solaris 10

[CalvinHobbs]

hello guys, currently downloading solaris 10, anybody using it here? can i dual boot xp and solaris? thanks guys. and how does it perform?

 

[n0cmonkey]

I played with it for a bit. Lost time, but not interest.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Couldn't tell you - the last time I touched Solaris was on that old SPARCStation that I sold to Theo

I'm interested to see how ZFS performs though, as I'm finally getting off my ass and building a proper NAS.

- M4H

 

[CalvinHobbs]

ouch....that was some response, anybody else

 

[nweaver]

I've used it a bit...

Coming from linux, I didn't like it much. it was OK, but not great. Didn't like the default shell, it had some strange stuff elsewhere that I randomly didn't like. Nowdays, the only time I use Solaris is long enough to shutdown the box and install Debian

 

[jlbenedict]

If you can wait, don't download it.

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=34&threadid=1991168&enterthread=y

Get the DVD media for free, straight from Sun.

 

[n0cmonkey]

You should be able to dualboot it, but with VMWare server, vmware player, parallels, Xen, qemu, etc. there isn't a whole lot of reason to do so.

Its performance depends on its workload. I've never thought it was a great workstation OS, but for some server tasks it's hard to beat it. But that's on SPARC hardware, I've never been a fan of the x86 counterpart.

For some things I'd chose it over just about anything else, but for most tasks I'd probably choose Linux over Solaris.

 

[Megatomic]

I'm planning to give it a shot when I get my DVD. It should be here early next week.

n0c, Sun has been pushing the whole Solaris/Java desktop thing on x86 for the last year. Perhaps it's gotten a little more mature for desktop use in that time?

One question: how is Solaris at detecting hardware? I've got a P4 Northwood laptop with a Mobility Radeon GPU and a Linksys PCMCIA 802.11g card. Death sentence?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Megatomic
I'm planning to give it a shot when I get my DVD. It should be here early next week.

n0c, Sun has been pushing the whole Solaris/Java desktop thing on x86 for the last year. Perhaps it's gotten a little more mature for desktop use in that time?

One question: how is Solaris at detecting hardware? I've got a P4 Northwood laptop with a Mobility Radeon GPU and a Linksys PCMCIA 802.11g card. Death sentence?

I thought sun was pushing amd64.

Hardware wise, check the hardware compatibility list.

 

[Megatomic]

They have been, but I could have sworn they were pushing x86, too.

 

[jlbenedict]

Originally posted by: Megatomic
They have been, but I could have sworn they were pushing x86, too.

I think the other day Intel & Sun announced something about using Intel CPU's in Sun servers.

Let me dig that link up real quick.


January 22, 2007 - Sun Microsystems, Inc. and Intel Corporation today announced a broad strategic alliance centered on Intel's endorsement of the Solaris Operating System (OS) and Sun's commitment to deliver a comprehensive family of enterprise and telecommunications servers and workstations based on Intel Xeon processors.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Megatomic
They have been, but I could have sworn they were pushing x86, too.

It's pretty new, and jlbenedict has posted a link. Previously the x86 port was just something they put out there. They didn't want you to use it, and they didn't really support it, and when it crashed (and oh did it crash) they told you to buy their hardware.

 

[Crashedout]

The only great thing I can say about Solaris 10 x86 is the ZFS. ITs a great file system and very easy to use its feature set. That being said, the x86 kernel is slow, and the hardware and software support is lacking. The Sparc kernel is much faster but still limited in off the shelf software.

Its interesting to play with but they need to create a distribution of linux with zfs if they want to survive. We are stuck with Solaris at work because of all the Sparc stuff we have. Once the contracts go I doubt with will still use it.

 

[Megatomic]

All right, thanks for clearing that up for me. I guess if I buy a Turion x2 laptop then Solaris will run significantly better. But it's hard to think about Turion with C2D out there being as good as it is.