i'm coming from a slackware background and have never wanted to do any other dist.
i'm part of a dev team for an HSP and we wanted to see if it would run on solaris...so i installed solaris 10.
its a php/mysql based script and solaris doesn't seem to come with php, so i'll need to install it...mysql is up and running (that took a little time to figure out)

my questions are very newbish but i can't seem to resolve this myself
on slack, i would upload to either /usr/local or /usr/src, extract the file, ./configure, make then make install then edit any configs to taste
solaris is very different...

where am i suppoesed to upload archives to be installed? (like i said...very noobish)

also, i can't seem to extract a tar.gz
i keep getting a tar: /dev/rmt/0: no such file or directory

i've been googling for a tips and tricks and trying all kinds of different filters, but i just can't seem to get it right...

anyone know of a site that has basic noob stuff that i can browse?

You can d/l the applications you want from http://www.sunfreeware.com/ and just use "pkgadd " to install them. If you want to compile them from source (which is what I also prefer to do) you can d/l them in a specific directory to keep your sources together and use the same procedure (./configure, make, make install) to install them.
As for the "tar" command, the one that comes with solaris is not the GNU one, so you have to d/l it from the link above and install it. Then rename the original tar and make a symlink for the GNU tar.

Thank you - appreciate it
yea that non-gnu tar was throwing alot of wrenches in my gears and really stripping them

If you want to install and easily update freeware on your Solaris 10 box, the simpler way is through blastwave.org pkg-get command.