Less than 6 months ago I bought what was at the time one of the highest
spec laptops around - a Sony VAIO SZ4XWN/C

2 GB of RAM,
Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 / 2 GHz (Dual-Core) CPU
Carbon fibre body
NVIDA GeForce Go 7400 graphics etc etc

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/...ctiveda3029-21

Even after negotiating a better price as I would not pay on a credit
card, this thing was the US equivalent of around $3200, so not a cheap
budget laptop, which only just meets the specs for Vista.

It came with Microsoft's Vista Business. But probably due to:

1) Sony's insistence in installing so much crap software on it
2) The fact it has Vista on it

I don't feel the laptop is very responsive. Certainly it is one of the
least response computers I have, even after a fresh install, setting it
back to how it is shipped from Sony.

I thought I'd install Sun's Solaris Express Developer Edition on it,
which is either a free download, or Sun will even ship you a DVD for
zero cost - not even postage:

http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/...xpress/get.jsp

I won't deny there are a few teething problems with Solaris, not all of
which I have fully resolved, but overall it is so much quicker and nicer
to use.

The biggest hassle to installing Solaris, was nothing to do with Solaris
as such, but Vista. Windows Vista would not allow me to shrink its own
volume by much, wanting to keep more than 50 GB of space in addition to
what was actually being used!. (I think with 90 GB free, it would only
let me shrink it by 25 or so GB).

I had to get install a trial version of a 3rd party disk defrag program
before I could shrink the Windows partition to a suitable size.

But once I'd done that, installing Solaris from the DVD was very simple.

It is just so much nicer to use. Things actually happen almost
instantly. I can click on a Word document and StarOffice has it open for
me to read or edit in about 3-4 seconds. Word was never like that.


If you find Vista a pain, have half a brain and are willing to spend
some time learning Solaris, you might be very surprised how much quicker
a high end laptop is when Vista is not the operating system loaded! If
you have a low-end laptop, I assume the benefits would be even more
noticeable.

Dave wrote:
Win 98 ME. I got rid of it the day I got my machine and struggled for
two days to get XP and the adequate drivers loaded. Well worth the
trouble indeed.

But what you say about Solaris would be much more convincing if you
could tell us what software can be run with it ... Main point of an OS.
I am ready to give a try.

Regards

--
John Doue

In article <4745abc2@212.67.96.135>, Dave <nowhere@nowhere.com> wrote:
I've also noticed that Vista bug. An alternative is qtparted from
the Knoppix livecd.

John
groenveld@acm.org

In article <4745abc2@212.67.96.135>, Dave <nowhere@nowhere.com> wrote:
This isn't terribly surprising. I've extended the lives of more than a
few "obsoleted" Wintel systems by blowing away the Windows OS and
replacing with some flavor of x86 UNIX. In the past, it's almost always
been Linux or BSD, but lately, it's been nice to have Solaris as an
option, too. And, yes, I realize that there have been prior x86
releases of Solaris, but the prior releases have had greater
compatibility issues than Solaris 10 and Open Solaris seems to be
exhibiting these days.

Assuming that you're able to find application equivalents in the x86
UNIX environment (and, to be fair, this *isn't* always possible), UNIX-
based OSes can be a great way to maximize your hardware investments.

As with everything, "your mileage may vary".
--

"You can only be -so- accurate with a claw-hammer." --me

John Doue wrote:

A list of software that can run on Solaris would be a very long list
indeed, but a few that on the free DVD (even free postage) that you
might know, and find useful are

Thunderbird for email
Firefox for Web browsing
Gimp for image editing
StarOffice for office tasks (reads/writes powerpoint, word, excell etc
files)
Software to read PDF files
Software to write CD's DVDs.
Software to sync to PDS's
Connects to the WiFi network
Games ...
A full development system, if you want to write your own.

There's a bit of a list at

http://developers.sun.com/sxde/features.jsp

Want to spend some money? Then of course there is commercial software
such as the seriously expensive Mathematica, which runs on Solaris x86

http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/platforms/

But there is an awful lot of free software too.

I think it would be better for you to list what sort of software you
use, and let myself, or someone else tell you of the nearest version for
Solaris.

Dave wrote:
....!) that most Linux software would run on Solaris?

Regards

--
John Doue

John Doue wrote:

Yes, most will. Often you will not find binaries for Solaris so easily,
so it will have to be build.

