Hello,
Peter I think you gave a good summary of opensolaris from an actual
user interface view and what this actually means. I would just like to
add a few comments about some of the stuff you missed (because it
wasn't really what you wanted to point out). Hopefully what I have to
say (even though I am new to opensolaris but reasonably familiar with
Linux) may help people decide.
I feel that the Sun audio system used by solaris works well, I had no
obvious problems with more than one sound being played at a time.
Unfortunately it does seem to lack support for some sound cards which
have been supported for some time in Linux. In comparison Linux
supports quite a wide range of sound cards, but it can sometimes be
awkward to say the least to get audio working fine with multiple
sources (eg. speech and music at the same time).
Another thing you may want to consider is how many applications are
available for opensolaris. I do java development and eclipse is a
reasonably accessible IDE, but as far as I know eclipse for solaris is
not available. I had a look through the standard packages in the
package manager on the opensolaris CD (this includes the
opensolaris.org repository) and the IDEs I found were netbeans (which
isn't accessible with orca) and Sun developer studio (which I haven't
even tried). This means I could have a lack of applications, although I
believe all the essential desktop applications (office, web browser,
email client, etc) are all available.
Michael Whapples
On 23/12/42 20:59, Peter Korn wrote:
Hi Ignasi,
I'm sure others may answer with specific differences (e.g. our amazing
ZFS file system or our DTrace technology or the fact that the arguments
to various commands are different or that drivers for hardware may or
may not be present); but I have another lens through which I look at
this.
OpenSolaris - and Solaris in general - is another accessible UNIX
operating system. One used in places where GNU/Linux isn't used -
where there are potential jobs that people with disabilities will now
be able to occupy. For example, one thing OpenSolaris is particularly
good at is scaling to lots and lots of processors running the same
single operating system image. EBay makes heavy use of Solaris because
the kinds of database tasks they have are best handled by large
machines with hundreds of (SPARC) microprocessors all running inside a
single machine - something the Linux kernel isn't yet capable of.
Solaris is used for similar applications in the financial sector
handling stock trades.
On top of OpenSolaris and on top of Ubuntu Linux and on top of Fedora
Linux is essentially the same GNOME desktop, with essentially the same
accessibility infrastructure and of course the same Orca screen reader
(and GNOME On Screen Keyboard and MouseTweeks and ...). As has been
noted here, there are differences in the audio subsystem of OpenSolaris
and among the various Linux distros (which may be important to users).
There are differences in what hardware is supported (which is of course
very important if it is the hardware you own!). But from an
accessibility point of view they are pretty much the same.
So what I think it means for users is that the same Orca screen reader
you have been using - on the same GNOME desktop you have become
familiar with - is now available more places, including more places
where you might find employment or which you might encounter in a
school or a library or...
Oh, and if you have a particular interest in some of the specific
technologies available on OpenSolaris - like the ZFS file system or the
DTrace dynamic tracing framework for monitoring & debugging &
troubleshooting systems - you now have an accessible graphical
operating system containing those technologies.
Regards,
Peter Korn
Accessibility Architect & Principal Engineer,
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
I just wanted to ask what is
exactly
the difference between Opensolaris and Ubuntu or any other Linux
distribution. I mean I understand that it works differently,
it's probably an other technology and things like that, but what does
that mean for the users, given that both of them use the Gnome
graphical desktop?
What advantages would I get if I change Ubuntu for Opensolaris?
Thanks!
Ignasi
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