Ok it's kind of long, but it might be worth reading. Especially to Oracle /Sun
corporate people.
Here is a conclusion and observation of where I am at now.
If Oracle /Sun truly desire Open Solaris or Solaris to be a viable alternative
to Windows and expand their userbase and financial bottom line (what business
doesn't?), then they have a LONG way to go. Most home computer users are NOT
geeks. They demand user friendly and at this point OSOL is NOT.
I tried 2009.06. Would not recognize my network adapter.
The drivers could be out there, but could not find them.
Need to do better at centralizing all available drivers for OSOL or
Solaris for
all hardware. And automate the install or a good guide of how to.
Full Solaris was free for a little time. Downloaded and installed it.
It required complete manual setup of the network.
Not being experienced in that I did NOT have the information I needed and
where to put it. And again no drivers.
This needs fixed in all future releases.
So it was suggested I D/L OSOL 2010.03 developers. I did.
Right off the bat was a boot loop, from Grub to bios and back.
This was totally wrong. Never should of been there in any version.
Kind people helped me make changes to stop it. But without them and a second
computer I couldn't have done it. Neither could of most home users,as above.
It did recognize my network though.
But could not get it to recognize my 6 month old epson printer or Nikon Camera.
Again I couldn't find drivers / software for it. Could be out there, I just
didn't find them.
Then , I needed two more partitions for my system. Found out how to do it.
Rebooted but the partitions did not show.
Was told I had to MOUNT them, manually through a terminal.
WHAT? Never in windows.
Create the partitions, reboot and Voila! there they are as new drive letters,
ready to be formatted and used!!
As I said OSOL /Solaris is way too cryptic for most home users. I say this as I
have helped a lot of Windows users correct mistakes they made or do things they
didn't know how to do. They definitely would be lost in OSOL/Solaris.
As far as the terminal and cryptic commands for day to day maintenance.
I never found a glossary of all the different commands one would need to use.
The syntaxes and samples of why and when you might need to use them.
ADMINISTRATOR. Here Osol and windows are similar.
You are only user and have setup a administrator account. But yet you really
aren't.
The help file should explain how to become the full administrator either
temporarily or permanently so you can just do what is needed and get on with it.
Speaking of glossary, it should be included with the D/L so you could print it
and refer to it as needed.
No, user friendly for the common person it is not. Until it is not many will
migrate to it. Lot of people dislike Windows and Bill Gates( I'm one), but
Windows is EASY for the common person, who mostly uses it for videos, pictures,
text letter, email and browsing.
So that brings me to this. I removed Osol. I searched for other Linux type OSes.
I settled on Ubuntu.
The install was flawless on my ACER aspire 5532. After install it recognized my
network and printer (haven't tried camera yet). I built the two partitions
rebooted. They showed up on the desktop. And with the label I gave them not
just the cryptic /dev/sda1 or 2 ,3,4, etc. They were formatted during
creation, but I can change to something else if I want.
The graphical layout of hard drive or the partitions is more like windows, a
simple pie chart of used and empty.
Simple easy to read.
For most part software is easy to find and download And some I can say where I
want it installed.
Thunderbird identified my mail settings with just my ISP's name.
Pan is my news reader. Little different than XNews, but learning it.
VLC my video player-D/Led it manually. Used it in Windows
TrueCrypt for data security, different than Drivecrypt, but mainly because
Ubuntu (linux) handles drive naming etc differently than windows. SO just have
to get used to that.
OpenOffice, been using that with Windows for three years so no changes there.
Yep Oracle/Sun need to come a long ways to be equal in user friendliness if you
truly want to expand your user base.
A lot of people want an alternative to Windows. But they won't change until it
is as user friendly as windows. Many shy away from Apple because of cost of the
machine.
Also since so many have all their personal data stored in a default format (fat
or NTFS) Solaris / OSOL must be able to access it even if they leave windows on
the system. Many don't have room on main hard drive to duplicate the data and
wouldn't understand how to run back and forth to get the data.
A guide of how to copy to an external hard drive or to backup to cd / dvd/ usb
stick first that OSOL can read would be nice. Many are afraid of losing all
their personal stuff during a conversion. I was. I bought a separate notebook
and good thing I did. As first install went wrong. I would of lost everything.
And I do have some knowledge having started with DOS and Basic
Well Oracle/Sun if you want any more HONEST input email me.
I feel during your take over you lost sight of the huge community that has been
helping you. Freely writing code, making enhancements, providing good solid
input.
You've been ignoring them and it is not wise to cut off the hand that feeds you!
For all you code writers that feel put out by Oracle ignoring you. You might
want to band together and write a new OS.
Granted you may NOT get paid for your work immediately. But if you write a
stable platform, with the common user in mind easy foolproof installation, all
necessary drivers for common off the shelf notebooks, 99% user friendly and
things I mentioned above, you could maybe make money in the future off it.
I would look at it in the future with a different computer.
I hope to never have to go back to windows for anything. In which case I can
actually delete the windows partition I made and have more room for personal
data.
As it stands now, I don't think I will ever have to go back.
Other than untested camera this version of a linux format is working quite well
for everything I desire to do.
I guess I can write Billy a letter saying for him to kiss my azz.
All others.
I will NOT be monitoring this forum any more. No need to do so.
But you can email me anytime choo_c...@millect.com.
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