Sun Microsystems makes new releases of Solaris about every four to six months, in many cases all the new release contains is bug fixes and some changes in functionality. More often than not most releases go by without a great deal of fanfare. Just as Solaris 10 3/05 broke new ground with Zones, Dtrace and the Service Management Facility. Solaris 10 6/06 introduces ZFS or Zettabyte File System and the SATA framework and Xorg 6.9, which will be the primary focus of this review.
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Member since:2006-09-20
>Not a bad review. You did hit on some of the nice >selling points of Solaris. It seems you are targetting >the developer-type audience, and if that was your >intent, you hit on the big issue - X/video card support. >It's something Sun does need to work on tremendously.
I'm supprised the Xorg Nvidia drivers didn't work I thought they where upgraded already. Never the less
Solaris has the same issues with video drivers as say
Linux of BSD they use the same source base. Or close
6.9 and 7.0 isn't tied to any video driver. One thing
you don't even care about using the native Nvidia driver
with Solaris x86/x64. You want to download the drivers
form the Nvidia site and take advantage of OpenGL
and all the hardware excelleration. Now it would be
nice if Sun just delivered the Nvidia drivers with
the system and I think they are working on this. You
can do it with linux distributions no reason why
you can't do it with Solaris.
By the way the OpenSolaris discussion site has a
pretty good list of the changes that go into Solaris
x86/x64.
http://opensolaris.org/os/community/x_win/changelogs/changelogs-nv_...
You can see when/if your bug gets integrated. Even logging the bug is free and getting the status or asking questions about if and when it would be fixed
is free. Actually I just wish they take Xsun out of
the picture altoghther for the x86/x64 platform but
I think Xsun is needed for the SunRay servers.
---Bob
Member since:2005-07-08
The nVidia card is the only one I didn't have to fight with in order for it to work (the 7300 GS). The motherboard integrated 6100 and the ATI card is where I had the problems.
I know nVidia has a Solaris x86 driver, but it appears to be for the Quadro series of cards that are used in the Sun Ultra workstation series, so I never tried it.
Member since:2005-07-08
Thanks. The focus on the problem I have with X is due to installation differences. On a SPARC for the most part you don't worry about the frame buffer, it is usually detected and the appropriate driver/resolution is set for you. It should also be that way for x86 with supported cards. In the past with Solaris (up to Solaris 10 1/06) I was able to use an ATI video card with no problems after setting the resolution in kdmconfig during installation. This is the first Release of Solaris where I had trouble with a supported card.
I really don't have a problem with the installer other than a couple of questionable screens that I think could go away. I feel a number of people would agree that it takes far too long to install Solaris, but that horse has been beat to death already.
Member since:
2005-10-09
Not a bad review. You did hit on some of the nice selling points of Solaris. It seems you are targetting the developer-type audience, and if that was your intent, you hit on the big issue - X/video card support. It's something Sun does need to work on tremendously.
The other biggie you touched on lightly, but needs a good beating - is the installer. It really is terrible. Now, that being said, most everybody who uses Solaris for any length of time, sets up a jumpstart server and installs that way. It's fine for server admins, but it really shouldn't be necessary for devs to have to jump through some hoops to get Solaris installed in a reasonable fashion.
Both of these are known and acknowledged issues, I just don't know at what priority they have been placed.
Thanks for the summary review.