Hi, I am just going to paste some parts of emails that I have sent to Sriram already as I think it would be a good idea to have a broader audience!! :-)
These cover the various stages of what I have done: > I have downloaded BeleniX and am just about to install it. Being KDE I highly doubt that the GUI is going to be similar to the 'standard' aqua Solaris Java look but in the future if you guys are willing to make it so that would be awsome :-) I honesty don't mind KDE as I triple boot my desktop between KUbuntu using KDE4, SXCE build 111 and FreeBSD 7.2. It's actually a new install since I keep running out of space on / root partitions all the time. I know ZFS is the way to go with BSD and Solaris but it needs a lot of memory of which I don't have unfortunately 1GB for desktop and 512MB for laptop. What I do like about SXCE and Solaris 10 is the GUI more then OpenSolaris, but I really dislike the multimedia capabilities and the fact that they keep making my system overheat. I tried to re-install SXCE last night, instead of going for the traditional auto-layout I went with a custom partition setup and in doing so it took more time that the installer was running and so my system overheated on install :-( because of this I would highly recommend Powernow from the frkit to be included in all install CD's as an option! To be honest why use Solaris in the first place one might ask me? Well, that question is simple as I am striving to become a UNIX and Cisco engineer! Currently I am doing a Cisco CCNA but have had some interest from the telcoms firm Alcatel who ask me to come over for nearly an hour and halfs interview. Currently I am based in UK but have dual nationality; Turkish and British so it was actually Alcatel Turkey that called me forward. I have included a screenshot of some one of the desktops I created using Debian Linux, I put that just as you might be interested. :-) Also my test lab at home (I did this page to show the manager at Alcatel what I was upto after their interview): http://optiplex-networks.com/nurettin/nurettin.html The real reason why I am giving you a whole insight on my bio is that I want to contribute somehow and anyway that I can, I guess you could just say I am a keen and enthusiastic person :-) . Maybe even in the future once I have a better server with lots of space we can even mirror the repos on them?? - just a thought anyway. > My first impressions of BeleniX is that I had to use the no-ACPI option in order for things like my hardware to function properly! I booted up KDE and noticed that it was KDE v.3 hope you guys will soon update to v.4. Main issue which seems to always be the case with Solaris on my laptop is that while performing the install the system overheated and subsequently shutdown :-( Is there a text based install that I can perform which may actually get the system installed before whacking the powernow feature from the frkit on it?? Or is there a way that I can install it onto the live CD while the system is running?? Also something really weird is that it didn't let me partition the system, ie create a layout of slices that I may need?? I am guessing that it used ZFS file system in which case I don't need slices but with 512MB of RAM I tried ZFS before and it was painful so I switched back to UFS. To be honest I'm not sure what to do now as I really want to give this a go at least to see what happens.... > Well after a failed first attempt I managed to get BeleniX 0.7.1 installed: booted into XFCE, took my laptop down to a cooler room and held the machine in the air until installation was complete!! A lot of work lol Anyway first impressions are that I love what you guys have done with the login screen, it looks like the computer screens of shows like NCIS and CSI. I'm just performing the update as you suggested: 589 packages or so need to be done.... I couldn't seem to login to my wireless network though?? I used the same syntax as with SXCE and I manage to connect to my access point briefly, after trying to get an IP address with DHCP the machine seems to disassociate itself. This may just be a case of updating the packages but for reference sake: #ifconfig -a {list all interfaces - IP addresses at 0.0.0.0 for rtls0 and iwi0} #wificonfig createprofile Cisco essid=SSID wepkey1=WEP_KEY_HEX_40_BIT wepkeyindex=1 authmode=opensystem encryption=wep {create a profile called Cisco with 40 bit wep key and open system authentication as opposed to shared wep key} #ifconfig rtls0 down {take the wired ethernet interface down} #ifconfig iwi0 up {bring my wireless NIC up} #ifocnfig iwi0 dhcp {tell the wireless card to use dhcp for acquiring layer 3 information} #ifconfig -a {should show IP given by dhcp but is still 0.0.0.0} I used: #wificonfig -i iwi0 showstatus to verify the wireless was connected initially and it was but after running ifconfig iwi0 dhcp it disassociated from the access-point?? The machine is a Hi-Grade Notino C2200 with 1.7GHz Intel Centrino 512MB RAM (8MB shared with Intel i855 graphics chip), 12.1 WXGA screen running at 1280x800 resolution and an Intel Pro Wireless IPW2200 NIC. I can't really say anything more at this point as the upgrades haven't gone in but hopefully soon I will be much better versed to give you more output! The only dislike I have is the desktop environments that are running on there. I don't like KDE3 or XFCE etc. I would prefer Gnome2 or KDE 4! Ah one other thing is that there is a non-standard implementation of GRUB on this machine for the bootloader. I can't find /boot/grub/menu.lst as I need to chain load KUbuntu Linux of which I've created a 10GB partition just while I sort out the teething problems with Solaris. >>> Currently I have upgraded all 8xx packages and will be checking out the multimedia any time soon. Updating however gave me a new line on the Grub boot loader called OpenSolaris-1, I think this is the previous 0.7.1 build as the initial line gives me build 0.8 which I am sure is the update! At the moment my wireless doesn't even want to connect as before so I don't know if this is a driver issue but then if BeleniX 0.8 is based upon build 111 which I think 'may' contain the same code as included in SXCE b_111 it should be in there and hence the interface would not be 'plumbed' beforehand?? At this moment I am off to play around with the system a little and see what I can do with it so that I get what I need to in there! Mainly wireless and a few other bits a pieces of which I will find out as I go (hence no specifics). Many thanks for all your help Sriram and the email replies I really appreciate it!! Time to get under the hood....
