Upgrade Laptop from Vista -> Solaris - well worth the trouble
Dave
spec laptops around - a Sony VAIO SZ4XWN/C
2 GB of RAM,
Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 / 2 GHz (Dual-Core) CPU
Carbon fibre body
NVIDA GeForce Go 7400 graphics etc etc
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000NNTVHC/interactiveda3029-21
Even after negotiating a better price as I would not pay on a credit
card, this thing was the US equivalent of around $3200, so not a cheap
budget laptop, which only just meets the specs for Vista.
It came with Microsoft's Vista Business. But probably due to:
1) Sony's insistence in installing so much crap software on it
2) The fact it has Vista on it
I don't feel the laptop is very responsive. Certainly it is one of the
least response computers I have, even after a fresh install, setting it
back to how it is shipped from Sony.
I thought I'd install Sun's Solaris Express Developer Edition on it,
which is either a free download, or Sun will even ship you a DVD for
zero cost - not even postage:
http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/solaris-express/get.jsp
I won't deny there are a few teething problems with Solaris, not all of
which I have fully resolved, but overall it is so much quicker and nicer
to use.
The biggest hassle to installing Solaris, was nothing to do with Solaris
as such, but Vista. Windows Vista would not allow me to shrink its own
volume by much, wanting to keep more than 50 GB of space in addition to
what was actually being used!. (I think with 90 GB free, it would only
let me shrink it by 25 or so GB).
I had to get install a trial version of a 3rd party disk defrag program
before I could shrink the Windows partition to a suitable size.
But once I'd done that, installing Solaris from the DVD was very simple.
It is just so much nicer to use. Things actually happen almost
instantly. I can click on a Word document and StarOffice has it open for
me to read or edit in about 3-4 seconds. Word was never like that.
If you find Vista a pain, have half a brain and are willing to spend
some time learning Solaris, you might be very surprised how much quicker
a high end laptop is when Vista is not the operating system loaded! If
you have a low-end laptop, I assume the benefits would be even more
noticeable.
gerryt
Im trimmimg this to alt.solaris.x86. I wish you wouldnt cross post all
over the place
Vista is a pig. Its much slower than XP Pro. My Vista SoupReme
Commander
Home Edition or whatever they call it took 1 GB of RAM just to sit
idle..
I was going to suggest VMWare Player
which does work under Vista but it will work better under XP Pro.
If you dont absolutely NEED WinBlows, just yank
the drive and install Solaris on a new 40 GB disk.. They are cheap
now : >
John Doue
Win 98 ME. I got rid of it the day I got my machine and struggled for
two days to get XP and the adequate drivers loaded. Well worth the
trouble indeed.
But what you say about Solaris would be much more convincing if you
could tell us what software can be run with it ... Main point of an OS.
I am ready to give a try.
Regards
--
John Doue
John Groenveld
>The biggest hassle to installing Solaris, was nothing to do with Solaris
>as such, but Vista. Windows Vista would not allow me to shrink its own
>volume by much, wanting to keep more than 50 GB of space in addition to
>what was actually being used!. (I think with 90 GB free, it would only
>let me shrink it by 25 or so GB).
I've also noticed that Vista bug. An alternative is qtparted from
the Knoppix livecd.
John
groe...@acm.org
Thomas H Jones II
>spec laptops around - a Sony VAIO SZ4XWN/C
>It came with Microsoft's Vista Business. But probably due to:
>
>1) Sony's insistence in installing so much crap software on it
>2) The fact it has Vista on it
>
>I don't feel the laptop is very responsive. Certainly it is one of the
>least response computers I have, even after a fresh install, setting it
>back to how it is shipped from Sony.
>
>I thought I'd install Sun's Solaris Express Developer Edition on it,
>
>which I have fully resolved, but overall it is so much quicker and nicer
>to use.
>But once I'd done that, installing Solaris from the DVD was very simple.
>
>It is just so much nicer to use. Things actually happen almost
>instantly. I can click on a Word document and StarOffice has it open for
>me to read or edit in about 3-4 seconds. Word was never like that.
>
>If you find Vista a pain, have half a brain and are willing to spend
>some time learning Solaris, you might be very surprised how much quicker
>a high end laptop is when Vista is not the operating system loaded! If
>you have a low-end laptop, I assume the benefits would be even more
>noticeable.
This isn't terribly surprising. I've extended the lives of more than a
few "obsoleted" Wintel systems by blowing away the Windows OS and
replacing with some flavor of x86 UNIX. In the past, it's almost always
been Linux or BSD, but lately, it's been nice to have Solaris as an
option, too. And, yes, I realize that there have been prior x86
releases of Solaris, but the prior releases have had greater
compatibility issues than Solaris 10 and Open Solaris seems to be
exhibiting these days.
Assuming that you're able to find application equivalents in the x86
UNIX environment (and, to be fair, this *isn't* always possible), UNIX-
based OSes can be a great way to maximize your hardware investments.
As with everything, "your mileage may vary".
--
"You can only be -so- accurate with a claw-hammer." --me
Dave
> Vista is more than a pain, it is the worst OS MS has ever produced after
> Win 98 ME. I got rid of it the day I got my machine and struggled for
> two days to get XP and the adequate drivers loaded. Well worth the
> trouble indeed.
>
> But what you say about Solaris would be much more convincing if you
> could tell us what software can be run with it ... Main point of an OS.
> I am ready to give a try.
>
> Regards
>
A list of software that can run on Solaris would be a very long list
indeed, but a few that on the free DVD (even free postage) that you
might know, and find useful are
Thunderbird for email
Firefox for Web browsing
Gimp for image editing
StarOffice for office tasks (reads/writes powerpoint, word, excell etc
files)
Software to read PDF files
Software to write CD's DVDs.
Software to sync to PDS's
Connects to the WiFi network
Games ...
A full development system, if you want to write your own.
There's a bit of a list at
http://developers.sun.com/sxde/features.jsp
Want to spend some money? Then of course there is commercial software
such as the seriously expensive Mathematica, which runs on Solaris x86
http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/platforms/
But there is an awful lot of free software too.
I think it would be better for you to list what sort of software you
use, and let myself, or someone else tell you of the nearest version for
Solaris.
John Doue
...!) that most Linux software would run on Solaris?
Regards
--
John Doue
Dave
> Thanks for this helpful reply. Is it possible to assume (ok, spare me
> ...!) that most Linux software would run on Solaris?
>
> Regards
>
Yes, most will. Often you will not find binaries for Solaris so easily,
so it will have to be build.
But there are sites that keeps binaries for Solaris x86 - see for example
Dave
> John Doue wrote:
>
>> Thanks for this helpful reply. Is it possible to assume (ok, spare me
>> ...!) that most Linux software would run on Solaris?
>>
>> Regards
>>
>
> Yes, most will. Often you will not find binaries for Solaris so easily,
> so it will have to be build.
What I meant to say was that often software would need to be built from
source code. But not always. I tend to build most from source myself, as
one is sure of having the latest version. Often sites will have Solaris
binaries, but they often tend to be old.
