[rescue] Linux/Sparc

[Big Endian]

>On Fri, 12 Oct 2001, Big Endian wrote:
>>  having run linux/sparc for a while, and redhat in particular I would
>>  say go netbsd.  If you MUST use linux for some reason then try an old
>>  redhat (5.2 or 6.0) and update it manually to the current specs.
>>  Other than that you might try debian.  I avoid debian for political
>>  reasons ( I'm anti-RMS ) but its a workable distro.
>>
>>  daniel
>
>Anti RMS?

I'm anti fanatic in the more general case and the debian folks seem 
to think that Richard M Stallman(RMS) is god.  I just think he's a 
fanatic and he bugs the hell out of me.

>Anyhow I currently run RH6.2 on most of my Sparcstations - well on my 20
>and my Voyager.  I like sound support and NetBSD doesn't support sound on
>those machines.

I ran RH6.1 on a dual sm61/192/4gb AXIL320(ss20 clone) for a while 
and I was QUITE underwhelmed.  while it worked ok, the speed was 
something I saw out of a PC of the earlier vintage.  When I put 
solaris 8 on there the speed jumped tremendously.  For something like 
a 20 your best bet is likely to be solaris8.  I've never used a 
voyager so I don't know the stats on it... but if its anything like 
an ss5 it should do ok with debian/slack/heavily modified redhat. 
The linux sparc code is just plain SLOW.  I've used linux on intel, 
alphas and sparcs and I have to say that while its faster than sol7 
its not by much.  If the voyager is supported by sol8 again I wold go 
with that.

>I do however run NetBSD on my Sparcstation 1 and 2 which
>run great!  What I really want is something a little snappier than RH with
>some sound support for my Voyager.

NetBSD is snappy, sol8 is snappy, and has sound support.  Linux is 
not going to get much faster without a total rewrite from the ground 
up.  I've used linux for years now and once I discovered *BSD and 
IRIX I became quite disappointed.  Linux is not the revolution people 
in the popular press crack it up to be.  If there's a native os thats 
actively maintained (Irix 6.5, sol8, VMS,MacOS) I use that on my 
machines.  If not I use Free,NetBSD in that order and then linux as a 
last resort.

daniel