sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI
Home   Services   About   Search   Contact   Graphics  

WHAT IS SOLARIA?

Solaria is a privately owned network of UNIX systems that I have chosen to make available to the general computing community. I believe Milwaukee needs a no-charge public access UNIX site, similar to what Lake Systems once was, and I find myself in a position to fill some of that need.

WHAT CAN SOLARIA DO FOR ME?

Solaria offers several services that are not easily accessible to many people. Bulletin board systems offer a limited set of services and files, due to their design. Solaria is not a bulletin board system. It is a multiuser computer which allows you access not only to information that is on Solaria, but also on other systems via UUCP (and someday directly via the Internet itself). Solaria offers Usenet news and Internet mail services, which are the UNIX equivalents of the more commonly known FIDONET. Internet mail can reach any site on the Internet, and most UUCP sites. Many major vendors of software and hardware can be reached this way, and commercial data services such as CompuServe can also exchange mail. Usenet news offers over ten thousand newsgroups on many varied topics. Solaria also offers a complete C development system, with both the traditional Sun tools and most of the GNU project tools. All of the standard UNIX utilities are available. In the future, we intend to gain a connection to the Internet itself, and to offer interactive network services. If these things are all Greek to you, Solaria is probably not something you would find useful.

WHAT DOES IT COST?

Nothing. However, Solaria's growth will be dependent largely on donations from it's users. Equipment is expensive, and there are maintenance costs including phone lines, repairs, and back-up tapes. With sites like MIX offering what little they do for as much as they ask, it seems reasonable to ask people to donate if more lines are wanted or if there are other needs.

WHAT DO I GET?

All Solaria accounts have access to news and mail. Users are assigned a standard quota of 10 megabytes of storage. This is not a license to use it all, but it is often convenient to be able to temporarily use more than the small quotas many other systems provide. Regular accounts have access to the entire system via either a menuing system or a variety of UNIX shells.

DISCLAIMER:

Solaria is a private system, and I can make no guarantees about what will happen to it tomorrow or next year. I do not anticipate anything disastrous happening. You are encouraged to use and enjoy this resource while it is available. With any luck, we will be around for a long time! Resources are always limited. Everybody will enjoy the system more as long as nobody hogs resources, whether it happens to be dial-in lines, disk space, or processor power.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Joe Greco   Last Modified: Monday, 30 December 1996 01:01:01 AM CST