Solaris 10 Installation and Desktop Walkthrough

linuxbeta writes "On OSDir they've got a whole whack of screenshots of Sun's Solaris 10 from the first boot screen, through an x86 installation, and through either a Java Desktop System 3 or CDE (Common Desktop Environment) 1.6 desktop. It's nice to have a look at Java Desktop System 3 while it's not even available for Linux (yet). I dunno... looks like Linux to me. I know about the licensing issues with Solaris 10, but I think they've got something going on here."

Comments

Take this with a pinch of salt

[Rupy]

IMO the whole "Solaris has gone open source" is just too little too late.

Re:Take this with a pinch of salt

[blastwave]

Well, I have been in the pilot project from the very beginning and there are builds of OpenSolaris up and running. We have the source and are working on a PowerPC port to the Open Desktop Workstation : http://www.pegasosppc.com/odw.php We all don't live in the Linux world. Some of us want an OS that can run on 128 simultaneous processors as well as one or four or twelve all with the same kernel. Not a cluster. One big computer.

Re:Take this with a pinch of salt

[node 3]

IMO the whole "Solaris has gone open source" is just too little too late.

How so? Sun's revenue last year was over $10bn, and their move to open sourcing Solaris, some impressive new features in Solaris 10, and their work on the Java Desktop as well as Project Looking Glass all show they are not standing still.

Sun's move to open source can only help them on the desktop. Java Desktop is really slick for the corporate environment. Project Looking Glass could really pay off big for them if they are able to refine it properly (think about OS X's aqua interface. 3d has a lot of potential on the desktop).

And if Sun manages to move Solaris to 100% open source, expect it to be *huge* competition to Linux.

Re:Take this with a pinch of salt

[SunFan]

They've actually been working on OpenSolaris for five years, and this summer it will be a genuine OSS _UNIX_. Not a work-alike UNIX but the real deal with more than two decades worth of production system use. It hasn't scaled to 64+ CPUs just this year, but more than five years ago. It hasn't just gotten solid virtualization technology, it's had it for years. For example.

Err...looks like Linux?

[deong]

Funny, I didn't see a picture of a kernel. It looks like Gnome, an event deemed less shocking by the fact that it is Gnome.

Re:Err...looks like Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, the opinion of "ugly" from a bunch of smelly slashdorks really doesn't have much impact. Of course, since the mods all participate in the same groupthink, it's hardly surprising to see you modded "insightful".

Re:Err...looks like Linux?

[SunFan]

Oh, BTW, don't forget to finish off the system with Blastwave. They provide a BSD-like package retriever that's integrated with Solaris' package system. Pretty slick.

Re:Err...looks like Linux?

[blackest_k]

The strangest notion grammar and spelling nazi's have is that English is one language with one set of rules.

English is a set of languages with regional and cultural sets of rules. When English first came to be printed an east anglian variation was used not because it was the correct form but because it was the form spoken and written by the printer.

English is a living language, that is it evolves and mutates as it is being used. That mutations occur is nothing new, which is why older written records in English can be difficult to comprehend.

Your form of English usage maybe correct to you and it might be the case that for you to accept me as a member of your social group I should form my words in the manner to which you are familiar with, but since I am not aspiring to join your social group I am not in error, you are. Since you seem to believe I wish to speak and write the same English variant as you.

If you were to compare two structured precise languages such as C++ and Java you might see a simularity in the code but java is not badly written C++ nor is C++ badly written java.

I can understand how distressing it must be for people, who are trained and write in a language with a precise syntax such as C++ or Java. People who find bueaty in the precise elegant expression of Idea's within a programming environment to have to come to grips with a language which has no such constraints.

English is buggy code gentlemen, Live with it.

Solaris for the masses?

[Anonymous Coward]

But is there any way that Solaris has a chance to grow enough to become any kind of threat to MS?

At least before Sun goes under, and it becomes a drain on Linux developers...

Re:Solaris for the masses?

[Mdalek]

But is there any way that Solaris has a chance to grow enough to become any kind of threat to MS?

What? People run Windows on big iron?

Re:Solaris for the masses?

[Anonymous Coward]

You should be careful to call the contributions to Linux from companies such as Sun or IBM "charity". These companies gain from making Linux stronger. Large companies do not expend resources on Free Software and Open Source Software out of the goodness of their heart.

At the end of the day though we all win, and that's a good thing.

Re:It looks like it's running through vmware

[drxray]

That makes it a hell of a lot easier to take screenshots when you're booting.

Install Walkthrough

[Metzli]

vi /etc/ethers
vi /etc/hosts
add_install_client
boot net - install

There you are, the installation walkthrough for jumpstarting Solaris. Tune in for our next episode, when we cover logging onto the console.

