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XFree86 Drivers For Solaris

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the sincere-flattery dept.

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!"

31 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. x86 solaris demand? by Marvin_Runyon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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

    1. Re:x86 solaris demand? by Erik+Hensema · · Score: 2

      I found Solaris to be very spartan (though Solaris 8 comes with a GNU CD, which makes it way more comfortable). Yes, I like to have vim instead of vi. Yes, CDE sucks big time, no, I don't want a classic bourne shell, I'd like to run bash thank you.

      Hardware support is very poor. Don't even try to run Solaris on a laptop.

      Furthermore: Solaris on x86 is slow. It flies on Sparc, but the x86 port just isn't speedy enough to me.
      It's not all bad, though :-) For instance, documentation is excelent and consistency is very good. To bootprocess is IMHO quite pretty and the packaging system is passable.

      --

      This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.

    2. Re:x86 solaris demand? by isa-kuruption · · Score: 4, Informative

      Superior desktop environments? What? GNOME doesn't run on Solaris x86 all of a sudden? I thought this was the reason for Open Sourced code. In fact, Solaris 8 comes with a software CD with a bunch of nice GNU utils which include GNOME and KDE window managers.

      Why would someone want to run Solaris x86 on an Intel box? Various reasons, but I think the original reason I did was to learn Solaris. Not all of us can afford Sparc hardware, especially 3 years ago when I was first starting to learn Solaris. I know you can get a Sunblade for $1000, but still, not everyone can afford to dish out $1000.

      Another reason someone might want to run Solaris x86 is for stability. Solaris x86 and Solaris sparc differ greatly. There is enough differences between the x86 and ultrasparc architectures that it required Sun to make more than just a "few" modifications to run Solaris on x86. Granted, I would agree Solaris does not run as well on x86 as it does sparc, but I can say the same thing for Linux as well, because UltraSparc is (arguably) a better hardware platform (stability wise).

      In fact, I saw an article recently stating that Linux runs faster on a Sparc than Solaris does, which is understandable. So why use Solaris at all? Because it's dependable.

      I, personally, recently had a problem installing Solaris x86 on a machine with an Promise ATA100 controller.. and because of this issue, I had to reinstall with Debian 2.2 instead (which, btw, didn't have support for the controller in the install kernel either.. which meant doing the base install and kernel recompile on another machine). I think Sun does need to have better support for Solaris x86 hardware, but I don't think Sun is really interested in supporting x86 hardware (yet). They do, as you know, have a processor they'd like to sell. One of Sun's "value-added" is how well and how much effort Sun puts into optimizing Solaris for their hardware.

      And although Solaris isn't a system for the average "I hate windows; I'll run Linux" user, it is a system run by professionals who are used to running Solaris on their UNIX workstations. For them, it increases their productivity.

      As a reply, this is nothing against the original post directly. I just knew there would be a bunch of Solaris bashing and I got tired of it by the time I got to your post ;)

    3. Re:x86 solaris demand? by Tet · · Score: 2
      I don't want a classic bourne shell, I'd like to run bash thank you.


      SUNWbash is shipped with Solaris 8 as standard (as is SUNWless, another godsend). As for vim, I agree with you 100%. If I have a wide window open for viewing Apache log files, I want to be able to edit files in the same window, rather than have to either resize it, or open another, smaller window because the standard Solaris vi can't handle windows wider than 128 characters. Fortunately, sunfreeware.com is your friend.

      --
      "The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
    4. Re:x86 solaris demand? by Surak · · Score: 2

      Good documentation. Better stability (in my experience) Good quality LVM and JFS. It's just a nicer, more complete whole than Linux with fewer rough edges. Much as the BSDs are. To me Linux often feels hacky, and almost like a toy compared to Solaris.


      I'll agree with you on some of those points, like the fact that Solaris has a good LVM and JFS... I'll even add stuff and say that Solaris is more scalable than Linux...but some of the others are a bit sketchy...

