> Yesterday I spent a few hours at night thinking and > talking with > friends about OpenSolaris and more specifically > trying to answer the > question of "Why I don't use OpenSolaris on my > personal laptop?".
I don't know. Why don't you? I know I can't wait for my laptop to come back from repair. Then I'll be able to install Solaris10 on it, and finally get some real work done. > I started to think about it because yesterday I saw > Chris Hanna - the > new intern in my team - trying to compile Anjuta from > early in the > morning till late... without success. Anjuta is already available as a Solaris native package from Blastwave. What was the specific reason that he had to compile Anjuta himself? > He tried to compile the whole thing first, but.. > oops! it requires the > Perl Regular Expressions library, and it does not > ship with Solaris, > so he had to start compiling it first. He had many of > problems trying > to do it, but after a number of hours he sorted those > problems out. pcre is available as a precompiled, Solaris native package from Blastwave. Why didn't he install it from there? And, I also believe it is on the Sun freeware companion CD, which is what Sun itself compiles and ships with Solaris. > In the meanwhile, I thought: «I'm sure he would > prefer to type > "apt-get install anjuta" rather than spending all > that time trying to > compile just a dependency of what he really wants to > use». > > apt-get is the Debian program to install software. It > manages to > install dependencies, to compile packages from the > source just by > adding "-b" to the command line, to fetch software > from repositories > all around the world, etc. It is a real pleasure to > have this kind of > facility when you are working. It lets you focus on > your target rather > than in sort out some compilation problems. Yes, thank you, we know what `apt-get` is and how it works. We have a pandan to `apt-get` on Solaris. It's called `pkg-get`. From Blastwave. And wouldn't you know it, it functions very similarly, at least conceptually, to `apt-get`, but what's even slicker, it uses the Solaris [I]software subsystem[/I] i.e. `pkgadd` as its engine. Really, really slick stuff. > I'm used to having all those facilities available, > and it is really > hard living without it after having used it for a > while. It's like > travelling in a time machine: using Slackware back in > 1995. We're used to having these facilities AND MORE available on Solaris as well. I don't know which time machine you guys popped out from, but it would appear, judging by your writing, that you guys don't have a clue that a) Solaris has all this software already easily and readily available b) you are unfamiliar with current trends and practices regarding OpenSource and Freeware on Solaris c) you just plain don't know what is going on, and apparently none of you bothered to look into it deeper. After `pkg-get` install from Blastwave (performed with `wget` which comes as part of the Solaris OE), one would do: `pkg-get -i anjuta` and that would have been the end of that. > The proposal I'm about to expose tries to fill this > huge usability > gap. It tries to bring all those facilities to the > OpenSolaris world > in order to make Linux users feel at home when they > switch to > OpenSolaris and, at the same time, drastically > improve the new users > experience. There is no need to 'fill the useability gap', because there simply is no gap. SVR4 packaging tools aren't available for OpenSolaris yet, but they will be. Then everything will be 'business as usual'. If you really want to 'fill the useability gap', then talk SGI into porting `inst` to OpenSolaris. > My proposal is to begin a new Debian architecture > based on > OpenSolaris. Debian is more than a Linux distribution The last thing I would want is for (Open)Solaris to start behaving like or imitating Linux. If I wanted Linux, I wouldn't be writing this on my Solaris desktop right now. Thanks, but I've had enough Linux to last me a lifetime, and that's not an experience I'd care to repeat. > Let's face it, we have to solve this problem. There is no problem. The newly arrived Linux crowd is just making noise. OpenSolaris is not here to cater to Linux people, nor has it been released so that it could be made into Linux! If you're unfamiliar with why and how, then you better start learning. Otherwise, your Debian-based distro will be just fine for you. > * Debian is a Free Software distribution, as > n, as OpenSolaris is a Free > Software kernel. There will be a really free OpenSolaris IS NOT A FREE SOFTWARE KERNEL. OpenSolaris is a FREE OPERATING ENVIRONMENT, which is a SUPERSET OF AN OPERATING SYSTEM. This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
