
/proc on proc read/write/setuid/devices/dev=4b00000 on Wed Jun  4 11:12:47 2014
/etc/mnttab on mnttab read/write/setuid/devices/dev=4b40001 on Wed Jun  4 11:12:47 2014
/etc/svc/volatile on swap read/write/setuid/devices/xattr/dev=4b80001 on Wed Jun  4 11:12:47 2014
/system/object on objfs read/write/setuid/devices/dev=4bc0001 on Wed Jun  4 11:12:47 2014
/etc/dfs/sharetab on sharefs read/write/setuid/devices/dev=4c00001 on Wed Jun  4 11:12:47 2014
/lib/libc.so.1 on /usr/lib/libc/libc_hwcap1.so.1 read/write/setuid/devices/dev=2d90002 on Wed Jun  4 11:13:08 2014
/dev/fd on fd read/write/setuid/devices/dev=4d00001 on Wed Jun  4 11:13:15 2014
/tmp on swap read/write/setuid/devices/xattr/dev=4b80002 on Wed Jun  4 11:13:19 2014
/var/run on swap read/write/setuid/devices/xattr/dev=4b80003 on Wed Jun  4 11:13:19 2014
/export on rpool/export read/write/setuid/devices/nonbmand/exec/xattr/atime/dev=2d90006 on Wed Jun  4 11:16:30 2014
/export/home on rpool/export/home read/write/setuid/devices/nonbmand/exec/xattr/atime/dev=2d90007 on Wed Jun  4 11:16:30 2014
/export/home/homer on rpool/export/home/homer read/write/setuid/devices/nonbmand/exec/xattr/atime/dev=2d90008 on Wed Jun  4 11:16:30 2014
/rpool on rpool read/write/setuid/devices/nonbmand/exec/xattr/atime/dev=2d90009 on Wed Jun  4 11:16:31 2014

But this is UNIX. Here is how to list the ZFS filesystems on OpenSolaris UNIX.

homer@hal9000:~# zfs list
NAME                      USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
rpool                    3.62G  4.19G  77.5K  /rpool
rpool/ROOT               2.86G  4.19G    19K  legacy
rpool/ROOT/opensolaris   2.86G  4.19G  2.85G  /
rpool/dump                256M  4.19G   256M  -
rpool/export             8.12M  4.19G    21K  /export
rpool/export/home        8.10M  4.19G    21K  /export/home
rpool/export/home/homer  8.08M  4.19G  8.08M  /export/home/homer
rpool/swap                512M  4.60G   101M  -

Type man zfs to get more information about this filesystem and the commands used to manage it. I am downloading OpenSolaris 11 now; I need to re-install with a newer version as the repositories do not work on an older release. But; this is a very nice alternative to the Ubuntu and Linux Mint desktop options if you want to play around with ZFS. Just create a Oracle account and download an ISO for yourself. You will not be disappointed at all with this lovely UNIX operating system.

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