The Solaris Installation Experience

Before commencing the installation process is a summary screen that shows the different options, which is something that Anaconda lacks.

Finally, the Solaris installer goes ahead, commits the disk changes, and installs all of the software packages. During this part of the install process all that is shown to the end-user is the percentage completed and what package is presently being installed. On the other side of the table, Anaconda shows the current package being installed along with a short description of the package, size of the package, and the packages that have been installed so far out of the total number of packages that will be installed. Solaris also lacks any packaging capabilities within the installer so that the end-user could select what specific packages or classes of packages to add or remove from the installation manifest.

While an installer's ease of use cannot generally speak to the quality of the software (with a great example being Gentoo and its lack of a graphical LiveCD installer until last year), we are glad to know that Ian Murdock and Sun Microsystems is working on addressing some of these shortcomings with Solaris through Project Indiana. Right now there are a few hurdles to cross if this is your first time installing Solaris, but any Linux user should be able to install Solaris Express with relative ease. We will be covering additional Project Indiana and Sun Solaris developments later in the year.

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