yuffie% cc
/usr/ucb/cc: language optional software package not installed
What the hell?
It's true. Solaris 7, out of the box in its standard configuration, is a lot like your average "operating" "system" from Microsoft: it eats up 700MB of disk space, chews through memory, brings otherwise zippy computers to their knees, and doesn't come with a compiler. That's right: they sent you the developer's edition of an operating system and neglected to include a compiler. (Cheer up. At least you didn't buy the whole computer from them. You don't want to know what that's like.)
If Solaris is so bad, then why use it? If it's such a pain in the ass to get up and running, why bother with it? Arguably, the pay-off for fighting with Solaris is simple: you get one of the most robust implementations of Unix with up-to-date code that can handle just about anything you throw at it, limited only by hardware constraints. If you're rich, this means you own a Sun Enterprise-class server; if you're cheap, you have a high-end x86 system. Either way, you have a system that's going to be very hard to push over. It can work as a database server, a nice strong Web server, or even a decent development platform if you outfit it correctly.
For a more in-depth examination of why the root account shouldn't be used for day-to-day tasks, run to your local bookstore and buy a copy of Aeleene Frisch's Essentials of UNIX System Administration, published by the source of all good advice in the Unix world, O'Reilly Press. Actually, if you don't have a lot of experience with Unix (specifically, if your experience is limited to Linux), go buy this book now and read it before doing anything else.
The Solaris implementation of X, as it comes out of the box, is really dumb. It understands all of Sun's own chipsets (duh) and knows how to beautifully display all kinds of stuff on them. Sun's graphics hardware, unfortuately (and to put it rather bluntly), sucks. You can buy a $35k workstation and still have it come with only 8-bit color. If Solaris is running on genuine Sun-brand hardware, you're in luck, and you probably don't have to do anything to configure it. If Solaris is running on Intel hardware, you're in for a rough ride.
The Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) is 1) Install XFree86, see their info on how to do so. 2) Then edit the file /usr/dt/config/Xservers, changing the line " :0 Local local_uid@console root /usr/openwin/bin/Xsun :0 -nobanner"