Hello guys,
has anyone tried the solaris 10 free download yet?

Any opinions?
How does it do with hardware?
(espcially stuff llike ACPI APM sound and CD/DVD burners)

Yes, did it. It works great (at least with my Spartan hardware). Has some lovely features and, even better, some awesome and thorough documentation.

My CD burner (TEAC DW-224E-A) works perfectly. The power management (it is APM), I think, also works correctly. No idea about sound cards, since I do not have a sound card.
Regards,
Maidros

Solaris 10 is cool soo far, with its new features and new environment, i'm sure most of us are falling deeply in love into it.

However, in my own opinion, there are still quite a few "major" bugs which were not solved at all.
I'm not sure if you guys encountered this issue, but it has been discussing in developer.sun.com with no resolution yet.
1 simple bug would be when u start an X-session with a remote software, (x-manager, reflection, humming bird..etc..) yr keyboard won't work!

also, due to the major change in certain aspect of OS, most of the commericial products are not compatible with Solaris 10 yet. I tried installing Veritas into solaris 10, only to get an error saying "unknown version of Solaris.." (or something like tat.) I wonder is Sun ever thought of compatibility issue with other products b4 launching it in the first place ? Some products sales ever mentioned to me they never expect their product NOT to work in solaris 10. To them, they have "assume" it's backward compatible, but well....sad for them.

Hence to me, i feel solaris 10 is still a "beta" product, with lots of improvement yet to be updated.

Out of interest.
I installed solaris 8 on an old laptop
(toshiba tecra 1MhZ 64Mb) and it ran terrible
loads of disc thrashing, awful.

So I tried FreeBSD 5.3 and it works okay
(not fast but definitely useable).

Try Solaris 10, it has huge performance improvements over Solaris 8.
Last time I used a 1Mhz CPU, it had 64 KBytes of memory ... I guess you mean 1 Ghz, which is fine for Solaris, but this laptop is undersized in memory, you probably can run Solaris in console (non graphic) mode on it, or with a lightweight window manager, like icewm.
With 256 Megs or more, you'll have no problem with JDS or CDE.

While I agree this is a major bug for the one who need this feature, I'm not sure it is really a Solaris 10 bug. Does it happen with both Xsun and Xorg ? and anyway, is not a show stopper for those who don't care of window's X11 implementations.
"Most" is probably exagerating, the only products I'm aware of are indeed Veritas, and IBM WebSphere suite.
I think you mean vxfs when you say Veritas, and indeed it is not supported and refuse to install on Solaris 10, but this is not Solaris fault if a program check the version and refuse to go further if unknown.
Not only Sun it did it, but will even guarantee that a C or C++ application written on Solaris 2.6, 7, 8 or 9 will work on Solaris 10.
See:
http://iforce.sun.com/protected/sola...ionkit/qa.html
http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/..._guarantee.xml

Last point about compatibility, when Janus is out, Sun will guarantee that LSB (Linux Standard Base) compliant applications will natively run on Solaris for x86/x64.

I downloaded the Solaris 10, but no success. It didn't detected my SATA controller, so I couldn't install it. I'm very disappointed.

SATA controllers reported to work are Intel 875, Adaptec 1205SA (Silicon Image 3112A) and Vantech Sil3112.

In fact, it's described in the Sun website. But I had no success anyway. It says I don't have a hard disk. My SiI3112 is on an Asus MB (A7N8X-E Deluxe). Maybe the Adaptec SATA card (which have the same chipset) is better supported...

This guy reported success with Adaptec (in 28/nov/2004): http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/aland

Ander

i downloaded 5 files and compressed into 1 file and burned to a dvd disk (about 2.4gb), followed the instructions described from sun, but i can't install it. So i don't see Solaris 10 is a good OS to use nor recommend other people to install it. I prefer Linux especially mandrake

I understand your disappointment about this installation failure, and would be happy to help figuring out why it failed.
However, don't overlook the fact there are tens or hundred of thousands people who have managed to install Solaris 10, so better to let them giving a recommendation about Solaris instead of hurrying sending yours, based more on frustration than experience.

