08.06.05
OpenSolaris on Laptops?
Up until recently I have heavily relied on my old and trusty Apple ibook laptop. Unfortunately it finally bit the dust a couple months ago (I think the system board is fried). My ultimate plan is to replace the ibook with a shiny new powerbook, but my budget will not permit the purchase of a new powerbook in the next few months. I’ve been thinking about getting a Dell laptop to tide me over until then, so I at least have something I can take to Starbucks and work from.
I had been thinking about installing Solaris x86 to test out the SUN Java Desktop environment, as I haven’t used a SUN workstation heavily since they released that. Actually that’s a lie- I use an Ultra 10 every day at work, however it’s low on RAM so I stick with CDE there because my 200 open Firefox windows already tax it enough.
It occurs to me, however, that I have no idea what the state of wifi support for Solaris/OpenSolaris is. I’ve done some googling and it’s not looking pretty. If I can’t run Solaris on the laptop, I suppose I’ll go with Fedora Core or something similar but I was getting jazzed about the prospect of a SUN x86 desktop. I have (well, had until my recent PC meltdown) Solaris x86 installs running under VMware on my primary Windows XP machine but that doesn’t really count as I only boot up a Solaris instance when I want to try something. As I did recently with my Solaris Zones experiment. That type of usage does not give you a good sense of what the UI is like on a day in, day out working basis. What to do, what to do?
I suppose I’ll hop on over to the OpenSolaris channel on irc.freenode.net and ask around.
Tags: Solaris, OpenSolaris, WiFi
michael’s thoughts » Time for a New PC Soon said,
May 28, 2007 at 7:10 pm
[...] get a replacement desktop or to get a laptop. I haven’t had a functioning laptop since the death of my much lamented iBook. I need to get both, but it’s a question of what to do [...]