Found out why OpenSolaris 117 and greater will not run on my laptop. There has been a bug reported where certain motherboards cause the same problem. I will have to wait until they get around to fixing that bug to upgrade to that version of OpenSolaris.
Because of this, and because I've picked up a contract that requires me to work in Windows, I have to come up with another plan. Windows becomes a problem because I'm running Vista under VBox on OpenSolaris. For various reasons I won't go into now, I will not run Vista next to the metal. But since I only have 2G of onboard memory in the laptop, if I give a VBox session more than 1/2G OpenSolaris begins swapping like crazy. With 1/2G, Vista really can't do more than one or two things at the same time. Fine for what I was using Vista for, but Java development requires a bit more.
My plan, which will probably start after a couple of the checks from that contract come in, is to start purchasing parts each month to build a new computer, i.e. purchase a case next month, a motherboard the next, and so on.
It looks like I can put together a pretty fast system, with about 8G of memory which is important, for about $700, but paid for over a 6 to 7 month period. Running OpenSolaris next to the metal, I can put Win7 in a virtual box and give it 2G, and even run Linux with 1/2G and keep them both running most of the time.
Then I can reformat the laptop to FreeBSD or Linux (I'll try FreeBSD, but if I can't get the wifi to work, try Ubuntu). Using X, I can log into the big machine from the laptop or our (really old) iMac when I need the power. Then the kids can use any for their homework or web-surfing and we are not tying up one of the systems.
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