> > Richard: > > When new functionality goes into Solaris, sometimes > support lags > a bit in either x86 or Sparc. However I think Sun > strives to > minimize any negative impacts to the end user. > > In the desktop space, I think probably the biggest > annoyance > on Sparc is the need to use the Xsun Xserver. Xsun > supports > less extensions than Xorg, including ones needed for > a11y.
Agreed. Hoping the XVR-1000 gets supported on Xorg on SPARC eventually; I've got an XVR-100 kicking around somewhere I think, but that won't give me the 3D, and with only the UPA slot or the one 66-MHz PCI slot on the Sun Blade 2000 fast enough to really do justice to video, my choices may be a bit constrained (the pgx64 (m64) on my other 64-bit SPARC box, a Sun Blade 100, is slow on bandwidth-intensive operations due to 32-bit/33MHz PCI bus (and doesn't do all it's capable of in terms of acceleration due to primitive driver, I guess)). And hate to use the 66-MHz PCI slot for video when something else like a SATA controller could also benefit from the bandwidth. > I'm not aware of any significant differences in audio > support > between x86 and Sparc. I know the OSS team is > working to > support a reasonable set of sound cards on both Sparc > and > x86. However, some users may find that certain sound > cards > don't work with OSS. Fortunately, replacing a sound > card > isn't too expensive for those users who might be > affected. > And if you are using one of those really old Sparc > sound > cards and if you care about audio quality, you would > probably want to get a new sound card anyway. Already having a USB 2.0 card, and given the possibility of adding a SATA card, a SunPCI iiiPro card (set), etc, conserving slots may be very desirable, thus the interest in either the builtin (CS4231) audio, or USB audio. Also, the SADA support didn't seem to work on OSS on SPARC, which is a problem until OSS on SPARC is sufficiently high-functional _and_ sufficient apps have been built (except for the adventurous that will build from the spec files) that speak native OSS rather than SADA. I've got a USB audio (Audigy NX USB) that OSS claimed to support (on other platforms). It'd be nice if that would work, although I might not be averse to buying another USB audio device of comparable functionality and reasonable (<$125 US, say) price, if/when it was supported on SXCE on SPARC. The overall picture is that increments of $100 or so here and there are no big deal, but replacing a perfectly good Sun Blade 2000 with an Ultra 45 to have access to more recent graphics or other boards isn't in the cards; I can't see dropping >$7000 to get an otherwise roughly comparable system. This message posted from opensolaris.org
