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XFree86 Drivers For Solaris
tnorbye writes: "On Sun's Intel site today there's a link to
a new XFree86 porting kit. Essentially, you can download binary XFree86 drivers which
run with the Solaris X server!
So any graphics card you can use with Linux you can now use
with Solaris. Sure makes Solaris x86 more widely available!"
Dont get me wrong i love solaris, But there HCL for the intel platform sucks. I've tried to set up a machine at home with three difrent network cards with no luck. It seems the only card i could get to work is the expensive 3com.
any graphics card you can use with Linux you can now use with Solaris
;-)
Not necessarily a great advance, the fun I've had configuring XF86 under RH recently
Wow...this is really great news for Solaris x86 users! Now all Sun has to do is improve their NIC support, sound support, SCSI support, Firewire support, USB support and RAID support and we'll show those silly little Linux kiddies what a real OS can do!!!
Why would a person run an operating system that was optimized for sparc on an intel box?
Oracle.
How much demand is there for running solaris on x86 machines? Half the point of going with solaris is using the Sun hardware.
I don't see how solaris 8 has anything to offer over the many linux distributions currently available, most of which already offer superior desktop environments. Until of course solaris 9 is released, which will be using ximian gnome as its primary desktop GUI.
While this is interesting as a toy feature for home experimentation, this isn't really huge news.
-Marvin
I would highly recommend a copy of Solaris x86 for anyone who would like to learn, or at the very least tinker around with Solaris. I used Solaris x86 to learn Solaris originally as well as study for my certification since 99% of the commands are the same between SPARC and x86. The only real difference is the absence of the OpenBOOT PROM, which is partially emulated in software on x86.
However, for day to day use, I'm still a Linux or Windows guy. Solaris x86 just doesn't have enough applications and fun stuff to make it useful for day to day non-business use, so don't plan on using it full time.
Per usual, here is where you can purchase a copy of Solaris 8 x86, or this link where you can download it for free.
It doesn't make Solaris on x86 any more relevant, that dog's had it's day.
AC's cheerfully ignored
jez people wake up thats not the point of the release
(2001-04-24 22:58:34 Khronos Group OpenML 1.0 Spec Released (articles,news) (rejected)
* 2001-08-28 21:56:47 Sun adds fonts and DPS support to XFree86 (articles,x) (rejected)
both important next we see Khronos Group OpenML up come on sort it )
the point of this Xfree was to add fonts and DPS to xfree86 code
+ wrap up the binarys so that all the same command run on solaris intel as well as Sparc e.g. Xsun
regards
john jones
Wow, now we all have one more reason to run Solaris on X86 machines! Hell, that means we are one step closer to coming up with a GOOD reason to use Solaris on X86, instead of just running one of the many free *NIXes instead....
My SGI Octane positively weeezes with Textures with it's texture ramless SSI card. The upgrade to 4MB costs over GBP1000.
How much would I love to stick a Geforce3 into it's PCI card cage and gain the benefites of PC performance, in a quality UNIX box.
AFAIK, you cannot use the NVidia Linux drivers with it, because they have their dinky little kernel module, which you have to reinstall everytime I compile a new kernel. At least NVidia cards can be used in 2D with the XFree driver now.
But what good is a driver for X if Solaris doesn't support most LAN-cards and IDE/SCSI-adapters.
This just shows that Solaris X86 is for servers only, where you check out the HCL before you buy/build the box.
I'm sure from some of the postings that I've read thus far for this article, is that people wonder why Sun bothers with Solaris x86.
Well from my experience there seems to be a few answers....
1) Some large customers want to run Solaris on cheaper hardware (ie PC's), but want the power of Solaris and leverage their other Sun investments.
2) Works great for Sun Field Employees who are given laptops. I'm one of those. I despise the idea of trying to work at a customer site and having my hands tied by Windows. Yeah, I'm one of the lucky field guys who happens to have an older (supported video) laptop, which can run Solaris x86. Then I can download applications and tools to my laptop and use them at a customer site. These tools and apps just frankly don't exist for Linux.
Besides, when I walk into a customer site, I'm representing Sun, and I open a laptop running windows? What kind of message does that send? I'd prefer to send a message like this: "Look, I like Solaris enough that I run it on my laptop."
3) Students or people who want to learn Solaris need something to tinker with. Solaris x86 is a cheap way to tinker around. Personally I'm happy because then I can finally run Solaris on my home desktop that runs perfectly happy under Linux, but didn't have a Solaris supported video card. (Of course I'll be getting my hands on a used SPARC, so it's a moot point anyway.)
