On Wed, 2006-09-20 at 13:52 -0600, Jim MacKenzie wrote: > Hi all. I'm new to the list. > > I have a Sun Ultra 1/170E that I got quite inexpensively a few weeks ago. > It has 640 MB of RAM and about 4 gigabytes of disk space. I've installed > Debian etch on it without a GUI and it's working quite well. > > Given the amount of RAM in it, I'm wondering if this would make a viable > workstation rather than a CLI-based server. I don't have a monitor, > keyboard or mouse for it but have a couple of NEC MultiSyncs that I could > adapt to it easily enough, and I understand a Type 5 keyboard and mouse > won't cost too much. How much hassel it will be depends a bit on what kind of graphics hardware it has (support for some of the less common cards is variable) and whether it requires a 13W3 monitor or not. You can normally find what you'd need on ebay for a relatively small amount of money. As a way of getting a working desktop machine, it's probably a little more costly than buying a second hand PC w/ all bitzen, as a learning experience / fun project it's price-less.
> If it'll be fast enough and usable with Gnome or KDE, I think it would be a > fun box to use that way. (My primary desktop is a PIII-450 with 768 MB RAM, > and I think Ubuntu runs quite respectably on it [I couldn't get Debian to > properly recognize my video card]... and I have Gnome on a PII-400 with 384 > MB and find it to be very usable.) (I have a really good laptop, so no need > to take a collection for me.) Fast enought to be usable is always a bit of a length of string type question. I would have thought the 'desktop experience' would be comparable to a PII 400Mhz machine, if that's not fast enough then changing to a lighter weight desktop environment might help. In short, YMMV HTH Cheers, - Martin -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
