On Wed, Oct 2, 2013 at 4:36 PM, u60 spitfire <[email protected]> wrote:
> Just signed up for this mailing list; had spent a good amount of time > over the last week getting my Ultra 60 up and running again. It's > mostly OK...heh...execpt the part about having to reprogram the darn > NVRAM every time I turn it on. > > I got jessie installed (Didn't get far in the stable release; first > thing I did was try to open iceweasel and it hit a bus error -- > unaligned mem access maybe). Working on getting the framebuffer going > and whatnot now, went to the Debian forums and figured I'd try this > mailing list after no responses there. > > After checking the posts for the last few months (only a handful!), > they seem all about "Hello....anybody out there using/maintaining > this?" or "Hey if anyone's using driver X y'all need to maintain it > yourself 'cause you're the only one using it", heh. > > Linux on SPARC is very niche. Think of yourself as...frontiersmen. Consider the cases though: you go to Oracle.com and cheap server is $20K. So you can either use: a) 100% supported Solaris 11.1, 24x7 phone support, deep virtual machine support, apps/libraries optimized for the HW, etc. b) Linux, which may or may not recognize your disk controller and may panic while booting the kernel on really new machines. > So, realistically*, what's the deal? Any point in trying to get this > to work or should I cut my losses now and move to some other > distribution or OS? I had thought that maybe there was some interest > in the architecture since OpenSPARC was published/available for some > time. Anyhow. > I think Debian/sparc is probably one of the better distributions for SPARC, but it can be quite rough, yeah. I run it and I don't have too many problems. I run it on an Ultra 80, E420R (Ultra 80 but with diff case IIRC) and a Blade 2500. Neither gives me problems, but running Sun-branded components is really hard -- Sun was never very forthcoming with HW specs and even if they had now, there would be little interest in pre-2000 HW to actually fix the drivers. You can try Solaris 10 if you have a lot of memory, but you're going to need to customize it, because for playing around, you probably don't need all of the stuff it installed. I personally enjoy Linux on SPARC more than Solaris on SPARC because I can mix cheap PC components in the PCI slots to get some flexibility, so long as it isn't critical for booting the system [e.g. disk controllers]. I ran an Ultra 10 with an NV GeForce4 for example and was able to play Quake III. Not all drivers work that well though, and I've filed a few bugs and other times just written off the driver as "meh" (for example, some SPARC sound drivers -- why bother if you can replace with $10 PCI sound card?) So I guess, I'd say stick with Debian. I think your experience with the Ultra 60 should be pretty decent overall, though if you need a new NVRAM battery, yeah, going to suck a bit. :) If you're having some issues, posted here, and I missed it, I'm sorry. I try to help when I can. Please let us know what they are and let's see if we can't work them out. Patrick > Advice appreciated in advance. > > thanks > > > > *Yes, I'm not being terribly realistic running anything on this box to > begin with. > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact > [email protected] > Archive: > http://lists.debian.org/CAN-w9fwQ7=FhaE3R=o7Ehx7ckMm=cfxuyiixinjcchmttbc...@mail.gmail.com > >
