Open Solaris 2008.05 - Are you kidding me?

Hi all,

If you want to stone me, go ahead. But I did not like Open Solaris 2008.05. If I remember, my experience with version 11 (Java desktop) was ok. This one, not good.

So if you wanna read what went wrong and even a geek like me got confused:

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/opensolaris-2008-05.html

Comments are welcome. Feel free to flame.

Cheers,
Mrk

 

Oh Mrk, I read your review and I'm really sorry that it turned out to be such a frustration for you.

Based on my experience with installing 2008.5, I expected some trouble.

Well, all I can say is that if I had this kind of experiences while aquainting to Solaris, I would not suggest it to anyone.
My experience is that 2008.11 (release candidate) shows impressive progress, but I don't mean to suggest that your experience would be guaranteed different.

I feel compelled to wipe my harddisk empty and see if I have to partition it first in the command line, before the installation finishes with success.
And I would try that with both 2008.5 and 2008.11.

A quick search in Google shows that a sound driver is reported missing.

Recently I have had very similar experiences with installing Linux on a new notebook, so I have no doubts about the steps you took to get reasonable results with installing OpenSolaris.

Thank you for your time that you spent on openSolaris, Mrk!

 

I hate to say it, and will probably get stoned for it too, but this has been my experience (and frustration) with Linux in general lately, to the point now where I have sworn off Linux and turned back to Vista x64 again. I have tried literally dozens of distros and without fail, there is always some show stopper issue or bug that keeps me from using it and settling on it. My general impression is that there is simply a lack of quality control in Linux, and as a result, it suffers, as does the user. So that's it for me, and no more temptations by things like Solaris either....

Ok, let the stoning commence....

 

Stone!

Well, I guess if I tried Open Solaris on a machine with 2GB ram or more, my woes would have been lesser, but it's not the speed that did it for me. It's the little things, like commands here and there, getting the basic stuff to work.

Kerodo, I don't know what your woes are and why - but at the end of the day, use whatever you feel like using, whatever works for you.

Personally, I have not found Windows to be better when it comes to drivers, especially if you do NOT have a CD full of installers waiting for you. But then, it does not really matter.

Still, most people have less patience for the new operating system, especially after being used to something that worked for them for many years. I am a very good example of this Usually, I do not give up easily and get things done - I managed a multiplayer in a 1989 game over serial emulation, after 19 years! - but after you try a 100+ distros, you get the hang of it. If 99 distros can get it right, there's no reason why you should be merciful toward the last.

So for me, today, in Linux, small things have become inexcusable. I did get a thrill over installing a network driver or a sound driver and hacking c sources in 2006 or even 2007. But no more. That's for work, not for home.

I think this is one of the reasons Open Solaris bit me.

Mrk

 

Hello Mrk,

I created a virtual machine, using Virtualbox 2.0.6 and installed OpenSolaris 2008.5 in a new unpartitioned virtual disk and 512 MB RAM.
The installer didn't have any problems with creating a OpenSolaris partition on the clean and empty disk and the process finished in about an hour, which is slow indeed.
I think I have different installation timings for several attempts and I didn't keep track of it with different hardware and release (OpenSolaris/Solaris/Developer Edition)

With regards to the shutdown, after Xorg is removed from memory, you see the text console, which looks like a login prompt, but the system is actually still in the process of shutting down it's services. No console messages as indication and yes, it takes long too.
Eventually the system will power off by itself.

2008.11 appears more desktop like, with reboot button.

The connection to Windows shares seems pretty special: CIFS ... in Solaris.

 

Hello,

When you say creating a partition, do you mean manually, or assigning the whole disk to it? Because when I let it use the whole disk, it worked.

Will give 2008.11 spin once the scars heal ...

Mrk

 

I think my frustration is just with little glitches and things. Overall, a lot of distros can be great, and well done, but there always seems to be this little glitch or that detail. Recently I found OzOS, which I love, and all was great in 0.8, but in the new 0.9, for some reason it won't see my NTFS drives at all. That bugs me. Then in Ubuntu 8.10, all is great, except for a little ATI driver glitch of some sort, that bugs me. And I don't much like the email client choices either. But I can live with TBird if I have to. Seems I can get 95% there, but that last little bit kills me. I must be losing patience.....

Anyway, I am going to try again... I will continue using Vista x64 as my main OS, but keep working on Linux distros till I eventually get things sorted out. I really do like both, and keep trying to use both, but I just periodically run into frustrations and wanna toss it all for a while.

Such is life eh?

