[nycbug-talk] Solaris 10 on x86?

[Daniel Krook]

> Aside from the server side of Solaris, has anyone used Solaris 
> regularly on an x86 box for general desktop use?

I'm running an early preview release of Solaris 10 on a circa-2000 HP 
Pavilion 6630 with a 500mhz Celeron processor and 192 MB of RAM.  It runs 
snappily enough, but I don't use it on a day-to-day basis.  The newest 
releases come with GNOME.  I assume that you would want to install the 
"Developer" or "End User" software group, though I'd recommend the "Entire 
Solaris Software Group Plus OEM Support." 


> I have heard from others that Solaris on x86 was not great, although I 
never 
> understood what the complaints really were.

Complaints generally reflect incomplete hardware support and the quirks of 
non-GNU system utilities such as tar and compilers.

If you're planning to install on an x86 workstation, you shouldn't have 
hardware that's too new, and you should make sure that you have a 
supported network card.  If not, you can still a cheap DLink or similar, 
but you will have to compile the drivers yourself.  In general, expect to 
do a bit of work at the hardware and software level to get it going on a 
home network.  DHCP configuration can be a challenge.

On the maintenance or development side, this post about package 
management, path gotchas, GNU tools, and administration tutorials sums 
things up (for both SPARC and x86):
http://lists.nyphp.org/pipermail/talk/2004-May/009776.html

There are also a couple of good lists to lurk on:

SunManagers (high volume, low tolerance for anyone that dares to post 
w/out reading the FAQ, but incredibly informative):
http://sunmanagers.org/

Suns at Home (low volume, seems anything goes):
http://www.net-kitchen.com/~sah/


Here's some other random gibberish about my set up:

[krook at caracal]: uname -a
SunOS caracal 5.10 s10_a47 i86pc i386 i86pc

[krook at caracal]: cat /etc/release
                              Solaris 10 s10_a47 X86
           Copyright 2003 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.
                        Use is subject to license terms.
                           Assembled 18 November 2003

[krook at caracal]: isainfo -kv
32-bit i386 kernel modules

[krook at caracal]: /usr/sbin/psrinfo -v
Status of virtual processor 0 as of: 11/18/2004 00:08:58
  on-line since 09/17/2004 11:34:15.
  The i386 processor operates at 500 MHz,
        and has an i387 compatible floating point processor.

[krook at caracal]: prtconf
System Configuration:  Sun Microsystems  i86pc
Memory size: 191 Megabytes

...


Hope that helps and good luck,
-Dan






Daniel Krook, Application Developer
WW Web Production Services North 2, ibm.com
1133 Westchester Avenue, White Plains, NY 10604

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