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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."
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.
Screenshots of the writer defragging his hard drive?
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
Don't be such a troll. I use gnome everyday. It has a foot print looking thing. This one says JAVA right there instead of the foot. I hate having to point everything out for everyone all the damn time.
Note to self: No more arguing with the faithful.
That makes it a hell of a lot easier to take screenshots when you're booting.
Slashdot - Mutual Assured Discussion
Eh, it's alright.
_________
The world doesn't just disappear when you close your eyes, does it?
(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.
Oh dear, CDE, what has become of you? Apparently nothing has changed since the mid 90's. Can anyone honestly tell me that they've looked through the CDE and JDS (GNOME) screenshots and would choose CDE? I've used CDE. It works well enough, but it really is lacking in functionality compared to GNOME.
Is it really that hard to transition people off CDE? Are there actually that many people that are that heavily wedded to CDE? Provide some legacy support, sure, but shouldn't GNOME (aka JDS) be the default by now? Why are they still mentioning CDE as anything other than a minor product they've attached on some extra CDs as support for legacy users?
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
sorry here is the real picture
serenity now!
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!
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?
Not to mention a lot less "Lose all contents of your drive." Solaris is a stuck up bitch and won't go out with scrubs who can only give her a partition.
Yeah, that's why Microsoft scales to...let's see...8 cpus or so (or was it maybe 16 more recently?), and Solaris scales to...128+. Yeah, I'd say those are functionally equivalent.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
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?
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.
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.
Actually, Windows 2003 Datacenter scales to 32 processors. Still much less than Solaris. Still Windows.
"It's too bad stupidity isn't painful." - A. S. LaVey
See : http://java.com/en/everywhere/lookingglass.jsp
I spoke to one of the lead developers of JDS at LinuxWorld in SF over the summer and he had mentioned that the roadmap put JDS & Project Looking Glass meeting around the next iteration of Sun Java Desktop (JDS4). I don't know if that's still the plan, but you download the latest source of Project Looking Glass here: https://lg3d.dev.java.net/
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
"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
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 /. /. /. 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!!!
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
Sun Mangement Console has replaced admintool - its a little heavy on the Java but it does what you want - admin in a GUI: /usr/sbin/smc
"If everybody is thinking alike, somebody isn't thinking" - Gen. George S. Patton
Don't worry. I've been doing them for 20 years now, probably done a few thousand in that time on maybe twenty or thirty different hardware platforms. Never had a problem, and I tell you, it's all about having a system. That's what you have to do, figure out a system. And then never, never, depart from it, no matter what the voices say. Just be cool.
Sure, I admit that I'm tempted sometimes to just type random stuff, but I've been totally able to control myself, no problem, just answer the questions. Ever since they took me out of detox the last time. I didn't like it there. It's not just the smell, it's the people. They have such a bad attitude. They're not positive. I need positive energy.
I had to know a few things, like what language I spoke, what timezone I was in, did I want to install everything or just a basic workstation. It is all a bit irritating, I admit. You'd think the installation script would just know that stuff. After all, it's pretty pathetic. It's like you're stupid or something.
I wish it would ask me some hard questions when it did its localization, like whether there really were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, whether my girlfriend would really like to be in a threesome or is she just saying that to see if I'm faithful, whether virus recognition merely NP-hard (as someone once tried to argue with me) or formally undecidable.
I don't think I'm a "certified Solaris Installation Engineer"; certainly I never had any training. Maybe there was some kind of coupon in the packaging that granted me that title automatically. Sorry if Sun didn't ship you one of those, because I don't see why you wouldn't be equally qualified to reason about the questions asked during system installation. I know I am. I'm cool. I've got the system. Figured it out. Figured it out.
But then, I don't usually eat the dessicant pack either. Though it does look kind of edible, doesn't it? Those sparkly little crystals and all... Could be good, and how can you know for sure if you don't try them? The label clearly states "DESSICANT -- DO NOT EAT" but that's probably just legalese. See if they can suck you in, right. They all try that. It's a power thing. Don't fall for it.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
I know I'm a bit late in the conversation, but anyway...
It's amazing that this story is up today, as I just spent the weekend loading Solaris 10 on my Ultra-60. It had been running Debian, but I thought it might be fun to run Sun's OS on Sun's hardware. :)
I have run Solaris 8 in the past. That just seemed like a bunch of junk to me. The main problem was that my main "unix" experience was Linux and IRIX. So, missing most of the commands and options I wanted, I was a bit dissapointed.
I'd just like to say, though, that it looks like Sun really has done quite a bit of work on this new version. The only reason it took me "all weekend" to install Solaris 10 was that the only SCSI CD-ROM drive I have is a 1x or 2x, and I can't trust my x86 box to stay up for longer than an hour any more (it's had a _rough_ life). The install process itself, though, is easy.
Once installed, I fiddled around a bit as root to make sure everything was working. I stuck with CDE for root loggin, just in case something was broken in JDS. CDE is exactly the same as it has always been, for those worried about it. I used the Sun Management Console to setup a new user - slick. The only thing I don't like about SMC is that it seems a bit lacking on features. What it has is good, but I think there could be a lot more in there.
With my normal user created, I logged in and setup JDS. I had been running Gnome in Debian, so I was pleased with how my desktop was setup. It runs very nicely. A bit of logging on to the web, and I had added Firefox. A bit more tooling around, and I had my printer working. It really does seem like Sun has gone to the trouble of making the things that people commonly do easy to do, or at least making them function like they would in other environments.
Now the only thing I'm missing is a way to move the data that I had in Linux over to the Solaris partition. Unfortunately I was using ext2/3 in Linux, so I can't mount it out of the box. I've found the LXRUN utils, but they say they're for x86. Probably a bit of hacking away at source code in my future. We'll see if that's even possible. If anyone here has a better idea - post it?
Next up for this machine: second processor and more RAM. Then maybe a SunPCi board ... just because I can. :)