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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
(Unverified)May 16th 2008 6:24AM
I'm surprised to see how negative this article was on behalf of OpenSolaris, I think most operating systems will have issues on some systems. To hang out OpenSolaris due to failure on one machine like here do not seem fair.
Anyway, I'm not here to defend OpenSolaris, even though it has some heck of a nice features like ZFS, DTrace, and the TCP/IP stack. What you should have done is to test it on more than one system, and you should also use the [OpenSolaris] community to request help and report the issues you find --not just blow off steam and debunk the OS. I don't think it would take 21,600 seconds before you got help if you requested it...
On the other hand, the article is well written and entertaining. Just hope it won't scare off others from trying it.
(Unverified)May 16th 2008 8:20AM
Thanks, Geir!
I did actually try it on every machine I had available to me (working from home limits my options). An older P4 machine booted consistently, and I was more than willing to just base the review on that... Except the hardware on that machine (network, most notably) was not even as well supported as the machine I eventually used. The ethernet driver for the network card on the P4 machine had a long discussion about installation and configuration, and out of six people or so in the thread, it seemed one got it to work reliably. I considered trying it on my Eee, as I have heard the wired ethernet works well.
Much of those six hours were spent Googling for help, alas, because I really desperately wanted to give this LiveCD a healthy chance. I also know well that most people are much less patient (and thereby, much more sane) and if they couldn't get something to work the way it needed to after a much less significant amount of time, they'd have cursed wasting a disk and tossed the CD-R in the trash.
It didn't seem like something I needed to ask on support forums. People had asked very similar questions. Many, very many, were unresolved (though there were some nice tips on how to further troubleshoot, and that helped greatly.)
I've had my fair share of other OSs not working as planned on hardware. It does happen. An early Fedora release would not boot come hell nor high water on my former desktop. I've had problems with Windows.
Speaking reasonably, most people just looking to try out an alternative desktop don't want to search for answers for as long as I did... Did everything in my power to make this work, without looking too neurotic about my compulsive want to get things to fly right.
It's why I recommended steering clear of *this* release. Will the next one/the one after that be as difficult? Most likely not. But I'd still have to say, as it stands, it's not a bad release to forgo in favor of some other open UNIXes.
(Unverified)May 16th 2008 9:03AM
Yeah, I know how you feel. I had a big issue on the "regular" Solaris on my notebook before too. It is a pain when things don't work, but I've never spent 6 hours trying to resolve something. I either try all reasonable options and then either debug it myself (if it is open source) or ask or check if someone in the community has encountered the issue before. I have to say I have had more issues with RHEL/CentOS detection of hardware though, but usually there are ways around every issue unless it is something that is flat out not supported.
Anyway, OpenSolaris is to Solaris what Fedora is to RHEL/CentOS, so when you go for something cutting edge then be prepared to bleed... :-) Wow, that sounded very cheesy....but I think you know what I mean.
You did manage to highlight the weakest side of OpenSolaris though, namely the comparatively modest amount of supported hardware.
Thanks for your clarification.
(Unverified)May 16th 2008 9:07AM
Yeah, it was a bummer, because I really did want this to work. I don't have enough programming knowledge to make major alterations to code... Certainly the -k and -v switches in GRUB made life a lot easier when it came down to figuring out what is making this so touchy...
I would have asked a question or two... but whereas it seemed very similar problems had come up, and were resolved with varying amounts of success, it bothered me to ask the questions again.
I did see advice on the forums that I tried... Memory timing, disabling PnP, or, yes, even removing RAM (okay, I didn't try removing RAM. I'll mess with my BIOS. But it's too much effort to find the screwdriver, crack the case, and pop out the memory module.)
There seemed to be someone on the forum who did have a hang up on boot, revealed by the -v switch, but it was an entirely different piece of hardware causing the issue. Don't know if he actually was able to fix it... I was lucky, actually, it was just a mouse issue and my house is filled with adapters. :)