 

Hello,
Pretty much same experince i had with opensolaris. 2008.11 RC2 is better.
with 2008.5 the package manager worked and downloaded packages but sometimes firefox couldnt load websites.

btw to install flash player all you do is extract the two files to the firefox/plugin directory.
the file stucture is pretty much the same as linux so im sure you can find where the programs are stored. you can just use the file manager to find it.
Then sudo or su at terminal to copy files from desktop to the firefox/plugin directory. close and reopen firefox , open up youtube and it should work.

since i installed in a virtual machine I left the default for partitioning. it did confuse me as well.
dont understand how the storage pools work if you wish to upgrade or reinstall opensolaris from scratch.

i find the Video on the sunmicro systems website that is telling everyone to ditch windows and install opensolaris.
if you cannot understand it how is the adverage user gonna be able to?

opensolaris 2008.11 now has a proper front end for instant snapshots. it has a wizard on what to backup. everything as default.
then in the file browser you click on the snapshot button and a slider appears. Move ths slider to the left and you are able to look at older versions of the current folder. think it does a snapshot everything 30mins if i remember correctly.
guess its a bit like time machine in OSX leopard. just without the whizzbangs.

 

I was keen to try this: software behemoth, community push, Virtual Box, free etc etc

Life ( particularly atm ) is too short for going in circles with Solaris on the desktop.
May be a great server tool but ...
This mirrored my exp with 2008 so far.
I'm no expert but wtf !
Too much trouble: install , speed, shut down, 'HW' issues in a VM !!, no idea what to do if things go wrong or even understand manual pages.

So I found my limits: Lesson in itself.

Maybe in the future will look again.

More interesting things around:
Fedora 10

 

Ok, for the record I have solved my Ubuntu ATI graphics problem and am now back on Ubuntu x64 and Vista x64. So my luck is improving....

Sorry this isn't exactly on topic, but I had to correct my previous statements.....

 

How did you fix your problem with ATI in Ubuntu, Kerodo? I've got an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro with 128 mbs of Ram. Also, does compiz seem awfully sluggish to you?

BTW, I just downloaded openSolaris 2008.11 RC2 from DistroWatch. Hopefully I can try it out tomorrow. Up to now my experience with Solaris, or it's variants, hasn't been a memorable one. Maybe this time it will be better.

Later...

 

Oh, I simply used the whole disk, tomorrow I will try to create a sized partition. I've no doubts about your actions and the results, it just intrigues me enough that I want to reproduce the situation.

 

I don't want to hijack the thread, so I'll just say that I installed the drivers off the ATI site manually, rather than use the ones Ubuntu offers. Compiz seems fine also.

Apologies to Wilbertnl and Mrkvonic on the side topic.....

 

No big deal, and just as a suggestion: you could exchange more details in a PM.

 

Yep, true..... thanks...

 

Tried openSolaris 2008.11 RC2 just a few minutes ago but couldn't connect to the internet after the install. Seems it didn't recognize my Ethernet card. Looked good other than that.

Maybe next time.

Sorry for going OT in my first post.

Later....

 

I ran some more tests with 2008.5.

Here I need to correct myself: Yesterday I did not select the whole disk option in the partitioner, I simply had an empty disk and let the installer create a partition with default size (which was the size of the empty disk).

I also repeated the steps of Mrk, by creating a smaller than maximum partition and creating a second Solaris partition. While the mentioned error popped up, it did not result in a installation problem after I removed the second Solaris partition.

And also I would like to mention that this time I prepared a fixed-size virtual disk, as opposed to a dynamic-sized virtual disk. The installation finished in 35 minutes.
My experience is that installation speed of any operating system is effected by VESA compatibility of the graphics chip. My nVidia GeForce 8200M is extremely slow in VESA mode. And only Mandriva 2009 offers a decent Xorg (beta!) driver for this chip.

These tests probably only show the common experience that some distro works fine with certain hardware and another distro works better with different hardware.

 

I've messed with OpenSolaris very briefly, so I have little to comment on, but I have researched ZFS under FreeBSD quite a bit to determine whether or not I should run it for my computers. What I found out is ZFS is an incredibly memory hungry beast, and people were recommending 2 GB minimum for it to perform decently, while dedicating 1 entire GB to the filesystem alone. And to have it running the best, a 64-bit operating system and 4GBs seemed to be the recommended specs. So this would attest to the slowness you underwent with ZFS and 512 MB.

Cheers,

Alphalutra1

 

I was playing with 2008.11 recently, things seems better ... some of them at least. There's a new restart option, the system is snappier. The hardware support issues have not been resolved yet ... I'll get another tutorial cooked.
Mrk

 

@Alphalutra1: Yes, that´s my conclusion as well regarding the memory use and the difference in transfer rates between using 32-bit or 64-bit CPU. One can´t bash Vista no longer for been demanding when it comes to hardware requirements. But ZFS is such an improvement regarding data integrity and its inbuilt raid capability for improving transfer rates by accumulating more HDD´s.

Btw, someone has gone yellow...

/C.