The DVDs that I had in class today were sent to me by OpenSolaris, an offspring of Sun Microsystems, the company that brings us Java. Solaris is an operating system, like Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac, etc., and OpenSolaris is partly, but not entirely, open-source, so you can read the code, learn from it, and alter it if you like. Here's an article about it from a reliable source.
Related references: Software Freedom Day looks to be a bigger deal in some other countries than it is locally. The Free and Open Source Software movement is one from whose ideas I certainly benefit every day, but I'm not doctrinaire about it. The group gNewSense is devoted to promoting software installations that are 100% free of commercial software.
The thing on the OpenSolaris discs that interests me most is Virtual Box, a tool for allowing several different operating systems to be installed on one machine. VMware offers a version free to small-timers like me, too: I'm not planning to host my own website or manage a network, so either of these should work fine. I'd like to have both Windows and Linux (or any other Unix-like system, such as OpenSolaris) on one machine without the drag to sleepwalking speed for both operating systems, which is what I've experienced with emulators.
Let you know if I ever get around to it. For now I keep separate machines, and they're both working fine. Boy, do I feel rich with two computers on my desk. Confused, sometimes, too.
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