Matt, Since no one else has mentioned it, I will. I have an Ultra 5 and a SparcStation 4, plus an Ultra 1 at work. All of them run Debian very well. Given the video constraints, I wouldn't recommend any of them as a desktop, but they all work quite adequately as headless servers. Putting X on them and pumping out some applications via an ssh forwarded session is also quite possible, and requires much less overhead than actually running an X desktop.
Debian's Sparc distro is fairly up to date (in the testing, or Sarge, branch. I wouldn't recommend Sid, usually), and most Debian package maintainers make Sparc compiled packages, or else processor agnostic versions. I have rarely found anything missing on a Debian Sparc box that I wanted, or have on my x86 machine. Incidentally, you call this a Sparc 5, I assume you mean Ultra 5, or is it a SparcStation 5? Regards, Ben Pitzer --------------------------------------------- "Those that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Ben Franklin-- > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Behalf Of Matt Frye > Sent: Thursday, October 21, 2004 3:29 AM > To: TriLUG > Subject: [TriLUG] Linux on a Sparc 5 > > > I'm looking for recommendations on distro and what this machine could > possibly be useful for. Right now, it's just taking up space. I have > a monitor, kb, and mouse, and an audio cable even, so if anyone really > wants this thing, I'd be willing to barter. I just need to justify > it's existence if I keep it. Suggestions? > > MPF > -- > TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug > TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/ > TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/ > TriLUG PGP Keyring : http://trilug.org/~chrish/trilug.asc > > -- TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/ TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/ TriLUG PGP Keyring : http://trilug.org/~chrish/trilug.asc
