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Solaris 10 Installation and Desktop Walkthrough

Posted by timothy on from the drag-out-your-grudges-and-polish-them dept.

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."

3 of 370 comments (clear)

  1. I installed it by delirium+of+disorder · · Score: 5, Interesting

    (Since this article is almost a re-post, my comment is too)

    Solaris 10 is a great technical computing or server OS. GNU/Linux has some advantages over it, for example debian's package system and free organisation. Overall Linux is easier to get up and running. Knoppix is trivial to boot. Paths and default executable placement are simpler in Linux. Linux is more ported. X11 support seams better in most Linux distros. (X worked fine thoughout my install, but when i rebooted, my display was messed up and I had to console login and set X to a lower resolution) Virtual consoles are a big plus when X gets messed up, and solaris misses them badly.

    But Solaris has some cool features. Zones, dtrace, exellent SMP support, and surprisingly, a great price/performance ratio. I donno how well sun will do (I would guess they'll make some money in the short term on Opeteron systems and probably in the long term with Fujitsu massivly multi-core SPARC). But the current market for used sun workstations/servers is great because of Sun's overall decline. I was able to get (on ebay) a quad 450mhz ultrasparcII box with 2 gigs of ram, and dual 36 gig scsi drives, quad redundent power supples (800 watt), etc: for a measily $200. Solaris 10 installed great. Sun hardware is built to withstand hell and admins, students, hobbiests, or whoever, who normally couldn't afford this quality should really check it out. I also actually like CDE and the old Motief look. It's clean, simple, easy to work with, and doesn't try to be Microsoft Windows or MacOS.

    --
    ------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
  2. My own Solaris 10 experience by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I installed it and was basically extremely disappointed in it as a desktop. I imagine it's actually quite good as a server, but the interface is just nowhere near the level of GUI integration that something like Ubuntu or Fedora have. That is the ultimate appeal of Linux to me. It can (potentially) have the same level of GUI integration that Windows has, yet much, much greater flexibility, openness, security, stability, and eventually usability. It's actually really getting close. As soon as a project like http://www.autopackage.org makes some more strides and gets near universal acceptance among distributions and application developers, it could actually be there finally. As much as I had really high hopes for Solaris 10, it's just not going to cut it. Among other things, I think Sun really needs to fire whoever is in charge of marking and branding for the company. It's fine if you want to have your corporate colors as yellow and purple, but for god's sake, please keep those colors away from my desktop AND applications!

  3. I too installed it by reachbach · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I installed S10 on a test box at office, and the installation was pretty cool. If you want to compare it to linux for "user friendliness" of the installer, well,i'm afraid you're on the wrong track.Because, if you're talking about an installer made for a dumb user (as tech ignorant as your grandmom), you're tending towards windoze. You don't even deserve to be posting here on /.
    In addition,it was good to see the slick JDS3. Two things stood out after the installation of S10 -
    1) The installer was a lot easier than was made out by S10-flamers at /.
    2)S10 is not just for admins who telnet to the machine and issue arcane incantations. JDS3 make S10 a strong candidate for a corporate desktop. Add a Sun Ray to it, and you have a sure-fire windoze killer.
    And running my apps on S10 has been, without doubt, one of the greatest joys of life.There isn't enough room here on /. for me to describe the sheer thrill that i experienced when my first DTrace script gave an inside look into the system resources that my app was consuming. The rush of adrenalin has to be experienced to be believed. And if you want to learn operating systems from scratch, Solaris is your reference manual. Sun deserves countless belssings for such a beauty of an implementation. Long live Solaris!!!