Should be Openlook

[bluGill]

Speaking as an old school sunOS fan (Anything pre-Solaris), CDE was almost as big a mistake as going sysV for Solaris. Openlook was much better. I never even looked at CDE, it was so ugly on my neighbor's desktop. (I was one of the last to get rid of the ELC off my desk, one of the downsides of being a intern, so I didn't have it as an option for years after a few switched to it)

Re:I installed it

[Metzli]

I'm curious, what about the paths and default executables do you find difficult in Solaris? I'll agree that /usr/ccs/bin appears goofy for the compiler (to me, at least), but I don't see what's odd about everything else. Then again, I'm used to running Solaris, AIX, Tru64, etc. and Linux seems weird to me. I expect most of my optional software to be self-contained, say in /opt, and not scattered about various other dirs. But, that's just my opinion.

Other features?

[lewiz]

I'd be much more interested to know how Solaris 10 handles things like:

CD/DVD writing,
wireless cards,
PCMCIA/Cardbus devices,
USB hotswapping (i.e. does it pop up and say you've plugged a USB HDD in and offer to mount it?),
Input types (i.e. Japanese, Chinese, etc.).

I've recently been trying out many Linux distros (FC3, SuSE 9.2, Mandrake (latest -- 10.1?), Gentoo and Debian) to check out how well they handle these things. So far I've been most impressed with Ubuntu. As a long-time FreeBSD user I have been very impressed how things have advanced with Linux in the last four or five years.

I'm aware how well Solaris 10 cuts it in the server arena but does it even come close to the likes of FC, SuSE and Ubuntu for desktop use?

Re:Perfect OS world

[hazah]

This isn't flaimbait!

And you don't have to have another layer in front of the apps to concieve such interoprability. You just need to follow standards. Preferably ones that make sense. There are many techniques, and a virtual environment is just one of them.

Seriously....

[asaul]

"Look like linux" - what exactly does "linux" look like? Oh, you mean it looks like GNOME, which is available on Solaris and Linux and probably a host of other UNIX operating systems....

"know about the licensing issues" - what is that supposed to mean? That because it doesnt use GPL but another OSI approved license it is an "issue"?

"Have something going on here" - well, if that aint flamebait I dont know what is. Yes, Sun have a high quality OS that integrates GNOME and a host of other FOSS software with appropriate licensing and acknoledgements and because you think it looks like _your_ "linux" desktop (and not KDE or blackbox or fvwm or tvm) they are supposedly doing something dastardly?

And really, if OS install snapshots were news worthy, whatever you do dont look at docs.sun.com, there are just too many consipiricies there to report!

Re:Still with CDE?

[SunFan]

One of the absolutely huge advantages of Sun over, say, Red Hat, is that Sun doesn't pull the carpet out from under their users every three years. OpenWindows stuck around until Solaris 9, I think, which means CDE is good to be around for quite some time. Sun always provides predictable transitions and always documents what will happen in advance for customers to plan ahead.

Sun also has a good record for maintaining compatibility to older versions of Solaris. I was quite pleased to see that older SunPCi IIpro cards can still work under Solaris 10 with JDS (with Windows 98, at least). Officially, these cards are supported only up to Solaris 9.

If I were running a big shop with my behind accountable for more than a year in the future, Sun is not a bad bet.

Re:Huge competition?

[Space Coyote]

People who have used Linux want something that THEY have worked on, THEY have started. The number of people who have actually 'worked on' linux, as compared with the potential market of users that Sun is thinking about, is very very small. And as the takeup of OS X among the Unix crowd shows, people want usability and new technology over some ideological purity that Linux / GPL seem to worry about. Most people who just want to get work done are rather more pragmatic about their software. As for Linux, though, Sun has shown that they are willing to use it where it makes sense to , and are just as happy to charge you for their services whether you want to run them on an AMD system running linux or one of their big Sparc machines. Besides that, I'm guessing Java Desktop will eventually find a happy home on Linux as well as Solaris.

Re:Huge competition?

[node 3]

Having another open source OS is great, but if you think the two compete against each other you're wrong.

Sure they do. They compete for both users and developers. This sort of competition seems far more noble than the nature of competition in the corporate world, but it's still competition nonetheless.

Almost as if you started to build a garage, your neighbor saw you and wanted to RACE, and finish one before you did. ooooh, WHO CARES.

Yeah, I guess the XFree86 folks don't care that everyone's moving to Xorg. Or the GNOME folks wouldn't care if everyone but them ran KDE. I also recall the Firefox team taking out an ad in the NYT asking people to try Firefox.

People who have used Linux want something that THEY have worked on, THEY have started. SUN is getting into this to compete with companies that USE Linux, the people developing it usually don't care.

What do you mean by, 'People who have used Linux...'? You clearly don't mean everyone who has used Linux, because that's obviously false. In fact, very few people who use Linux actually contribute to it.

Which, of course, has nothing to do with whether or not Solaris competes with Linux.

Besides the point, usually two open source projects will BENEFIT from each other. Gnome, X, Mozilla, Konqueror as in with Apple, etc.

I'm certain they will benefit from each other. That doesn't mean they don't also compete.

Re:Yeah....

[Minwee]

It's almost as good as a Debian desktop with the Red Hat logo on it.