Re: To all the computers ...

Gregory Alan Bolcer (gbolcer@gambetta.ICS.uci.edu)
Thu, 17 Dec 1998 13:05:54 -0800


Hi Jon!
The Inspiron has an ATI 3D pro video card
which is fairly standard. Sun supports ATI
cards in their Ultra5's, so they have some
really good drivers. The inspiron has a 8meg
disk, so I used partition magic to split it up
2.1 for unix, and the rest for windows. I haven't
re-installed Solaris back on it yet after that, and
in fact I reverted it back to a full Windows machine
until I get the latest rev. The reason
I haven't re-installed Solaris is that I ordered
Solaris 2.7, i.e. Solaris 7, so I was waiting for
that to come in. The initial install was 100%
partitioned Solaris 2.6 for x86. Being a now former
academic, it's available for the cost of the media, about $20.

X works the same way it does on the sparc. You can
install the Common Desktop Environment (CDE) which provides
a customizable graphical desktop and menus. There are also
a multitude of window managers such as mwm, fvtwm, twm, olwm
and others that run on Solaris as well as Linux that make it look
exactly like a Windows machine on one end, or exactly
like a vanilla X/unix workstation on the other.

For booting, you can use System Commander. Basically
my choice was to support win9x and unix or NT. NT
sucks for a portable, win9x is great for games, particularly
with that 15" LCD. Incidentally, I have a small scan line problem
with the LCD at 640x480 in Windows, but not under Solaris.
For unix, I wanted something that supports really fast Java.
Linux is fragmented and usually takes a couple of weeks
to catch up to the latest patches and releases. Solaris
always supports it right off. Also, Oracle 8i (Internet)
supprts Solaris 7 on x86, but not Linux.

Greg

> Hello
> I saw your post on the theatlantic.com and was hoping I could ask you a
> few questions about Solaris on the DEll Inspiron 7000
>
> Which version of Solaris did you use?
> How did X work, where there drivers and such for the video card?
> Do you have it dual booting?
>
> I would be interested to hear more about how it went.
>
> Thanks
>
> --
> Jon Conaway
> Mt Tech of the University of Montana
> Geophysical Engineering Dept.
> 406 496 4352
>
>
>