What advantages are there to Solaris? Is it really as pure UNIX as what you can get now? How hard is it to install simple things? (window managers, etc)

I'm curious as to whether I should try it out or not.

Solaris is UNIX. Heck, even Mac OS 10.5 is consided UNIX now.

http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/r.../brand3555.htm

Simple things for you might be difficult for others. Learning Solaris might be difficult if you don't know how to use CLI, but administering Solaris is not limited to CLI.

I'd recommend trying out OpenSolaris. The free DVD disc set comes with a live bootable disc.

http://opensolaris.org/os/project/starterkit/
http://www.opensolaris.org/kits/

Mac OSX is also registered as unix compliant

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_UNIX_Specification

That depends on with which O/S you compare it and what features are important to you.
ZFS, Containers and dtrace are my favorites.
As already pointed to, being UNIX is a certification process now so you are or you aren't compliant. Solaris is also UNIX by being based on the main AT&T UNIX source code branch (System V release 4.0).
Not as easy as with most Linux distros yet.
Sure.

This is perhaps true. But with Blastwave, installing software is now as yumish or apt-getish as one can get.

You are right. pkg-get is however not part of Solaris nor does it updates Solaris original packages. As already discussed in this forum, there is a work in progress to enhance the Solaris own packaging system. See Open Solaris preview (Indiana).

Here is an interesting read on why choose Solaris instead of Linux:
http://www.lethargy.org/~jesus/archi...ver-Linux.html

Well, I figure complications may come with it, but what the heck, it'll keep me from getting bored.

I'm running Solaris 10 right now. I have the Developer Edition, but only installed the "regular". Can I still set up a server with this? And I don't mean apache, the one that comes with Solaris instead.

(Side note: for some reason, Solaris 10 seems to be "nicer" to my computer. I can hear less "straining". Its weird. I like it. lol)

@kebabbert, thanks for the article, very enlightening in some ways

Also, I have no sound...

Apparently I have no gstreamer volume control anything installed. Is this a matter of letting my user have more rights, or installing gstreamers or what?

I understand you don't mean apache but can you tell us what you mean by server ?

I could be one of:
unproperly configured driver
uninstalled driver
unsupported hardware
Did you try adding it to the bottom panel ?

The "volume control" is already on the panel, but thats where I get the error. I've only had problems with my soundcard in DesktopBSD. Just installed the needed gstreamer plugins and it was fine. I don't know where to start here.

You start by checking if your hardware is supported.
The tool to do it is on the installation dvd (/sddtool).

Also, you didn't answer to my server definition question.

Give me a break, I'm kinda out of my league here.

I don't see any tool like that on the DVD. Is there a real chance that it isn't supported when Debian, Fedora, and every other Linux distro I've used was fine?

(as far as the server, it sounded like Solaris has its own generic server)

That would probably mean you aren't installing a recent Solaris Express release. I'd recommend doing it instead of trying Solaris 10, especially as your h/w seem to have compatibility issues.
Absolutely, Solaris is not at all a Linux distro as far as the kernel is concerned. Linux drivers license forbids (most of them are GPL only) to reuse them with Solaris. Most Solaris drivers are written from scratch or sometimes ported from BSD. There are proprietary drivers, like nVidia and dual license ones too.
Perhaps are you referring to the Service Management Facility ?