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79 Comments
- inactive, on 12/13/2008, -1/+27This is good news more competition means more innovation.
- inactive, on 12/13/2008, -6/+2150% of people who buy one of these laptops will think they're using a new version of windows.
Most people don't know what an OS is.
They just know that you can get a computer with XP or Vista, or buy one of those Apple ones where they put the maximize, minimize and close buttons on the wrong side. - hungryduck, on 12/13/2008, -3/+15Solaris is horrible as a desktop OS. But Opensolaris is a whole different story. I attempted installing Opensolaris on an old toshiba laptop and it was pretty awful. It was slow and unstable. Then I installed it on a new core 2 duo system. Wow. It was not only fast but it came with things like Java and Nvidia drivers. It's not quite there yet but It's something worth looking into.
- mrsteveman1, on 12/13/2008, -0/+12MOO-COW
oh ***** i'm way off aren't i - d0nkeym0nkey, on 12/13/2008, -17/+28Solaris is absolutely worthless as a desktop operating system.* What's the point of this?
*Unless your need a computer just for email / web / (open)office. I don't mean to be a troll, just stating the obvious. - InorganicMatter, on 12/13/2008, -0/+11Glad to see it. The latest version of OpenSolaris is very nice.
- smotpoker, on 12/13/2008, -0/+11Most FOSS software that works in Linux also works in solaris (moreso than Windows). This includes desktop environments such as KDE and Gnome as well as projects like Compiz. Their package management system is supposedly superior (despite having less packages than Linux or *bsd). There is also ZFS which is a truly revolutionary filesystem.
These are really the main/only benefits that would be useful to the casual user and, like Linux, opensolaris' main hurdle is marketshare. They need more hardware and software support from vendors and, since they have even less of a userbase and community, it's advancement doesn't progress as fast (despite being able to piggyback on Linux advancements by sifting through open software/drivers to develop their own versions).
Opensolaris is a really good OS with some decent ideas. Maybe even better than Linux as an OS (if you don't consider hardware/software support (like every other OS, free software ports and community support tend to lag behind Linux)). IMO there is nothing whatsoever wrong with advocating it's use or selling/supporting it commercially (despite what most of the cretins who commented above have posted) - judicar, on 12/13/2008, -1/+11definitely look into project management dude ...
- steviesteveo, on 12/13/2008, -1/+11Uh huh, Solaris is the ***** there...
Just saying.
(Hope your code's better than your Digg comments) - d4ni, on 12/13/2008, -7/+17Sun's OpenSolaris really came bundled with Sun's Java? Wow, that's quite an accomplishment indeed...
- sneaker98, on 12/13/2008, -1/+9I've had my Toshiba Satellite 2450 laptop running some form of Solaris for quite some time now. And I enjoy it.
So, good on em!
As for the nay-sayers, have you tried it out? - elfprince13, on 12/13/2008, -1/+9this could be said of Linux within the the last few years. and that's what most people use their computers for anyway. hence the rise of netbooks.
- DamnMan, on 12/13/2008, -0/+8Not really, Lots OSS apps will compile under Opensolaris without much of a fuss. What are you going to be doing on a Linux desktop that you couldn't on Opensolaris? Especially if you have the manufacturers support.
ZFS for quick painless rollbacks on the other hand will take a bit of work on a Linux machine with zfs-fuse (thanks GPL! Freedom indeed!) - jdmulloy, on 12/13/2008, -0/+7steviesteveosteviesteveo
Solaris Epxress/OpenSolaris support three architectures, SPARC, x86 and AMD64. As for 64-bit processors in 1991 when Linux started, at least one already existed, just not at Intel, MIPS Technologies had it. OpenSolaris didn't just come out of know where, it's just a version of Solaris released under SUN's CDDL license. Solaris is based on SVR4 which has been around since 1988. You really need to do some homework on this.
The one thing that OpenSolaris does have against it is that Solaris is a memory HOG. It won't run well unless you have at least 1GB of RAM. Solaris is really meant for servers and high end workstations, it isn't well suited to consumer machines. I still don't understand this move by Toshiba. Why not a Linux machine, on the bright side, at least we can buy something from them that doesn't have the windows tax. - devin_mm, on 12/13/2008, -0/+6Why not?
If computers were left up to the people who asked why things are done we wouldn't have moved beyond the calculator. - inactive, on 12/13/2008, -0/+6Solaris complies to the Single UNIX specification. It's not them that's doing something wrong.
- steviesteveo, on 12/13/2008, -0/+6Amen - that's exactly what's needed. OpenSolaris isn't as good as linux, because it's considerably younger. It's why there's more features in Linux. It's supported by a gigantic company, that's a good thing for actually getting things done. How many open source projects have you seen that released an alpha package (if even) and then quit?
