Unix - what the hell is it? - Page 3

zovat · 06-07-2005, 17:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by timewarrior2001

Unix is glorified DOS and much harder to use.

Unix engineers think thye are gods when in reality they are cardiganised sandal wearing beard toting folkies........usually

You'll find many of them supporting the campaign for real ale and buying Vin Garbutt CD's.

Well thats how it is where I work anyway.

I am a Unix Engineer, and I can assure you that I am clean chaven, and cardigan free..

I only wear sandals when I am on the beach......

However I do agree that Unix is less easy to use as an end user, and although Linux has come a long way, it is still not as user friendly , nor does it support as many devices or applications as windows.

Personally, I use Linux or Solaris (Unix) on my laptop, and have a windows PC at home that I use exclusively for gaming... I will be putting linux on the second hard drive of tht PC, but as my wife is not a techie, (and CS:Source is not yet available for linux), I will be leaving the primary drive as Windows with Linux as the secondary boot option.

pretty much all of my posting is done on my laptop running Linux, with Firefox, over a wireless link - so for surfing and business use it is fine (although StarOffice apparantly takes a little getting used to if you are an MS Office user - I have been on openoffice/staroffice for years and rarely use/used MS Office)
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Quote:

Originally Posted by Gareth

Heh, I think that people who complain that Linux is too user-unfriendly for them will have an even tougher time with BSD

I think that Sun's decision to open source Solaris was an extremely brave one to take, and also a highly commendable one. I really hope it pays off for them having taken such a risk. Although I've yet to use Solaris on an x86 box, I've only used it on SPARC machines. Anyone here tried it on an Intel box?

I hope so too - I work for SUN

Solaris 10 on my Tosh laptop is pretty quick - and with the decision to opensource it, I expect it to get better as more drivers are written by the Open Source community.

I used to be a Solaris X86 Support engineer, and was gutted when they axed it - Hindsight is 20/20, but I believe it cost us a lot of goodwill and time in the now expanding X86 market.

Stuart · 06-07-2005, 17:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by philip.j.fry

Here come the pedant police: Linux is a Unix clone, not strictly a Unix version

If you want to try Unix at home you can go for a BSD distribution, e.g.

FreeBSD
OpenBSD
NetBSD

Or Sun have just open sourced Solaris.

Or if you want a look at the core of Mac OSX: Darwin

chambece · 10-07-2005, 11:11

Just put suse on my new desktop, but now perhaps wishing I'd put on solaris, as I use and older version of that at work....

Whats it like on a PC? I assume it doesn't use CDE as that isn't OpenSource, is it? likewise X11 and stuff...

Any chance of a couple of screen shots?

zovat · 11-07-2005, 11:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by chambece

Just put suse on my new desktop, but now perhaps wishing I'd put on solaris, as I use and older version of that at work....

Whats it like on a PC? I assume it doesn't use CDE as that isn't OpenSource, is it? likewise X11 and stuff...

Any chance of a couple of screen shots?

depending on the verison of solaris, you will either get CDE (older versions) or Gnome (newer Versions).

X11 is there - Solaris is not an "Open Source" Product yet, it is SUNs software that we choose to not charge for

I run it on a laptop, and it is pretty good...

You can get Nvidia drivers and things like FireFox and Thunderbird Pre-compiled for Solaris as well.

you can download Solaris 10 for free from : http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/get.jsp

HTH
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Even once the Full open Source project is complete, there will still be a "commercial" version of solaris, based on the Opensource, but with additional software that we cannot opensource for whatever reason (mainly T/P stuff that we are not allowed to release), and that will still be free to download.

The current way of looking at it is that Solaris is free, if you want support, then you have to pay for it.

tkiely · 27-08-2005, 10:24

Well I have just got a tadpole uSparc laptop running Solaris, cant figure why i did it?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!

zovat · 27-08-2005, 20:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by tkiely

Well I have just got a tadpole uSparc laptop running Solaris, cant figure why i did it?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!

Nice - I run Solaris 10 on a toshiba lappy - does well for work, not quite up to a decent linux distro for a home PC yet though..