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OpenSolaris takes first step toward laptops

Stephen Shankland Former Principal Writer
Stephen Shankland worked at CNET from 1998 to 2024 and wrote about processors, digital photography, AI, quantum computing, computer science, materials science, supercomputers, drones, browsers, 3D printing, USB, and new computing technology in general. He has a soft spot in his heart for standards groups and I/O interfaces. His first big scoop was about radioactive cat poop.
Expertise Processors, semiconductors, web browsers, quantum computing, supercomputers, AI, 3D printing, drones, computer science, physics, programming, materials science, USB, UWB, Android, digital photography, science. Credentials
  • Shankland covered the tech industry for more than 25 years and was a science writer for five years before that. He has deep expertise in microprocessors, digital photography, computer hardware and software, internet standards, web technology, and more.
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Stephen Shankland

OpenSolaris, the effort by Sun Microsystems and others to make the Solaris version of Unix into an open-source operating system, has started branching into the mobile computing domain. That's a notable step given that Solaris is generally designed for much more powerful--and stationary--servers.

The OpenSolaris Laptop Community Web site was launched earlier this month. It features support for Atheros' 802.11b/g wireless networking chip and said that drivers for Intel's wireless chips is "being evaluated." (Intel contributed open-source wireless networking drivers to Linux under General Public License, but Solaris is governed by a different license, the Community Development and Distribution License.)

In addition, Sun engineers are working on adding Solaris support for various power-saving techniques important to the battery-constrained world of mobile computing. For example, Intel's SpeedStep and AMD's PowerNow throttle back. Sun Solaris programmer Casper Dik posted a PowerNow driver to his blog in June.