If This Is All New to You

    One of the clear obstacles to trying something new is that it happens to be new to you.  I know that sounds overly simple but just think back to the first time you tried to ride a bicycle.   If you are anything like me then you probably fell over and hurt your knee.  Repeatedly.   You're experience with walking was probably just as difficult and extended over months of your life.  The great problem with getting older is that we have a terribly small amount of patience for our own failure.   In fact, most adults will try something exactly zero times before giving up in order to avoid failure entirely.  Worse, we may dismiss this new thing entirely and simply say “I can ride a bike and drive a car and play the piano, I don't need this and who wants it anyways.”   This is something I see quite often and the more educated among us are often worse than those that experiment and fail with an open mind.  There is an ancient proverb that says “it does not matter how many times you fall down but it does matter that you stand up.”  Its a bit weak, I know, but hopefully you can see my point.

    If someone were to drop the CDROM set for Solaris 10 Update 3 on your desk and say “install this, figure it out and good luck” then you may be wandering into deep murky waters.  Most especially if you have spent a long chunk of your life with Microsoft Windows or an Apple Macintosh.  This document will get you started to a point where you can at least login and push a mouse around.  If you have some network route to the internet then your browser will work.  This is a major leap from nothing but CDROMs in your hand to a working full blown UNIX system.  Be fearless and just follow the steps I lay out and all will work fine.  At least I will certainly try to get you there.

    It is my hope that I can help you with this little task before you.  If I were to walk along with you through this process then you can rest assured that you are not alone.   I have installed Solaris more times than I can possibly remember.   I started long ago with Solaris 2.5.1 Intel Edition on a dual Pentium P90 AST Premmia GX machine that is still running today.  That installation process took all night long back in 1996.   The installation process for Solaris 10 will go much faster.  So then let's begin and just go nice and slow, step by step.