On Mon, 2008-02-18 at 08:32 -0800, Euan Thoms wrote: > I ask this because it sucks in Solaris 10 and even Nevada / OpenSolaris > builds that i have trialled to date.
This is simply not true. OK, perhaps if you are looking for everything to be nicely integrated at install time and supported by the vendor (Sun), but there is no gap between what we can do in Solaris and what the Ubuntu guys can do. And the method in obtaining the key pieces is quite similar - grab it from a community repository (my personal preference is blastwave.org). I listen to streaming mp3 audio from my old home town radio station (hockey fan - go Blues!!!). I watch DVDs, listen to audio, play with my iPod. > not just because I find Windows frustrating (fragmentation, viruses, pests, > bad administrator friendlyness, being forced to upgrade to buggy replacements > with little backward compatability etc...). OK - I can relate to this :-) We've been relatively Windows free in our household for quite some time. And except for DRM stuff from Apple (iPod content), I'm doing pretty well without it. I haven't started playing with VirtualBox to see if that is a solution - it certainly works well for Quicken/TurboTax. > At the moment I have Ubuntu on my desktop PCs because I got fed up trying to > get > simple things like mpeg video clips to play and my Canon PIXMA printer > doesn't > have a driver for Solaris etc. Can't help you there. I use CUPS/Foomatic and have drivers for my Epson and HP printers and they work just fine. If there is CUPS driver it should work under Solaris too. > How extensive will the automated package management be compared to aptitude > and yum? > Will linux apps work on indiana? There's not a lot of software available for > Solaris yet. Really ? Not a lot - have you looked into a repository lately ? Our friends like Dennis Clarke have been rather busy of late, so there is certainly plenty of software to be found if you look. And this should all flow very nicely into IPS soon to make it that much easier to find what you are looking for (and to maintain it for the long haul). > How about driver support? Currently I don't know whether I can buy a modern > photo printer > and be sure it will work. I'm prepared to bin my Canon, don't think it will > ever have solaris kernal driver ;-( Why does it need a kernel driver ? USB, parallel, and IPP network printing all work quite nicely. My HP OfficeJet 6310 does a stellar job. > Last but not least, will 3D graphics support be available for Solaris in the > future, is it on the agenda or will it remain to be deamed unnecessary? NVIDIA support is very solid. There is support for some Intel graphics adapters (I don't have one, so I haven't followed it). ATI is being tested. So the graphics scenario is pretty good. And I do lots of installfests across the country (not as many as I used to) and don't have a lot of rejects from Solaris (about the same as Linux - a handful here and there). > it will be up the standard of modern linux distros soon. Oh my goodness, I expect it to be better than that :-) It will be up to you to judge that, but with DTrace, ZFS, FMA, SMF and RBAC - I'd say we're already well past that :-) Adding creature comforts like the gnu tools and a nice gnu userland compatibility will make things more friendly. Bob _______________________________________________ indiana-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/indiana-discuss
