SOLARIS 8 for i386 ?

[Nailz]

Ok, not LINUX per se, but *NIX related:

I thought I saw at one time that Sun had a binary distribution of their Solaris 8 OS for Intel i386 architecture for FREE Download.

Am I wrong? If anyone knows where to get the download from...can you post a link?

[stiles]

http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/binaries/download.html

[bdg1983]

Yes they do as I downloaded and burned the 3 cd's a couple of months ago. Still haven't had time to give Solaris a try.

I can't remember the exact url, but you can at least start at www.sun.com (http://www.sun.com)

[Nailz]

Thanks Stiles. I'll fill out the info and proceed w/ download once I get to my cable modem at home.

As much as I love playing w/ Linux, there are a ton of jobs out there that are asking for Sun Solaris experience.

[jbstew32]

be perpared to see how much it sucks :(

solaris on intel is absolutely aweful...if/when you get it installed, there is a 95% chance you cant use anything but the CLI. There hardware support sucks hard...

just FYI....

[bdg1983]

The installer looks nice though. ;)

[stiles]

BTW if you boot form the Install Disk you go thourght the deaded WebStart install (it's pretty I guess but slow, requires an extra bounce). The text base install, Sun Install, you use the first software CD (it's bootable also).

Maybe your hardware sucked for x86 Solaris. As an unix OS it's very stable. It's not really fast out of the box cause it's default kernel tunning is wack, but if you know what your doing and get your /etc/system right it's very good.

[slayer17]

solaris is great on a sparc but I don't much care for it on intel, it is sturdy as hell but can be a ***** to install on intel. I use it for intel in my programing course currently and I run it on a sparc at home. I really don't see much difference as far as speed goes, but hell I am running a sparc 10 50 mhz cpu with 128 ram. Good luck it is a good os.

[Nailz]

Well, not having a Sparcstation around my only choice really is my space i386 (Dell GXa 266/128 RAM/Matrox Millenum video) and it looks/works nicely although no support for my Voodoo Banshee card at home (which I expected).

Granted the HW support sucks, BUT if I'm using it to LEARN Solaris (to compliment my strong NT/Novell skills and improving Linux skills), then this should do the trick, right? No difference in the ins/outs of the OS. The NY job market is great if you have Solaris under your belt too.

Hey, if anyone has any tips (or good URLS) on learning/tweaking/general use of Solaris 8... PLEASE Let me know.

Thanks

[Shadoglare]

Originally posted by Nailz:
<STRONG>Hey, if anyone has any tips (or good URLS) on learning/tweaking/general use of Solaris 8... PLEASE Let me know.
</STRONG>

The hardware support on Sol8 is about a billion times better than it was on Sol7, so you might be OK - the main problem was with video drivers more than anything.
And BTW, from what I've seen the command structure has been identical, except with the obvious exception of commands that relate to OpenBoot.
I installed it on a few different computers at work and it went flawlessly every time - for some reason the installer keeps crashing on my home PC though.. dono what the deal is.
As far as links, there are actually quite a few out there, but give the following a try:
www.solarisguide.com (http://www.solarisguide.com) www.solariscentral.com (http://www.solariscentral.com) www.faqs.org/faqs/Solaris2/x86/FAQ/ (http://www.faqs.org/faqs/Solaris2/x86/FAQ/) www.elementkjournals.com/sun/ (http://www.elementkjournals.com/sun/) www.searchsolaris.com (http://www.searchsolaris.com) www.sun.drydog.com/faq/ (http://www.sun.drydog.com/faq/) www.sunguru.com (http://www.sunguru.com) www.sunfreeware.com (http://www.sunfreeware.com) www.sunworld.com (http://www.sunworld.com)
And of course:
docs.sun.com )