Solaris 10 is a big disappointment. There's much hype about it. First, the installation (with 4 cds) is very slow; it takes some 2 hours (Celeron 1.8ghz, 256mb ram) to complete it. It's partitioner is almost primitive. Certain functions in the vi editor (and other applications) do not work as in Linux/BSD, like the backspace button. It incorrectly configures X, so you're left to configure it manually. At the end of a tortuous installation, you're left with Gnome 2.6.x, and Sun's own unintuitive window manager. Performance-wise, it's slower than Linux/BSD. Solaris 10 doesn't offer anything better than Linux/BSD. Linux/BSD distros are ahead of Solaris 10 by a number of years. Clearly, Solaris 10 isn't ready for the desktop. Maybe it's ok to use it as a server.

Alternative faster installation methods exists, but point taken.
How long does takes your average linux distro installation ?
It doesn't allow to create/install on extended partitions and has a basic UI, beyond that, it does its job.
Can you clarify that ?
I use vi on both Solaris and Linux and has no problem with backspace.
This can happen, but it does correctly configure many video cards. However there's still room for improvement here, specially with Xorg.
JDS user feedback is usually good, what wrong with it ?
This is not Sun's own wm, CDE (Common Desktop Environment) was conjointly designed by IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun and Novell on top of Motif, and is probably being "deprecated" now anyway.
Like with any other X11 based machine, you are free to install your favorite graphic environment (e.g. I'm happily using icewm from blastwave now).
Do you have numbers/benchmarks to share ?
Zones
Dtrace
ACL
RBAC
SMF
Upward compatibility between versions, including device drivers
Patching system
Sure Linux has too features not yet in Solaris, but can you teel what you feel is missing more ?
Sure.

Hi there,
Question for those of you who run solaris. Is there any x-configs for system settings (like in Red Hat)? I was kind of interested because I might someday move, but I want to know what to expect if I will have to hack through huge text documents or if I can just use a GUI.

Thanks for you help,
Derek

Perhaps smc (solaris management console).

I have installed a custom Solaris 10 (a subset of the developer class) and I installed it in around 60 mins. I include all the time I took to resolve dependencies.

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It's partitioner is almost primitive.

It does its job for Solaris - it lacks some features of others, but it is hardly necessary in this case.

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Certain functions in the vi editor (and other applications) do not work as in Linux/BSD, like the backspace button.

I am using vi/vim and the backspace button seems to work perfectly for me.

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It incorrectly configures X, so you're left to configure it manually.

Run kdmconfig and make any changes you want. It is hardly to be expected that the OS can divine your intentions. Both xorg and xsun function perfectly for me.

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At the end of a tortuous installation, you're left with Gnome 2.6.x,

I never use any desktop environment (running icewm only), so I cannot answer how good or otherwise Gnome 2.6 is.

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and Sun's own unintuitive window manager.

CDE is built on old commercial code that could be included on all UNIXs. And in any case, I cannot see anything wrong with it. It is different, but what do you mean by 'unintuitive'?

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Performance-wise, it's slower than Linux/BSD.

Quite the contrary, I found Solaris 10 much faster than Debian testing and FC3. When you are compiling large TeX files, you get to notice the difference very sharply.

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Solaris 10 doesn't offer anything better than Linux/BSD. Linux/BSD distros are ahead of Solaris 10 by a number of years.

Others have told you of a number of features that are 'Solaris only' at present.

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Clearly, Solaris 10 isn't ready for the desktop.

I have never understood what you mean by a 'desktop'. There are plenty of us using it on laptops and desktops and it seems to do its job superbly with no problems. As long as it offers all the functionality one wants, I cannot really get what you mean by 'not ready for the desktop'.

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Maybe it's ok to use it as a server.

Maybe it is okay if you feel it is okay, either as a server or as a desktop. Generic statements serve no purpose.
Regards,
Maidros