sparc computer

[xxispawn01xx]

guys i want to know i wanna start on solaris cuz i want a good job tell me about the power that ive heard about this baby! should i run a GUI on it? is it worth runnig a GUI, and also wat specs should I look like aroudn wat mhz and all?
ANY BOOKS U WOULD RECCOMEND FOR A YOUNG TEEN ON THE TOPIC? thx in advance :)

[scinerd]

as far as spec for a sun I have a ton of ultra 5's 400Mhz with 500mb of ram. They run fine with a bunch of people on them. For a single user you can get away with something slower. If you are buying new almost anything will work for you to learn on.

If you want to use the gui I would say go for it. You should know you way around it. Most sysadmin stuff you will do in a terminal anyway. The install is the only thing I would say you should do both on a gui and terminal. When you get a job and need to install on a large server, your not going to hook up a monitor on it. I use minicom on my linux laptop and a null modem cable which you can get from belkin.

when it comes to books I like Mark Sobell. He has a number of books. His books are a little out of date but It goes over a lot of basic stuff that doesn't change. The other thing you can do is sun has lots of manuals you can download. the other thing to keep in mind is you can download solaris for free on sun's site. You can get 9 but I would also learn 8 since that is what most people use.

[xxispawn01xx]

does it dual boot? :P so tell me more about the specs and the price ?

[scinerd]

sun has a X86 version of solaris if your tight for cash but that version is not free like the sparc version. It'sw also not realy very good from what I here. Daul boot I don't think is done by default but I'm sure it could be done.

Price is a big gap you can get a ultra 5 used for cheap off ebay. It looks like you pick up one for less then $200. The specs are a little funny the cpu's are not the same as a X86 pc. A 400mhz sun will run stuff faster then a 400mhz pc. The ultra 5 is nice because the bus is ide so you can use off the shelf cdrom and hard drives. The one down side is after you label a hard drive(paritiion it) you realy need to clean it off with a disk tool before using it in a pc. you can get something newer if you have the cash but for learning almost anthying 333+ should be fine.

The monitor output is for a sun monitor but you can get an adapter to use a std monitor. you will need to get a sun keyboard and mouse. The other option is to just use a terminal and after you have it setup just ssh/telnet into it.

The other site you want to know is www.sunfreeware.com which is where you can down load non default sw packages. Packages are what rpm's where based off. I think the command to install is "pkgadd -d packagefile" but it's been a while since I've used it.

[bs_texas]

Originally posted by xxispawn01xx
guys i want to know i wanna start on solaris cuz i want a good job tell me...

ANY BOOKS U WOULD RECCOMEND...
I would recommend you start here first:

The Elements of Style
- Strunk & White - MacMillan
The Little Rhetoric & Handbook
- Corbet - Wiley
Human Communication
- Book, Albrecht, et al. - St. Martin's
Technical Writing
- Mills & Walter - Holt, Rinehart, Winston

These are probably kind of dated at this point, but similar study materials for your 'young teen' age level will help.

Sorry, I don't have any Sun SPARC references.

regards...

[xulfralos]

LMAO


xxispawn01xx,

if you are a 'young teen' then there's no need to rush to learn Solaris. By the time you enter the workforce there will probably be some radical new UNIX that's all the rage (then again, probably not).

Anyway, if you still want to find out about how much Sun gear costs, do a search on eBay:

ultra (http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?GetResult&query=ultra&from=R10&ht=1&currdisp=2&itemtimedisp=1&st=2&category2=11217&Top10=&SortProperty=MetaEndSort&catref=C1)

Many of them will have specs, so you can learn a good deal about the hardware just by browsing ads.

[xxispawn01xx]

i know about ebay i wanna know wat specs i should look for, and will practically any monitor work? how come they have sooooooooo much ram wat kinda ram do they run? and wat is sooo hotty about solaris other than its the os of the future

[scinerd]

most sun machine will use a sun monitor but if you get an adapter you can use a standard monitor. this is the adapter http://www.anysystem.com/13w3m-130-3034-x3872a.html

with this you can use standard monitor/keyboard/mouse
http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Merchant_Id=1&Product_Id=62277

Like I said before any ultra 5 is going to work for you. I like the 400Mhz+ with 500mb of ram. Keep in mind these things are made for heavy duty work, so thats why they all have tons of ram. For a single user you can get away with almost anything. The ram type is basied on a the model. For example ram made for a ultra 5 will not working in a pc or a 280. They also come in groups of four so if you want 2gb of ram then you will get 4 X 500mb.

