@heatherval
I also have been trying OpenSolaris 2008.11 for some longer period of time then usual. It looks like it (OpenSolaris) likes to wait for something as long as it can, and when it cant get that (sometimes after several retries) says the error.
Its even at very basic level, check how much it takes to start plain xterm on OpenSolaris (its currently submited as a bug) with that command:
% time xterm -e exit
On my Core 2 Duo 2GHz laptop with 2GB RAM it takes about 10 seconds.
I will propably dig into something like
MilaX, a small base to start working with, the same as FreeBSD custom instalation with base + GENERIC kernel, fortunetly OpenSolaris provides whole framework for creating such thing, its in SUNWdistro-const package (yes also avialable thru IPS repositories).
I aslo strongly suggest adding some REAL repositories to play with OpenSolaris, where you can get fluxbox for example:
Code:
# pkg set-authority -O http://blastwave.network.com:10000 blastwave.network.com
# pkg set-authority -O http://pkg.sunfreeware.com:9000 pkg.sunfreeware.com
# pkg set-authority -O http://pkg.lifewithsolaris.jp:10000 pkg.lifewithsolaris.jp
# pkg refresh
Things that I like about OpenSolaris are that my box will not hang when I remove the USB pendrive without unmounting it, also my WiFi Intel 3945 card works flawlessly on OpenSolaris, which I can get working even on FreeBSD 8-CURRENT to use WPA-PSK encryption. FreeBSD also does not offer any fast full virtualization sollution, on OpenSolaris I have great VirtualBox and xVM (which is Xen 3.1 avtually).
I am also awaiting NetBSD 5.0 to play with Xen 3.3 and NetBSD a little, seems good alternative for FreeBSD if you want virtualization.
I remember my beginnings with FreeBSD and they were hard, but after some period of time it gone better, maybe it will be the same with OpenSolaris?