"If you insist on using Windoze you're on your own."
You can run X86 to learn Solaris. There are lots of reasons to run Solaris on Sparc, and a lot of jobs out there for people who know how to do it.
If you DL x86 for free, you can learn a lot about Solaris. You can learn almost everything you need to know to pass the certification exam.
I'm not suggesting that you should learn Solaris, anymore than I'd suggest you learn Japaneese or Art History. If it's not useful, don't bother. But the notion that it's not useful for *anyone* is silly.
"So any graphics card you can use with Linux you can now use with Solaris."
And this is something new? XFree was ported years ago... I understand how this may be a new implementation, but that statement is dated.
Now if someone would figure out why the keyboard drivers in solaris do not like Dell Laptops, now that would be an accomplishment.
I'd like to see this for Sparc architectures...I have one of the Sparc clones with an ATI Rage II+ in it. 256 colors is possible, but just you try to set different video modes...anyone have any ideas for me? The board is PCI-based, and I'm not paying 700 bucks for a video card that a TNT1 would stomp all over...
"We apologize for the inconvenience."
I may induce even more manufacturers to either produce xFree86 drivers or open their specs, so that someone else can. It may not be a large market, but it has name recognition.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I might check this out. x86 Solaris 8 is free to download from Sun.
-Legion
Solaris is free. So no one is putting $$ in SUNs pockets
... if the software vendors who make commercial stuff for SPARC Solaris would also support the x86 Solaris. For instance I wanted to run Lotus Domino server on x86 Solaris but can't because there is no antivirus package available for Domino on Solaris x86, or Domino on Linux for that matter. Seems that some huge software company known for its desktop operating system has likely strong-armed the antivirus vendors by refusing to provide the much needed proprietary API information for future versions of their desktop o/s to these antivirus vendors unless they agree not to support competing email server software that runs on any x86-based free unixes.
Good news. I've been very dissapointed in x86 version of Solaris OS, because it didn't recognize my Quantum 3D Raven with Voodooo Banchee chipset. So I was stuck with terminal only interface, or 2 color (ugly) 640x480 GUI. Ultimately, I'd like to see Solaris to be tweaked by GNU people, to take advantage of both Linux technology, and Solaris, but as I know, the Sun's licence wouldn't allow that.. (to distribute "GNU Solaris").
Sun does not produce laptop SPARC systems. It hasn't produced a portable system since 1993 or so. Tadpole may still produce them, but they're not Sun either.
It's limited. The advantage of this is that you /know/ your hardware is going to work. One of the big hidden gotchas of linux servers is trying to get the right combination of drivers and hardware, and praying you don't crash smack dab into the bug nobody fixed yet. If you go Solaris x86, you have to choose hardware from a smaller list but you can stop worrying about whether or not that RAID card will really work right.
And if by some chance it doesn't, you can get support for it. You will not get caught in the ugly "well, talk to Red Hat well talk to the server vendor well talk to the card vendor" loop.
With Sun Blade 100 workstations available for $1K, it'd be nice to drop an ATI Radeon PCI card in and use that instead of the onboard ATI Rage chip. Is this doable?
Actually, what would be really cool is to get one of the ATX UltraSPARC IIe motherboards (roughly equivalent to what the Blade 100 ships with), mount it in a good midtower case (PC Power & Cooling, 400W Silencer p/s), get four 512meg PC133 ECC DIMMs from Crucial, one or two IBM 60gig 60GXP series IDE drives or Ultrastar 10K RPM SCSI drives (which SCSI controller?), a DVD-ROM drive (Pioneer 16X slot-load?), that Radeon PCI card, slap it all together, and you'd have a pretty nice workstation or low-end server. Much better than the config Sun sells.
But that's only because we need SPARC Solaris compatibility at work. Otherwise, a dual Athlon running Linux would beat the snot out of it.
This is good news indeed, since Solaris is still used on x86 by some, because people say it scales better.
BTW: Xi Graphics has been shipping graphics drivers for Solaris (and Linux) for a long time. Although not for free. But when you are using Solaris, I guess you have got the proper money. (Yes, Solaris is for free now, but I think of business applications and maybe enterprise solutions)
[--- PGP key and more on http://www.root42.de ---]
You have always been able to run XFree86 on Solaris_x86. This has no impact whatsoever on Sol_x86's usability.
