Oracle Releases Oracle Solaris 11 Express (2010.11)

More than one year after the latest and last OpenSolaris build (2009.06) was released Oracle has finally released a new snapshot of the next generation Solaris 11 Operating System: Solaris 11 Express (snv_151a).

Solaris Express is now available as:

• A text installer: this installer does not install any window manager but it can be easily installed using the Solaris package manager (pkg).
• A LiveCD with a GUI installer (does install the GNOME Desktop Environment).
• An automated installer for network deployments.
• USB install images.

If you want to discover what's new in this release, have a look at this presentation. The most important features I was waiting for are:

• Boot Environments.
• Fast Reboot.
• IPS packaging system.
• Boot Environments for Zones.
• ZFS as the default file system.
• ZFS deduplication.
• ZFS diff.
• ZFS dataset encryption.
• Network virtualization (Project Crossbow).