August 2001 - Solaris 8 Upgrade Information

• Netscape version 6 is available, in addition to the 4.7x release. To start version 6, just run netscape6. Note that versions 6 and 4.7x can peacefully coexist, so you can run both versions at the same time without conflicts.

• The newest Forte/Workshop 6 compilers are installed. See the Sun Documentation for information about the enhancements over the current version 5 compilers installed on the Solaris 2.7 machines.

• The Java Development environment Forte for Java, release 2.0, Community Edition has been installed. To run this, just run the command forte4j. If you have run the older 1.0 version of Forte for Java and get errors when you run this new version, try moving your forte4j_user directory (created by the 1.0 version) as there appear to be some conflicts between the two versions.

• The default version of the Java JDK/SDK installed in /usr/bin is version 1.2. You can access version 1.3 in /usr/j2se/bin and version 1.1 in /usr/java1.1/bin. The various versions in /l are also still available.

• The latest KDE 2.2 desktop environment is installed. Thanks to Travis Bauer, there is also a document available to guide you through the process of Configuring KDevelop on the Suns.

• SSH version 2 is now the default. If you need to use SSH version 1, you will have to explicitly use the ssh1 version (ie. use ssh1, scp1, ssh-add1, etc). See the ssh2 FAQ entry for more information about making the transition to ssh2.

• All windowing environments (CDE, KDE, GNOME, OpenWindows) now run under the SSH Agent by default. If you use ssh-add to load your keys, they will automatically be accessible from your entire login session.

• The SunForum 3.x data conferencing software is installed. This is a conferencing tool based on the T.120 and H.323 standards and can interact with other applications based on these standards, such as NetMeeting. Just run sunforum to start it up. Search for "sunforum" in the Software Database for more information.

• The Sun CD read and write tool, cdrw is installed. This tools allows the reading and writing of CDs, including the ability to extract audio tracks from audio CDs. See the cdrw man page for more information.

• There is software available to sync your palm pilot with your CDE applications. In CDE, you can select PDASync from the Desktop_Apps folder in the Application Manager, or you can run sdtpdasync from the command line. For more information, start up application and click on the help icon.

• The PC Launcher is installed. This is a tool to run applications on a remote PC. I have not tried this yet, but it looks pretty interesting. See the sdtpcaction man page for more information.

• If you use the exmh mail program with CDE, you may notice that you cannot open the application after is has been iconified with a simple double-click. You can, however, open it with a triple-click. I'm working on this one...

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