[Sussex] Solaris Networking

[Nico Kadel-Garcia]

Jon Fautley wrote:
> Desmond Armstrong wrote:
>> LINUX is our main purpose but since this is free download Unix and is 
>> also open I do feel that this is a reasonable digression from our 
>> main topics.
>
> It's about as open as a can of beans that's been welded shut and 
> placed under a 50 ton weight.
>
>> At the moment although for me Mandriva is my best distribution and, 
>> as is observed, the best distribution is the one i am familiar with, 
>> I am also tackling the problems with Ubuntu and, once I have solved 
>> the main ones with the help of our community, I will move on to other 
>> distributions.
>
> I don't think you'd want to use Solaris (has to remember not to spell 
> it 'Slowaris' as I'm posting from a company address ;) as a desktop 
> system. There is a GNU/Solaris distribution that's basically the 
> Solaris kernel with the Ubuntu userspace layered on top. I installed 
> it the other day, and it seemed kinda interesting. And slow. But I was 
> running it in VMWare.
>
> If you're after more UNIX-like experience, and want to be even more 
> free and open than Linux, check out the BSDs.
>
> Probably FreeBSD and OpenBSD. FreeBSD is 'user friendly'. OpenBSD is 
> secure and VERY minimal.
>
> If you really want to learn hard-core UNIX/BSD administration, I'd 
> look at OpenBSD. It's only 50-odd MB to download, too.
Solaris has.... interesting historical issues and variations from the 
open source and Linux models. The misnaming of SunOS 5.x as Solaris 2.x 
and renaming of SunOS 4.x+OpenWindows as Solaris 1.x was typical of 
market driven nuttiness Sun has been prone to. And the switch from BSD 
style UNIX with SunOs to AT&T style UNIX with Solaris caused issues.

They seem to have been reverting to BSD style UNIX due to the GNU and 
Linux pressures. Linux, for *years*, had far more usable versions of NIS 
and NFS than you could find on a default Sun obx.

That said, if you want to learn that path, go for mixed networks. I find 
OpenBSD's installer to be.... unfortunate indeed, but it's interesting 
to see something so tightly managed and "pure".

If you want to be leading edge and have a cheap play environment, 
though, try CygWin. You can learn quite a lot about open source packages 
and software development there, especially cross-platform work. The 
knowledge will stand you in good stead when the architecture changes 
under your project.