"There's a problem with Solaris and Sun knows it. The installation experience of Solaris (along with other areas) could be greatly improved. The installer doesn't 'suck' as it's easy and known to Solaris administrators, but for a Linux or Windows user it could prove to be a bit challenging. For those of you that have never tried out Solaris, what we've decided to do is to show you this 'usability gap' with the installation process in Solaris compared to Linux. Is the experience really that bad?"
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Member since:2007-01-27
It's a little annoying that released versions of Solaris are not as good as you'd like even on their own hardware. I have had better experiences with Solaris Express (Nevada) builds, which installed flawlessly even when Solaris 10u3 wouldn't install.
So I'm confident that at the time Solaris 11 is released, probably later this year, hardware support will have improved tremendously. Free operating systems are getting better all the time in contrast with closed ones, which sometimes regress a lot both in stability and hardware support (Vista).
Member since:2005-07-07
"Free operating systems are getting better all the time in contrast with closed ones, which sometimes regress a lot both in stability and hardware support (Vista)."
Very true! I was a little surprised by the problems with Solaris, but it may well have been just me--maybe I overlooked something or unintentionally skipped a step? I have been using Linux since ~2000 and it is amazing how much more hardware is supported and the increasing ease of the installation. Even the display problems are increasingly becoming a thing of the past as screen resolution is dynamically detected. With regards to Vista, apart from its cost and the well-described DRM issues, it is not as bad as people report. 64-bit Vista runs stably and reliably. A 32-bit IE is installed along side the 64-bit version so that you can use flash and the java plugins. Office 2007, in spite of what you may have read, is actually a pleasure to use. The ribbon organizes features in a very logical way and makes finding them simpler. If you enjoy trying out OSes and you have an extra hard-disk around, it would be worth a try.
Member since:
2005-07-07
Agreed. Sun is trying to find a wider a audience/user base for Solaris. Their installer is OK, but still very rudimentary. This may well be because their customer base has traditionally been UNIX users/administrators and likely previous customers who are well versed with their installer.
It may interest your readers to know that even their pre-installed Solaris can be problematic. I bought a Sun Ultra 40 (AMD) machine from Sun two months ago. First, upon turning on the machine, I get an error that no os was found. I check the bios and I realize it is set to boot from USB only. Then the installer hangs after a prompt for a hostname! This was on a machine with Solaris pre-installed! I have tried a number of Linux distros as well as 64-bit Vista and I am pretty sure it was not a hardware issue.
Solaris has a great reputation which is probably deserved, but for someone who is a mere tinkerer, it can be something of a challenge to install. Had I been more determined I probably could have succeeded, but other than the novelty of running Solaris I didn't know of any benefit for an ordinary user-hobbyist.