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Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sonki who wrote (11424)	10/27/1998 9:46:00 PM
From: David Evans	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 64865

>>Can I run solaris 7 on my pc? can I run my other pc applications on solaris? is there a PC compatbile something i can buy to run my apps on solaris? I would assume that solaris 7 is not currently made for x86 systems. Sun of course is porting a 64 bit system( I would assume solaris 7) over to intel systems for Merced. If you wanted to run Solaris on your pc, you can get it for minimal cost (around $20) right from their web page. I played around with it a bit, although I still use Redhat Linux since it has support for my video card that Solaris x86 didn't. One of these days I will get Xfree for Solaris and give it another try. As far as running pc apps in Solaris, I am not sure if this is possible. Linux does offer a dos and windows emulator, although I think they are still fairly buggy. I don't use them myself, I installed linux to try and minimize the amount of time I had to spend in windows. Dave

To: Sonki who wrote (11424)	10/27/1998 10:27:00 PM
From: JC Jaros	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

jc, thx for the info. Startoffice, i assume is wordprocesing and excel equiv. Could staroffice spreadsheet load into Excel and vice versa ? thx again. Can I run solaris 7 on my pc? can I run my other pc applications on solaris? is there a PC compatbile something i can buy to run my apps on solaris? looks like sunw in on a roll and i bet some people think that sunw is a workstation vendor. ha ha ha... Well, Sun is a workstation vendor. The ultimate outcome of being a Solaris user on x86 is to become a Solaris user aspiring to a Sparc workstation purchase. When you put Unix on a PC, you basically no longer have a PC, but rather a Unix workstation (or server). Although there are fundamentally good and compelling reasons to detach your home desktop from the Microsoft BS, you do kinda sign up for a whole other world of Unix BS, which is a more worthwhile pursuit IMO, but one that is inclusive of a (powerful) less intuitive interface, and a much steeper learning curve. I chose to go that route and I'm very glad that I did. I had the time and motivation to invest in it though (Linux). I ordered the Solaris 7 CD today. If Microsoft has you by the Office treble hook, you might not have a compelling reason to switch out of the warm and familiar Windows desktop. Having said that, you should definitely though consider migrating yourself to a Unix (Linux/Solaris) at the point you next feel compelled to purchase and install the next Windows OS "upgrade". If you have a high school student at home thinking about a CS or IT career, you should IMO do the favor of making a concerted effort to steer that person toward Unix. The SUNW strategy is not to displace end user Windows on the desktop with Solaris, but rather replace end user Windows on the desktop with Java. Sun doesn't mind at all that you run Linux or Solaris in place of Windows at home. The more mindshare the merrier but, I don't think Sun has any plans for an end user Solaris solution displacing Windows in the home. They're both fat clients and contrary to ultimate Sun thin client paradigm where most of the action is on the back end. Microsoft as yet does not make Office for Unix. Wordperfect Suite 8 is on it's way at least for Linux, and probably for Solaris, although I haven't heard back from Corel with an answer to that question. StarOffice as I understand it is cool, supports Word format (R/W) but not Excel. You can run one of several desktop Windows emulators, but in general that's a big kludge compared with running Win32 programs natively. So right now, the option for an MS Office enthusiast seeking to at the same time get wet with Solaris x86 (or Linux) is to stick with Windows/Office and partition your HD as a dual boot system. Then just wait for either Office to appear for Unix, or for the feature set of WPsuite8 or StarOffice or Applix, or some future Java productivity suite to become compelling enough for you to replace Win32/Office altogether. JCJ

To: Sonki who wrote (11424)	10/28/1998 10:13:00 AM
From: Judd	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 64865

Our company bought some Darwin Workstations, and yes, they run Windows 95 programs right out of the box. I think its called Soft Windows or something, but I don't remember. I'm stuck using a PC for now. My friend says its about as fast as a Pentium 90. You can also buy (or get for free) WABI, but it only runs 3.1 apps. WABI also runs on Linux. I bought/use Applixware 4.4.1 for Linux. It is compatible with Office 97, Word 6.0, 2.0. It has a spreadsheet, presentation package, mail, web page editor, and database, etc. I like it so far. S.U.S.E. is repackaging it and selling it as Linux Office Suite 99. They sell it for 20% less money. Its pretty good quality software. Also, WordPerfect for Linux is Free, as is Star Office, I think. I used the wordperfect and couldn't get it to print postscript. Applix has allowed me to be 100% MS free. I'm not affiliated, blah, blah (thats about as much legalese as I know). applixware.com applix.com Judd