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. Technical Package management and installation Information on features in the distributions. Package numbers are only approximate. Security features See also Comparison of operating systems Comparison of open-source operating systems References External links OpenSolaris Solaris distributions