Solaris paths - or - where the &$@% is all the software?
If you are new to Solaris you and have just installed a full installation of Solaris 10, you may login for the first time, type a few commands that you are used to in a GNU/Linux environment and stare wide-eyed at all the "command not found" responses.

Never fear, all (ok, most?) of your favourite GNU software is actually there, you just need to find it. Here's a quick breakdown of where Sun has placed everything:

/usr/sfw/bin
Contains most of the freeware/GNU software that you may be looking for (like gcc). This location is the destination for the SUNW packages that contain freeware/GNU software..

/opt/sfw/bin
This is where you will find anything installed from an SFW package. These packages are found on the Companion disc. For example, I quickly added vim, sudo & screen from the Companion disc, and they ended up here.

/usr/ccs/bin
You'll find some development-related tools here, such as make, ld, ar, yacc, strip, etc...

So a default Solaris PATH may look like (including the sbin dirs as well):

PATH=/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/ccs/bin:/usr/sfw/bin:/usr/sfw/sbin:/opt/sfw/bin:/opt/sfw/sbin