Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 17:31:21 -0800 From: jehamby@lightside.com (Jake Hamby) To: hackers@freebsd.org, patrick@xinside.com Subject: Re: Sun Workshop compiler vs. GCC? Message-ID: <199702140131.RAA03400@lightside.com>
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Patrick at XInside writes: > > I tried to get Solaris x86 up on two different machines. No go. Can > however install Linux FreeBSD etc. on these systems no problem. > System A - it didn't properly detect my Adaptec 1542B. > > System B - couldn't install the boot blocks properly on an IDE (not > EIDE) drive. > > Solaris won't capture the market, because they don't have a good > installation program. Maybe this isn't a very technical problem, but > it is a very real consideration when dealing with people who are just > trying to get things to work... I'd plunk down the money for Solaris > x86 if it would install easier - but it doesn't. I agree that Solaris installation is often a hit-or-miss business. Hell, the first time I installed it, it trashed my hard drive! The most recent time I installed it, I disconnected the other hard drive (with my DOS partition) to prevent such shenanigans (you have to trick the installer if you want to put the root partition on the second HD, and you need something like BootEasy, but I did get it to work). I do have a few suggestions for you: Go to http://access1.sun.com and get the latest Driver Update disks. They are up to DU7 now (it works on Solaris 2.5 and 2.5.1). They extract to floppies and are set up so that the new drivers get loaded when you boot to install the system, and are then loaded onto the hard drive as patches (so they can be individually backed out or upgraded later). Pretty slick, but Sun has the SLOWEST patch installation mechanism I've seen (it's a big shell script interfaced to the SVR4 package commands). If you still have trouble, even with the latest DU (and be sure to read the PostScript "x86 Device Configuration Guide" from the same Web site), I'm sorry. I can only presume Solaris 2.6 will be "Plug and Play" and much nicer all around. But I agree, this is the weakest part of Solaris/x86 right now. >From the access1 Web site, you can also get the latest hardware compatibility list, and there are companies (the most well-known is EIS, www.eis.com) which sell PC's specifically configured for Solaris. P.S. Were you planning to port AcceleratedX to Solaris/x86? :-) It already supports XFree86, though I prefer to use OpenWindows, because even though it's deadly slow, it has Display PostScript and works well with CDE. They do support Matrox Millenium, which is pretty cool, but I use a lowly S3 805 card on my 486 (it's actually a "JAX 8241" but I told Solaris it was an "Orchid Fahrenheit 1280 Plus", which uses the same chipset). -- Jake
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