I am being critical here but I'm not angry. Just not really impressed.
several years ago Sun was kind of promoting Open Solaris as being a viable
alternative to MS Windows. But they didn't really inform people that it really
was not user friendly, plug and play and for the common person. Least ways that
was my observation.
I think in today's age all necessary drivers should be included in the install.
What I mean is for common everyday off the shelf brand name computers, that you
plan to convert over. Or the drivers should be downloadable and put on the live
cd, while creating the live CD, at the Sun website with Open Solaris. Also a
short text describing how and where to install the various drivers.
I downloaded the 2009.06 live CD and did an install and here's what I found.
I found I was going back in time to windows 95/98.
I bought an ACER Aspire (Gateway cheap brand) specifically for this experiment.
Good thing I did or I would be in doo doo now.
I reset bios to boot from cd and let the install go automatically.
At the partition screen I did NOT see a description of how big the HD was
(160gig).
I saw I think 4 partition options. one was set as unknown 12g, I presumed that
was the windows partition, but I think I was wrong as after install no more
windows.
I set one partition to 20.1 g for solaris for further expansion of programs and
data. But I think it may be using the entire hard drive anyway.
I had downloaded via windows a tar file of drivers for atheros and an extractor.
But I can't go get them now as windows was wiped. So will redownload from
different computer.
My feeling is, there should be a driver in the OS for this, so after install
you can access internet and network at least for all off the shelf factory
configured laptops.
Now the opening screen menu is nice, but I expected dual boot Open Solaris and
windows. Nope just Solaris.
Start Solaris, the home screen is nice and I figured out the menus easily
enough.
Device analyzer says no driver for Atheros ethernet adapter or the wireless. as
I expected. But the sound card driver is there although very basic.I set volume
control to loud, but can just barely hear the speakers. So another driver needs
to be found. But again, where do I install the driver. Is there a set place
that OS wants it in, or can I put it anywhere. How do I actually install.
Windows uses *.exe or *.com as the execution file. most times double click it
and it starts running the program. OS as other linuxs/ unix don't do this, so
a small help booklet (online) would be nice to explain these little things (I
haven't found it yet).
Next the explorer or computer analyzer.
I see two different menu selections depending on what you want to do. I would
like to see these combined into one as it appears they overlap in what they do.
But looking at the DA.tool.
left pane has several things listed. Click computer, right pane shows CD drive
and hard drive (as file system). Click the Hard drive, several folders open,
click the folder and get more folders or files. That's like MS windows.
But you can not expand the folder or drive in the left pane to make it easier
to see where you are at or for dragging files / folders in right pane to a
different spot over in the left pane. Maybe there is an alternate way just
haven't found it yet. I haven't added any data yet and don't want to move any
"system" files.
I would of thought openoffice.org would have been included like firefox and
thunderbird. Or at least an option to download it with the live cd, and run the
install after the OS was up and running. Same with missing drivers.
Have an option to download them onto the live CD while creating the live CD.
This would increase the Userability much more.
Now I am going to go re-download the drivers, openoffice, and virtualbox and
the developer version of 2010.03.
First I will try adding just the drivers to OS 2009.06. If that does not work
then I will try doing the 2010 install.
So this will be a learning experience.
Oh, why did I go OS 2009 anyway.
MS Windows has gotten out of hand. If I am the only user and am the
administrator, I should not see the message "you need administrator privileges"
to do whatever. There are just too many things I have to change to make it
quicker and easier and more open. Plus so many people write viruses and trojans
for MSWin that you have to have two or three programs to catch them and remove
them. So far OS 2009 doesn't have that problem
And there is native software to do everything I need to do anyway.
There are very few original MSWin programs out there. Most just duplicate
another one. Maybe a few more bells and whistles, but not really original. All
you do is decide which one fits your needs.
I will let you know my progress and if things get better. Either way it's a fun
learning experience!
Any help, tips, tricks, howto, must have or worthwhile software I should see,
will be appreciated. Don't forget you can write me direct at my email
[email protected].
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