Solaris 10

So I’ve been thinking about building some kind of server with Solaris 10. Solaris is a free operating system that’s built by Sun Microsystems and is based on Java. I used Solaris 9 in the first programming class that electrical engineers have to take at Clemson, and since then I’ve heard that the new version (10) is great for server-type things. Maybe I can get a web server going.

I have an old-ish Dell Dimension desktop with a Pentium 4 that should be good for the project (Solaris only runs on x86/64 and SPARC). My experience with Dell, though, has been that they put unusual proprietary hardware in their base-line desktops in order to save money, and you’ll never be able to find all the drivers you need unless you’re using Windows. And sometimes not even then. But any way, it’s the only computer I have around.

I realized that I need to get my firewall working first, before I mess with any new projects. So I’ll come back to this when I finish.

—

So the firewall is [more or less] working again, but I’m giving up on that for now. Solaris is installing itself on the Dell, so I’m going to get some samiches while it finishes.

—

So I’m usually right when it comes to Dell doing stupid things when they build computers. This time they built a computer with integrated graphics, then put a PCI video card in too, only the PCI card overrides onboard video by default and if you remove the card, the BIOS can’t tell and you have to put the card back in to change BIOS to use only the AGP onboard graphics. The kicker is that Solaris couldn’t recognize the PCI card after the install, because it’s some lame proprietary Dell card, so I have to do it all over using the generic AGP graphics card. Shoot me in the face.