“It wasn’t until last week during a meeting with Sun that some new light was shed on the Solaris Check Tool and as a result we decided to explore this tool further. Check Tool is a bootable CD that lets the user know whether the hardware they have installed is likely to work with Solaris or not. If a third-party driver is needed for a particular piece of hardware, the Check Tool will even provide a link to the driver needed. There are currently a few rough spots with the tool, but improvements are planned and in this article we will share more information on this program that can tell you in a matter of minutes whether you’ll face a hardware compatibility nightmare or will be running Solaris/Solaris Express with ease.”
I can’t tell you how many hours I have spent finding out if a desktop will run linux or not. Knowing right off the back if a driver is supported or not will save (me at least) many hours of anguish
Once OpenSound has been merged into OpenSolaris, you’ll find that 9/10 your hardware will be supported out of the box; the only thing that it doesn’t support on this machine is the built in webcam – considering that I only ever used it once (and the quality was crap at best), I haven’t lost any functionality in the process.
Check Tool for Ubuntu and other Linux distributions:
1) Put the LiveCD in the cup holder
2) Reboot
3) Verify that your hardware works
4) Click on the Install icon
Sun should consider developing a full-fledged Solaris LiveCD. Perhaps the Check Tool is a step toward this goal.
Use Belenix. Although not an official Sun project, it is very good distribution that comes on a LiveCD (installable to harddisk).
vista had a similar check tool that in reality proved HIGHLY inaccurate (on my hardware at least) causing me a fair few problems on first install
yeah, but that was a MS created tool
It told me that my audio device, SATA controller (thus HDD), and Broadcom Wifi isnt supported and it was right.
BeleniX did not see my HDD, Wifi isnt supported until at least Ndiswrapper 1.1, and audio device doesnt work with audiohd.
pfft this news is so old why is it even on OSAlert
JAVA new tool run from within windows linux etc.
Since open sound is now released under the new licence the tool will pick up majority of sound hardware soon yay.
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/hcts/device_detect.html
It’s true, the Java tool is more convenient, although I think it doesn’t support Vista. They should also update it with compatibility fixes from every latest Nevada build.