Saturday, June 16, 2007

A Developer's Journal: Solaris #9

Installation complete! Yeah!

Initial Reactions

The fonts look like crap! At this point, I'm not sure if the problem is the default set of fonts or if font rendering just sucks. Every bit of text everywhere is fuzzy. Text is my life! I am a programmer and sometimes blogger, after all. Solving this issue is at the top of my todo list.

The default configuration for the root user account is just plain insipid. The root user does not have a default HOME directory so every file and directory that gets automatically created by the shell or the desktop environment gets dumped to /. How absolutely, positively, retarded is that? Every Linux distro I have ever used creates a /root directory to store the root user's files. I just can't fathom the rationale behind not setting a decent default directory for root.

Now some of you may say or be thinking, "you are not supposed to be using the root user account anyway". If you did say that then you've obviously never installed Solaris 10. Because if you have installed it then you know you only ever get prompted to provide a password for the root user. The install process forces you to wait until the installation is complete to create a normal user account. The problem is on first reboot the only account you have to log in with is root and the minute you log in, the desktop environment creates a host of hidden files and directories on the root filesystem for root. So you never get the opportunity not to use the root account. Like I said before, insipid, and that's putting it nicely.

The good news is most of my hardware works out of the box. The only thing that isn't working is my USB DVD-R/W. One more item for my todo list.

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