pkgsrc on Solaris (also called SunOS)

Roland Illig

Why should you use Solaris?

• I don't know, but we have it at our university.
• Much free software was lacking.
• But I wanted to have a current GIMP.
• After some months of work, I got it.

Common problems on Solaris

• Solaris 8 seems very old to me.
• Solaris 10 is much better.
• System tools are quite limited.

But ... the compiler (SUNpro) is nice.

• Some warnings that gcc is still missing.
• The generated code is much better than gcc's.

Is pkgsrc on Solaris usable?

• Definitely. I don't remember how much time I invested.
• GNOME works fine, but I still couldn't get KDE running.
• Many other packages are available now in pretty recent versions.
• The T2000 I'm using is a great testbed for parallel builds.
• More than 3300 packages already work, with more being expected.

See also

• http://wiki.netbsd.se/index.php/How_to_use_pkgsrc_on_Solaris