Dave
>> If you find Vista a pain, have half a brain and are willing to spend
>> some time learning Solaris, you might be very surprised how much quicker
>> a high end laptop is when Vista is not the operating system loaded! If
>> you have a low-end laptop, I assume the benefits would be even more
>> noticeable.
>
> This isn't terribly surprising. I've extended the lives of more than a
> few "obsoleted" Wintel systems by blowing away the Windows OS and
> replacing with some flavor of x86 UNIX.
What I find a bit surprising though is how badly Vista runs on an almost
new very high specification laptop.
But then perhaps I am not surprised by that either!
Richard B. Gilbert
What do you want do? Star Office is more or less the equivalent of the
Microsoft product. Other than that, you need to get specific about what
sort of applications you want to run.
A lot of people use Windoze because of the available applications; there
are probably more than for any other O/S. But which O/S you can use
depends on the apps you want.
Richard B. Gilbert
The binaries probably will not run. You should be able to build most
Linux apps for Solaris. Some Linux apps may have dependencies on Linux
features that will not allow them to run on Solaris without a little, or
a lot, of work. Solaris is free, and so are the development tools,
and will run on readily and cheaply available hardware. Try it and see.
mike
>
> A list of software that can run on Solaris would be a very long list
> indeed, but a few that on the free DVD (even free postage) that you
> might know, and find useful are
Extremely optimistic posts like this show up frequently.
I'm no lover of Windows. I've been around long enough to remember
writing product proposals with NROFF.
I've been trying to get off the Windows bus for years.
I've downloaded many gigabytes of magic linux distributions.
And I still run Windows XP.
And here's why...
There's a song that sums it up nicely: "99 and a half just won't do".
Doesn't matter how well it does 99% of what you want to do if it
won't do the last bit. Yes, you can get generic software to do generic
stuff. Once you get used to the strange behavior of linux, like clicks
that don't seem to do anything, no feedback, no nothing, so you click
again, and 30 seconds later, two windows pop up. Once you get used
to the many vairiants and resign yourself to the fact that you
really can't help granny fix her email without going there.
I've found linux
applications to "feel slower" than windows applications. Yes, there
are stripped down linux apps, but if you compare like functionality and
complexity, OO vs. MSOFFICE, I find the linux variant feels slow.
But the real killer is the odd stuff. What do I do about the box of
webcams. The box of non-webcams. The box of WM and Palm PDA's.
The GPIB card. Printers/plotters. All the utilities written in Visual
basic. Bluetooth devices. WiFi devices. USB headsets. VOIP.
PCMCIA/Cardbus/Infrared stuff. How about something as simple
as getting your touchpad mouse to use it's enhanced features?
I don't use my scanner much, but what do I do when I do need it?
It's GOTTA WORK!!!
If you have the time to go searching, you can often find some high-school
kid who wrote a buggy, undocumented driver for some of your stuff.
If you fully understand how linux works, you might even figure out how
to resolve all the dependencies and/or recompile the whole thing.
Now, go to CompUSA and ask for a (insert your favorite hardware toy here)
with a linux driver.
Bottom line is that old hardware won't work, because the kids who
used that stuff have all graduated high school. The new stuff won't
work, because no high school kid has one yet.
Linux will be feasible about 10 years after you can walk into CUSA and
get hardware with linux drivers. That's how long it's gonna take for me
to find one used/cheap.
Now, look at the way the world works. If you're a hardware vendor,
your market is 99% windows. You decide to put some of your scarce
resources into linux support. Then you go visit MS for a windows
compliance certification of your device. What do you think MS is
gonna have to say (unofficially) about your linux support? What are
your stockholders gonna say about your little tiff with the owner
of 99% of your business.
Monopoly is a bitch! But it's also the reason that I can tell you my
problem and you can understand enough about what I have to help me fix
it. Try calling up a Ubuntu user and asking him where to find the
configuration files on YOUR distribution. Ever have the experience of
loading one distribution and finding your sound card works, but your
lan won't. Then trying another distribution where you lan card
works but your sound card won't. Sure, a linux guru could (probably)
easily fix either. I didn't have the energy to go searching for the
solution.
Only way for linux to flourish is for MS to take it over...or some other
big company with a need for a write off...and charge big bux for the
privilege of using it. Linux is interesting only because people think
it's free. If you run a webserver, I'm not talking to you...you're good
to go, because you don't need drivers for my sound card...
For most of us who use more than open office and a web browser, linux is
not and never will be a viable option.
Yet, I still pop in my linux hard drive occasionally and fantasize about
a fully functional system that does what I want.
And since I'm bored, I'll probably even download solaris and load it up.
mike
Fred
> But the real killer is the odd stuff. What do I do about the box of
> webcams. The box of non-webcams. The box of WM and Palm PDA's.
> The GPIB card. Printers/plotters. All the utilities written in Visual
> basic. Bluetooth devices. WiFi devices. USB headsets. VOIP.
> PCMCIA/Cardbus/Infrared stuff. How about something as simple
> as getting your touchpad mouse to use it's enhanced features?
> I don't use my scanner much, but what do I do when I do need it?
> It's GOTTA WORK!!!
Right now, my computer is hard-wired to my stereo using a USB
digital/analog interface that I hunted for on the Web for two days.
Found exactly one, made in Germany and carried by one vendor in the US.
It's either this or nothing. So I get the thing, plug it into Windows
XP, and I'm up and running. Just that easy, just that quick. No separate
drivers, no shell scripts, no distro hell, just plug and play. Plays
nice with the computer's sound card, too.
So given the choice between being morally superior or using what works,
I choose to use what works.
As Stone Cold Steve Austin would say, "And that's the bottom line."
--
"Just because you're smart doesn't mean you're wise."
Dave Martindale
>It is just so much nicer to use. Things actually happen almost
>instantly. I can click on a Word document and StarOffice has it open for
>me to read or edit in about 3-4 seconds. Word was never like that.
One difference I noticed a few years ago, while running on a dual-CPU
box (back when that meant two CPU packages and a special motherboard):
If you run something graphics-intensive under the X window system, you
can use a substantial portion of both CPUs. The X server is a separate
process from your code, and runs in its own context that can be on a
separate CPU running in parallel. The stuff to be drawn is passed via
some sort of IPC mechanism, probably shared memory. This is a feature
of X, so it's probably true whether you're using Linux, Solaris, BSD,
etc.
In comparision, under Windows 2000, a graphics-hungry process keeps one
CPU busy while the other is idle. (The actual CPU in use can switch
from time to time, but total CPU use doesn't go significantly above
50%). It looks like the whole windowing system runs in the same context
as your process, and can't run in parallel with it.
This was a dual Celeron 400 system, so the responsiveness difference was
quite noticeable.
I don't know whether WinXP or Vista perform any better in this regard.
There is certainly more incentive for them to do so, now that
multi-thread and multi-core CPUs are so common.
