Dibbler's Net

Since about 1994 I have always had some type of Sun Sparc machine somewhere near my desk. Usually acting as a server or some other minor task it has helped keep me proficient at my solaris skills. Now this has almost always been as a server because really that is what Sun’s are really good at. However with Solaris 10 Sun has been getting better at this desktop idea. Solaris has always had a desktop but CDE really was there because Sun had to have something and even a one legged dog can play fetch better than no dog at all. Well now with Solaris 10 and more Sun on Intel ideas I have been trying to do more with the java desktop and see how useful it can be. More recently I installed VirtualBox on my Vista system and ran Solaris under that. Since then Sun decided to buy VirtualBox which shows that even Sun really liked the product. VirtualBox works well and has a lot of features but if you want to try out a new desktop then you need to not be in a virtual instance of that OS.

Now we bring in the new small workstation. Intel CPU, 2GB of memory, 500GB Sata Drive. All the same I would have on a decent XP machine or low end Vista. Download the ISO which fits on a CD. Then as the web site says “Download, burn, boot, and launch.” With the CD burned and in the desktop machine it first boots to a live system. This allows you to run device driver utility so you can see if any of your hardware will be a major issue. For me the onboard audio has an issue but that’s not too critical yet. Once you are satisfied that you want Soalris on the system you just click the icon on the desktop for “Install to Hard Disk Now” and it starts the process.

Now installing Solaris was never actually difficult. Completing the install could be murder. Setting up your network card, networking, trying to get X to run, then realizing that some critical device didn’t work was usually how it went. Well I was quite suprised. The install stayed in the GUI the whole time. The process had some detail steps but not too many. Once the questions were over it started the install. Overall time less than an hour from burn to boot to launch. Once that is done you then have a pretty functional desktop. Solaris now has the Automatic Network Daemon that will figure out if your DHCP or not and set everything up. Or you can stop that service and configure it manually like we all did back in the day.

But here’s the nice part. In that one hour I now have a working desktop. Complete with a working email client. Internet browser and other critical apps. The same you would find on a base Vista or XP install. This is the same place that Ubuntu, Redhat, Suse and others all figured out years ago, it’s just nice to see that Sun is finally getting to the right place with desktops.

So with the new desktop I will see over the next two weeks how many daily tasks I can move to it and what end user problems I start to see. So far firefox, and thunderbird are working and they are on from the install. Plus with a running Solaris desktop so close it gives everyone a chance to learn more about SMF and other handy Solaris 10 features.

D~