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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."
IMO the whole "Solaris has gone open source" is just too little too late.
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.
That makes it a hell of a lot easier to take screenshots when you're booting.
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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?
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.
"It's too bad stupidity isn't painful." - A. S. LaVey
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?
"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!
"If everybody is thinking alike, somebody isn't thinking" - Gen. George S. Patton
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.
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
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.