Archive for the ‘OS’ Category

Ubuntu, OpenSolaris, or PC-BSD

Tuesday, November 25th, 2008

Its that time again. Every so often I feel the need to try out a new OS. For the last year I have been running Hardy Heron on my trusty ThinkPad T61p. It was my first ThinkPad, and now I’m thinking it won’t be my last. After all, they have quad core ThinkPads now. Although, I’ve seen more and more colleagues becoming infected and turning in to Mac zombies. I wonder how long I can avoid infection.

For several minor and not so minor reasons, I may need to move off of Ubuntu. Although, I could try out Intrepid Ibex before I do. In the meantime I have installed OpenSolaris and PC-BSD images in VirtualBox. I tried to run them (I did get them installed) in VMWare, but there were issues with both. To be honest, there are still some minor issues with VirtualBox and PC-BSD. Namely, I haven’t been able to get the guest additions installed in PC-BSD. Nor can I seem to run it at a resolution greater than 1024 by 768 or at a color depth greater than 16 bit.

Update: I installed OpenSolaris 2008.11 RC2 in VMWare. Back when I tried 2008.05 I followed some instructions on installing the guest tools, and just like back then I was presented with the same wonderful black screen of death after installing the guest tools and restarting 2008.11 RC2. In addition, they was no Eclipse to be found. I thought that after seeing this page and this bug status that it might just be available as a package. I didn’t see it.

Update: I used the following instructions to install the guest tools on OpenSolaris 2008.11, and they worked. The only issue I’ve noticed so far is that the screen resolution is not automatically adjusted when you resize the window.

Update: Eclipse is now available as December 5th via IPS!

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