But there are sites that keeps binaries for Solaris x86 - see for example


http://www.sunfreeware.com/
http://www.blastwave.org/

Dave wrote:
What I meant to say was that often software would need to be built from
source code. But not always. I tend to build most from source myself, as
one is sure of having the latest version. Often sites will have Solaris
binaries, but they often tend to be old.

Thomas H Jones II wrote:

What I find a bit surprising though is how badly Vista runs on an almost
new very high specification laptop.


But then perhaps I am not surprised by that either!

John Doue wrote:
What do you want do? Star Office is more or less the equivalent of the
Microsoft product. Other than that, you need to get specific about what
sort of applications you want to run.

A lot of people use Windoze because of the available applications; there
are probably more than for any other O/S. But which O/S you can use
depends on the apps you want.

John Doue wrote:
The binaries probably will not run. You should be able to build most
Linux apps for Solaris. Some Linux apps may have dependencies on Linux
features that will not allow them to run on Solaris without a little, or
a lot, of work. Solaris is free, and so are the development tools,
and will run on readily and cheaply available hardware. Try it and see.

Dave wrote:

Extremely optimistic posts like this show up frequently.
I'm no lover of Windows. I've been around long enough to remember
writing product proposals with NROFF.
I've been trying to get off the Windows bus for years.
I've downloaded many gigabytes of magic linux distributions.
And I still run Windows XP.

And here's why...

There's a song that sums it up nicely: "99 and a half just won't do".

Doesn't matter how well it does 99% of what you want to do if it
won't do the last bit. Yes, you can get generic software to do generic
stuff. Once you get used to the strange behavior of linux, like clicks
that don't seem to do anything, no feedback, no nothing, so you click
again, and 30 seconds later, two windows pop up. Once you get used
to the many vairiants and resign yourself to the fact that you
really can't help granny fix her email without going there.
I've found linux
applications to "feel slower" than windows applications. Yes, there
are stripped down linux apps, but if you compare like functionality and
complexity, OO vs. MSOFFICE, I find the linux variant feels slow.

But the real killer is the odd stuff. What do I do about the box of
webcams. The box of non-webcams. The box of WM and Palm PDA's.
The GPIB card. Printers/plotters. All the utilities written in Visual
basic. Bluetooth devices. WiFi devices. USB headsets. VOIP.
PCMCIA/Cardbus/Infrared stuff. How about something as simple
as getting your touchpad mouse to use it's enhanced features?
I don't use my scanner much, but what do I do when I do need it?
It's GOTTA WORK!!!

If you have the time to go searching, you can often find some high-school
kid who wrote a buggy, undocumented driver for some of your stuff.
If you fully understand how linux works, you might even figure out how
to resolve all the dependencies and/or recompile the whole thing.

Now, go to CompUSA and ask for a (insert your favorite hardware toy here)
with a linux driver.
Bottom line is that old hardware won't work, because the kids who
used that stuff have all graduated high school. The new stuff won't
work, because no high school kid has one yet.

Linux will be feasible about 10 years after you can walk into CUSA and
get hardware with linux drivers. That's how long it's gonna take for me
to find one used/cheap.

Now, look at the way the world works. If you're a hardware vendor,
your market is 99% windows. You decide to put some of your scarce
resources into linux support. Then you go visit MS for a windows
compliance certification of your device. What do you think MS is
gonna have to say (unofficially) about your linux support? What are
your stockholders gonna say about your little tiff with the owner
of 99% of your business.

Monopoly is a bitch! But it's also the reason that I can tell you my
problem and you can understand enough about what I have to help me fix
it. Try calling up a Ubuntu user and asking him where to find the
configuration files on YOUR distribution. Ever have the experience of
loading one distribution and finding your sound card works, but your
lan won't. Then trying another distribution where you lan card
works but your sound card won't. Sure, a linux guru could (probably)
easily fix either. I didn't have the energy to go searching for the
solution.

Only way for linux to flourish is for MS to take it over...or some other
big company with a need for a write off...and charge big bux for the
privilege of using it. Linux is interesting only because people think
it's free. If you run a webserver, I'm not talking to you...you're good
to go, because you don't need drivers for my sound card...

For most of us who use more than open office and a web browser, linux is
not and never will be a viable option.

Yet, I still pop in my linux hard drive occasionally and fantasize about
a fully functional system that does what I want.

