GNU/Solaris and easier partitioning
If you’re about to deal with the Nexenta GNU/Solaris distribution, you might want to check out the latest installer ISO image (elatte_install_a7test2-b61_i386.iso, to be found in /unstable-iso/, which has seen quite a bunch of improvements compared to the “official” alpha6 image. But, aside the fact that a7test2 features the OpenSolaris / NWS build 61 and a bunch of updated software packages, to me the most notable improvement is that there finally is a tool for guided partition creation during installation, which is at least on par with what most of the recent text-based Linux installers provide. So finally, I can give GNU/Solaris a “bare metal” try again (as right now I am just running it inside VMWare server). Also have been playing around with Solaris Express Community Release, as suggested earlier by some of my honoured readers, but despite the fact that it seems to be a rock-solid, well-working environment, I still am in favor of Nexenta GNU/Solaris somehow because in many respects (including software / package management) it just feels as comfortable as Debian. And my server-sided testbed system (housing our internal documentation wiki as well as a subversion repository) has been just running the last few months without requiring too much attention. Good thing. 🙂