I meant everything else. With modification and some manhandling FreeBSD 6-RELEASE can work with the msk driver. STABLE and CURRENT have the updated device ID's and supposedly work. I was referring to Cambridge Silicon Radio (BT), Intel Pro 1000 (PCI-E), and Atheros 54xx (To a degree, it's supported upstream in HAL) and NVIDIA (Never had issues with NVIDIA on anything) the Mavell SysKonnect is the exception, but surely you guys have used FreeBSD driver code in the past. I see nothing wrong with it, and on the record I think OpenSolaris has a long way to go with mobiles, not just on this particular hardware, I watch the mailing lists. Now, my desktop, an Ultra-20 M2, runs great, but it should.
I've already used those blogs, and I knew how to do it before they even posted about it. Their methods mostly work, but they are not healthy, and the main thing wrong is the installer, it doesn't matter EFI or MBR it shouldn't try and cobble the mbr with grub without asking, this is a main source of grief, along with managing without parted, which is a must. Nowadays I know how to restore everything without wiping the disk, it's quite easy, simple 134MB bit of free space with some mkpart magic, and you can restore it back to one using their GUI frontend to diskutil, or you can use diskutil mergePartitions JHFS+ VolName disk0s2 disk0s3 for instance. Fixes for the keyboard and trackpad features are on my list of things that are a must. Thankfully VirtualBox now is "stable" with v1.6 cause I need an equivalent of VMware with VMDK support, so that's a good thing though I don't know the status of bridging which on OSX is not there even though Sun says it's "stable" this is just pathetic, bridged networking is a must, there's no technical reasons it's not there, there's tun/tap and qt works fine with system level stuff, and hence I refuse to support VBox regardless until they keep all the basic funtions at parity, and have a FreeBSD version. Compiz works nice on my desktop, acceleration is pretty good, SongBird is okay, though I really HATE the Gecko rendering engine, and XUL especially, such slow and badly cobbled cruft IMHO, there's better options for a renderer, and this is a MEDIA PLAYER! The gstreamer bundling problem is the other hurdle, it's more than just annoying, then there's the quality, which I've discussed before. I've tried the supposed fix, it's better with current builds of JDS and Nevada with Fluendo, but it still doesn't feel or work exactly how it should on anything. Under the scenes is the only thing going for OpenSolaris, I really like the use ZFS snapshots on Indiana (2008.5). As a system administrator by contract, OpenSolaris is a decent option for deployment of file servers and web stack servers, but for specialized tasks, for support, for integration, into any other market it will have trouble. Solaris 10 is worse off, though still better supported, there's a tad bit of overkill engineering going on, similar to how the Linux Desktop folks like doing things. Lack of a modern current stable popular version of KDE with sane options is unacceptable. I don't really like GNOME, and CSW KDE is crufty old, don't make me mention Solaris Companion, what a joke. - James C On May 9, 2008, at 12:57 AM, James C. McPherson wrote: > James Cornell wrote: > .... >> I too have a MacBook Pro. Problems plaguing OpenSolaris on this >> hardware are STILL with EFI handling, the workarounds still are >> dangerous, and partly at the fault of Apple you can't use a USB >> disk reliably, (Open)Solaris doesn't like them anyways BIOS (MBR) >> or EFI it doesn't matter. My Atheros (MBP3, Atheros not broadcom) >> doesn't work out of the box, neither does the Marvell Yukon, same >> goes for FreeBSD 6/7, tried that too, it doesn't support my laptop >> either. Even most Linux distros new and old don't like it, though >> MadWifi supports it, and the ethernet driver works fine. The main >> issues is with how grub installs itself, it's VERY annoying, then >> the needing to edit the driver files and force plumb, etc, just not >> a quality action to go through, makes my hands feel dirty. >> Hardware drivers are one thing sysadmins shouldn't have to worry >> about, these devices are open and widely used enough and not just >> tied to this particular hardware, it must be included. For us, it >> will only be included 6mo down the line with the CD, or with bi- >> monthly SXCE DVD's, which may take a few months, been a full year >> so far without a cent of support, and then the lack of GLDv3 makes >> things painful. (xVM, Zones, Crossbow) I tried and tried, possibly >> wearing my unit out faster than normal, trying to get OpenSolaris >> decently working, it has cost me tons of time so far without it >> even working correctly. The best option would be to image a copy >> of OpenSolaris and then install a boot loader onto the superblock >> (Which UFS doesn't like) and even with rEFIt things go wrong >> randomly at boot. James, please give me explicit instructions on >> dual-booting, I will not wipe OSX, OpenSolaris cannot replace >> neither Windows or OSX for a desktop, maybe for you since you're a >> kernel engineer, regardless... I still want to use it, I need to >> be current since this is my career area. > > Hi James, > i can't help you directly, but perhaps if you have a look > at Paul Mitchell's blog (http://blogs.sun.com/paulm/) it > might help you with these issues, as might Alan Perry's > blog entry http://blogs.sun.com/alanp/entry/setting_up_a_mac_mini > > > btw, I wouldn't describe Marvell hardware as Open - all the > ON code for Marvell chips is in usr/closed as its delivery > via http://dlc.sun.com/osol/on/downloads/current/on-closed-bins.i386.tar.bz2 > demonstrates. > > > hth, > James C. McPherson > -- > Solaris kernel software engineer, system admin and troubleshooter > http://www.jmcp.homeunix.com/blog > http://blogs.sun.com/jmcp > Find me on LinkedIn @ http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamescmcpherson > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/laptop-discuss/attachments/20080509/6246ff2a/attachment.html>
