After much speculation about what would happen to Sun Solaris after being bought by Oracle, they finally released Solaris 11.

Install media can be downloaded at no charge from Oracle. The Live CD version (DVD actually) boots and installs Solaris 11 from the GUI similar to most modern Linux distros. The non-live CD only has a text mode installer.

This is the default Solaris 11 desktop. There is not really much to see here, as it is a mostly standard Gnome 2 desktop. It is basically the same layout used in Solaris 9 and Ubuntu 10.

The "Java Desktop" branding used in Solaris 10 has been dropped (It never did have anything to do with Java anyway), and it no longer tries to mimic the Windows Start menu.

It actually starts off in a higher resolution, but I sized it down for the screen shots. And, as usual, for some dumb reason it won't let me set a reasonable refresh rate in the display control panel. Also, the login screen continues to use the higher resolution even after I specified the one I want.

Like Solaris 9 and Ubuntu 10 the applications are accessed via the Applications Menu in the upper right.

Launcher shortcuts are placed in the middle of the top panel, and system applets are in the upper right.

The panel at the bottom provides a list of running application windows, enabling easy switching.

The Solaris 11 desktop does not place "My Computer" or "Home" type icons on the desktop by default.

Instead there are icons for Oracle's Package Manager, and "Start Here".

Oracle's Package Manager enables point-and-click download and installation of a number of applications and utilities from a central repository.

Oddly Solaris 11 (at least this version) didn't include OpenOffice/StarOffice, and I don't see it listed here.

The "Start Here" is a simple welcome screen with links to common tasks a new user might want to perform.

The Oracle 11 desktop is pre-set to use four virtual desktops. You can select each virtual desktop by clicking on the corresponding box in the lower right. You can also move windows from one desktop to another by dragging the window to the edge of the screen.