Linux and Solaris

So I've been doing some research into different operating systems, since Windows seems to be generally annoying from an architectural standpoint, and I figured that since I was using a virtual machine anyway, I'd check out several OS's. It's been kinda fun while being a tad annoying at times. I've run across some that require an advanced computer degree to install, and others that are fairly easy. 

One thing with non-Windows OS's is that where in Windows, the Graphical User Interface (GUI) is the primary access point for the operating system, in other OS's, the access point is a command line interface, and the GUI is run on top of the basic OS. Hence, when I installed a couple of Linux systems, they were using a desktop environment called Gnome. When I installed Solaris, an OS also based on Unix by Sun Microsystems, it also used Gnome for the desktop GUI. Hence, on both systems, I ended up looking at exactly the same screen and options...and neither one of them were interested in my blasted video card.

To digress to the video card problem, I have an NVIDIA GeForce 6200 which came packaged with my PC when I bought it, and while Windows seems to get along with it just fine, I've had nothing but trouble in getting Linux to acknowledge its existence. Solaris permitted me to change the screen resolution, at least, but Unbuntu locked me into a max resolution of 800 x 600, and while Debian has me at a large-enough-to-use resolution, I have scrollbars on the outside of my Virtual Machine that I have to get to if I want to see the bottom of the screen. It's annoying.

Anyway, I decided to see what people thought of Solaris versus Linux in terms of use, and the universal answer from those geeky enough to know both of them turned out to be "it depends on what you want to do with them." What does that mean for me? Not a whole lot, to be honest. So I went to my next source: the library. I searched in the extensive database of available reading material in the Tulsa City-County Library System to see what I could get on both Linux and Solaris.

My first victim was Linux which returned pages and pages of books on not only the OS itself, but the variations of it like Fedora, Red Hat, Ubuntu, and the many versions of each. That was cool, so I requested some books on the basic OS, and one on Ubuntu since it seems to be fairly popular. Time to see what I could find on Solaris. Typed it in. 

Nothing. Not a single book in the entire library references this OS. As much of an internet hound as I can be sometimes, I still prefer a hard copy of material to read, since scrolling through pages while you're actually trying to do something on the machine is no fun. I also can't afford to be printing out all that material, even if I could find it online. 

That pretty well clenched. Linux it would be since there's no info on Solaris. Linux has a greater community support structure online as well as being almost 100% open sourced, whcih means those with the know how can update and tweak it as needed. Solaris has an open sourced version, but it's still a proprietary OS owned by Sun, just like Windows is owned by Microsoft.

The last thing on the current OS run I learned this morning. Windows has a version of their next OS, currently referred to as Windows 7, online and licensed to try out for nothing until June of 2010. My Virtual box might just need another entry...