Ray Clark writes: > It bothers me that SXCE is released every two weeks, implying very little > testing. Shouldn't I be?
I'm not. ;-} It's built every two weeks, then undergoes at least a week of internal testing and bug fixing before it shows up on our internal servers. Then a couple of more weeks go by (with more internal testing) before it shows up on an external server. Just because it happens every two weeks doesn't mean that it was cooked last night. > Someone (Your names sounds familier, it may have been you!) told me a couple > months ago when I was starting (Things go slow when you only work on them > after the family goes to bed and your brain is drained) that SXDE is tested > really very well, and that SUN runs all of their servers on it. Tell me > something to give me similar confidence in SXCE (I am gullible :-) ) Actually, we run everything on what is effectively SXCE -- the official Nevada once-every-two-weeks builds. SXDE is a selected build where the pain of integrating has been raised a bit so that effectively only outstanding bugs are fixed, and only a selected few of those. This is done every three or four months. It's done rarely enough that SXDE isn't useful for build servers, so we just don't use it much internally. Honestly, I'm not sure what the selling feature of SXDE might be (I think it has more to do with the new installer and "developer capture" marketing stuff), but I'm not in marketing. > I have fiddled with ZFS under U4, and maybe SXDE (of course zpool and zfs are > the same), so I know about that pretty well. That and Samba are all I > *really* need. I installed Samba from the companion CD on U4 but couldn't > figure out how the services stuff worked, or how to get it started. I notice > on SXDE that I can configure it, then it shows up in a menu, but it doesn't > start. I assume RTFM is applicable. Probably. I used swat(1M) to set up my system at home quite some time ago. It's a bit on the frightening side, as I recall, but it seems to do the job. > With respect to KDE, for our server at work we forced everyone to change to > the Gnome as shipped with U4 because the KDE package has not been updated in > two full years. No disrespect intended, but it looks like an effort by a > single individual who has not gotten around to it in a couple of years. Not > something I would want to hang my hat on. I would think that Sun would have > to tackle KDE seriously if they expect to make inroads in the "Linux" > "Market". KDE *does* have *alot* of functionality, not just eye candy. I > guess I know mostly about konqueror. Honestly, I'm not using GNOME much myself. I'm still on twm until there's functionality in GNOME that I care about. I do run one system with GNOME enabled -- but it's just as an experiment. Nor do I care much for KDE. Apparently, there are people who like it, but I haven't been paying much attention to what's going on there. There's probably more information available at http://www.kde.org/. Sun has been putting a lot of effort into making GNOME a usable environment, and it apparently (I'm told) has features that make it far more viable for a commercial market. But I really don't want to open that debate once again because (A) I'm no expert in either KDE or GNOME and (B) I don't care. Really, I don't. I'm working on networking, not whizz-bang GUI stuff. > Thanks for your help. With your next response (to my first paragraph) I > expect I will be off and running. Good luck and report back. -- James Carlson, Solaris Networking <james.d.carlson at sun.com> Sun Microsystems / 35 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677