      Stability is not a factor that is decided exclusively by the operating system. There are a LOT of variables in terms of stability: the hardware, the application, the networking environment, machine maintenance, and so forth. You can't tell much about a given machine's stability exclusively from the operating system.

      Documentation? Much of the documentation that is available for Linux is actually very good. The Solaris documentation appears to be better only from the aspect that it comes from (more or less) one source, while Linux documentation is the product of many writers with many different writing styles. The only problem with Linux documentation is that there isn't enough of it for some of the newer projects (in particular, I find the GNOME documentation to be rather lacking in some respects), but you might be running those on Solaris anyway. :)

      What does Linux have that you're missing? Freedom. Freedom to have the source, to edit that source, and to distribute that source, complete with your changes. Most Linux distributions consist of mainly open source software, and one distro, Debian, consists of nothing but open source software (in their definition of that term of course). You simply can't make changes to the Solaris code and start distributing "Chegosaurus" Solaris. But you could have "Chegosaurus Linux," sure no problem, just keep it open source. You just don't have that kind of freedom with Solaris.

      whether I chose to hack the Linux source or not is irrelevant, btw... It is the freedom to choose to do so if I wish that it is the issue here, not whether or not I modify said code at all...

      --
      My journal has hot /. gossip.
    5. Re:x86 solaris demand? by duffbeer703 · · Score: 2

      I like Solaris, but it doesn't come with a great LVM or JFS.

      VxFS and Veritas Volume manager are great, but they cost alot. UFS & Disksuite kinda suck.

      --
      Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
  2. I submitted this before and I get rejected by johnjones · · Score: 2

    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

  3. Hella cool!!! by supabeast! · · Score: 2

    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....

    1. Re:Hella cool!!! by iceT · · Score: 2

      Solaris 8 is (almost) free for Intel.....

      Just $75 for 'media'.

      (what is that, a fsck'in PLATIUNUM CD?)

      --
      -- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
    2. Re:Hella cool!!! by cnkeller · · Score: 2
      Just $75 for 'media'.

      Been a while since you checked? It's free dude, just use your Sun login...

      --

      there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots

    3. Re:Hella cool!!! by duffbeer703 · · Score: 2

      If you buy the media kit, you get documentation, and about 7 cds with OS stuff, docs, gnu utilities, star office, forte for java and an eval of forte for C/C++

      --
      Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
  4. This can be a good thing... by Doctor_D · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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."
    1. Re:This can be a good thing... by Ami+Ganguli · · Score: 2

      So what you're saying is that the only reason people use Solaris x86 is:

      • Because they're Sun employees and it looks bad to use anything else.
      • Because they want to study for a certificate.

      If that's true, then these don't really sound like good reasons at all. Surely there must be _somebody_ who is using Solaris x86 for real work?

      I have to admit I don't understand why Sun is resisting the switch to Linux. I'm not saying they should dump Solaris over night, but a two or three year transition plan would make a lot of sense.

      As it is they'll probably be the only proprietary Unix vendor in three or four years. As more vendors support Linux, application support for Solaris and trained administrators will become harder to find. No matter how good their hardware is, that's a big barrier to overcome.

      --
      It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
    2. Re:This can be a good thing... by bockman · · Score: 2
      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.
      You mean, using PC hardware and still paying big bucks for each small piece of software? (like compilers, debuggers, development environnments, whatever).
      To me, it looks like getting the worst of both worlds.

      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.
      You have heard of Linus and FreeBSD, I assume. What can you run on a Solaris laptop that cannot be run on a Linux laptop? (aside from SUN proprietary software, of course ).

      3) Students or people who want to learn Solaris need something to tinker with.
      A good reason. But only for people deeply involved in Solaris. Solaris is still a Unix, and anyone comfortable with Unix should not have big problems with 90% of Solaris, including many system administration tasks. I personally was able to tackle some non-complex admin task (setting DNS, starting custom programs as daemons, installing Apache, GNU compiler, SUN C++ compiler, SUN firewall), supported only by my previous Linux experience.

