Solaris Operating System

[Dan Gould]

Any opinions/reports on Sun Microsystem's Solaris OS? My wife's partner is refusing to pay even $170 for XP Pro for their extra work station, so my wife is now curious about Solaris, since its apparently free. Any advice? In particular (and forgive us if this is a stupid question), does Solaris have its own "Office" suite of products, or will MS Office be easily loaded?

Thanks in advance.

[rockefeller center]

Welcome to the world of GNU/Linux.

http://www.ubuntu.com/

http://www.ubuntu.com/products/WhatIsUbuntu/desktopedition

[Claude]

Solaris is a UNIX-based OS that was popular in the scientific community. For home use, you'll fare better with a Linux distribution (like Ubuntu) because it is easier to set up.

As far as office software goes, Open Office is now the most popular free software.

http://www.openoffice.org

Windows software can be run in an emulation environment under Linux, but that's mainly a solution where no suitable Linux software exists.

Edited May 3, 2008 by Claude

[Dan Gould]

OK, so if I understand, any employee using this work station would use different software but that software would be able to open Word docs or Excel pages, and the documents that software produces would be recognized by Word or Excel and other people in the PC world would be able to open them, right?

What about network issues? As in, "seeing" the printer, scanner/fax, and (I think) wireless internet?

[BruceH]

Is it both sentient and incomprehensible?

[Christiern]

I have noticed lately that, when PC people send me awkward files, my Mac automatically goes to Linux and opens them in Open Office. I guess it must be a part of the Leopard Mac OS package, because I never installed this program. Anyway, it works well and I am able to save the files in more conventional formats.

[Uncle Skid]

OK, so if I understand, any employee using this work station would use different software but that software would be able to open Word docs or Excel pages, and the documents that software produces would be recognized by Word or Excel and other people in the PC world would be able to open them, right?

What about network issues? As in, "seeing" the printer, scanner/fax, and (I think) wireless internet?

Open Office does not automatically save to MS Word or Excel formats, but it's very easy to do a "Save As..", and specify "Microsoft Work 97/2000/XP(.doc)" for documents, or "Microsoft Excel 97/2000/XP (.xls)" for spreadsheets. My kids use Open Office for homework all the time, and have never had any problems with their work being recognized by MS Word/Excel. I have also used it for many business documents, and never had any incompatibilities.

The other direction seems to work well too -- Open Office can open documents originally created in MS Office.

One caveat: interoperability with MS Office 2007 may present some problems, but it looks like the latest version of Open Office supports it. It hasn't been an issue for me yet, as almost all companies I work with aren't running Office 2007 yet.

Networking, printing, scanning, and wireless are all supported in Ubuntu Linux, and work quite well.

Download it, burn a CD, and give it a try. You can boot directly from the CD, and although it may run slightly slower, you can get a feel for how it works without actually installing it to the hard drive. Office Office is included on the Ubuntu CD.

It's not perfect, but neither is Windoze!

[Dan Gould]

OK, so if I understand, any employee using this work station would use different software but that software would be able to open Word docs or Excel pages, and the documents that software produces would be recognized by Word or Excel and other people in the PC world would be able to open them, right?

What about network issues? As in, "seeing" the printer, scanner/fax, and (I think) wireless internet?

Open Office does not automatically save to MS Word or Excel formats, but it's very easy to do a "Save As..", and specify "Microsoft Work 97/2000/XP(.doc)" for documents, or "Microsoft Excel 97/2000/XP (.xls)" for spreadsheets. My kids use Open Office for homework all the time, and have never had any problems with their work being recognized by MS Word/Excel. I have also used it for many business documents, and never had any incompatibilities.

The other direction seems to work well too -- Open Office can open documents originally created in MS Office.

One caveat: interoperability with MS Office 2007 may present some problems, but it looks like the latest version of Open Office supports it. It hasn't been an issue for me yet, as almost all companies I work with aren't running Office 2007 yet.

Networking, printing, scanning, and wireless are all supported in Ubuntu Linux, and work quite well.

Download it, burn a CD, and give it a try. You can boot directly from the CD, and although it may run slightly slower, you can get a feel for how it works without actually installing it to the hard drive. Office Office is included on the Ubuntu CD.

It's not perfect, but neither is Windoze!

Thanks Skid, I'll report to my wife that, as usual, there have been helpful posts from the mighty 'O' community.