Analysts familiar with Sun Microsystems' Project Indiana say that as early as this week the company could reveal plans to revamp the OpenSolaris operating system by <A HREF="http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid39_gci1263867,00.html?track=sy184">incorporating key pieces of Linux software.</A>

In March 2007, Sun officially announced Project Indiana, whose goal is to create an OpenSolaris binary distribution. The long-term objective of the project is to increase the technology's user base and cultivate mindshare. Similar to Red Hat's Fedora Core and Novell's openSUSE projects, OpenSolaris is Sun's open source operating system and includes experimental features that might eventually make their way into its commercial Solaris operating system.

Industry watchers said Project Indiana is indicative of Sun's desire to increase awareness of Solaris among Linux-centric IT managers and developers. But these same pundits also said Sun must walk a delicate line between luring Linux users to Solaris and supporting its existing Solaris user base.