SXCE on the Desktop

Solaris is a great and highly advanced OS, it has many features that can be used on the home desktop as well as enterprise class systems that run the very core of the Internet, Supercomputers (HPC) and Banks. One of my favourite such features is the ZFS file system.

However, for people who have used GNU/Linux, such as Ubuntu, and are trying out Solaris for the first time may have the first impressions that Solaris is somehow slower then Linux.
This is however not the case. Solaris has many things running under the hood that servers would find useful but Desktop users have no such use for, such as ssh running or sendmail.

SXCE or Solaris Express Community Edition can be downloaded here for free:
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/downloads/
You can check your hardware with this neat tool:
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/hcts/device_detect.jsp
(Click "Start Sun Device Detection Tool 2.0" on the page.)

After a default install, login and choice JDS as your default desktop session, now right click on the desktop and run the following in the terminal:
------------

$su
_root-password_
#/bin/zsh
#svcadm disable basicreg cde-calendar-manager cde-ttdbserver cde-printinfo webconsole wbem sendmail sac ssh autofs ipsec/policy ipsec/ipsecalgs
#echo "set maxphys=4194304" >> /etc/system
#dispadmin -d IA
#shutdown -y -g0 -i6

------------
After this your desktop should be both more secure and more interactive.

If you find anything more you would like to add, please comment.
If you would like to learn more, see:

docs.sun.com

Regards,
Edward.