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
I checked out the links but I don't see the major impact this will have. I currently run Solaris 8 on x86 as my web server and have had absolutely no issues/problems with driver availability.
i've been running solaris for home use since 2.5, all on x86. i've also tried running linux. i keep going back to solaris. why? i'm not running a desktop machine.
for one, i run mostly 2 cpu boxes (ppro/p2), on intel motherboards, with scsi drives. i've found that the stability way outweighs linux, and the snappiness is wonderful. where linux crawls in a 2 cpu situation, solaris takes off and allows me to run a ton of stuff with near 0 load. when i try the same thing on linux, everything slows to a crawl (same hardware).
of course, when i'm running a single cpu, i get the exact opposite, linux is fast, solaris is slow.
i also do a ton of java servlet development, and i have to say, the lightweight threads in the solaris kernel just plain kick ass.
Instead of using XFree drivers in Sun's server,
I'd like to throw away Sun's bloated server and be able
to use XFree on my Sparcstation.
Only 1% of 1% of 1% of 1% of computer users care about this. WHO CARES????
It's very nice of sun to provide a port of their OS to comodity hardware. There's plenty of work that's been put into software that runs under solaris, and it would be very nice to have it on a box that you and I can afford. I've got a program with a solaris makefile. I imagine it would be much easier for me to port it to solaris X86 than to Debian, but a combination of time, community spirit and FUD have me going the Debian route. There's demand and people with less time and more software than me must like this.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Are you functionally retarded? Apparently so, given the level of cretinism displayed in your post. Thinking for half a second would lead to the conclusion that Sun has enough engineers to just pick one of the GNOME-supported WMs and port it, if not several. Even if thinking logically was too much for you, you could always go look at the relevant sites. I'm not going to link here because I have no desire to feed your laziness.
Read the name, OK. XFree86. Note the *86*. That means it's written for the Intel/AMD family of microprocessors. Porting to SPARC would be non-trivial. BTW, more information is at my Solaris x86 FAQ at http://sun.drydog.com
Sure wish Sun would give something back to the community instead of just take, take, take and act as if they're an open source company when asked. They want to be the next microsoft, but don't have management competent enough to do that.
I wish that Number Nine was still in business. NN cards were excellently supported across all x86 UNIXes (Solaris, SCO) and workalikes (FreeBSD, GNU/Linux)... a pity.
Hopefully these new drivers will enable me to put Solaris on this tiny little Compaq bnox we have at work, with Intel 3D graphics.
The next things they need to work on are networking and IDE storage. Networking... well, unless you have an Intel or high-end 3com NIC, you're likely SOL. And I've yet to find an ATA/66 or ATA/100 chip from Promise (or even High-whatever, those bastards) that Solaris will detect.
--
I like to watch.
I've been running XFree86 on my solaris/X86 system for a couple of months, so is this really news?
Apart from the size of the Linux community, is there much else to distinguish Linux and Solaris? I only run Solaris because it's what my department uses (except they get nice Sparc boxes), and have been considering changing to something else.
Greate news!
My cards run fine with OpenWindows but more support is always better.
I run Solaris 2.5, 2.5.1, 2.6, 7, 8 on x86.
People are asking for reasons to run Solaris X86 so here's my oppinion:
1. Solaris X86 is a bit slower but more robust then Linux and there not that
many features that distinguish Linux from Solaris. Robust VM, mature IP stack,
ufs logging (read journaling), solid software RAID.
2. Solaris X86 is less common which makes it arguable more "secure" in a sense
that there are much less exploits for Solaris X86 floating around. New
exploits don't come out with Solaris X86 code and this eliminates at least 90%
of the people coming after your box.
3. All GUI things that I need work on Solaris X86. Enlightenment, Gnome,
Mozilla, DDD, etc. In fact my Linux and Solaris desktop setups are
indistinguishable.
4. Daily experience with Solaris does help managing big SPARC servers.
5. Solaris X86 works as a Solaris development system. In most cases you just need to
recompile your code developed on X86 to run on SPARC.
How is this important to anyone? Well, it is VERY important because it means that the XFree86 version 4.0.1 that is slated to be released in Q4 of 2028 will work. Congrats to all out there in Debian land.
Even better news is that there is work underway to create a loop free deb package installer that will create backups BEFORE overwritting so as not to ever get 'cant find or execute ldconfig' or being stuck in a configuration loop. By 2063 we fully expect to have a robust autodetection method in place for hardware (especially audio and video) that includes the latest hardware such as: The Creative SoundBlaster 16bit Stereo (amaze your friends!) the entire Roland series and in the video arena, the '1337' nVidia TNT and the 3Dfx voodoo.
