Getting to know Solaris

The past ten years I've been working comfortably with various distributions of Linux (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Gentoo, Mandrake, RedHat, Debian, Suse) and I have really enjoyed what they have to offer. During the four years where I was self-employed all my machines were running one or the other distribution of Linux (My favourite to this day is Ubuntu closely followed by Gentoo).

Anyways, lately I've become curious about Solaris and would like to use it for a Java build server that I'm setting up. The server will host a versioning system (Subversion), a continuous integration system (CruiseControl most likely) and an issue tracking system (Mantis most likely).

Last weekend I started my project to set-up Solaris. It's been quite a struggle as I thought that I could just transfer all my Linux skills to Solaris - but little did I know at that time.

Status as of now is that I've

• downloaded the DVD image of Solaris 10 onto my Windows workstation


• Merged the two ISO files (this took me time to figure out as I'm not exactly known for reading the instructions before starting work!)


• Created a Virtual Machine in the free version of VMWare 1.0.4 with 15 GB Hard disk space


• Installed Solaris with the minimum required software (the first few times I installed it I didn't select the custom installation and ended up installing both Java Desktop System and CDE - all I really wanted was just a text console).


• Installed pkg-get for package management


• Installed a few packages like SSH, Subversion, Apache, PHP, MySQL

One thing that has thoroughly annoyed me is package management. When you're use to apt-get (Debian) its hard getting use to tinker around so much to get packages to compile and configure properly.

So here I am... I've been contemplating how to continue from here, and that is when I saw an announcement about free Solaris training in Sun Learning Centre with the added bonus of being part of a $50,000 sweepstake!

For any other people considering Solaris I'd recommend signing up for the free training while it lasts as it will give you a head start on the nitty gritty of Solaris.

More about my adventures into Solaris later.