Sun released the second version of Solaris Express Developer Edition(SXDE) in June this year. It was made available to the users in one of the two ways:

  1. Download the CD/DVD images from Sun’s website.
  2. Place an electronic order for a free DVD Kit containing SXDE. Completely free of cost including international shipping(limited time offer).

    3. I received my Solaris Express Developer Edition 5/07 DVD a week ago and wanted to try it out in VMWare. I will eventually install it on a real machine to find out its hardware compatibility. Below is a screenshot guided tour of the procedure to install SXDE in VMWare; the procedure would be the same for a PC too, except for the things like the risks involved in partitioning the hard disk where more care will be needed.

    1. Insert the Solaris DVD into the DVD-ROM drive and boot the computer. Alternatively, create a new virtual machine with at least 8GB hard disk space and 768MB RAM, more is highly recommended. Start the virtual machine with its CD-ROM drive mounted on the physical drive.

    2. You will see the boot menu. Keep “Solaris Express, Developer Edition” menu entry selected and press ENTER.
      Boot menu of SXDE

    3. Solaris is booting into the installer.
      SXDE booting the installer

    4. Select your keyboard layout.

    5. Solaris installer tests if it has detected the graphics hardware properly or not. If you can read the text, then click within the text area window with the mouse and press ENTER. The installation will proceed.

    6. Select a language and press “Next”.

    7. Select your country.

    8. The current date and time according to the country selected will be shown next. Correct it if it is wrong and press “Next”.

    9. Select a root password and enter it twice in the provided text boxes and press “Next”.

    10. The SXDE license agreement, read carefully. Press the “Next” button if you want to continue with the installation.

    11. Select additional localisations to install. English will be installed by default.

    12. Partitioning has to be done carefully if installing on a real drive containing other operating systems and data. First select the drive which contains free/unallocated space, create the needed partitions(/, /export/home, swap etc) etc. The following screenshots should give you an idea if you have ever created partitions while installing a GNU/Linux OS.



    13. The installation will now begin.

    14. The developer tools are installed after the operating system is installed.

    15. The installation is finished. Press “Reboot Now” to reboot the computer/virtual machine. The first time you boot into the Solaris system, some configuration steps need to be performed.

    16. Solaris installer doesn’t provide the option to create a non-privileged user account, so you have to login the first time as root.

    17. Choose a desktop, I prefer GNOME.

    18. As soon as the desktop is loaded, create a new user account. “Users and Groups” window will be opened automatically; Press “Add User” button and fill out the details. Logout and re-login as non-privileged user as soon as possible.

    19. Complete the registration if you wish, otherwise click “Cancel”.

    20. You need a Sun Online Account to finish the registration process. You can create it from the registration window.

      After registration is finished, hopefully you will have a working Sun Update Manager configuration from where you can install all the updates released for SXDE.

    21. The desktop. Have fun.

    Sun Express Developer Edition is the easiest to way to start developing Java applications on a *nix platform.
    More information:
    Sun Express Developer Edition Home
    Sun Express Developer Edition FAQ
    Installing Apache, MySQL, PHP(AMP) Stack on SXDE
    Upgrade SXDE 2/07 to 5/07