The big deal with solaris is it's the most common unix out there. There is also hp unix witch is different but not as common and from what I hear not as good. Right now linux support for major programs is growing but In the the unix world almost everything will run on solaris.

On the other hand if you know linux realy well the jump to solaris is not going to be that big.

[BoomerADF]

If you really want a good job you will need to learn the english language and how to speak it.

I dont think your boss wants to read something that says: WATS THE SPECS FOR THAT BADASS SERVAR BOSS DUDE????


Most Unix flavors will run on about any hardware as long as you have it for the proper platform x86, SPARC, Alpha etc.

[xxispawn01xx]

how do i determine which one is the best for my computer? and bs_2003 yur icon always makes me laugh so hard because my cat does the same thing!

[xulfralos]

If you want a good job, you're going to have to know how to write English correctly.

No one's going to hire anyone who can't even spell 'what'.

The topic here is about sparc workstations, now you want to know what is best for your computer?

No one here ever said Solaris is the OS of the future, it's the OS of the present that is the choice of many companies in enterprise environments that choose to run a UNIX-based network.

You're not going to have very much fun learning Solaris, but you will have lots of fun learning BSD, especially since you probably won't need to buy any hardware. Then later on after you mature a bit, you can apply what you know to learning Solaris. By that time, Sun hardware will be really cheap and easy to obtain. Even more so than it is now.

Anyway, please don't post any more questions on this same topic, it's getting old. Everyone that has responded has given you plenty of information and suggestions for you to make a decision and get started.

[xxispawn01xx]

hey thx for the replies ppl and i really like wat u say about transition from freebsd to solaris but yur attitude really pisses me off i asked inicely so dont be a god damn snob there are a lot more people who write in slang dont give me sass.

now for those of u who are nice to answer, i want to know i will learn C++ will learning it on linux be different from windows? will it be more powerful? where can I find C++ tutorials for a linux platform(it would greatly be appreciated)

[BoomerADF]

Originally posted by xxispawn01xx
hey thx for the replies ppl and i really like wat u say about transition from freebsd to solaris but yur attitude really pisses me off i asked inicely so dont be a god damn snob there are a lot more people who write in slang dont give me sass.

now for those of u who are nice to answer, i want to know i will learn C++ will learning it on linux be different from windows? will it be more powerful? where can I find C++ tutorials for a linux platform(it would greatly be appreciated)

You are the one speaking like a dip**** man not us. You asked for help when you go to get a job so we told you dont use your little 14 year old chat room speak.

C++ is C++ when learning it. There will be a difference on how to compile and what its writing depending on the OS. When you get into useing it ofcourse the OS will matter.

[xxispawn01xx]

wat os would u reccomend for newbies, and wat os has more power to harness in general?

[stiles]

Originally posted by xulfralos
You're not going to have very much fun learning Solaris, but you will have lots of fun learning BSD...

Why would you say that other than the hardware issue?

[RWiggum]

Originally posted by scinerd
The one down side is after you label a hard drive(paritiion it) you realy need to clean it off with a disk tool before using it in a pc.

Could you provide a little more details? I'm about to do this. I just bought a U5/400/512 off eBay (sweet!) and pulled the drive. I had a spare 20GB to put in it, so I'm putting its Sun-labelled 8GB in a computer I'm giving away. I was unaware that I'd have a problem reformatting back to fat32. What tool would you recommend? I have EraserD, DOS fdisk, various Linuxen (c)fdisk, etc. - I don't need Partition Magic, do I?

ispawn01 - I suggest you buy a SparcStation 5. They can be had off eBay for ~$20+shipping, usually for a total of about $50. Look for a 70-110MHz processor with at least 32MB of RAM. A functioning CD-ROM will help with OS installation. That's about all you need to get started, and won't break the bank. If you get about a 4GB drive with it you'll have plenty of room to dual-boot Solaris 7 or 8 and Debian Sparc. It's not going to be fast, but if you just want a learning tool it will do. Use it until it quits (which will probably be a very long time) and then throw it away. Don't expect to run KDE or Gnome, but you can probably run a small WM like IceWM or Fluxbox for X sessions.

xulfralos - He he - I have a good idea what that "radical new UNIX" will be...

