> Also Waynel, did you ever get the USB stick install
> to work in 2008.11 or does it still only work in
> 2008.05? Maybe 2008.11 needs a bigger USB stick?

I was using 8GB USB stick, thus, size should not be a problem in either case.

I have given up on the though of booting os0811 from USB flash stick (it was a 
little jerky even when it worked).

However, I have found booting OpenSolaris from a USB HD may provide a great 
option.  You can get a 250 GB USB HD for about $50 ~ $60.  To take full 
advantage of zfs, you really need a large hard disk.  You can actually run a 
mirror with a pair of USB hard discs.  Nothing will emboss a stronger 
impression of OpenSolaris than doing a demo like this.

Nowadays, most laptops come with at least 3 GB of DDR2 RAM.  I don't know about 
older laptops, but on these laptops, I don't notice any difference between 
running OpenSolaris from a USB HD and from internal HD.  Intuitively, I think 
this may be because the way zfs is designed to take full advantage of the extra 
RAM.  Another big plus for OpenSolaris.

Face it, I don't think anyone will be crazy enough to be willing to install 
OpenSolaris (or any other OS) over the Windows on their new PC (most likely a 
laptop).  Resizing Windows is not something you can talk anyone into doing, 
either.  Thus, our best hope of enticing the general public to try OpenSolaris 
may be to install it on an external USB hard disc.  The OpenSolaris LiveCD 
makes this process painless and, from my own experience, prone-free (relative 
to, say, Ubuntu).  It also helps, as afore-described, that os0811 runs great 
from the USB HD.

As I mentioned in a separate thread, Acer is predicting that sales of the 
so-called netbooks may reach 35 million units in 2009.  If the netbooks do 
become a ubiquitous item, imagine we can carry our OpenSolaris HD around, and 
boot it from any machine when needed.  Totally independent from the built-in OS.

I have not tried this on Linux, but with OpenSolaris, I can put the machine 
into the suspend mode, unplug the USB HD, and conveniently carry it with me or 
keep it in a safer place.  Waking up the machine takes only a few seconds.  
Very neat.

I also have WinXP installed inside os0811 via Sun xVM VirtualBox.  Everyone has 
got to try this: running WinXP from an external USB HD--and on top of 
OpenSolaris--is as just snappy as I can ever recall from my experience of 
running it on a bare metal.
-- 
This message posted from opensolaris.org
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