Solaris

Hi,

How nice is Solaris? During my OS development research I've read some on the Solaris internals and it interests me. I was just wondering how it is from the user point of view. I'm well aware it will "appear" like other Unices, but I'm talking specifics.

I'm not sure what you would mean by "nice". Solaris is the largest commercial Unix distribution out there. Having developed and administered Sun based O/S's for more years than I'd like to admit I feel that it is a solid O/S. Some of the other Unix distos have had easier system administration for years (see IBM's smit).

I run Solaris x86 and have an ancient Ultra5 at home. Both work well and run well. As with all O/S's it is important to keep up to date with patches. That isn't too difficult with Solaris though I always liked the commercial Linux distro's setup better. RedHat's up2date is a very simple and easy way to keep your system, well, up to date.

I use the gnome GUI for my desktop. The only problems I had with it was finding a driver for a pretty new video card and I wanted my scroll mouse to work. Both were solved though it should have been easier. Sun doesn't focus on the desktop as much as I'd like.

All in all I would recommend learning and using the O/S if you can. My PC triple boots Solaris 9, XP, and SuSE 8. Each have their own pro's and con's but I enjoy having all of them available.