[desktop-discuss] new user, a few questions (sun update manager, software management)

[Abram B Olson]

Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> On Fri, 4 Jan 2008, Abram Olson wrote:
>
>> I've been trying to run the sun updater for about 30 minutes now and
>> it's just sitting there doing nothing. There is very little network
>> activity but both cpu's in the machine are making very nice sine wave
>> pattern as they move from 0 to 100% usage and back. Is this normal?
>
> Solaris is based on packages and it seems that removing/adding a 
> package is rather slow and quite exhaustive.  Much slower than typical 
> Linux package managers.  Probably that is what it is doing.
The process ran for almost two hours last night with no results. When I 
right click on the icon it says "this system is not registered for 
updates" and when I choose "register this system for updates" the 
updater opens and then it just hangs and uses a lot of cpu cycles. I let 
it run for about an hour this morning but nothing happened.

>
>> My big question though is, software management. How do I find out
>> whats installed on the system? How do I install new software? I've
>
> Use 'pkginfo' to see what packages are installed. Usually 'pkgadd' is 
> used to add a package.  But some software may be installed via other 
> means.
>
Great! This will help a lot. Thank you very much.

Abe

>> I've installed solaris off and on over the years since version 8. I
>> owned an ultra 80 for a few years as well (although I mostly used
>> linux on it) and I'm really impressed with how far solaris has come.
>> Thanks for your time and keep up the excellent work.
>
> The interesting thing is that Linux is trying to catch up to Solaris 
> from a core-OS standpoint while Solaris is trying to catch up to Linux 
> from a desktop usability standpoint.
>
> Bob
> ======================================
> Bob Friesenhahn
> bfriesen at simple.dallas.tx.us, 
> http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
> GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/
>