And since I'm bored, I'll probably even download solaris and load it up.

mike

mike wrote:

Right now, my computer is hard-wired to my stereo using a USB
digital/analog interface that I hunted for on the Web for two days.
Found exactly one, made in Germany and carried by one vendor in the US.
It's either this or nothing. So I get the thing, plug it into Windows
XP, and I'm up and running. Just that easy, just that quick. No separate
drivers, no shell scripts, no distro hell, just plug and play. Plays
nice with the computer's sound card, too.

So given the choice between being morally superior or using what works,
I choose to use what works.

As Stone Cold Steve Austin would say, "And that's the bottom line."

--
"Just because you're smart doesn't mean you're wise."

Dave <nowhere@nowhere.com> writes:

One difference I noticed a few years ago, while running on a dual-CPU
box (back when that meant two CPU packages and a special motherboard):
If you run something graphics-intensive under the X window system, you
can use a substantial portion of both CPUs. The X server is a separate
process from your code, and runs in its own context that can be on a
separate CPU running in parallel. The stuff to be drawn is passed via
some sort of IPC mechanism, probably shared memory. This is a feature
of X, so it's probably true whether you're using Linux, Solaris, BSD,
etc.

In comparision, under Windows 2000, a graphics-hungry process keeps one
CPU busy while the other is idle. (The actual CPU in use can switch
from time to time, but total CPU use doesn't go significantly above
50%). It looks like the whole windowing system runs in the same context
as your process, and can't run in parallel with it.

This was a dual Celeron 400 system, so the responsiveness difference was
quite noticeable.

I don't know whether WinXP or Vista perform any better in this regard.
There is certainly more incentive for them to do so, now that
multi-thread and multi-core CPUs are so common.

Dave

"Dave" <nowhere@nowhere.com> wrote in message news:4745abc2@212.67.96.135...

<snip>

I did give Vista a try for 3 months...
then blew it away and installed PCLinuxOS.
Though I mainly use Win2k...I found that PCLinuxOS was a very nice
alternative.
I tried Solaris a few years ago and found that it ran rather slowly so also
gave up on that.
If they've improved it over the last few years it may be worth looking at
again.

mike wrote:

IIRC, I did not mention the word Linux at any time, only Solaris. You
did not mention Solaris, only Linux. Did you have a point there?

Many people do find Linux very usable, and Windows frustrating in
comparison. Only the week before last I was at a meeting with my laptop,
but I needed access to a UNIX box, so the company arranged a network
connection so I could use mine via remote access.

But running graphical software over the internet is not so much fun. I
just sat there thinking "If I had Solaris on this laptop, I could do
what I want. I could read all the documents they gave me, give them
documents, shared some photos.." Next time I go back, my laptop will
have Solaris on it! I will leave Vista on it, in case it is necessary,
but I don't actually envisage needing it for my work, although I play
the odd game of the chess on the internet and find the Windows clients
better than the UNIX ones. But apart from the games, Solaris is more
usable and less hassle.

You mentioned GPIB cards. I can assure you drivers are available for
GPIB cards from National Instruments for both Solaris and Linux. I have
a couple here - both an sbus and a pci GPIB card. I've used the sbus one
in a Sun SPARC 20 and the PCI one in a Sun Ultra 80.

And I've written software to control instruments myself via GPIB. Of
course, you can also get Labview for Solaris, and I assume Linux too.

philo wrote:
[...]
Solaris a "few years ago" on x86 is totally different from what is out
today. And now it's all open source too.
Have a look at http://opensolaris.org

Dave wrote:

Your strong distinction sounds like Solaris must not be a
unix/linux variant?
Are you saying that it's yet another OS that's incompatible with linux?
Yet another market fragmentation?

I'm 9 hours into the download. I can hardly wait to fire up that bad
boy and see what new wonders (drivers) await.

mike

mike wrote:

Solaris existed before Linux, although I think Linux was on x86 before
Solaris.

A lot of software can be shared. Generally one just needs to recompile.

As I said in my original post, you need to have half a brain, and you
need to spend some time on it. There probably will be some teething
problems, especially if you have obscure hardware. I very much doubt I
would get a driver for the fingerprint reader in my laptop, but I don't
see that a high priority. Solaris is probably not ideal for someone who
is not IT literate and has no intension of being. But in my opinion as
soon as Windows develops problems, it is extreamly difficult to fix
unless you have an awful lot of knowledge, or you go down the reinstall
route. Reinstalling seems to be the answer to most problems on Windows,
but it is not one I personally find attractive.

mike wrote:
Solaris is UNIX in contrast to Linux.

It's Linux that is incompatible with UNIX.

Linux is like Microsoft, trying to invent its own standards.