Solaris 9 on x86 - is it good for a desktop?

[martin]

Was wondering if anybody can share their experiences with Solaris on x86, is it good for a workstation, is it supported enough or do Sun prioritize the Sparc edition much more? What I do usually is run a few browsers, email, ICQ, several consoles, text editor, and xmms. Sometimes play a movie with mplayer.

I use Debian right now for that as I like it's package management, no more rpm dependencies ;-) or Slack's missing libraries, now fire up ldd and Google the packages that have these.

And if you can compare it to other *nices, I've ran Mandrake, Slackware, and NetBSD before.

[bakedjake]

It runs just fine, albeit not very good as a multimedia workstation.

Is there a specific task you're looking to perform that's only supported on Solaris? If not, then I'd stick with one of the Linux or BSD platforms. You'll have a much easier time, as far more hardware and software are supported on those platforms.

If you're just looking to tool around with a new OS, however, go for it! :) It's neat to get some experience admining Solaris, as they have some very funky ways of doing things compiler wise.

[martin]

I'm not actually a C/C++ hacker, if I install Solaris I'd probably use it for the same purpose as the Debian I use now, don't feel quite confortable with Windows.

I don't think that there's something supported only on Solaris that I'd use, as far as the hardware/software support is concerned I have a pretty standard hardware that's probably supported. And Sun say they are binary compatible with Linux, I've seen Linux emulation in NetBSD is was pretty good, apps even ran faster than on Mandrake (which surprised me at that time).

Probably the thing that I'll miss most is apt-get if they use a basic package management in Solaris, I forgot that habbit to Google for software, if something's good enough it should already be in Debian.

Btw if I was to install a BSD, do you think that OpenBSD is a good choice or are they going down after the Iraq war.

[bakedjake]

Btw if I was to install a BSD, do you think that OpenBSD is a good choice or are they going down after the Iraq war.

OpenBSD was a Canadian outfit the last time I checked, so I'm not too sure of the political consequences of their distribution. I wouldn't imagine the war having any effect, but I can't be positive.

If you'd like a quick summary of the BSDs, I wrote one here: Is anyone using NetBSD? What are the advantages / disadvantages? [webmasterworld.com]

I've run all three, and generally run FreeBSD on my x86 boxen and NetBSD on my weirder computers (including a webserver running on a Dreamcast!)

[martin]

Running a webserver on a Dreamcast ;-) that's really weird, can I run it on my cell phone, just kidding?

On the OpenBSD issue, I didn't mean that they're directly affected by it but as far as I know DARPA dropped their financial support for OpenBSD.

Actually what I am looking for is a neat, stable, easy to administer OS, if its install is easy that's cool. Debian is quite good at that, if I needed a webserver probably I'd use Debian or a FreeBSD/OpenBSD for it but I'd probably experiment more with a desktop system. I haven't made my mind up yet...

[bakedjake]

Ever try BeOS? Definitely my favorite desktop OS by far.

I haven't tried Zeta yet, but I took off Be because of the lack of wireless support. When OpenBeOS comes out, it'll be awesome.

If you don't need wireless support, do yourself a favor and grab the free version of BeOS.

[martin]

Never considered BeOS, anything worth mentioning about it? All I know is that it was sold and thought it doesn't have much future.

I only have fixed LAN so no wireless doesn't bother me.

The only non-Linux/non-BSD's I've tried actually are QNX and Apple Darwin. I still have Darwin installed on an older hard disk but never got the time to do anything with it, it's a pretty old version 1.4.1 (Mac OS X 10.1) though. Wanted to see if Apple could make it on x86 hardware.

[martin]

bbspot.com/News/2003/01/os_quiz.php

I took it 3 times, 2 times got Amiga and once Apple DOS ;-)

[fpmurphy]

Solaris 9 works well on most IA32 systems. However
the number of graphics cards that are supported
OOTB (out of the box) is limited.

Some additional graphics cards are supported via
the XFree86 development kit and there is a company
out there which supplies additional or enhanced
graphics drivers for a small fee.

A list of supported graphics cards is available
on the Solaris X86 Web pages.

- Finnbarr