Solaris?

[CrystalMethod]

Just wondering if anyone has played around with Solaris yet. I have a spare HDD that's just itching to have Linux, or Solaris installed on it. Has anything changed drastically in unix operating systems or should I be ok?

[AmbientFiction]

Well there is a Mandrake 8.1 out now there is a new version of slackware either 8.0 or 8.1. I have seen a major improvement in the ease of use that Linux is getting.

[cloasters]

A friend tried Solaris 8, for IA32 boxen ~4 months ago. He said it wasn't bad, but did have a problem or three. One of which is the supported hardware list. Would you believe that he needed to buy a Diamond Stealth 2 Mb PCI Vidcard from me? Yep, that Solaris 8 for x86 machines is kept current. The folks at Sun really care about that flavor of their OS!

It is Unix. I think you'd be smarter to give FreeBSD a try, it is indeed a flavor of Unix. From this century.

[Phiber]

umm.. what is solaris?

[Vryce]

Well, I'll agree that Solaris for the x86 doesn't have the support the sparc does, but it still has some..
and, since you can d/l a free copy of Sol 8, I'd say give it a shot...if you have the hardware..otherwise, check the BSDs, they're actually quite nice...

and lots of linux distros are getting impressive device support out recently, and most are getting much easier to install and use....and since you can get most free...why not give a few of 'em a try? (since you said you had a spare hd)

[Vryce]

Originally posted by phiber
umm.. what is solaris?

Solaris is a UNIX Operating system maintained by Sun, its mainly for the SPARC processor, but they've made a port to the x86...

[Áedán]

Originally posted by Vryce
Well, I'll agree that Solaris for the x86 doesn't have the support the sparc does, but it still has some..
and, since you can d/l a free copy of Sol 8, I'd say give it a shot...if you have the hardware..otherwise, check the BSDs, they're actually quite nice...

I've noticed that Sun engineers round here are using laptops with Solaris for x86 on them. On the other hand, if you really want to run Solaris, buy a Sun of some description. Ultra 10s aren't the fastest in the world, but they can be reasonably cheapish.

I'm so-so on Solaris. I have to know some stuff about it as most of the clients I come across run Solaris. Very very few of the clients I've worked for have run Linux though.

AidanII

[CrystalMethod]

Thanks guys! I'm going to give it a shot on my second machine. Might, be able to throw together a third machine just to toy around with it. I have bit's and pieces of old hardware that's pretty much out of date that I can use. Think all I'm missing is a CPU, MB, and PSU. Thanks again for your opinions! I'll let you know how it goes.