      --
      Ciao

      ----

      FB

    3. Re:This can be a good thing... by cybrthng · · Score: 2

      1). The complete GCC toolchain is available for Solaris SPARC and X86 - Free

      2). What can you run on a Linux laptop that can't be run on a Solaris Laptop

      3). Good for you. But try running an E10k with a 20 terrabyte EMC disk array running 4 fiber channel cards, splitting up the Disk IO and then 4 ethernet ports with 2 for redundant network connections and the other two for high speed private backup network.

      Aslo try switching scsi devices, removing a cpu board or adding in a cpu board and memory on your linux box.

      It isn't just about what you run on your laptop, it is about what tool you use for whatever your trying to solve.

      Solaris X86 isn't the latest and greatest, but it does get Sun 80% of the way to supporting future X86 based hardware such as AMD's sledgehammer and it is a foot in the door in cross compiling knowledge and porting to support Intels Itanium as well.

      Plus Solaris X86 is stable. I can upgrade from 2.6, to 2.7, to 2.8 and not have to rebuild, relink, recompile or re-install anything. If i install oracle 8.1.7 on 2.6 and upgrade to 2.8 i won't break anything, mind you there are some patches to install, but unlike Linux i won't have to chase down glibc compat libraries and make sure to edit everything and configure special environment variables if i ever have to relink.

    4. Re:This can be a good thing... by segfaultcoredump · · Score: 2
      I have to admit I don't understand why Sun is resisting the switch to Linux. I'm not saying they should dump Solaris over night, but a two or three year transition plan would make a lot of sense

      (warning: Sarcasm ahead) Ya know, I dont know why all of these BSD guys keep resisting the switch to linux. I'm not saying that they should dump *BSD overnight, but a two or three year transition plan would make a lot of sense

      That said, I run all of my production systems off of SPARC. When it comes to cheap cpu that only takes up 1 rack unit of space, you just can't beat a Sun X1 ($995 to start, and it takes PC133 DIMM's to boot).

      Solaris has a huge installed base and is rock solid. I've been running solaris systems for 5 years now, and they only crash if there is a hardware problem. IMNSHO, their support group is second to none.

      Besides, can you imagine the mods that would be required to allow linux to dynamically add cpu and memory modules? (not that one can do that with pc hardware)

      Lets face it, you choose the right tool for the job. For my environment, that tool is solaris. For yours, it is prob Win2K.

    5. Re:This can be a good thing... by jandrese · · Score: 2

      The problem with support on laptops in Solaris isn't the processor, it's all of the accessories. I tried to install Solaris x86 (we have a piece of software written for Solaris x86 exclusivly that we wanted in a mobile package). I tried no fewer than 6 different kinds of laptops (although 5 of those were just different kinds of Dell laptops--it's what we have aroudn the lab). Number of workable Solaris installs: 0.

      On newer laptops Solaris doesn't initalize the keyboard properly, and the first time you have to enter a keystroke it pretty much b0rks the machine up. Not to mention that the video card was completely unsupported by Solaris's X (if you use a USB keyboard the laptop will run, but it's not exactly useful for a moble machine). We had two machines in that category.
      In the older Dells the PCMCIA controller was completely unrecognised, and Solaris seems to think that every piece of hardware in the system conflicts with something (Duh! It's a laptop, laptops are always lacking for interrupts).
      Finally, with the HP laptop (unsupported video again), we could at least try to fix some of the problems. One big stumbling block though was that none of our (dozen or so) PCMCIA ethernet cards worked at all. Even common ones like the 3Com 3C509 and the Netgear FA410s were unrecognised. Eventually we had to use parallel port ethernet to get the system semi-functional.