Dave
philo
"Dave" <now...@nowhere.com> wrote in message news:4745...@212.67.96.135...
<snip>
I did give Vista a try for 3 months...
then blew it away and installed PCLinuxOS.
Though I mainly use Win2k...I found that PCLinuxOS was a very nice
alternative.
I tried Solaris a few years ago and found that it ran rather slowly so also
gave up on that.
If they've improved it over the last few years it may be worth looking at
again.
Dave
> Dave wrote:
>
>>
>> A list of software that can run on Solaris would be a very long list
>> indeed, but a few that on the free DVD (even free postage) that you
>> might know, and find useful are
>
> Extremely optimistic posts like this show up frequently.
> I'm no lover of Windows. I've been around long enough to remember
> writing product proposals with NROFF.
> I've been trying to get off the Windows bus for years.
> I've downloaded many gigabytes of magic linux distributions.
> And I still run Windows XP.
IIRC, I did not mention the word Linux at any time, only Solaris. You
did not mention Solaris, only Linux. Did you have a point there?
Many people do find Linux very usable, and Windows frustrating in
comparison. Only the week before last I was at a meeting with my laptop,
but I needed access to a UNIX box, so the company arranged a network
connection so I could use mine via remote access.
But running graphical software over the internet is not so much fun. I
just sat there thinking "If I had Solaris on this laptop, I could do
what I want. I could read all the documents they gave me, give them
documents, shared some photos.." Next time I go back, my laptop will
have Solaris on it! I will leave Vista on it, in case it is necessary,
but I don't actually envisage needing it for my work, although I play
the odd game of the chess on the internet and find the Windows clients
better than the UNIX ones. But apart from the games, Solaris is more
usable and less hassle.
You mentioned GPIB cards. I can assure you drivers are available for
GPIB cards from National Instruments for both Solaris and Linux. I have
a couple here - both an sbus and a pci GPIB card. I've used the sbus one
in a Sun SPARC 20 and the PCI one in a Sun Ultra 80.
And I've written software to control instruments myself via GPIB. Of
course, you can also get Labview for Solaris, and I assume Linux too.
Thommy M.
[...]
> I did give Vista a try for 3 months...
> then blew it away and installed PCLinuxOS.
> Though I mainly use Win2k...I found that PCLinuxOS was a very nice
> alternative.
> I tried Solaris a few years ago and found that it ran rather slowly so also
> gave up on that.
> If they've improved it over the last few years it may be worth looking at
> again.
Solaris a "few years ago" on x86 is totally different from what is out
today. And now it's all open source too.
Have a look at http://opensolaris.org
mike
> mike wrote:
>> Dave wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> A list of software that can run on Solaris would be a very long list
>>> indeed, but a few that on the free DVD (even free postage) that you
>>> might know, and find useful are
>>
>> Extremely optimistic posts like this show up frequently.
>> I'm no lover of Windows. I've been around long enough to remember
>> writing product proposals with NROFF.
>> I've been trying to get off the Windows bus for years.
>> I've downloaded many gigabytes of magic linux distributions.
>> And I still run Windows XP.
>
>
> IIRC, I did not mention the word Linux at any time, only Solaris. You
> did not mention Solaris, only Linux. Did you have a point there?
>
>
Your strong distinction sounds like Solaris must not be a
unix/linux variant?
Are you saying that it's yet another OS that's incompatible with linux?
Yet another market fragmentation?
I'm 9 hours into the download. I can hardly wait to fire up that bad
boy and see what new wonders (drivers) await.
mike
Dave
>> IIRC, I did not mention the word Linux at any time, only Solaris. You
>> did not mention Solaris, only Linux. Did you have a point there?
>>
>>
> My bad. I jumped to a conclusion without sufficient research.
>
> Your strong distinction sounds like Solaris must not be a
> unix/linux variant?
> Are you saying that it's yet another OS that's incompatible with linux?
> Yet another market fragmentation?
Solaris existed before Linux, although I think Linux was on x86 before
Solaris.
A lot of software can be shared. Generally one just needs to recompile.
> I'm 9 hours into the download. I can hardly wait to fire up that bad
> boy and see what new wonders (drivers) await.
As I said in my original post, you need to have half a brain, and you
need to spend some time on it. There probably will be some teething
problems, especially if you have obscure hardware. I very much doubt I
would get a driver for the fingerprint reader in my laptop, but I don't
see that a high priority. Solaris is probably not ideal for someone who
is not IT literate and has no intension of being. But in my opinion as
soon as Windows develops problems, it is extreamly difficult to fix
unless you have an awful lot of knowledge, or you go down the reinstall
route. Reinstalling seems to be the answer to most problems on Windows,
but it is not one I personally find attractive.
> mike
Thommy M.
> Dave wrote:
>> mike wrote:
>>> Dave wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> A list of software that can run on Solaris would be a very long list
>>>> indeed, but a few that on the free DVD (even free postage) that you
>>>> might know, and find useful are
>>>
>>> Extremely optimistic posts like this show up frequently.
>>> I'm no lover of Windows. I've been around long enough to remember
>>> writing product proposals with NROFF.
>>> I've been trying to get off the Windows bus for years.
>>> I've downloaded many gigabytes of magic linux distributions.
>>> And I still run Windows XP.
>>
>>
>> IIRC, I did not mention the word Linux at any time, only Solaris. You
>> did not mention Solaris, only Linux. Did you have a point there?
>>
>>
> My bad. I jumped to a conclusion without sufficient research.
>
> Your strong distinction sounds like Solaris must not be a
> unix/linux variant?
Solaris is UNIX in contrast to Linux.
> Are you saying that it's yet another OS that's incompatible with linux?
> Yet another market fragmentation?
It's Linux that is incompatible with UNIX.
Linux is like Microsoft, trying to invent its own standards.
Dave
>> Your strong distinction sounds like Solaris must not be a
>> unix/linux variant?
>
> Solaris is UNIX in contrast to Linux.
>
>> Are you saying that it's yet another OS that's incompatible with linux?
>> Yet another market fragmentation?
>
> It's Linux that is incompatible with UNIX.
>
> Linux is like Microsoft, trying to invent its own standards.
Like it or not, Linux has become a 'defacto' standard.
Of course, there are various incompatibilities between various linux
distros, but so are there between various UNIX distros.
But on the whole, most things that work on Linux will work on Solaris.
To me, a computer is a tool to do a job. Solaris allows me to earn my
living *using* the system - I don't work in the IT industry, but as a
professional engineer.
If I want to read a PDF someone sends me, I can do it. If I want to send
emails I can do it. If I want to read or write a file in Word format I
can do it.
If I want to write software I can do it. If I want to upgrade the
system, I do it when it suites me, rather than when the system is so
broken it needs a fresh install of Windows.
Running Sun hardware (as I normally do), allow me to almost forget about
drivers and incompatible hardware. I know it will just work. That does
not apply to the same extent on random bits of x86 hardware I would
agree. But my laptop seems to be OK with Solaris x86, which is fine by me.
