Solaris x86 client

Hi.

It would be great if Solaris 10 x86 client would be also available. As Linux client is it should be quite easy to provide also Solaris client.

Would it be possible?

Doesn't Solaris already have a Linux compatibility layer?

Doesn't Linux already have a Windows compatability layer?

Well.. a good number of people that play SL on linux actually takes more digits than I have on my body.. Solaris? How many people actually run Solaris as their desktop?

i have v 2.something on my old p 90 laptop ... that might count but honestly i didnt use it when it was new

shame really ... kinda like solaris just never got back to using it

That's different.

Windows and Linux are different architectures, while Solaris should be quite compatible. My understanding that these compatibility layers consist pretty much in making the kernel understand Linux syscalls so that it can run an unmodified binary.

For instance, opening a file on Linux and on Solaris should be the same thing, while it's different on Windows (different path conventions, case insensitivity, etc). So all that would be required to make Solaris run a Linux application that opens a file would be making it understand the Linux syscall used to do it, and perhaps compensate for minor differences like a struct having extra or missing fields.

My main concern is how the SL Linux client will interface with NVidia's Solaris drivers. I don't now if ATI has Solaris drivers.

As I understand, SL works OK in BSD with linux compat libs, so one might assume the same would be true for the Solaris compat. layer http://www.sun.com/2004-0803/feature/

Don't really have the interest (or the time) to try it out tho!

The drivers are basically the same source between all operating systems with only the system calls changed. Which would be the bottom end of the driver, SL interfaces with the top end of the driver so it should be pretty much the same across all systems. Though it could have bearing if the window manager or shell are configured differently, this is something I can probably get a decent answer for shortly. I will add it in here once I find out.

After probing around with a few folks it seems logical that nVidia uses the same code but may enable/disable different things for different OS's. The compatibility layer for Linux apps on Solaris is only so good so SL may or may not trigger problems with that. Also Solaris isn't really an OS with focus on graphic intensive games, typically it is a server OS. Performance may vary but it would be interesting to see someone try. Simply put Solaris is different enough from Linux to warrent exploration though it would be more like running the Windows client in Wine on Linux.

The APIs provided by the nVidia drivers on Solaris, Linux and FreeBSD are the same - OpenGL. Incidentally, this is also what they provide on Mac OS X. (Windows, too, but there there's also DirectX). It should work in the compatibility layer, really.

I might try that here at some point in the future. The only data point I can give you is that a handful of apps I've tried (Chromium BSU comes to mind) will build on Solaris SPARC and Linux AMD64, and their 3D-rendering code path is the same in both cases, despite the difference between the FFB framebuffer and a GeForce 7800GT

Well, stable release not yet.
In latest Solaris development release there's BrandZ support - which means you can run Linux binaries inside a zone.

As I have that development release on my desktop with nvidia drivers I tried it - and looks like it just works, with sound, etc. And perfmance looks ok. See http://milek.blogspot.com/2006/10/secondlife-on-solaris.html

However native Solaris client would be great. At least Solaris x86.
Probably it won't be anything harder then just recompile Linux client.

Is the source available for the Linux client?

Why would you run solaris as your desktop os??

Because I work at Sun.

Yes, there are two:
An older effort co-developed with SCO called "lxrun" and the newest shiny project called BrandZ.

BrandZ is short for Branded Zones... you create a Solaris N1 Container, "brand it" as running Linux, then do your install. Currently, Solaris Express 11/06 (Solaris 11 beta or OpenSolaris Nevada, build 50) supports Centos 3.5-3.8 and RedHat Enterprise 3.5-3.8 installation, or any other Linux which uses the same kernel and glibc revision as those distributions.

Essentially what happens is that the Linux user-space application environment is setup, allow you to run many kinds of Linux application binaries on top of the Solaris kernel. Userspace is Linux, and the kernel-space is Solaris, with translation gates for the library calls, etc.

But... I think you see where things would fall down for SecondLife on Solaris x86 via BrandZ:
SecondLife for Linux requires card-specific OpenGL support which, on Linux, requires a card-specific driver modules inserted into the kernel.

Under BrandZ, there is no Linux kernel to slot the driver module into.

So, SecondLife for Linux (really, SecondLife for SDL) would require an OpenGL port to the Solaris OpenGL stack, or a port of SDL to Solaris x86, which I don't think has been done.

Solaris OpenGL is aimed squarely at medical and scientific visualization... which may mean that it lacks "gamer features" needed to support SecondLife.

However, NVidia does offer native Solaris drivers, which probably include the GL/GLX pieces needed.

Personally, I would prefer the choice to run SecondLife on Linux or Solaris x86 or BSD, etc.
It's been said that the more portable code is, the more stable it is, from being debugged on so many platforms

You can load/run the Sun Java Desktop, which is GNOME with Java apps installed.

Firefox, Thunderbird, Evolution, StarOffice all installed and running out of the box make Solaris a pretty nice desktop, especially for commercial/business environments.

In firstlife, I administer global networks of Unix servers which primarily run on Sun/Solaris.

Running a Sun/Solaris desktop helps keep my technical skills sharp, and is really nice since Solaris is the only OS I know that runs from single CPU/single core x86 up to 128+ CPU single-os-image monster servers.

Use Solaris on the desktop, and you are honing skills used on big iron at the same time.

It made me more marketable, and got people calling ME to offer jobs, rather than me calling them.

That is SO cool!

Does that also have Accelerated Drivers? Like the proprietary ones from NVidia etc? Or are the Solaris Drivers good enough?

I am not sure which post in this thread you were responding to... but I can answer some of this.

If you run a Sun video card, then the video drivers supplied for that card are accelerated in 2D and 3D, using Sun's OpenGL drivers.

If you install NVidia's proprietary closed-source drivers, then you will have accelerated 2D/3D in X using NVidia's hardware and OpenGL drivers.

Sun/Solaris native X drivers are not accelerated on commodity hardware like VESA/VGA cards and such.

So, the native Xsun server uses non-accelerated drivers and no OpenGL.
If you install specific card drivers for your hardware, and those drivers supply an OpenGL layer, then you will have accelerated 2D and 3D.

By default Sun only supplies hardware and OpenGL drivers for Sun-manufactured cards, which tend to be for the SPARC systems, not the x86.

Low-end Sun workstations and such used to ship with ATI graphics chips on-board, and unaccelerated drivers in the OS and X server.

I don't know if ATI ships accelerated drivers and OpenGL bits for Solaris x86 or SPARC.

Finally, there is a replacement X-server available from XiGraphics that does accelerated 2D on a wide variety of cards... and I have seen some notes about XiG OpenGL extensions, so I am assuming the XiG server has an OpenGL bit as well by now. Back in Solaris 2.6 days, the XiG server was accelerated 2D only.