Hi guys,

I've just read someone's blog somewhere in which he describes the 'time slider' feature in Open Solaris and I thought it was just the coolest thing ever. I'm currently downloading an .iso image to burn a Solaris CD and give it a try. But I'm wary, because I've always thought of Solaris as only suitable for super-nerds (which I regrettably am not!) so I just wondered if it has now been refined to a point where non-nerds can get a piece of the action, too? Please advise.
TIA, C.C.

Hi CC

It's what you get used too, the more time you spend on a given subject the better your options!!

Jnike

Well, I think it depends on what "ordinary" means. If I think about some people I know, I don't think that even Windows would be "suitable".

Seriously, Solaris Express and OpenSolaris are pretty usable. My girlfriend, for example, only uses Solaris at home and she's experiencing no problems at all: she browses the internet with Firefox, writes document with Star Office (or OpenOffice), listens to music, chats with Pidgin. The basic every day tools are there and my girlfriend is not a power user, nor wants she to be. Another thing is being a "Big admin" but I don't think an "ordinary" guy would even care about it and about some of the tools Solaris provides.

Even installation is pretty straightforward: insert the OpenSolaris 2008.11 CD, wait for Gnome to come up, double click the install icon, answer a couple of basic questions and wait until the system restarts.

Don't worry and try it!

Hi,

actually I have to agree with both posts above; Ok I do use Solaris in a networked environment but I have SXCE (Solaris Express) installed on my laptop and it's fine apart from the slight incompatibility with the hardware causing the system to overheat quite a bit.

In fact putting it this way; at home I tried to find a Windows replacement for my mother and got her to test out Solaris and Linux. She actually found Solaris easier as the GUI was similar to what she was used to. Again hardware problems meant that I had to use Linux but still she does prefer Solaris.

It is for everday stuff probably easier if you're coming from a Windows background. I mean in general I haven't been using it all that long maybe 3 -4 months now and yet I have 4 servers plus a laptop all running it.

Only advice I can give is try different systems and see which one fits your style better. In industry unfortunately we aren't that lucky as it's which one gives max performance or does what we need it to do but still SXCE is amazing definately and wouldn't even bother with 2008.11 unless you really want the traditional Gnome2.0 look.

HTH

Any distro has limits either in software or hardware or both.

OpenSolaris is good for common things if you know a bit. It may be that on your machine is just boots and works to let you do common tasks that most people do. You will find that line 1 will apply sooner or later.

Not really for ubergeeks anymore. Very common to any linux distro. As with all of them the terms and ways to do stuff are different.

Be warned that Solaris doesn't have a lot of application support. There are also ways around that.

There is no reason why OpenSolaris or any lnx distro can't be used.
You do need to become used to it's idiosyncrasies, though, but this applies to any new O/S.
even a M$ system !.

however, some are easier to learn, than others.

I think linux is more for "ordinary" people. They have solaris in my University, and I have to use it for lots of stuffs because of that. But, maybe because I started with Linux, I find it a lot easier to get software (packages-> I use Debian btw) and get a rather "good" hardware compatibility on Linux. I was even thinking about getting some certification on Solaris but when I saw the book... Well, let's just say I find Linux a lot more logical. Of course I'm sure if you are used to Solaris instead of Linux, you'll find Linux people are crazy or something.

I don't know, maybe it's just that I like my harddisk to be shown as /dev/sda rather than /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s0 or something...

@rikijpn: I suppose your impressions depend on the version of Solaris your University is running. I imagine it's neither SXCE nor OpenSolaris. By the way, the package manager issue is one of the aspects that is being address by project Indiana.

This (should) depends on tastes, too. I, on the other hand, find Solaris pretty much "usable" than Linux as far as it concerns documentation, for example. "Logical" sounds pretty strong, indeed, once you know why Solaris name disks that way!

Software availability and hardware support are a problem, indeed, and that justifies the efforts that are being done by the community to address such problems. I was a Slackware linux user in 1993 and I remember very well the hell of hardware support and software availability, those days. I also remember how I could find and buy a second hand Sun workstation to run Solaris at home. Given the relative young age of the OpenSolaris projects and communities and the great amount of open source software out there I can compile, I see as a point of strength and as an opportunity the situation in which we're all working nowadays: that's why I like to think that next generation Solaris will be such a great OS and it will have the adoption it deserves.

I also think that "fighting GNU/Linux" or just "comparing with GNU/Linux" is not an issue for new Solaris users: problems are others, and they're pretty well known. Rather, Windows and Mac OS/X are the OSes Solaris should try to steal users from.

/dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s0 is actually a symbolic link to the real device name which is something like /devices/pci@0,0/pci-ide@1f,2/ide@0/cmdk@0,0:a, definitely not for "ordinary people" ...

I'm fine with this though. I find convenient having more information in the Solaris name vs the Linux one. Also, I had some trouble with Linux shifting internal disk names after a new one has been added. This isn't supposed to happen with Solaris which stick names to the hardware path used to reach them.

Are Sun workstations still in production? If not (as I suspect) then what are contemporary programmers typically using instead?

Sun Workstations which are still in production ( http://www.sun.com/desktop/index.jsp ) aren't a requirement to work with Solaris.
I suspect most of the Solaris programmers, like everyone, use laptops. Happy few use SunRays.

I was speaking about long time ago, when Solaris was a SPARC only OS.

By the way, as jlliagre pointed out, there still are Sun workstations and I own a couple of them and I'm really really happy with them! They aren't a requirement to run Solaris, in this very moment I'm writing on a Dell laptop running SXCE and everything except wireless NIC is functioning properly. It works with NDIS wrapper on the 32-bit solaris kernel but I prefer plugging the cable... Nevertheless, if you were targeting a desktop PC with more or less the same characteristics of the Sun workstations still in production I would suggest you to try one.

That's unfortunately true. I mean: a laptop is often necessary but I still find huge differences working on an heavy duty workstation rather than working on a laptop like this. I suspect disks (not SSDs) still make most of the difference. Obviously this also depends on the budget you have but the Sun Ultra 20 M2 and the Ultra 24 I bought were pretty price competitive when compared with other producers' PCs with the same characteristics. Let alone laptops...

I'm a Java architect and the minimum tools I'm using in both machines are Netbeans 6.5, a couple of instances of Sun Java Application Server, Oracle and MySQL. Neither benchmarks nor scientific measurements here: as soon as I go home I sit at my workstations and the smoothness and the responsiveness are just another story. I just forget my laptops...

Checking out the spec, there seems to be nothing special about them any more. I can see that's also reflected in the (much) lower (than 20 years ago) prices. Seems a shame though.

At the beginning of 2009 Sun gave out producing SPARC-based workstations, being the Ultra 25 and the Ultra 45 the last ones to be produced. Well, "nothing special" means that they're PCs, and moreover, competitive! They're certified to work with many GNU/Linux distros and many Windows versions as well, let alone Solaris. I think they're as special as an Apple machine and OS/X are: you can install many supported operating systems, and between them you've got Solaris, without worrying for any hardware-related issue. They just work. For me, who regularly use Solaris to work, is a safe harbor. They are pretty cheap and I don't have to worry running the hardware detection tool or checking the hardware compatibility list.