IF I wanted to have the latest game running, a web cam, I'd probably
look to Windows. But those things are not too important to me.
philo
"Thommy M." <eclipsed9...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:AKw1j.706$R_4...@newsb.telia.net...
Ok thanks. I will try it again
Thomas H Jones II
philo <ph...@privacy.net> wrote:
>I tried Solaris a few years ago and found that it ran rather slowly so also
>gave up on that.
>If they've improved it over the last few years it may be worth looking at
>again.
Solaris 10, _in_general_, is *rather* different than (and improved over)
prior versions of Solaris. To give you an idea of how different the current
iteration of Solaris is, it would probably be easier for an SA experienced
only with Solaris 2.5 to sit down and sucessfully administer a Solaris 9
system than it would be for a Solaris 9 admin to sit down and sucessfully
administer a Solaris 10 system (assuming that the Solaris 10 system was
using all of the advanced features like zones, zfs, SMF, etc). At least,
this was the conclusion that a group of fellow Solaris admins came to over
beers a couple months ago. ;)
Of course, the default WM is the "Java Desktop" (really, just Gnome) versus
the old CDE, so you do take a bit of a performance hit, there vs. CDE (but,
that's still selectable from the login screen). However, it's still a *far*
lighter weight WM than Vista's Aero.
The OS is a lot fatter than it used to be: they include more open source
software in the standard JumpStart. They also include a "Companion" DVD so
that you don't have to spend a month scouring the net for add-on software
just to make your workstation/laptop useable.
Overall, though, Solaris 10 is the first Solaris release I've actually
been relatively enthusiastic about. It's about the first time in a long
while that SUN has released an OS that has had features that I could point
to and say, "wow, that's kind of cool", rather than always having to say,
"nice to see SUN finally implementing that."
John Doue
Ok, but one thing bothers me: what do you mean by Sun hardware? Any
available to an individual user ... ?
--
John Doue
Rich Teer
> Ok, but one thing bothers me: what do you mean by Sun hardware? Any available
> to an individual user ... ?
He means hardware manufactured by Sun. And yes, it is all available to
individual users--I'm typing this on my Sun Ultra 20, which is served
by my Sun E220R server, protected by my Sun Netra T1 105 firewall. All
machines are running Solaris, of course.
--
Rich Teer, SCSA, SCNA, SCSECA, OGB member
CEO,
My Online Home Inventory
URLs: http://www.rite-group.com/rich
http://www.linkedin.com/in/richteer
http://www.myonlinehomeinventory.com
Dave
> Ok, but one thing bothers me: what do you mean by Sun hardware? Any
> available to an individual user ... ?
Plenty of Sun hardware is available to an individual user.
The Sun Ultra 20 M2 Workstation sell brand new from Sun for $895. I'm
not sure if that is the cheapest, but it probably is the cheapest you
would get a new machine from Sun.
Look on eBay you will find used Sun workstations selling for as little
as $10, to as much as $60,000. It depends how deep your pockets are.
I bought this machine (Blade 2000) used from the USA. It cost me $1300
including shipping to the UK. It has dual 1.2 GHz UltraSPARC III CPU's,
8 GB of RAM and a pair of 73 GB disks, which I have since upgraded to a
pair of 147 GB disks. It also has a decent high-end graphics card
(XVR-1000).
Just today I fitted a card inside, which has a complete PC on the card.
It uses the display, keyboard, mouse, disks, but allows one to have a
normal PC if one needs it.
So Sun hardware is more expensive than commodity PCs, but then the
better quality Sun hardware is built a lot better too.
There are lots of people who run older Suns at home.
Dave
> Ok, but one thing bothers me: what do you mean by Sun hardware? Any
> available to an individual user ... ?
>
For what it is worth, there are 3 types of systems you can install
Solaris on:
1) Workstations manufactured by Sun with x86 type CPUs. These run
Solaris x86, and you would have no issues with getting drivers because
Sun would obviously write drivers for their own hardware.
You can if you want dual boot these Windows/Solaris, since the CPU is
x86 based.
2) A typical PC made by just about anyone (Dell, HP, your local PC
shop). These run Solaris x86, but getting drivers for obscure hardware
can be an issue. But it is pretty good now. There are lists of what
components are certified to be compatible, but a lot more are OK too.
Again, you can if you want dual boot these Windows/Solaris, since the
CPU is x86 based.
3) Workstations made by Sun, but based on the SPARC processor. These run
the SPARC version of Solaris and are quite a different animal to an x86
machine.
It is totally impossible to run Windows on one of these natively, as the
CPUs are totally different. The only practical way to run Windows on the
same machine is to fit a card like this
http://www.sun.com/desktop/products/sunpcipro/
which is basically a PC on a card.
Apart from the OS being free, another nice thing about Solaris is that
there are to my knowledge no viruses for Solaris. It may be technically
possible to write one, but I'm not aware of any. Nobody sells anti-virus
software to protect Solaris systems, simply because it is not needed.
So even though the hardware is a bit more expensive than a typical PC,
the operating system is free (unlike Vista) and you don't need
anti-virus software.
John Doue
thing about Sun and Solaris, thought they were meant for professionals
only. I will keep this in mind next time I have to make an extensive
renewal of my equipment and will try meanwhile to familiarize myself
with Solaris ... time permitting!
Thanks again
--
John Doue
Oscar del Rio
> Of course, there are various incompatibilities between various linux
> distros, but so are there between various UNIX distros.
Worse than that, there are incompatibilities between VERSIONS of the
same Linux distro. With Solaris, programs that worked in older
versions, e.g. Solaris 8, still work in Solaris 10 and will work
in future versions, it's called Backwards Compatibility.
For example, I like to use a PostScript viewer called "ghostview"
on my Solaris 10 desktop. I just checked the ghostview binary and
OMG! I compiled it in 1993! I don't even remember what version of
Solaris I was using then.
It still runs flawlessly (the interface is not very "modern" but it works)
philo
"Thomas H Jones II" <fer...@xanthia.com> wrote in message
news:l6SdnUfbKukFbNva...@speakeasy.net...
Ok I'm going to fire up my main machine right now and download it
Oscar del Rio
> For example, I like to use a PostScript viewer called "ghostview"
> on my Solaris 10 desktop. I just checked the ghostview binary and
> OMG! I compiled it in 1993! I don't even remember what version of
> Solaris I was using then.
Found another gem that still works too
Help - About:
Netscape NavigatorTM Gold
Version 3.04
Copyright © 1994-1997 Netscape Communications Corporation, All rights reserved.
:-)
Bill Waddington
Cripe, my _device driver binaries_ written for 2.0 still run.
Amazing. Of course, that only goes back to 1992 or so ...
