[Tfug] Solaris x86 experience

[Neil Short]

Thanks for the enlightenning response!

--- Jeffrey Denton <dentonj at c2i2.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 22 Dec 2003, Neil Short wrote:
> 
> > Maybe I was expecting something a little smarter.
> >
> > The installer(s) did not offer a whole lot of
> options.
> > These are things I noticed:
> >
> > 1) There was no option to modify the boot record.
> It
> > just did. No biggie. It at least let me put my own
> > boot record back on and still boot everything.
> 
> Solaris was originally designed to run on
> proprietary hardware.  Most of
> it's problems are because of this.  Since Sun didn't
> have to worry about
> third party hardware, no changes to the boot loader
> where needed.
> Companies spending thousands on hardware and
> software were not going to
> dual boot the system, so again no changes to the
> boot loader were
> necessary.
> 
> As bad as the installer looks for Solaris, it is a
> LOT better then the
> SunOS installer.  To set partitions in SunOS, you
> had to know the
> geometry of the hard drive, do the math with the CHS
> info, and set the
> partitions by specifying the beginning and end
> sectors.  If your math
> was off, you'd either end up with filesystems larger
> or smaller than
> your partitions (no, the installer didn't verify
> your settings).
> 
> > 2) The installer SAW my FreeBSD partitions and I
> > specified that those partitions were not to be
> > modified. Well, the installer still rewrote the
> > partition table around my FreeBSD partitions and
> > rendered that OS unbootable. I was able to recover
> > those partitions, however.
> 
> Dual booting the original Solaris x86 and Linux was
> interesting.  The
> partition IDs for Linux partitions and Solaris swap
> were identical.  If
> you didn't do the install properly, you'd lose
> everything on your Linux
> partitions.  I haven't tried to dual boot Solaris
> since because of those
> problems.
> 
> > 3) Neither the installer nor the fully-booted OS
> could
> > see that I had a usb mouse plugged into the usb
> port.
> 
> Since Solaris x86 was an after thought, hardware
> support sucks.  If it
> wasn't for Linux, I doubt that Sun would have ever
> released a version
> for Intel systems.
> 
> > That's when I noticed the next problem:
> > 4) Documentation seems to be pretty bad. There is
> > nothing on the Sun website that I could find. The
> > newsgroups seem to be filled with "If it doesn't
> work,
> > it's the fault of your equipment. My USB mouse
> works
> > fine on my computer." Yes, there is a 2-cd set of
> > documentation that I can download and burn. Maybe
> I'll
> > look at them. There is nothing out there that is
> > reasonably easy to find in the way of what to do
> to
> > make the OS look for a USB mouse.
> 
> There was a time when it was necessary for Solaris
> admins had to have
> some sort of formal training (not sure if this is
> true any more).  Some
> of the problems with the documentation was because
> Sun assumes the
> person behind the keyboard knew what they were
> doing.  Most of the
> documentation also assumes you are using Sun's
> hardware.  Since Sun used
> proprietary hardware for a long time, hardware
> compatibility wasn't ever
> an issue.
> 
> > Yes, I know that Solaris is not really a good
> "hobby"
> > OS; but I'm thinking this may be a little bit over
> the
> > line. Maybe it's just me.
> 
> One of the things I hate about Solaris is the
> commands.  After getting
> use to the GNU tools that come with Linux and all
> the options they have,
> I feel clumsy when I'm on Solaris systems now.
> 
> dentonj
> _______________________________________________
> tfug mailing list
> tfug at tfug.org
> http://www.tfug.org/mailman/listinfo/tfug


=====
The restriction of knowledge to an elite group destroys the spirit of society and leads to its intellectual impoverishment. - Albert Einstein

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard
http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree