[geeks] OS for an Ultra 2

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Tue, 27 Jun 2006 @ 19:04 -0500, Lionel Peterson said:

> >From: Charles Shannon Hendrix <shannon at widomaker.com>
> >Date: Tue Jun 27 18:24:31 CDT 2006
> >To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
> >Subject: Re: [geeks] OS for an Ultra 2
> 
> <snip>
> >That leaves Solaris and Linux.  Linux SMP on x86 is excellent, not sure
> >about SPARC.  I hated Linux on SPARC years ago, but I've been told it is
> >OK now.
> 
> The Ubuntu Linux Server for SPARC can install just a LAMP server, if
> that is something you are interested in (Linux, Apache, MySQL,
> [Perl|Python|PHP])...

I didn't realize Ubuntu had that kind of setup.

If the Solaris installer keeps forcing me to start over because someone
in eastern Siberia farted in the wrong direction, I might try it.

> I prefer Solaris, but my machines are all for play, so I have few of
> the very reasonable concerns you do...

I wasn't supposed to be having them, so I could have time to play with
this one.  I've been waiting for a free Ultra to play with, snagged one,
and won't be able to do as much playing after all.

On the plus side, dumping all the old hardware and upgrading, while
painful, will pay off in the long run.  It's just turning out to be a
longer run than I planned... :)

I'm installing Solaris 10 right now, and hating every minute of it.

You'd think a company that can create an OS like this, could create an
installer that would not have sucked 15 years ago.

What kills me is that when it fails and you have to exit to fix
something, it is so brain-dead it doesn't unmount failed installs and
otherwise back off for you.  Most of the time you have to reboot to get
started again.

Besides that, why is the installer so limited that you must exist to fix
even the tiniest things like disk partitioning.

Egads... that was normal 20 years ago, or on a modern Windows install,
but not on any good UNIX these days.

Sheesh...

Oh well, temporary pain to get to the goodies.

One of these days I'll have an install server so I can avoid the CD
shuffle too.

-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["The determined programmer can write a
FORTRAN program in any language." ]