OTOH, Linux is just a different beast with a totally different
philosophy re backward compatibility. Quite intentionally. I
happily support hardware and drivers on both :)
Bill
--
William D Waddington
william.w...@beezmo.com
"Even bugs...are unexpected signposts on
the long road of creativity..." - Ken Burtch
Thomas H Jones II
>John Doue wrote:
>For what it is worth, there are 3 types of systems you can install
>Solaris on:
>
>1) Workstations manufactured by Sun with x86 type CPUs. These run
>Solaris x86, and you would have no issues with getting drivers because
>Sun would obviously write drivers for their own hardware.
>
>You can if you want dual boot these Windows/Solaris, since the CPU is
>x86 based.
This is kind of muddy. "x86" is a *very* generic term that refers to any
CPU that is generally compatible with the old 32-bit Intel produced CPUs.
SUN currently sells hardware based on AMD64 chipsets.
In addition to dual-booting, you *might* also be able to load Xen onto them
and run the two OSes within VMs. At least, given that SUN had been working
with Xen and the underlying AMD chipsets normally support that type of
virtualization, it should be an option. I haven't had a chance to implement
it yet on our SUN/AMD hardware.
>
>2) A typical PC made by just about anyone (Dell, HP, your local PC
>shop). These run Solaris x86, but getting drivers for obscure hardware
>can be an issue. But it is pretty good now. There are lists of what
>components are certified to be compatible, but a lot more are OK too.
>
>Again, you can if you want dual boot these Windows/Solaris, since the
>CPU is x86 based.
Again, depending on the underlying CPUs and BIOSes, you could also use Xen
(or another hypervisor solution - but Sun seems to be teaming with Xen,
these days) and run multiple OSes within VMs (singly or concurrently).
Thommy M.
> Thommy M. wrote:
>
>>> Your strong distinction sounds like Solaris must not be a
>>> unix/linux variant?
>>
>> Solaris is UNIX in contrast to Linux.
>>
>>> Are you saying that it's yet another OS that's incompatible with linux?
>>> Yet another market fragmentation?
>>
>> It's Linux that is incompatible with UNIX.
>>
>> Linux is like Microsoft, trying to invent its own standards.
>
> Like it or not, Linux has become a 'defacto' standard.
Nope, it is in fact so far from all standards that it competes with Windows.
mike
Ok, after a day of downloading and concatenating and burning, I have
a solaris dvd.
Stuff it into the machine and load up MS VirutalPC.
Start the install....................
.......................
.......................
Aborted. This requires 753MB of ram, you have only 453MB.
GAME OVER! Don't these Sun people remember about virtual memory?
I don't have a machine, that I care to trash, with that much ram.
Ah for the good old days when you could run MSOFFICE, surf the web
and have a wonderful time on 4MB of RAM. Why should it take
753MB of ram to write a letter?
Ok, undaunted, I try the express version.
...................
......................
......
Read error, incompatible media installed.
Hmmmmm...
GAME 2 OVER.
Guess I shoulda read the requirements page...silly me...
Wonder why XP is so popular????
mike
--
Return address is VALID!
Ian Collins
>
> Ok, after a day of downloading and concatenating and burning, I have
> a solaris dvd.
> Stuff it into the machine and load up MS VirutalPC.
> Start the install....................
> ........................
> Aborted. This requires 753MB of ram, you have only 453MB.
> GAME OVER! Don't these Sun people remember about virtual memory?
How can you have virtual memory without backing store?
Select text install.
--
Ian Collins.
mike
Andrew Gabriel
fer...@xanthia.com (Thomas H Jones II) writes:
>
> This is kind of muddy. "x86" is a *very* generic term that refers to any
> CPU that is generally compatible with the old 32-bit Intel produced CPUs.
> SUN currently sells hardware based on AMD64 chipsets.
and Intel CPUs, but they're both "x86" by your definition.
> In addition to dual-booting, you *might* also be able to load Xen onto them
> and run the two OSes within VMs. At least, given that SUN had been working
> with Xen and the underlying AMD chipsets normally support that type of
> virtualization, it should be an option. I haven't had a chance to implement
> it yet on our SUN/AMD hardware.
Yes, it's in the latest Solaris Express downloads.
--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]
Andrew Gabriel
Dave
> Ok, after a day of downloading and concatenating and burning, I have
> a solaris dvd.
> Stuff it into the machine and load up MS VirutalPC.
> Start the install....................
> .......................
> .......................
> Aborted. This requires 753MB of ram, you have only 453MB.
> GAME OVER! Don't these Sun people remember about virtual memory?
> I don't have a machine, that I care to trash, with that much ram.
> Ah for the good old days when you could run MSOFFICE, surf the web
> and have a wonderful time on 4MB of RAM. Why should it take
> 753MB of ram to write a letter?
>
> Ok, undaunted, I try the express version.
> ...................
> ......................
> ......
> Read error, incompatible media installed.
> Hmmmmm...
> GAME 2 OVER.
>
> Guess I shoulda read the requirements page...silly me...
>
> Wonder why XP is so popular????
>
> mike
>
Was an error message from Solaris about requiring 753 MB of RAM? I doubt
it is, since the requirements are for 256 MB, but 512 are recommended. I
suspect that is your Virtual PC screwing thing up myself.
But if you give up that easy, you will never learn enough to make
Solaris useful to you, so I would go back to XP if I were you.
tanhkx
operating system and it come with a free DVD which I can install Solaris on
my pc.
Few months ago I bought a book on FreeBSD and it come with a DVD and that is
how I install my FreeBSD on my PC.
Any problem I encounter, I can refer to the text book and immetiatelly get
the answer.
It is too troublesome and time consuming to search for answer by using
google because I only have a slow speed 3g. The 3g in my country is very
slow...same like the analog dial-up...sometime even slower.
Andrew Gabriel
tanhkx <tanhkx@hanged_screamyx_email.com> writes:
> It would be nice if I can go to a book shop and buy a book on Solaris
> operating system and it come with a free DVD which I can install Solaris on
> my pc.
You can get the free DVD from Sun's website, either download or
posted to you. It's updated every few months (the download images
even more frequently) with new features and hardware support, so
anything attached to a book in a bookshop would not be the latest
version, and would likely be a year or more old.
> Few months ago I bought a book on FreeBSD and it come with a DVD and that is
> how I install my FreeBSD on my PC.
> Any problem I encounter, I can refer to the text book and immetiatelly get
> the answer.
>
> It is too troublesome and time consuming to search for answer by using
> google because I only have a slow speed 3g. The 3g in my country is very
> slow...same like the analog dial-up...sometime even slower.
You can ask in the solaris newsgroups -- lots of help there.
Dave
> It would be nice if I can go to a book shop and buy a book on Solaris
> operating system and it come with a free DVD which I can install Solaris on
> my pc.
The problem with operating systems on DVDs is that they are soon out of
date. Solaris 10 came out in Jan 2005. The the latest release is Solaris
10 update 4, which came out in August of this year. So that is 4
releases of Solaris 10 in the space of 2.5 years. So unless the book is
very new, it would be out of date quite quickly.
