I ended up re-installing Solaris 9 yesterday. It was my own fault - I accidentally installed libraries that were already installed, so I ended up with two copies of the same library in two different locations. That was ugly, so I just started over.
Mostly it's been good news. Installing apps has been *much* easier. Nary a warning in sight. Even gaim installed without a hitch. The -h option for ls, df and du is nice. I chose a different locale (iso-8859-1, btw) so I don't get those annoying text boxes at the bottom of all my windows any more. I've only had one install fail (FXRuby), and I had the same problem under Solaris 8. So far, it's definitely been worth it.
Definitely install the stuff on the software companion cd. Here are a few tips I recommend to simplify your life if you're going to upgrade:
1) Immediately modify your path to include the following directories:
3) Add the 'lib' directories to your LD_LIBRARY_PATH (yeah, yeah - it's just easier this way).
4) If you're going to install the Oracle 9i software, be aware of a minor bug in the installer. First, launch it from the command line (not a gui file manager). When it asks you to insert CD 2, you'll need to go back to the same terminal you started the installer from, hit return a couple of times, and cd to a different directory. Otherwise, you'll always get "device busy".
5) Don't expect Netscape 6.2.1 beta to work if you're using a proxy. I didn't bother installing it the second time. Besides, Sun has 6.2.3 available for download now.
Well, I guess that's it for now. Hope it helps someone out there. :-)
