solaris vs linux

linux. by far.

as of right now there is zero zip nada support for wireless in solaris, and its something that linux has down with native madwifi, ipw2200 and even broadcom drivers, and if all else fails, ndiswrapper.

and overall linux is just more popular and this is where things are happening. BSD (PC-BSD) is also an option, but still, BSD is more server oriented, not end user desktops.

and btw, in temrs of laptop linux, i found Ubuntu and PCLinuxOS to be best bets.

I would love to try solaris sometime, especially because it's open source now. I just don't know if I could do anything useful on it. I checked http://www.sunfreeware.com and most of the packages appear to be server related. So it might be a nifty web server, but probably not a good desktop.

I hope it continues to improve, tho. The more non-microsoft oss systems the better, especially if the source is ported easily between architectures. I just wish BeOS still existed.

ive played around with it and it definitely doesnt hold a candle to the likes of ubuntu

BeOS is being carried forward as Zeta by a small company called yellowTab in Germany. Apparently, they obtained the appropriate licenses to the sources and to distribute. Still a lot of the same hardware issues, especially for laptops, but hey, it's BeOS - I mean Zeta. My favorite OS of all time.

http://www.yellowtab.com/

Yah I downloaded the freeware from sun.com, the actual version of solaris from sun is 100% aimed at servers. For example theres no option to turn the computer off from the log in screen. The network config was very different, all i found were tools to run a network, and not get the internet working :/. The Java gnome desktop was kinda cool, but in my opinion java is a developer only tool. All the best stuff that is done with java and ajax, users can use without downloading java or ajax like gmail. All of the java required things to use on the internet are very subpar say in comparison to flash requiring things like java chats and games like runescape (which i still can't believe doesnt fully support any browser besides internet explorer for how large of a grosseing game that is). Alot of the open solaris stuff looks promising, and I'd rather keep an open mind to it than choose sides. None of it has reached a 1.0 release yet, and its guaranteed that hardware support is going to be a very difficult because the kernel is new for open, and the original one it was based off of was server only. I mean personally right now free bsd seems alot more interesting, since its been open for a long while with more hardware support, and because solaris was originally based off of bsd just like mac os. Also if you've never given pcbsd a try you should most deffinatly do so, www.pcbsd.com, its just freebsd with preconfigured packages and graphical desktop/installer but its done really well with pbi packages you can chose from that will be fully installed with a package program for pcbsd, all of these pbis you get straight off of the website at www.pbidir.com. The preconfiged packages are things like opera 8.5 w/preconfiged flash, open office 2.0, kmplayer with regional encoded dvd playback, videolan which is same as kmplayer but supports menus and anamorphic widescreen, and I think I even saw doom 3 in the works.