[xulfralos]

Originally posted by stiles
Why would you say that other than the hardware issue?

Well, obviously the hardware factor is the biggest, so that really can't be ignored. Other than that:

(1) Excellent manpages and documentation.
(2) Way more resources for BSD than Solaris (websites, IRC channels).
(3) Way more software for BSD than Solaris.
(4) BSD supports much more hardware than Solaris.
(5) BSD can run Solaris and Linux binaries.
(6) Solaris is a PITA for a newbie to get running on x86, and running well at that.
(7) Solaris is a PITA for a newbie to configure.

That should be enough.

An OS is only as powerful as its administrator.

See what I mean about xxispawn01xx's inane questions? They are pointless.

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

Originally posted by RWiggum
Could you provide a little more details? I'm about to do this. I just bought a U5/400/512 off eBay (sweet!) and pulled the drive. I had a spare 20GB to put in it, so I'm putting its Sun-labelled 8GB in a computer I'm giving away. I was unaware that I'd have a problem reformatting back to fat32. What tool would you recommend? I have EraserD, DOS fdisk, various Linuxen (c)fdisk, etc. - I don't need Partition Magic, do I?


If the disk has a Sun Disklabel, then you just need to use fdisk in Linux to make a new DOS disklabel. It should just be as simple as that...

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

Originally posted by xxispawn01xx
hey thx for the replies ppl and i really like wat u say about transition from freebsd to solaris but yur attitude really pisses me off i asked inicely so dont be a god damn snob there are a lot more people who write in slang dont give me sass.

now for those of u who are nice to answer, i want to know i will learn C++ will learning it on linux be different from windows? will it be more powerful? where can I find C++ tutorials for a linux platform(it would greatly be appreciated)

thx 4 not using d AOL chat spk here. I don't really like to respond to people who use "slang". If you know it's slang, and you see that people here are annoyed by it, why use it? besides, it only shows you are a lazy keyboard user. I can type about 70 wpm without really trying, all because I pride myself on being able to not use "slang" to get my point across. Our attitudes don't suck; if you notice, each time we got onto you for typing like a lame AOLer, we also gave you the answer to your question.

I don't mind helping people like you, I would just appreciate a bit more maturity. And age is not an excuse, either... :rolleyes:

[stiles]

(1) Excellent manpages and documentation.

I haven't found sun's man pages to be lacking, if anything they provide more info than is in free os'

(2) Way more resources for BSD than Solaris (websites, IRC channels).

I'll take quality over quantity any day. I'll give you an example, in the Solaris admin doc book it details how to recover an UFS superblock, where would I find that type of detailed information for *bsd.

(3) Way more software for BSD than Solaris.

I disagree, almost all software that runs on *BSD is opensource and will compile just fine on Solaris. The reverse can not be said. This is just a side note I have personally seen more opensource projects that flat out said that our code will not compile on a BSD platform cause XXXX POSIX lib is missing (two in the last two years, can’t remember what projects offhand cause they weren’t that interesting to begin with).

(4) BSD supports much more hardware than Solaris.

I just got a loaded ultra 2, it's on the way and I'm happy :)

(5) BSD can run Solaris and Linux binaries.

Come on, if this was the end all, be all of running software not available for BSD then why is there a petition to influence oracle to make a BSD release (the fact is nobody has to my knowledge been able to get an oracle instance up using binary emulation on a BSD platform)? Why has there been such a stink over not having a JVM for BSD, why not just use binary emulation? BTW solaris has binary emulation for linux binaries, and it runs solaris binaries natively, go figure....

(6) Solaris is a PITA for a newbie to get running on x86, and running well at that.

Yea this one can get you even if you do read the related docs of supported hardware.

(7) Solaris is a PITA for a newbie to configure.

Is vi really that much harder to use compared to nvi? </tongue-n-cheek>

[xulfralos]

stiles: you have a few (but not all) valid points; my points are geared towards that of a newbie.

All I'm saying is that for someone who is trying to move from linux to a more UNIX-like system, BSD is easier to make a transition to than Solaris.

It's obvious you have a good deal of experience using Solaris; I myself have an Ultra 2 and an older SS10 w/dual ROSS CPUs. While it was cool to get them up and running, I don't find myself using the U2 much and the SS10 is sitting on a shelf. I find that I don't have much fun using Solaris and I don't want to spend lots of time manipulating it so that I'm comfortable with it.

I have a lot more fun with FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD.