I am running Solaris 10 build 72 on an old Dell Precision 220: 800 MHz Pentium III, 384 MB RAM. I had no problems configuring the video or any other hardware, and it "feels", in my opinion, just as fast as RHEL 3 or Windows XP (this is purely subjective, I haven't run any benchmarks on it yet). This build comes with Java Desktop 3 and StarOffice 7 integrated into the OS installer, and so far I am pleased with it.
We are in the process of tearing out over one hundred Sun workstations from some of the public labs here at the University at Buffalo and replacing them with Dell systems running Linux. As someone who's been a Sun system administrator for 14 years, this is tearing my heart out, yet I concede that this action is necessary for one reason: lack of application support. Many of the software packages our users need have either already abandoned Solaris or have declared end-of-life for it. Many of these same vendors have jumped on the Linux bandwagon, plus these systems can run Microsoft Windows either in dual-boot mode or with VMware for the applications that require this environment. The simple fact is that no matter how good the OS and the hardware, a computer isn't useful unless it can run the apps that the users need.
Our purchasing of Sun equipment (I work for a group that supports the Engineering School and the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics) has gone way down for this reason alone. Ironic that a company that started with great workstations has almost totally abandoned this market. They've failed to nurture third-party application support, failed to take advantage of opportunities (when SGI was having problems, HP successfully lured some very powerful software packages onto their workstation platforms), and fallen way behind the curve in performance, especially in graphics.
I feel terrible about this, having been a Sun and Solaris pundit for many years (I still think Solaris is the most reliable version of Unix out there), but it's necessary, because in our world the needs of the users outweigh the desires of the sysadmins.
Actually, the summers here are usually beautiful; Climate-wise, Western New York is a great place to live, and has just as much need of A/C in the summer as most other places. Oh, and contrary to what a poster below states, it doesn't smell bad here, either.:-)
It's back up. I changed the server configuration so that only 60 simultaneous connections are allowed. So, it'll be slow, and may time out, but at least you can get to it eventually. It's a small server, and we never expected this kind of load on it.
To anyone I may have freaked out on: I apologize. I was beside myself trying to get things working again, as this server is sometimes used for Real Work, and was totally useless during the initial onslaught. I'm better now...:-)
Slashdot Mirror
I am running Solaris 10 build 72 on an old Dell Precision 220: 800 MHz Pentium III, 384 MB RAM. I had no problems configuring the video or any other hardware, and it "feels", in my opinion, just as fast as RHEL 3 or Windows XP (this is purely subjective, I haven't run any benchmarks on it yet). This build comes with Java Desktop 3 and StarOffice 7 integrated into the OS installer, and so far I am pleased with it.
We are in the process of tearing out over one hundred Sun workstations from some of the public labs here at the University at Buffalo and replacing them with Dell systems running Linux. As someone who's been a Sun system administrator for 14 years, this is tearing my heart out, yet I concede that this action is necessary for one reason: lack of application support. Many of the software packages our users need have either already abandoned Solaris or have declared end-of-life for it. Many of these same vendors have jumped on the Linux bandwagon, plus these systems can run Microsoft Windows either in dual-boot mode or with VMware for the applications that require this environment. The simple fact is that no matter how good the OS and the hardware, a computer isn't useful unless it can run the apps that the users need.
Our purchasing of Sun equipment (I work for a group that supports the Engineering School and the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics) has gone way down for this reason alone. Ironic that a company that started with great workstations has almost totally abandoned this market. They've failed to nurture third-party application support, failed to take advantage of opportunities (when SGI was having problems, HP successfully lured some very powerful software packages onto their workstation platforms), and fallen way behind the curve in performance, especially in graphics.
I feel terrible about this, having been a Sun and Solaris pundit for many years (I still think Solaris is the most reliable version of Unix out there), but it's necessary, because in our world the needs of the users outweigh the desires of the sysadmins.
For some of the gory details on the GCC 3.1/Java/Mozilla incompatibilities, here's a link:
4
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11644
Actually, the summers here are usually beautiful; :-)
Climate-wise, Western New York is a great place
to live, and has just as much need of A/C in the
summer as most other places. Oh, and contrary
to what a poster below states, it doesn't smell
bad here, either.
To anyone I may have freaked out on: I apologize. I was beside myself trying to get things working again, as this server is sometimes used for Real Work, and was totally useless during the initial onslaught. I'm better now ... :-)