SunOS (er... Solaris)

From: Zane H. Healy <healyzh_at_aracnet.com>
Date: Fri Aug 3 20:58:50 2001

> I was hoping Sun would open up 2.6 and later to the net like they did
> with 8... but it appears either licensing issues stop them or they
> are too interested in moving the new hardware.

I don't think they see any reason to. However, I must confess to rather
likeing 2.6 as I've got a bunch of S-Bus cards that won't run on higher
(both 100Mbit Ethernet and SCSI cards). Still I was able to come up with
enough HW to be able to run 8 on my SS20.

> 8 cost me $100 even though I can't run it on my current hardware.
> The server version of 7 with stuff like Solstice Disk Suite (in the 8 I
> have) would cost over $3k... (as an upgrade to the SunOS license these
> Sparc2's had). The desktop Sparc version is over $300 for the license
> and $100 for the media.

Why not just get the stuff on eBay? I bought my 8 kit on eBay for about
$30-40 less than Sun wanted. It was still in the shrinkwrap.

> I guess every Sparc sysadmin must've socked away sparc CD's from work to
> support their home Suns... 8-) (or they're running FreeBSD and
> Open/NetBSD) at home.

OpenBSD seems to work pretty good. I've got it on some of my Sparcs at the
moment. In the case of my SparcBook 3GS, it's the only thing I've got to
run on it :^(

> Meanwhile I just picked up a 21 inch Trinitron refurb monitor which
> will handle BNC inputs so I can switch it between Vax and Sparc and PC.

Nice! While a Sparc is almost usable on a 17", you really need a 19-21" :^)

I've got to admit though, I've not even bothered to hook a monitor back up
to my SS20, it's more convenient to either telnet in, or bring up its
desktop on my Mac (same with my main VMS systems).

                                Zane
Received on Fri Aug 03 2001 - 20:58:50 BST