Another possible issue in the UK at least is that books sold with
software are I believe subject to 'value added tax' (VAT). I have never
worked out what value it adds, as it costs 17.5% more.
Solaris express, comes out more regularly still. It tends to have newer
features, but is not as well tested as the main release.
Why not log onto Amazon and order a book, and get Sun to send you a
Solaris Express DVD, which they will do free of charge - not even
postage? (Forget the SPARC versions - they will be useless to you on a PC)
http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/solaris-express/get.jsp
Solaris Express, which is less tested than the main stable release, is
probably better for most individuals.
It will not take too many bytes of your dial-up modem to order a DVD and
it will not cost you a penny/cent/ or whatever the local currency to you is!
> Few months ago I bought a book on FreeBSD and it come with a DVD and that is
> how I install my FreeBSD on my PC.
> Any problem I encounter, I can refer to the text book and immetiatelly get
> the answer.
I suspect the release you have is somewhat out of date though.
> It is too troublesome and time consuming to search for answer by using
> google because I only have a slow speed 3g. The 3g in my country is very
> slow...same like the analog dial-up...sometime even slower.
>
I suggest you buy a book, and order a DVD. I don't know what country you
are in, but Sun will ship to most countries and for now at least, they
will do so for free - normally there is a nominal charge, but there is
not now.
Chris Ridd
Gabriel) said:
> In article <47481...@news.tm.net.my>,
> tanhkx <tanhkx@hanged_screamyx_email.com> writes:
>> It would be nice if I can go to a book shop and buy a book on Solaris
>> operating system and it come with a free DVD which I can install Solaris on
>> my pc.
>
> You can get the free DVD from Sun's website, either download or
> posted to you. It's updated every few months (the download images
> even more frequently) with new features and hardware support, so
> anything attached to a book in a bookshop would not be the latest
> version, and would likely be a year or more old.
The other problem with including Solaris DVDs with a book is that Sun
seem to prevent anyone from redistributing their OS.
That seems to be changing with the Indiana project, and of course
Belenix/Nexenta/et al.
Cheers,
Chris
Canuck57
> It's Linux that is incompatible with UNIX.
>
> Linux is like Microsoft, trying to invent its own standards.
Could have fooled me. I routinely write C/C++ and scripting for both and
have no problems with either of Linux or Solaris. Mostly systems and server
side but also apps work too.
I like BOTH Linux and Solaris!!! And use both. No Vista betaware here at
all. Unless it is a coaster of course. For me I just want the letters u,
n, i, x in it and I am happy and at home with it.
While it is true to say Linux does not run a UNIX derived kernel, it is in
fact POSIX compliant, has for the most part the same APIs and all the same
utilities as does Solaris. Perl, awk, sed, etc all just work like they
should. Threads, RPCs, kerberos etc. And Solaris too has evolved quite a
bit from the old BSD sources and could be said to now be its own lineage.
If Linux had not come along UNIX would have near dead by now. HP, SGI, DG,
IBM, Sun and others got greedy, needed C/C++ licenses and almost extorted
business in pricing. Sun is still in this because they were not as bad, not
that they were that good. Programs like the X100/V100 and the Intel port
saved Solaris. It sure wasn't Java.
HP in Itanic and apathy in development killed HP-UX as a viable OS. DG,
SGI, do they even sell Irix and DG-UX any more? SCO, we know the story.
AIX being chip bound and closed is also loosing market share. Why, because
they wanted at least $2000 and up for a basic compiler, DB etc much more
extra. OS/HW Vendors put too much faith in companies like BMC and CA with
their over priced bloated products. It was deathly expensive to run these
back in the '80's and '90's.
Microsoft is now buried in their "MS-standards" as each new OS the
developers, admins must relearn a whole new layer of "Microsoft standards"
and incompatibilities that we so not see in the xNIX world. Vista has so
many compatibility layers, even MS engineering no longer understands it.
This is Microsoft's Achilles heel. Their older software no longer runs on
their OS!
So write for both Linux and Solaris and let the user choose. It isn't too
hard if you script or try to stick to the POSIX APIs and common tools like
GTK. Don't get too caught up in the next wizbang proprietary API offering,
most die eventually, while some like GTK make it many do not. SAA or NETBUI
anyone?
Open source competition, including Linux is good for this business.
Now for the flames.
Canuck57
"mike" <spa...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:t8N1j.26859$9h.3444@trnddc07...
> Ok, after a day of downloading and concatenating and burning, I have
> a solaris dvd.
> Stuff it into the machine and load up MS VirutalPC.
> Start the install....................
> .......................
> .......................
> Aborted. This requires 753MB of ram, you have only 453MB.
Oh, I so much recommend you use VMWare over that MS virtual thing. It even
comes up 64 bit on my AMD X2. Runs like a charm.
Peltio
> a solaris dvd.
> Stuff it into the machine and load up MS VirutalPC.
Does MS stand for MicroSoft?
If so, what makes you think that the "game over" is Sun's fault?
--
Su www.efunda.com trovi informazioni concise sugli aspetti essenziali
dell'ingegneria (specialmente meccanica). Brevi tutorials, formule per
il dimensionamento, proprietą dei materiali. Annuncio sponsorizzato
dalla LIPSISC. Aut. Min. rich.
Richard B. Gilbert
The last time requested a copy of Solaris 10 from Sun, they sent a DVD
at no charge! The manuals are free if you download them. If you want
printed copies, they are available but you'll have to pay for them and
pay for shipping. Even a large book cannot explain Solaris in detail!
It would take a small library to cover: Introduction, System
Administration, Programming, Installation, etc, etc.
That library is available. See docs.sun.com. You might find someone
with a broadband connection who could download copies and burn them to
CD or DVD for you.
mike
I have 1GB of real ram. I assigned 443MB to the virtual machine. It
wouldn't let me do 750mb, so I couldn't try that.
I inserted the dvd and started the installation. It whirred for a while
then informed me that it found 443MB of ram and needed a minimum of
753MB. It refused to go further.
So, yes, I do blame Sun for THEIR error message. If lack of RAM is not
the problem, they shouldn't be giving me that error message.
It's certainly possible that Solaris is incompatible with MSVirtualPC.
But I have succcessfully installed about a dozen linux variants on it.
I never found one distribution that supported all my virtualized
hardware at once,
but that's the same problem I have with real hardware.
You'd think that anybody wanting to penetrate MS territory would include
drivers for the virtualized hardware in the MS VirtualPC...but that's
just me.
>
> But if you give up that easy, you will never learn enough to make
> Solaris useful to you, so I would go back to XP if I were you.
The amount of effort you put into something is directly related to the
gain you expect to achieve. When you hang out with unix/linux people,
you are hanging out with people who love to bang their head against the
wall to make stuff work. They're blind to the fact that for the other
99% of us...we'd just like it to work. There's no joy in recompiling
stuff. There's no joy in scouring the web for a driver.
I've never talked with a linux zealot who understood that. It's all
my fault that I'm too dumb or lazy to make it work.
So, you're right. Solaris didn't work for me out of the box.
