OpenSolaris, VMWare, Sun Developer Network

I'm wanting to play with OpenSolaris... Solaris seems technically cool, I have a lot of respect for the engineering prowess of Sun, and ZFS and DTrace have gotten a lot of publicity and seem cool.

To a certain extent experimenting with OpenSolaris runs contrary to my overall feelings on operating systems at this point, which is that the important thing is a convenient, well-thought-out packaging and package-update mechanism, with the largest possible number of things packaged for it, and ideally available from one or a few trusted sources. This is why I like Debian so much.

Another issue is whether such an experiment is the right way to handle the fact that there are always too many things to learn. Software is all about lots and lots of precise and largely arbitrary details, resulting in a stiff learning curve when trying to use something new. (And, correspondingly, great gains in power that come only from deep familiarity with a system.) It is a key professional skill to manage this learning effectively: on the one hand, it is easy to get too deeply entrenched in what you already know how to use, and miss out on opportunities arising elsewhere; on the other, it is easy to obsess over always learning new things from the beginning, when gaining further skill with things you already use and know a little about would be more valuable.

But despite such concerns--hey, new toy. Looks shiny and fun right now. Could be a pain in the ass to actually get it working.

Anyway, I'm planning to run OpenSolaris under VMWare. VMWare, by the way, looks really fucking sweet. I've only used it a little, but... cool. Papers about it, which I read back at UT... cool. It's proprietary, but the VMWare Server Console is beer-free, and has at least a bit to play around with.

So the holdup at this point is the Sun Developer Network, or as the military refers to it, the SDN. (This is a joke; as a fun parlor game, if the military were to use SDN, what would it stand for?) Any similarities in name or intent between the SDN and the MSDN are purely coincidental.

I'm familiar with the general concept of Developer Networks, but have long held them to be tools of the Evil Proprietary Establishment, and have not learned the details, or joined one (which I vaguely considered to be too expensive to contemplate, anyway). But Sun's is free. I think it has recently morphed from something else, upgraded its website, acquired new superpowers, etc. It's pointed to by OpenSolaris.org. But I can't download any fucking software from it.

Rediculous. (And yes, I do know how to spell.)

It's funny how so much of everything comes down to doing things right.