So, being a curious carbon based lifeform, I decided to try out openSolaris 2008.05 now sporting the GNOME interface, I realized it might not be as smooth as say an Ubuntu install, but figured it couldn't be much worse than some of the lower grade distros I've tried. I mean, it's made by Sun, it must work pretty well. Sigh, I assume too much. I tried installing openSolaris on just about every type of computer running every type of hardware and never got farther than the boot menu on the disc. No error messages, nothing, it just hung on a black screen with Sun's copyright info. That's when I decided to try out VirtualBox, also by Sun, but my reasoning was that they should at least be compatible, which thank god, this time I assumed correctly. The image you see here is openSolaris 2008.05 running in Sun xVM VirtualBox 1.6 on Ubuntu 8.04. Getting openSolaris to run in VirtualBox as a live CD and also to install was really easy, couldn't get usb ports or sound to work, but after everything I just masochistically put myself through trying to install openSolaris on so many machines, usb and sound were the least of my concerns. I guess I shouldn't be surprised really, the only way I ever got Solaris 10 to run was in VMware, ashame I didn't remember that sooner. sigh. 
I was surprised after the install that openSolaris ran so quickly in a virtual environment, GIMP loaded up in a couple seconds, and Rhythmbox did too. Usually, even with a lot of resources given, virtual operating systems hang a lot, openSolaris seemed perfectly happy though. Then, out of nowhere, it crashed. Repeatedly. Then I started to get errors that it could not boot from the virtual drive. And then I had to reinstall it. 
Sun added some nice touches to customizing GNOME for openSolaris, and being a Linux user, I felt right at home of course in GNOME, but it was weird using an older version of GNOME again even if it has been tweaked. Firefox loaded very quickly and looked slick. You can definitely tell why they hired Ian from Debian, he's made openSolaris seem very accessible to Linux converts. But until they manage to get openSolaris's hardware, driver, and installer issues sorted out, I can't say I would recommend even trying to install it in anything but a virtual environment, for the time being. My overall opinion: openSolaris shows great promise, keep your eye on it, but for right now, save yourself the migraine of trying to get it installed and configured properly. If anyone says Linux is too hard to use, hand them an openSolaris install disc.
If you should decide you need to feel defeated and lose several hours of your life in the process, here is the link to openSolaris so you can download it.
If you want to try out VirtualBox, I highly recommend it, you can download it here.
