Installing OpenSolaris 2008.11

OpenSolaris 2008.11 was officially released, quickly installed in his own notebook, and would like to experience how ZFS's time Slider feature is powerful.

DELL Inspiron 1420

Half a year ago in 1420 has been installed in the version of 2008.05, Live CD boot up, the results of disappointment found on board 100M network card is not supported, so did not continue to install. This is probably the benefit of live CDs, so don't waste your time. But do not give up, or to check a bit, found that someone submitted a bug, it seems to use Dell's book a lot of people. Later, this bug unexpectedly turned to our group to do, has always thought that the 100M Broadcom should be the Japanese Masa driver support, but also sent letters to ask him. The result is that, although it is 100M PHY, it is still closer to the 1000M mac and is best supported by BGE.

The 2008.11 installation is still smooth, Live CD boot up, the network card has been able to identify, and DHCP to an IP, then the next, the more cool is that ZFS does not need to the hard disk planning partition, which makes a lot of people think it is a bug, Often see the BBS people asked. It seems that the user habits change is really not easy ah.

Since 1420 is a discrete graphics card, the OpenSolaris 3D Desktop is installed by default, but it needs to be opened. Nvidia graphics driver Good, support is very smooth, much better than Vista, the original to see what Vista Aero Special effect is a look, spend more than hundreds of dollars from home basic upgrade to Prenium, really failed AH.

Lenovo Thinkpad x200

Installation on the x200 is still a bit worrying, after all, the book is a little more than 1420 new. My x200 does not have the optical drive, so first I made a USB installation disk with distribution constructor,

./usbgen Os200811.iso Os200805.usb/tmp

./usbcopy Os200811.usb

In this way, you can directly use a USB stick to guide the system. Sure enough, boot up, found that the Intel 5300 AGN Wireless network card is not supported, the other is the fingerprint recognition device does not support. Fingerprint identification I know it's because of the law, the Chinese side of the code has been slow to enter the main version. But the wireless card driver should not, this side but has been and intel in cooperation. Checked, in fact, OpenSolaris's IWH has supported the Intel 5300 Series wireless network card, but just this device is relatively new, has not joined the device ID, so it is not recognized correctly. After installation, with Update_drv–a–i ' "pciex8086, 4236" ' IWH Update device ID, finally the wireless card can be used. OpenSolaris Nwam is automatically opened, after booting, into the desktop, the wireless card can automatically connect to the AP. OpenSolaris's own update manager is also good, after a few days, the report has a software update, the installation process is simple, reboot, upgrade to the new kernel version.

Time Slider does put the characteristics of ZFS, in the desktop to open this feature, the File Manager has a time scroll bar, arbitrary drag, you can see the folder content at any point in the snapshot, no longer worry about accidentally deleted files, because there is a machine. It is said that this is a snapshot feature of ZFS, where redundant data is much smaller than normal file backups.

X200 is a small, Intel integrated graphics, so the 3D desktop opens, the window will feel very slow, so still give up 3D effects.

In short, OpenSolaris 2008.11 brings us a lot of new experience, of course, there are many areas that need to be improved. OpenSolaris support for x86 hardware is a lot better, but there are still a few gaps. In particular, the power management of this piece, the DELL 1420 suspend/resume very useful, but x200 suspend later, will never recover.

Personally, the OpenSolaris community really needs to think about how to better engage more companies or individuals in x86 hardware support. Otherwise, OpenSolaris, which is located as a desktop version, is difficult to achieve more success. At this point, some people have proposed to open the GPL OpenSolaris source code, personally feel more agree. While this may also make some of the good things in Solaris, such as ZFS, taken away by others, the individual thinks that ZFS, even if it is well protected, is only a temporary lead, but the issue of x86 hardware vendor support has been a matter of death in a few years. Of course, the above is only a personal point of view, the future of the community, it is really difficult to say.