[rescue] Solaris 8 Differences

[Brian Hechinger]

> > For the second time in a month, I've been bitten by the Sparc bug. I
> > just won a -nicely- loaded LX on eBay, with a full 96M of RAM and 8G
> > of hard drives for $63. 
> 
> Congrats, these are hard to find. 

and completely kick ass little machines.

> > What are the major differences I'll find when it comes to this
> > Solaris installation, over what I would have seen with Linux or BSD
> > systems I've used in the past? 
> 
> Well... Solaris ist different. Quite different, because it is SystemV.
> It seems to be more memory hungry, especially in recent version. 2.5
> may be more efficient. 

my desktop box at Lucent eons ago was an LX with 16M ram and a second GX
card in it.  ran like a CHAMP.  solaris 8 would run on an LX with 96M ram,
but may be just a but bloated for it, but not too bad.  although it's not
so much solaris itself that's the hog, it's Xsun that's the hog.

> X is a problem of its on. The free Xservers seem to be a bit flaky on
> Sparcs, at least the one from Debian 2.2 sucks. Debian 3.0 isn't ready
> yet, but there have been problem reported, too. The Solaris server is
> better.

i've run X on NetBSD on sparc without a single bit of flakyness.

> Imho having only 256 colours at a maximum resolution of 1152x864 just
> isn't worth it. Getting a cheap Matrox as second or third graphics
> card in a PC is *much* faster at higher resolution/colours. 

uhm, you do realize your target audience here right?  we'd *ALL* rather own
slow than PC.  :)

> OpenBSD and Linux should be fine for console use. Solaris sucks,
> because it has no frame buffer support and no virtual terminals.

what do you mean it has no frame buffer support?  and yes it does have virtual
terminals, it's call screen.  install it, use it, love it.

-brian