Technical variations of Solaris distributions include support for different hardware devices and systems or software package configurations. Organizational differences may be motivated by historical reasons. Other criteria include security, including how quickly security upgrades are available; ease of package management; and number of packages available.
These tables compare each noteworthy distribution's latest stable release on wide-ranging objective criteria. It does not cover each operating system's subjective merits, branches marked as unstable or beta, nor compare Solaris distributions with other operating systems.
Basic general information about the distributions: creator or producer, release date and latest version, and so forth.
| Distribution | Developer | First public release | Based on | Latest release date | Status | Purpose | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BeleniX | ? | ? | OpenSolaris, GNU | 0.7.1 / July 19, 2008 | Discontinued | ? | Gratis |
| Nexenta OS | Nexenta Systems | 2005 | OpenSolaris, GNU, Ubuntu | 3.1.3.5 (October 31, 2012) [±] | Discontinued | ? | Gratis |
| NexentaStor | Nexenta Systems | ? | Nexenta OS | 5.3.0, May 2020[1] | Active | “Enterprise Grade Unified Block & File Storage”[2] | Commercial |
| OmniOSce | OmniTI / OmniOSce Association | 2012[3] | illumos, GNU | r151042 (May 2, 2022)[4] | Active | “Produce a self-hosting, minimalist Illumos-based release suitable for production deployment”[5] | Gratis |
| OpenIndiana | illumos Foundation et al. | 2010 | illumos, OpenSolaris, GNU | Hipster 2023.10 (October 28, 2023) [±][6] | Active | “Ensure the continued availability of an openly developed distribution based on OpenSolaris”[7] | Gratis |
| SmartOS | Joyent | ? | illumos, GNU | 20201203T165910Z, Dec 2020[8] | Active | Cloud computing (“converged container and virtual machine hypervisor”[9]) | Gratis |
| Tribblix | Peter Tribble | ? | illumos | 0m25, Apr 2021[10] | Active | Tribblix is an operating system distribution derived from OpenSolaris, OpenIndiana, and illumos, with a retro style and modern components (“”[11]) | Gratis |
| v9os | Alexander Eremin | ? | illumos | 2018-10-01[12] | Active | “Server-only, IPS-based minimal SPARC distribution of illumos”[13] | Gratis |
| Distribution | Developer | First public release | Based on | Latest release date | Status | Purpose | Cost |
| Distribution | Supported architectures | Install-time desktop environment selection |
|---|---|---|
| BeleniX | x86, x86-64 | KDE, Xfce |
| Nexenta OS | x86, x86-64 | GNOME |
| NexentaStor | x86(-64?) | ? |
| OmniOS | x86, x86-64 | none |
| OpenIndiana | x86, x86-64 | MATE |
| SmartOS | x86-64[14] | none |
| Tribblix | x86-64, SPARC | Xfce |
| v9os | SPARC | none |
| Distribution | Supported architectures | Install-time desktop environment selection |
Information on features in the distributions. Package numbers are only approximate.
| Distribution | Approximate number of packages | Package format/tools | Default installer | Graphical installation procedure |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BeleniX | ? | RPM | ? | ? |
| Nexenta OS | ? | APT | ? | ? |
| NexentaStor | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| OmniOS | 1032[15] | IPS | Kayak | No |
| OpenIndiana | 4600[16] | IPS | Caiman | Yes |
| SmartOS | ? | pkgsrc/pkgin | N/A (live system) | N/A |
| Tribblix | 130[17] | SVR4 | N/A (live system) | N/A |
| v9os | ? | IPS | ? | No |
| Distribution | Approximate number of packages | Package format/tools | Default installer | Graphical installation procedure |