      At least it isn't so bad on the desktop machines. I just wish the /boot dirctory would stop emptying itself out occasionally, and the demon processes would stop spin-locking, and that it wouldn't take 128MB of RAM for the OS alone (not to mention all of the Java based tools that come with it).
      Oh, and the PPP daemon (aspppd) that comes with Solaris sucks, but not as much as the old daemon.
      Not to mention all of the braindamage in the base system that forces you to tinker with just about every app you download to get it to compile. If it wasn't explicity ported to Solaris your chances of having it compile out of the box aren't very good, even with gcc.

      Finally, I think I should add that Solaris x86 runs really slow on our (admittedly meager PII-300s) machines, but that's partially the result of massive amount of memory these things want that we don't have.

      --

      I read the internet for the articles.
    6. Re:This can be a good thing... by bockman · · Score: 2
      1). The complete GCC toolchain is available for Solaris SPARC and X86 - Free
      I know (I did say I installed some of it). Not 'blessed by SUN' however. If it was, I would case less about which OS I am using.

      2) Hardware support is still better for Linux, I think (wasn't this the point, that now Solaris users can use all graphic cards supported by XFree86? This mean they couldn't). And original poster point was "I'm using Solaris on Laptop because it would look bad to use Windows".

      3) How much of 'big-iron management' can you learn on an Intel box, without the right hardware?
      The 'stability' (I'd say 'backward binary compatibility') is a good point, especially if you are running binary-only (and expensive) stuff like Oracle. On the other hand, I had to re-ask for a licence number when I changed the host name and IP number of the machine on which the SUN C++ compiler was installed. And I am not sure that changing system version would not affect an installed GNU toolchain, that you you suggested to use at point 1.

      --
      Ciao

      ----

      FB

    7. Re:This can be a good thing... by why-is-it · · Score: 2

      I have to admit I don't understand why Sun is resisting the switch to Linux. I'm not saying they should dump Solaris over night, but a two or three year transition plan would make a lot of sense.

      I think there are a few reason why they want to stick with their own OS:
      * They have invested a lot of time and money in Solaris and there is a large install base for the OS.
      * They make money by offering Solaris training and certification.
      * As was stated in a recent article concerning IBM and the future of AIX, Linux is not designed to run on enterprise level hardware or run enterprise wide applications yet.
      * At this point in time, Solaris on SPARC is more stable than Linux on SPARC.

      Why would Sun give up when Linux is not yet ready for the task? So in the meantime, they release Solaris for x86 and give it away in the hopes that some people will download it and give it a try.

      --
      *** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
    8. Re:This can be a good thing... by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 2

      The video card was unsupported by Solaris, and yet you have the nerve to complain that it doesn't work? Whatta moron. Check the HCL next time before even starting.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    9. Re:This can be a good thing... by Nailer · · Score: 2

      If that's true, then these don't really sound like good reasons at all. Surely there must be _somebody_ who is using Solaris x86 for real work?

      We are. We need a high performance NFS server on cheap (ish) Intel hardware. Linux currently can't do it. Solaris can.

  5. Here's a good reason by astrashe · · Score: 2

    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.

  6. I'd like this: by borzwazie · · Score: 2

    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."

    1. Re:I'd like this: by borzwazie · · Score: 2

      well actually I can't get the monitor to sync up at any resolution or freqency if I choose this bitdepth...

      --

      "We apologize for the inconvenience."

  7. Sounds good by HiThere · · Score: 2

    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.
  8. Read the article by Legion303 · · Score: 2, Informative
    Before there's a stampede of open source fanatics screaming, "WHAT? NO SOURCE?!" you should mention that there is source as well as binaries available.

    I might check this out. x86 Solaris 8 is free to download from Sun.

    -Legion

  9. What about SPARC Solaris? by Brian+Stretch · · Score: 2

    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.

  10. This is the opposite of what I want by ebcdic · · Score: 2

    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.

  11. here's a use by twitter · · Score: 2

    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.

  12. Re:You don't always get what you want by be-fan · · Score: 2

    Its been ported to PPC and Alpha, so why not SPARC?

    --
    A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
  13. Sending Message by fm6 · · Score: 2
    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?

    "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.