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.

General

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 Nexenta OS Nexenta Systems 2005 OpenSolaris, GNU, Ubuntu NexentaStor Nexenta Systems Nexenta OS 5.5-FP4, January 2025 “Enterprise Grade Unified Block & File Storage” OmniOSce OmniTI, OmniOSce Association 2012 illumos, GNU r151058 (May 4, 2026) “Produce a self-hosting, minimalist Illumos-based release suitable for production deployment” OpenIndiana illumos Foundation et al. 2010 illumos, OpenSolaris, GNU “Ensure the continued availability of an openly developed distribution based on OpenSolaris” SmartOS Joyent illumos, GNU 20260528T000227Z, May 2026 Cloud computing (“converged container and virtual machine hypervisor”) Tribblix Peter Tribble illumos 0m37, Aug 2025 An operating system distribution derived from OpenSolaris, OpenIndiana, and illumos, with a retro style and modern components v9os Alexander Eremin illumos 2018-10-01 “Server-only, IPS-based minimal SPARC distribution of illumos” Distribution Developer First public release Based on Latest release date Status Purpose Cost

Technical

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 none Tribblix x86-64, SPARC Xfce v9os SPARC none Distribution Supported architectures Install-time desktop environment selection

Package management and installation 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 IPS Kayak No OpenIndiana 4600 IPS Caiman Yes SmartOS pkgsrc/pkgin N/A (live system) N/A Tribblix 130 SVR4 N/A (live system) N/A v9os IPS No Distribution Approximate number of packages Package format/tools Default installer Graphical installation procedure

Security features

See also

Comparison of operating systems Comparison of open-source operating systems

References

External links