One reason is they bought Win2k datacenter and discovered it really sucked on their 32-proc unisys box.
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run
"Hey, I can use this Windows system in a Solaris-dominant environment, and there are no interoperability problems."
I'd prefer to send a message like this: "Look, I like Solaris enough that I run it on my laptop."
What desktop manager and applications are you running? When I was at Sun (3 years ago) we had to use CDE desktop (nice looking but not very useful) Netscape for Solaris (crashes every couple hours, went crazy if it had to render tables, and couldn't put page numbers on prinouts) and some no-name word processor and spreadsheet apps (very badly designed). If you use any of these in front of a customer, the message you're sending is, "I am a TRUE BELIEVER IN THE SUN RELIGION. I will use Solaris no matter how many problems it causes for me. If you can't buy into that you are AN EVIL INFIDEL."
If you've converted to GNOME the message is a little mellower, and I have to admit Sun field people would make good ambassadors for Windows alternatives. But I'd be suprised. Back in '98, a lot of Sun people were still resisting the changeover from OpenWindows to CDE.
I Quote Sun "DEVELOPERS TO BENEFIT FROM 8 MILLION LINES OF SUN-SPONSORED OPEN SOURCE CODE AT SUNSOURCE.NET
u nf lash.20010530.4.html
Developers now have one convenient access point to information on 15 Sun-related open source projects"
See:
http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2001-05/s
and
http://www.sunsource.net/
Microsoft does open source software, too. I guess that makes them an open source company as well, right? And since their an open source company they must be playing fair.
Show me a company that has contributed more?
Open Source Projects Sun is Involved In:
Ant
A Java Based Build Tool
Batik
A Java Based Toolkit For Scalable Vector Graphics
Brazil
Web Application Development, Sun Labs Projects
Crimson
A Java XML Parser Derived from the Sun Project X Parser
Grid Engine
Distributed resource management software
GNUlpr
Printing
Gnome
UNIX Desktop, Development Platform, and Office Productivity Applications
JRMS
Java Libraries and Services for Building Reliable Multicast-Aware Applications
JXTA
Project JXTA - distributed network and peer-to-peer computing for complete access to the expanded web.
Mozilla
A Web Browser
NetBeans
Java IDE
NFSv4
Network File System Version 4
NFSv4 on Linux
Linux Port of NFSv4
OpenOffice.org
Office Productivity Suite
Solaris I18N Framework
X Window System Technology
Tomcat
The Reference Implementation For the Java Servlet 2.2 and JSP 1.1 Technologies
WBEM
Java implementation of the Web-based Enterprise Management (WBEM) standard
Xalan
An XSLT processor for transforming XML documents into HTML, text, or other XML document types.
Does this mean that I can find any decent pci video card that is supported under linux, and use it with my sunblade100? It has a pci bus, but all the video cards that sun sells suck in terms of frame rate. I can't play any video full screen on my 24" monitor unless I want to watch a slide show.
Casca
http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/binaries/get.h tml;$sessionid$3SSWHMIAACKTXAMTA1LU45Q#download
Step 1. Buy a D-Link 530TX+. I know, it's not on the HCL, but...
:-(
Step 2. Go here to get the drivers for the chipset.
Step 3. Have as much fun as Solaris will allow.
Or, if you really need something on the HCL, Netgear still has their FA310TX available from their store, for a rather large shipping charge though
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Uhm... Offtopic:-1??? Sun releasing these drivers is an obvious attempt to take market share away from Linux. That is, to make Linux users use Solaris instead. Linux is the revolution. Sun is a Capitalist pigdog. And you say OFFTOPIC??? Who's side are you on??? Oh yea. Slashdot sold out to the Capitalist pigdog a long time ago. But I have hope that the Revolution will succeed and the Capitalist pigdog that is Microsoft and Slashdot will burn.
The drivers from previous versions (2.7) are still in the latest version and do work, SUN just won't guarantee it. So for all practical purposes, you can combine the HCLs for 2.7 and 2.8 when you're determining if you have compatible hardware.
So you can use your ISA pnp cards in 2.8. My old 3Com 3c509 PnP ISA ethernet card worked great when I installed solaris x86 on my machine. As did my Diamond Fireport 40, Diamond S3 based video card and Sound Blaster 16 ISA which pretty much covers the bases.