> Did you ever consider that one possible reason is > that Solaris X86 > simply doesn't have all the drivers - I have a > laptop, and it's less > than 2 years old, which Solaris will install on, but > there simply are no > network drivers for it. So it would take much more of > my time to get to > a usability level on Solaris X86 with that machine > that it would with > JDS/Linux, hence I'm sicking with the latter for the > moment, it doesn't > rule out Solaris X86 - I still have it installed and > if I manage to > locate drivers for it, I'll move, but it's the time > investment needed > that I simply don't have right now.
In my 20 years of experience working with computers, if there is one thing that I've learned, then it's [I]get hardware that supports your software, not software that supports your hardware[/I]. Now what does that mean? It simply means, if for example Solaris has built in drivers for a RTL8139 ChipSet, I'll make sure I get HW that has that ChipSet. If the SW supports printing to a PostScript printer, I'll make sure that the printer I buy understands PostScript. This is a lesson I learned very well during my Commodore Amiga days, and it stuck ever since. As a result, I've been relatively [I]unscathed[/I] in regard to all this stuff. Be that as it may, when was the last time you installed Solaris on the x86 platform? Solaris10 has very good HW support for most common HW, and the OEMs are starting to release [I]Solaris native packages[/I] of their drivers right on the 'install CD' along with Windows drivers! For example, I just about fell on my behind when I found Solaris native packages of drivers from a [I]vanilla Taiwan manufacturer[/I] of the machine I bought. Further more, the laptop I'm writing about is a Compaq AMD Athlon "run of the mill" thing. It has a Savage 3D graphics adapter, RTL8139C, and some sort of AC '97 audio. All these things are supported by Solaris10 out-of-the-box, Savage 3D included. And if my audio won't work, I'll just get the audio drivers from http://tools.de/solaris/audio/ And I'm done. Easy as pie. I could probably even get Solaris9 to work on that thing. Where's the problem? Solaris10 on x86 has really come a long way, and its support for x86 is rapidly increasing -- in fact, I've never seen any platform's support start to build momentum so rapidly. > As stated in other threads - it's crazy the amount of > extra libs that > get downloaded if you pkg-get something like this - > and in this case it > was intended to be a learning experience w.r.t. what > is involved in > building such applications as well. As I stated before, Blastwave currently suffers from lack of engineering and quality control. But they have come a long way, and I'm confident that Blastwave will only get even better as the time passes. What "Nekoware" is to SGI IRIX (http://www.nekochan.net/downloads.php) "Blastwave" is to Solaris. Blastwave is already the #1 Freeware provider for the Solaris platform. It can only get better from this point on. As an interesting side note, the Nekoware guys said they "liked the comparison" when I pointed out Blastwave to them. These two projects are very, very much alike, only for different platforms (SGI and Sun). > pkg-get is a great idea, but I think unless it's part > of the core, and > includes the core packages - in other words a person > can update their > entire Open Solars based distro via pkg-get - then we > will always end up > with problems of duplication of packages, etc. Ah, but the question is, [I]what is considered to be the core, and by whom[/I]? Plus, this is very much [I]conceptually wrong[/I]. Why? Because "updating" in the sense you're writing about could end up [I]removing and replacing entire software subsystems[/I], and that [B]rules it out for production right on the spot[/B]. This is the exact same approach that Linux takes. The only way to patch a software subsystem through the OS interfaces is to do `rpm -u` which goes and [I]replaces the entire software subsystem[/I] in order to "update" it. This is very much busted. For example, SuSE is most notorious for breaking production systems in this way, especially when they do kernel updates with YaST. > What Alo was suggesting was having a Debian distro > using an Open Solaris > kernel - why is this such a bad thing? I can only be Because that would mean you'd have a Solaris kernel surrounded with GNU tools. It would effectively behave like a Linux distro, only instead of the Linux kernel you'd have a different kernel. The people that make these kind of suggestions don't understand Solaris, more importantly, they don't understand UNIX! They are proposing to start fitting a square peg