[rescue] Re: the infamous missing CD

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Fri, 5 Sep 2003, Earl D. Baugh Jr. wrote:

> Ok, I will try that on the next machine I load on.  You just boot off of
> Solaris Software 1 of 2?

Yep.  You'll get a traditional "suninstall" session running inside of
twm instead of that slow, floofy Java crap that makes even a beefy E450
look like an 80386.  I prefer suninstall even over their OpenLook
installation tool, as it's generally very fast and a lot easier to use.

> So, you believe they're just talking about manufacturing cost?  That's
> not how I read it...though I can see how that might be the
> interpretation.

Not "manufacturing", per se, but development costs, bandwidth costs,
etc.  Sun builds in the price of Solaris to each system.  They're not
shy about this.  But if the only copies of Solaris 9 in use were
downloaded for free onto SPARCstation 10 systems, Solaris 9 wouldn't
have been a good investment for Sun.

What they've given is a happy medium.  You get the entire OE (usually
one release prior to what's shipping) for free via download.  You don't
get the stuff that you can download from elsewhere on Sun's site.  It
just doesn't make sense for them to go through the time and effort of
putting together a CD image of stuff you can already fetch from
sun.com, unless you're willing to pay for it.

Now, documentation packages would be really nice, and, IIRC, they -used-
to be included in the download.  But, seriously, docs.sun.com isn't all
that bad, if you have a network connection, and $90 is a bargain for
what Sun ships you.  The Solaris 9 "thick kit" I have here has
StarOffice, Solaris 9 (CD and DVD), -lots- of extras, iPlanet trialware,
a try-before-you-buy set of compilers, documentation in a dozen
languages, and all sorts of other stuff, and I may use it on as many
uniprocessor machines as I please.

Apple doesn't do that.  IBM doesn't do that.  SGI doesn't do that.  HP
doesn't do that.  Sun is going out on a limb for the hobbyist
community, and I'm personally very grateful for that.

I think the majority of your problems will be solved by using the
Installation CD as a coaster, though.  You won't get any more
documentation than you had before, but at least the installer won't nag
you about stuff you don't have.

-- 
Jonathan Patschke   )  "Gamer weenies...are the sludge at the bottom
Elgin, TX          (    of the user swamp."           --Gary Nichols