Peter's Sun3 Zoo

What's New - chronologically sorted
History of the Sun3 Series - How it happened
The Zoo - with lots of nice pictures
Spare Parts - and even more pictures
Tips and Tricks - Docs of Hard- and Software
Location - Where is the Sun3-Zoo?
Links - Other Sun3 related stuff on the Net


What's New

Oct 27. 2007 - Linux

For years we heared: Linux on the desktop is coming. But if you work with PCs every day you know: Windows might not be all the best, but it does work somehow.

I can say i am able to use Linux, MacOS, Unix and Windows equally well. And i can decide what combination of hardware, software and operating system is suitable for which task. My PowerMac G4 Cube runs MacOS X, my server runs Solaris, my older PCs and closet servers run Linux. But my newer PCs run Windows 2000 or XP. From time to time i try to make Linux work on 'em - during partitioning i always leave enough room for it - but it was never the first choice yet.

My one year old Acer Travelmate is especially challenging. Immediately after buying i tried SuSE 9.3, later 10.1 and 10.2. But the experience ranged from interesting to annoying. The sound did not work, then no WLAN and the graphics was 1024x768 despite the fact, that the screen is capable of 1280x800. With 10.1 i nearly made the graphics work but after some restarts the screen went and stayed dark. Eventually i gave up.

Windows XP was frustrating too: After half a year i downgraded to Windows 2000 which ran ok so far.

But yesterday evening i had an encounter of a different kind. OpenSuSE 10.3 was attached to the c't magazine. Of course i tried it and what shall i say: after on hour of installation and two hours of configuration everything important was working!

Graphics displayed out of the box at 1280x800. WLAN was gorgeous - as comfortable as on Windows. Sound and suspend to disk run without a hitch. And the multimedia stuff was not more than selecting the community repositories of VideoLan and Packman and installing some packets. Then my mp3s would play fine and i was able to watch my Online TV-Recorder movies.

Here is the short list of the additionally installed packets:

  • VLC