Yes, there's all these distributions of Linux but you know what? They're exactly the same program packaged differently.
If, eg the linux kernel maintainers take their project down a dangerous path just because you technically can write your own doesn't mean that all but the best people with a lot of spare time actually can. - Dopeskills, on 12/13/2008, -1/+7Sun probably wanted to make sure that there was a laptop available for their employees to use.
- elfprince13, on 12/13/2008, -2/+8so-LARE-us.
- ChromaVita, on 12/13/2008, -18/+23BREAKING NEWS: Sales of Toshiba laptops plummet.
- wedderburn, on 12/13/2008, -1/+6solaris isn't that new, it was doing things back when linux was very much a hobby os in the eyes of companies. the only thing not going for it is sun took their time open sourcing it, other than that its a very solid os.
- inactive, on 12/13/2008, -5/+10"Unless your need a computer just for email / web / (open)office"?
It's like watching a train wreck, but with grammar.
/dugg you up for getting your point across anyway - charlietuna, on 12/13/2008, -0/+5It's just an OS people. The OS exists to support the applications you use. Does it matter if you prefer Debian/Gentoo/Ubuntu/Fedora/FreeBSD/Hurd/OSX/Plan9/ReactOS/OpenBSD/NetBSD,BeOS Windows or Minix?
- xero8472, on 12/13/2008, -0/+5Best simple and to-the-point comment I've seen on digg in awhile. Well said. I totally agree.
- castletech, on 12/13/2008, -2/+6I am just glad major manufacturers are finaly using non M$ operating systems. Now that HP is shipping linux on almost all their products now is a nice thing to hear. I also started selling Acer's with Linux preinstalled as well at my shop. M$ just has their head way to far up their own ass so they can't see what people really need/want with their pc. This solaris will not take off but I hope the idea of alternate OS's does.
- DonJuanAussi, on 12/13/2008, -2/+6This is a seriously retarded argument I keep hearing from Linux users.
They are releasing it on their own hardware. This means that they will have exactly enough well programmed drivers as they need installed on the hard drive already. They don't need 500000 half working drivers for old hardware.
The only other drivers that will be needed will be for scanners, printers and similar. Generic drivers for each brand have worked well for decades. This means that all they need are a few dozen generic drivers aimed at the most common printing/scanning commands from each manufacturer.
If I were to go to an alternative OS, I would avoid half a million half finished drivers for a small selection of well programmed drivers that gave me full functionality. Even if that means I am stuck with only buying one or two manufacturers printers or scanners. Small price to pay for a smaller and faster OS. - neodude237, on 12/13/2008, -4/+8OK, I love Linux because it is free and has a huge community of people and a large number of programs, but Solaris?
- inactive, on 12/13/2008, -1/+4I don't know about the OpenSolaris version, but Solaris is a very mature OS. It's years ahead of Linux on technologies. What you see in Linux today, Solaris was already doing it while the foss world still was in diapers.
- karbonfyber, on 12/13/2008, -9/+12Why?
- TodoInTX, on 12/13/2008, -0/+3Yes, Solaris is free, has a moderate but growing community of people and a large number of programs. This is why Sun setup this deal... to get a larger community and more programs.
- sneaker98, on 12/14/2008, -0/+3Though it took quite a bit of figuring things out, I've now gotten OpenSolaris on my old Toshiba laptop to behave so that anyone could use it. It autoloads and connects to your wireless network (with a bit of fiddling, I could rewrite the script to try x, then y if x is not available, so no problem there). The new gnome desktop is fantastic - very friendly to the eyes. Every required program is listed plainly on both the quicklauncher and desktop. Nvidia's drivers are used, though the default x display worked fine.
All that's left is getting vlc (or Totem) to display my videos properly, and auto-detecting the tv-out through xorg.conf.
Really, I'm impressed with the progress of OpenSolaris. And frankly, the more OS', the merrier.
Oh, a bit of advice for people - NWAM (NetWork Auto-Magic) is junk, and so is gnome's network monitor. Get rid of both of them if you notice some random freezing - they were the cause of all of my wireless headaches. Maybe NWAM/network-monitor works with certain types of wireless cards, but using ndis 1.2.1, they froze more times than I can count. Fortunately, manually configuring is easy:
ifconfig wifidevname plumb
dladm connect-wifi -e wifiaccessname
ifconfig wifidevname dhcp start
There, done. I threw this into /etc/rc3.d so I didn't have to do it at login each time. You can create hostname.wifidevname and dhcp.wifidevname for the system to load it each time, but it will try to log in to the first available wireless network which may or may not be yours. You can use wificonfig to set a default profile, but if your wireless network is hidden, it will still attempt to connect to the first available one.
