Has anyone attempted to install Solaris 11 on a Macbook Pro with the new Retina display? I'm considering setting up a triple boot scenario with Windows 7, Mac OS X and Solaris 11. My goals are to learn the OS better and to gain daily exposure to it by running it as a desktop OS whenever possible.
I have not tried, but why not virtualize solaris 11 on Mac or Win 7 ?
That way you will not encounter potential problem with hardware and have much wider test environment to play with, meaning you can try all sorts of things like NFS, iscsi, zfs etc. with no accidental command doing damage to your machine.
Also, snapshots and clones come handy.
You can virtualize 3 or more solaris machines to simulate real networks (dns, dhcp, automated installer etc.)
All in all, you should run virtual machines for this purpose in either mac or win.
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Oh yes, I'm running VMware Fusion currently on the Mac OS X to boot into Solaris 10. I'm a huge virtualization user and appreciate all it's benefits. I suppose my interest was more to see how it would interact with the hardware. Plus, when you're running an OS on the bare metal you learn a lot more about how it interfaces. After all, VMware won't be automating so many administrative tasks like adding a device, etc.
You can always power off machine and add memory or network cards, disks etc. then boot and configure those devices as you would if you plugged it in a real machine.
Anyway, in what way do you think installing on bare metal would benefit your knowledge over a vmware install ?
VMware is so good at providing a stable, clean virtual hardware environment. My experience has been that the real world is rarely as sanitary. Getting your hands dirty is a great way to learn some of the more specifics of how an OS handles the hardware.
"retina display" by apple is not a special, new, different kind of display, it's just a buzzword for "extra-high resolution".
Yes, that's true. But it is the name of the product this thread is referencing. Hence, I used it's name.
I thought you were asking if it were compatible with the display, rather than the machine in general. Sorry!
OS X handles the display to ensure the best user experience (i.e. that things can benefit from the extra resolution without making fonts, etc. unreadable). Solaris, obviously, won't do this, so the worst that could probably happen is you'd need to choose a sensible resolution.
I tend to agree with Peasant, though, that I'm not sure what you are going to learn by installing Solaris in bootcamp, or however.
Unless the place you're going to be working is using MacBook's for their Solaris servers, anything that goes wrong with it will likely serve you no purpose later on.
VMFusion is, IMO, far and away the best Mac virtualisation software around. Make the most of it 
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No apologies needed. 
Roger, I'll spend my time elsewhere then. Thanks!
Of course, if you want to go ahead and install it, it'd be good to know how it works out
Will do, just as soon as I get a few days free.