OpenSolaris on snv_124 Impressions

I've bitten the bullet, and finally installed "OpenSolaris" over my SXCE install, upgrading from build 105 to build 124 in the process. I thought I'd share some things I've noticed:

  • Gnome's volume control Just Works, and doesn't show the legacy Sun device anymore. (Yay!)
  • There is a 12 MB Core file on the CD ... er... too big... DVD ... image. (Oops!) Maybe someone was hoping the community would jointly debug the program that generated the core file. (gtk-update-icon).
  • Still no /bin/tcsh installed by default. Fortunately easy to get off the network for this machine. (For other systems, not so easy. This really ought to be fixed.)
  • AudioHD has a really, really annoying beep on this system. The beep volume control doesn't take effect until you lower it to 33%. (And then it gets really quiet.) This is a bug that I'll have to investigate further, there's probably some codec tweaking needed.
  • Regular SunOS vi has been replaced with vim, which has an incredibly obnoxious bug. It doesn't scroll down properly, redrawing on the last line in the terminal window instead of the whole screen. This is IMO at least a P2 bug against the editor. The old editor in SXCE, while maybe lacking some neat colorization features and not being open source, at least worked properly.
  • Trying to install CUPS using the package manager GUI fails with a horrible stack back trace. While the request is is made to report the problem with the stack back trace, there is no provision to save it or e-mail it. So alas, I don't have it anymore to post. It should be easily reproducible. (It looked like a problem relating to the SMF configuration.)
I have a lot more to do... so many things are at the moment still missing. But I think I'll be able to muddle on at this point. (The vim bug is going to really, really bug me though, because there isn't an easy workaround -- apart from just copying over the old vi from SXCE.)

Update: Turns out /usr/xpg4/bin/vi (which is what I had in my path anyway) doesn't have this problem. And its installed by default. Yay. But someone really needs to fix vim, because that bug is horrible.

Update 2: When I logged in using my old home dir, the Gnome panel which I had configured for auto_hide did hide itself. But unfortunately would not unhide itself with any mouse actions. The only way I could get it to unhide was to disable the auto_hide property using gconftool2. Unfortunately, it took a while to figure out how to use this.

Comments

Unknown said…
I'm pretty sure that the vim behaviour (which also affects screen) is a bug in gnome-terminal/the underlying vte widget. Try it with xterm and see if it's still there.
October 9, 2009 at 11:18 AM
Binary Crusader said…
Garrett,

vim did not have this issue in previous builds (such as build 122). So this is a newly introduced issue. I also wonder if this is somehow a bug in GNOME terminal or in the default vim configuration (such as bad escape sequences in there).

As for the SUNWcups thing, yes, that's a known issue:

http://defect.opensolaris.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=11617

As for the error in the packagemanager, you can copy and paste the message into a bug at defect.opensolaris.org.

There's no email option since the bugs are supposed to go into bugzilla.

I'd open an RFE at defect.opensolaris.org under development -> pkg -> gui for the option to save the error though.
October 9, 2009 at 12:13 PM
Unknown said…
I got the same CUPS error that you got and did file the bug report. I've seen messages that pkg bug reports were being escalated because of the volume. :-)
October 9, 2009 at 1:08 PM
Unknown said…
The cups packaging bug is being worked on. Danek knows enough about it that I expect it to be fixed.

I've filed CR's on all of these issues, btw.

The vim behavior might be a gnome-terminal bug, but as it only affects vim, and as it is worked around if you use :set ruler, I suspect it's really a vim bug. I've not investigated further.. /usr/xpg4/bin/vi works fine in all situations.
October 9, 2009 at 1:23 PM
blogbert said…
dare i mention .. EMACS :)
October 11, 2009 at 12:43 PM
Unknown said…
There's been an update to the original bug report that lists out the steps needed to resolve the CUPS issue until it gets permanently fixed.

http://defect.opensolaris.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=11617

Comment # 18
October 13, 2009 at 12:35 PM
Unknown said…
Btw, other updates:

gnome-sudoku is totally busted.

The blackjack application doesn't appear to work right at all.

While games aren't a priority, they're one of the first things end-users try. They need to work correctly, or they should be removed. Right now, as they stand, its just embarrassing.
October 13, 2009 at 12:39 PM
Unknown said…
Yup, gnome-sudoku is busted as is chess. Chess is supposedly fixed in 125 so we shall see.

btw, just out of curiosity do you get the annoying "mouse jumps" issue?

Multimedia nees some help as well.
October 14, 2009 at 12:16 PM
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