Oh, DNS was also a problem for me, but this was due to network monitor's rewriting /etc/resolv.conf values. Make sure the values in there are correct. - TodoInTX, on 12/13/2008, -0/+2I highly doubt these laptops will be front an center on Toshiba's website with the rest of the consumer electronics. It would likely only show up in business products section, from which you will have to manually select that you want Solaris. Most people who get a laptop do it from a retail store anyway, so you would have to be persistently and spectacularly stupid to get one of these unknowingly.
- iofthestorm, on 12/13/2008, -1/+3@steveiesteveo: That's not possible, since Vista x64 doesn't support 16 bit code at all.
- TodoInTX, on 12/13/2008, -0/+2The point is, OpenSolaris needs to attract community developers. Making it easier for someone interested in developing for OpenSolaris or any of the other satellite projects around it, to get their environment up and running quickly is a good thing.
- astyguy, on 12/13/2008, -0/+2freedom of choice ... competition is good
- AWilmore, on 12/13/2008, -2/+4thank you for the useless assanine comment
- TodoInTX, on 12/13/2008, -0/+1Imagine no longer, just READ.
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/data/os/ - Vadi0, on 12/13/2008, -0/+1Yeah, all behave differently and some behave plain stupidly.
- Darkhacker, on 12/13/2008, -0/+1Even though most of the userspace is the same, I think it's good to have a different kernel. Linux could use some competition with Solaris and BSD. Monopolies are bad, even if it's open source.
- steviesteveo, on 12/13/2008, -0/+1Hmm, you're not going to believe this, but that's a significantly abridged post from what I distinctly thought I typed. That's madness.
I'm not actually as ignorant and bad at finishing sentences as my comment above would seem to indicate.
I did do my homework on this, I had a look a few years back about alternative operating systems since I had already used Windows and Mac OS and came across Solaris, when it wasn, I ended up leaving Solaris since the x64 version was so recommended and I couldn't run it. The fact that it just seemed like too serious for my general interest "I'll download it and have a play about with it" methodology meant that I went to a standard sort of
I do remember that Solaris had some -high- requirements that meant that I left it, I think my computer at the time had 256 or 512MB of RAM and obviously this was cutting it fine for actually getting anything out of Solaris. I really seem to remember I could find two links for downloads of Solaris and one was for SPARC systems (which I -clearly- don't own) and the other was for x86, it stuck in my mind as an unusual choice of architectures to support since an i386 or similar version wasn't immediately obvious. - csarak, on 12/15/2008, -0/+1Linux is already finding inspiration in OpenSolaris (at a summit Linus called for an answer to the ZFS filesystem) so this can only be a good thing. Competition = Inspiration (despite what Shout Out Out Out Out might say).
- TodoInTX, on 12/13/2008, -0/+1This agreement is not targeted at end-user types like the average-joe Digg reader. At this point you really only care about OpenSolaris on a laptop as a development platform. This is exactly what OpenSolaris and much of the rest of sun's free software initiatives need, more developers. Just look at who they interviewed for the announcement, "Sun's vice president of datacentre software" No reason for the laughing and finger pointing.
- steviesteveo, on 12/13/2008, -0/+1I have no idea what happened there, why is most of it going through but not all?
I had a look a few years back about alternative operating systems since I had already used Windows and Mac OS and came across Solaris, when it wasn['t open source]
The fact that it just seemed like too serious for my general interest "I'll download it and have a play about with it" methodology meant that I went to a standard sort of [Linux, an early copy of Fedora Core, in fact.] - johndavidjack, on 12/16/2008, -0/+1I wouldn't say there are more features in linux...
I think it's the opposite. My opensolaris machine does everything all of my linux boxes of the past have done, and more... - johndavidjack, on 12/16/2008, -0/+1I wonder what the geek squad would do when a user running opensolaris on a laptop has a problem such as rolling back to a previous snapshot or booting from a different boot archive...
- johndavidjack, on 12/16/2008, -0/+1dumbass...
- johndavidjack, on 12/16/2008, -0/+1Use google. There are PLENTY of features in the Solaris OS that separate it from Linux variants. Whether you like them, or care for them or not is your opinion. But if you actually read a little bit about the different technologies, you'll see there are plenty of reasons.
I run opensolaris2008.11 as my desktop OS, and it runs flawlessly. I can do everything a linux user can do, and probably more... - johndavidjack, on 12/16/2008, -0/+1@jdmulloy
The zfs arc uses a lot of memory, but it's not reserved (if that's the correct way to say it)
I run opensolaris on my home machine, and it's always using 90% of the RAM, but when another program requests memory access, zfs gives it away... - custangro, on 12/15/2008, -0/+1@AzathothhAzathothh
XP > Vista > Fedora > OpenSolaris > Ubuntu -
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