I'm too lazy to move the dvd drive to the scratch machine to try
on real hardware. If I can't make it work on a virtual machine, I won't
use it anyway.
I don't expect any benefit beyond learning about Solaris. I give up.
Is that the fault of Solaris? Only if they want market penetration.
Look at it this way. I try to teach you something. You don't get it.
Have you failed as a student? Have I failed as a teacher?
I submit that blaming the student is FAR less likely to achieve education.
Ian Collins
>
> I have 1GB of real ram. I assigned 443MB to the virtual machine. It
> wouldn't let me do 750mb, so I couldn't try that.
> I inserted the dvd and started the installation. It whirred for a while
> then informed me that it found 443MB of ram and needed a minimum of
> 753MB. It refused to go further.
>
one (which requires Java for the tools) and select text console install.
The installer requires more RAM than the running OS. The installer is
being updated to drastically reduce its memory footprint.
>
> It's certainly possible that Solaris is incompatible with MSVirtualPC.
> But I have succcessfully installed about a dozen linux variants on it.
Do what everyone else does and use VMWare. There are VMWare drivers for
Solaris, I don't know of anyone using MS VirtualPC.
--
Ian Collins.
Ian Collins
the drive(s).
--
Ian Collins.
mike
> mike wrote:
>> I have 1GB of real ram. I assigned 443MB to the virtual machine. It
>> wouldn't let me do 750mb, so I couldn't try that.
>> I inserted the dvd and started the installation. It whirred for a while
>> then informed me that it found 443MB of ram and needed a minimum of
>> 753MB. It refused to go further.
>>
> If you are short of RAM, choose the community edition, not the developer
> one (which requires Java for the tools) and select text console install.
Would have been nice to have figgered that out prior to the 10-hour
download.
> The installer requires more RAM than the running OS.
I understand market pressures that make it profitable to spend the
customer's
$$$ on more RAM than on writing efficient code.
But requiring 750MB of RAM just to copy some files from a DVD to
a HD is INSANE! And the installer taking more ram to run than the OS is
...what's the next step beyond insane????
That should never have made it past the first product concept review.
The installer is
> being updated to drastically reduce its memory footprint.
Post an announcement when that happens.
>
>> It's certainly possible that Solaris is incompatible with MSVirtualPC.
>> But I have succcessfully installed about a dozen linux variants on it.
>
> Do what everyone else does and use VMWare. There are VMWare drivers for
> Solaris, I don't know of anyone using MS VirtualPC.
Sure you do...pleased to meet you. I run several windows variants and
several linux variants.
I did go visit the vmware site. First impression is that I have to
click a button labeled "buy" to make it work. That ain't gonna happen.
There's a free player, but that doesn't look like it works on anything
except precompiled images???
Solaris has configured itself out of my market segment. And that's ok...
mike
Ian Collins
> Ian Collins wrote:
>> mike wrote:
>>> I have 1GB of real ram. I assigned 443MB to the virtual machine. It
>>> wouldn't let me do 750mb, so I couldn't try that.
>>> I inserted the dvd and started the installation. It whirred for a while
>>> then informed me that it found 443MB of ram and needed a minimum of
>>> 753MB. It refused to go further.
>>>
>> If you are short of RAM, choose the community edition, not the developer
>> one (which requires Java for the tools) and select text console install.
>
> Would have been nice to have figgered that out prior to the 10-hour
> download.
>
get installed.
>> The installer requires more RAM than the running OS.
>
> That should never have made it past the first product concept review.
>
If you have an issue and a suggested fix, join the OpenSolaris install
community. You appear to be suffering from a closed source mindset,
OpenSolaris is opensource, so if you have an issue, join the appropriate
community and contribute. Whinging on Usenet will get you nowhere.
>
> The installer is
>> being updated to drastically reduce its memory footprint.
>
> Post an announcement when that happens.
Follow the progress yourself.
>
> I did go visit the vmware site. First impression is that I have to
> click a button labeled "buy" to make it work. That ain't gonna happen.
> There's a free player, but that doesn't look like it works on anything
> except precompiled images???
>
I suggest you look again.
--
Ian Collins.
Ian Collins
labeled, where do they write the data?
--
Ian Collins.
CJT
--
The e-mail address in our reply-to line is reversed in an attempt to
minimize spam. Our true address is of the form che...@prodigy.net.
Dick Hoogendijk
> Ian Collins wrote:
>> Which the installer doesn't know about until you assign and partition
>> the drive(s).
>>
> Somehow, linux and windows can figger it out and install just fine.
Sure ;-(
But what gives you the impression that you are so valuable to have on
board the solaris ship? If you don't like waht you see, than that's
fine. Who cares? Just use what you want. Don't keep on whining on
usenet. It's almost troll-like behaviour.
And ONE more other thing: learn to use the right newsgroup. Posting to
as many as you do is bad behaviour. I'm even surprised folks in this
solaris newsgroup actually answered to your posts.
--
Dick Hoogendijk -- PGP/GnuPG key: 01D2433D
++ http://nagual.nl/ | Solaris 10 / XDE ++
mike
In the case of an emulator, there's is only one (virtual) hard drive.
It's blank, empty, unused. When you stick in an installation CD, the
installation process has to figure out where to put it. If it can't,
it can surely ask you for guidance. I've got maybe a dozen linux
install cd's that manage to figure out what to do. You'd think
Sun could...I'm not even sure they can't...I can't try it 'cause
I don't have a gazzigabyte of ram.
I guess when you've struggled to manually configure unix/linux
all your life,
something that just plugs in and works is a foreign concept.
And yes, that's the major stumbling block to widespread adoption
of linux...the builders have no concept of what the general public
needs...or are just unwilling to meet that need.
Thomas H Jones II
Andrew Gabriel <and...@cucumber.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <Cpmdnd4XToSDo9ra...@speakeasy.net>,
> fer...@xanthia.com (Thomas H Jones II) writes:
>>
>> This is kind of muddy. "x86" is a *very* generic term that refers to any
>> CPU that is generally compatible with the old 32-bit Intel produced CPUs.
>> SUN currently sells hardware based on AMD64 chipsets.
>
>and Intel CPUs, but they're both "x86" by your definition.
Hmm... Our sales weenies have only been pushing USPARC and Opteron systems
at us of late. Just looked at the SUN web site and see that SUN's also
selling IA64 Xeons. So, I'll modify: it would probably be better to say
"x64" rather than "x86" as the SUN hardware is exclusively 64-bit rather
than the 32-bit that is included in the more general "x86" category.
--
"You can only be -so- accurate with a claw-hammer." --me
John Groenveld
Thomas H Jones II <fer...@xanthia.com> wrote:
>at us of late. Just looked at the SUN web site and see that SUN's also
>selling IA64 Xeons. So, I'll modify: it would probably be better to say
>"x64" rather than "x86" as the SUN hardware is exclusively 64-bit rather
>than the 32-bit that is included in the more general "x86" category.