into a round hole, because the only experience that they have is working with a round hole! That's just plain wrong. They should learn about the "square peg", instead of trying to make it a "round peg". That's just BUSTED. I can't even begin to explain how wrong it is. > good for Solaris / > Open Solaris users since it will encourage the > thousands of opensource > software packages to be easily compiled on Open > Solaris because > developers who prefer the Debian way of doing things > can still do so > while also being able to benefit from a world class > base like Open Solaris. We really don't want Linux "developers" on board; those guys are hackers that are going to bust stuff by "improving" it. What we want are professional developers picking (Open)Solaris as a free, better alternative to everything else out there. > I think it's this "business as usual" that isn't > actually so usable by > end-users - based on you're e-mail title, I'm > assuming you're a > sys-admin - so maybe this is fine for you, but as an > end-user this > really isn't good enough - and I think this is were > Debian (and the > off-shoot Ubuntu) have done really well. What exactly do you find "not so usable"? Is it the fact that: a) you have to do `su -` or b) type in `pkgadd -d /path/to/package [all|package name]` or pick a choice from a MENU presented upon executing the command or c) something else (lack of eye candy GUI, for example)? > I think you are being blinded by your (assuming bad) > experiences with VERY BAD experiences (as compared to Solaris, IRIX and HP-UX, even AIX). And I did Linux professionally, for a living! > Open Solaris is not aimed at just system admins - > it's being targeted at > the desktop user, more so now than ever - so live > with it, you are going > to have to accept that some people simply don't like > the way things are > right now on Solaris and would like to have a desktop > machine that > doesn't constantly require you to bring up a terminal > to make even the > slightest change to the systems configuration. How will you use your eye candy GUI to make "slightest change" to the system when the system HAS NO GRAPHICS ADAPTER but only a TERMINAL or is connected to a REMOTE SERIAL CONSOLE MANAGER, and/or there is NO X-window run time environment on a system? You will be in trouble. A lot of trouble, in fact, because you'll only know how to do things from a GUI and you'll have no clue how to do it on the command line. See, this is exactly what I mean when I write that the new influx of Linux converts doesn't really understand the core UNIX concepts. How many Linux machines did you ever see managed in the "lights out management" mode, i.e. with an ALOM or an RSM or a CMS? You are the one who has to understand that not everything revolves around the desktop: it's a 50-50 proposition. It is also rediculous the come in and say "I'm here; I'm a convert; now cater to me!" So what??? If you don't like it, you can always go down to GRUB/LILO and select the Linux or Windows distro you have installed on that PC at home. But as somebody pointed out, all the goodies are here, in Solaris, not >>over there<< in Linux, so either you learn about Solaris, or you go back. Why was it OK to spend the time and effort learning Linux, but it's suddenly not OK that you actually have to LEARN REAL UNIX? > Precisely why the Linux community can also benefit > from Open Solaris - > which can be achieved via the Debian proposal. Why should the Linux community benefit? What have they given to Solaris except "it works on my Linux system, if it doesn't work for you, use Linux! Everybody should just use Linux!" > Linux has had many problems in it's day - so has > Solaris for that matter > - but one of the reasons for putting out Open Solaris > is also to enable > sharing of technologies - Debian based upon Open No, that was NOT the reason why Solaris has been released to the public! Solaris was not released so that the Linux crowd could bastardize it into another Linux distro, but to evolve further as Solaris! > better, so it would probably stay in place. Why do > you think it's bad > that anyone could get the best of both worlds? Isn't > this what the > opensource community is really about? Because Linux as a whole does not have anything good to offer, except that "it's free". So is Solaris, so that's no argument. It has a big following, but the *majority* of people involved are just plain incompetent from a professional point of view. They are no engineers, and it shows. Solutions are not well thought out or thought through, mainly because of lack of experience and understanding. This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
