Trials & Tribulations in replacing my XP desktop 1

Well I have been using Solaris since 2.x and SunOS before.. Just call me a Sun bigot! That is in my server space. I have currently a pair of Ultra 2, with dual 400Mhz cpus, running my web server, and db servers, just very happy with Solaris 8. I have a pair of SunBlade1000 that will replace them though (750Mhz U3).
Unfortunately, I talk out of the other side of my mouth for my desktop. Well my office desktop with two monitors, XP service pack 2, Skype and what not was getting a they say just a little buggy, like 10-20 seconds for the ok box to come up when you wanted to save something like a photo. Just for you that have to know it was a:

• Intel 3.8Ghz Dual Core Cpu
• 1Gb Memory
• Intel D875PBZ motherboard
• Matrox Millennium P650 Dual head Video Card (2 Sun 21" Monitors)
  
• Creative Labs Audio Card
• 3Com 10/100 Network Card

So being a glutton for punishment I started on my quest to replace my XP office OS with a open source OS.

Ok so I downloaded the new Opensolaris, and installed it. Very impressive quick no problem install (I though). First thing that I have to do is assign my IP address, etc to the box. That only took 2-3 hrs. Well out of the box its a DHCP and you DON'T HAVE A CHOICE! ( As we used to say you can't get here from here.)

It turns out that you have to disable Network Auto Magic service (NWAM) and enable traditional networking service

svcadm enable physical:default
svcadm disable physical:nwam

Got that done.

So now I tried in vain to log in as root to configure the system (from the console) ... that right no joy.. they had it set to a role... Like I'm trying to get away from XP/NT etc. and back to my comfort zone.

rolemod -K type=normal root

That was last night, Oh just give me back my Open Window (Solaris 2.5), I just go fed up and said lets look a Nexenta maybe they did a better job. FORMAT!