IA64 refers to Intel's Itanium.
<URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ia64>
Intel's marketing wonks now refer to their x86-64 Xeons as
Intel64.
<URL:http://www.intel.com/technology/64bitextensions/>
John
groe...@acm.org
Thomas H Jones II
Canuck57 <dave-n...@unixhome.net> wrote:
>HP in Itanic and apathy in development killed HP-UX as a viable OS. DG,
>SGI, do they even sell Irix and DG-UX any more? SCO, we know the story.
>AIX being chip bound and closed is also loosing market share. Why, because
>they wanted at least $2000 and up for a basic compiler, DB etc much more
>extra.
Well, before you summarily toss IBM and AIX over the side and into
history's dustbin, let's not forget they embraced the Linux/open source
community *well* before SUN did. IBM was also the "we know the story" to
your "SCO", above...
I'm pretty sure that "market share" depends on what your metric is based on
and which quarter you look at. Anecdotally, over the past few years, I've
worked with quite a few large financial services companies. Most have
either been running either a mix or Solaris and AIX, exclusively AIX or
converting to exclusively AIX (but very few have been exclusively Solaris
and, of those that were, *none* planned to stay that way). Granted, that's
not necessarily reflective of the entire computer industry, but it's an
area that's really been chewing into SUN's bottom-line the last few years.
Not trying to pee on the SUN love-fest (just tempering with a bit of the
reality I see, day-to-day). At any rate, it's hard not to like Solaris:
it's been helping to pay my salary since the mid-90's. ;)
Ian Collins
> Ian Collins wrote:
>> mike wrote:
>>> Ian Collins wrote:
>>>> mike wrote:
>>>>> Ian Collins wrote:
>>>>>> mike wrote:
>>>>>>> Ok, after a day of downloading and concatenating and burning, I have
>>>>>>> a solaris dvd.
>>>>>>> Stuff it into the machine and load up MS VirutalPC.
>>>>>>> Start the install....................
>>>>>>> ........................
>>>>>>> ........................
>>>>>>> Aborted. This requires 753MB of ram, you have only 453MB.
>>>>>>> GAME OVER! Don't these Sun people remember about virtual memory?
>>>>>> How can you have virtual memory without backing store?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Select text install.
>>>>>>
>>>>> Don't know about yours, but mine has a hard drive for backing store
>>>>>
>>>> Which the installer doesn't know about until you assign and partition
>>>> the drive(s).
>>>>
>>> Somehow, linux and windows can figger it out and install just fine.
>>>
>> How can they tell which partition is free, or if the drive isn't
>> labeled, where do they write the data?
>>
> I don't know why this is so hard for you to understand.
Oh I understand alright.
> In the case of an emulator, there's is only one (virtual) hard drive.
> It's blank, empty, unused. When you stick in an installation CD, the
> installation process has to figure out where to put it.
If the emulator is any good, the OS doesn't realise it is running on one.
> If it can't,
> it can surely ask you for guidance.
And if there isn't anywhere to use for backing store? The Solaris
installer is designed to work entirely form a RAM disk, that design has
stood the test of time, but is now on its way out. There are other
OpenSolaris distributes with much smaller install footprints, including
LiveCD.
>
> I guess when you've struggled to manually configure unix/linux
> all your life,
Nope, it's never been a struggle, because I know what I'd doing. The
new installer's defaults will suffice for most users.
> something that just plugs in and works is a foreign concept.
Try Indiana,
http://dlc.sun.com/osol/indiana/downloads/current/in-preview.iso
> And yes, that's the major stumbling block to widespread adoption
> of linux...the builders have no concept of what the general public
> needs...or are just unwilling to meet that need.
>
Like Solaris, Linux is open source, so there is probably a distro to
suite everyone.
--
Ian Collins.
Andrew Gabriel
amd64 and x64 are the commonly used generic terms for the
x86 instruction set with 64 bit instructions (which Intel
copied from AMD). amd64 doesn't mean only AMD processors,
it's just that AMD invented it and first produced CPU's
using it. Intel was still flogging IA64 (Itanium) at that
time.
Dave
> I guess when you've struggled to manually configure unix/linux
> all your life,
> something that just plugs in and works is a foreign concept.
So Windows just plugs in and works? That's not always been my experience.
It is probably true installing Solaris 10 on *random* x86/x64 hardware
will take more time than installing Windows on random hardware. But once
running, Solaris takes up far less of your time.
If you want a *very* easy life, just install Solaris 10 on UltraSPARC
hardware. (I assume the same is true if you install on Sun's x86/x64
hardware, rather than random bits of unnamed kit, but I have not tried
that).
In the 6 months I have owned my laptop, I have reinstalled windows Vista
three times.
1) After "upgrading" to Vista Ultimate, from Vista Business, the camera
and audio drivers would not work, nor would they work after I
reinstalled them. Totally reinstalling the Vista OS before adding the
drivers fixed that. Then of course I had to reinstall all the programs
and restore my user files, which took the best part of a day.
Perhaps you would have had a better suggestion - Sony did not.
2) The Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional (about the only bit of *useful*
software supplied with the laptop), got corrupted and would not work. No
amount of repairing the installation worked. With no option to remove
just that product and reinstall just that, I had to do a complete reset
to factory defaults.
Perhaps you would have had a better suggestion - Sony did not.
3) Despite running a Norton security product (forget which), with
regular updates, the system got infected with some spyware/virus, as
random programs tried connecting to the internet. (Norton could only
detect the programs trying to connect, not find the rubbish that was
causing it). So I reinstalled Vista for the 3rd time.
Perhaps you would have had a better suggestion - I personally did not
trust any other solution.
So that is three times in 6 months I have *needed* to reinstall Vista in
order to fix a problem. Of course, I could have left the camera, audio
and Adobe Acrobat not working, and continued to use a system I think was
infected, but none of them seemed too clever.
Despite running two Sun workstations 24/7, and an odd one occasionally,
I have not within the last few years ever had to reinstall an OS. I have
reinstalled Solaris when it suited me (if a new version of Solaris was
released), but I have not in the last few years ever had to reinstall
Solaris because of a problem I could not be fix another easier way.
> And yes, that's the major stumbling block to widespread adoption
> of linux...the builders have no concept of what the general public
> needs...or are just unwilling to meet that need.
I guess I want something that once set up, continues to work. Solaris
does that.
John Groenveld
Andrew Gabriel <and...@cucumber.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>amd64 and x64 are the commonly used generic terms for the
>x86 instruction set with 64 bit instructions (which Intel
>copied from AMD). amd64 doesn't mean only AMD processors,
>it's just that AMD invented it and first produced CPU's
>using it. Intel was still flogging IA64 (Itanium) at that
>time.
Sun's marketing wonks refer to the new x86-64 Xeon based
systems as x64 systems just as they've been referring to the
Opteron based system for years now.
For what its worth, Wikipedia says x64 is a contraction
of x86-64.
<URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64>
John
groe...@acm.org