Slashdot Mirror
Red Hat Abandons Sparc
Mike Dubreuil writes: "When I went to download Red Hat Linux 7.0 for Sparc I was disappointed to learn RH is dropping support for the sparc processor line. They are claiming that there is a low demand for sparc versions This may be a major blow to the Linux community because Red Hat is the top vendor for commercial copies of Linux. Not to mention that they have the support in place to handle what large companies demand."
Update: 10/02 09:43 PM by CT : Bernhard Rosenkraenz wrote in to say "It is true that we will probably not release Red Hat Linux 7.0 for
sparc. However, this does NOT mean there won't be a Red Hat Linux 7.1 or
7.2 for sparc.
If, at some time, we decide to discontinue
commercial sparc support, we will turn Red Hat Linux for
sparc into a community effort."
Now that is ironic, isn't it?
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
Great, Don Kool is here.
Why do I keep typing pythong?
Try Debian/Sparc, if only to see apt in action.
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
Incidentally, /proc is older than linux. I first used it on SVR4, where it had simply the memory image of each process.
Debian still supports Sparc systems, so no big whoop.
"RedHat files anti-trust suit against fellow Linux distributor Debian"
We can't make money off of people when these freaks are giving it all away for free. Not only that, their logo looks better. He felt we had to do *something*.
.... mmm. no...
Lycestra
When I looked at the licensing agreements for the "free" Solaris 7, it was only free as a non-commercial license; if you wanted to make money using Solaris, you had to pay Sun the Big Bucks
--
PPC is not primarily controlled by Apple. IBM uses very similar, if not the same processors in their RS/6000 machines.
Daniel J. Kelly
And why wouldn't you, if one may be enlightened to know?
--
Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
I would tend to disagree!
Sun's business is hardware not software, same as Macintosh.
So linux running on sparc does not take away from Sun's market. Why do you think sun is welcoming linux ?
Solaris is not the ideal OS, it's /proc is primative compared to Linux, it's obviously more expensive. However, the advantages of having the manufacturer support their own OS are obvious. I KNOW all the drivers will work. I know that the X server will have decent performance.
If Linux was mainly hosted on Sparc, it would be different. But if I'm going to use Sparc hardware, I'm going to choose the OS which is most commonly used on that hardware.
chuckle. that was nicely put.
I'm surprised they don't add a Bwahahahahaha! just for grins. :)
The whole "we need someone to sue" argument really is a load of crap.
More like an imaginary security blanket. It allows big-wigs to sleep at night.
James
There are three things that might happen to "the Open Source community" as a result of this.
These are listed in my estimate of decreasing likelihood. Most of the people who would care about RedHat dropping a marginal platform use some other distribution or operating system (which is why it's a marginal platform) and most of the people who run SPARCs are probably not running Linux.
In no case does anyone outside of "the Open Source community" even notice that this has happened. I'm sorry, but I just can't see this particular decision damaging Linux's reputation with the people who don't already use it. I believe that this is definitely a teapot-sized tempest.
SuSE for sparc is much better than RedHat for sparc, and SuSE provides quality support.
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
First of all, the article is plain wrong.
Second, if we decided to drop sparc support commercially, we'd also try to get a community effort on keeping the port alive going.
Third, this has nothing whatsoever to do with releasing a closed source version. Doing that would do harm to the entire community.
Dropping a rarely used port would hurt a part of the community, but actually benefit others (all the engineering time we're currently putting into fixing up sparc would go to other projects).
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
Oh, you mean the same Linuxcare that was GOING to have an IPO in June, but decided not to because of "market conditions"? This may or may not be the real reason - and it's a perfectly legitimate reason. But it doesn't sound like a support structure I'd want to depend on for mission-critical systems.
When companies invest time and hardware in a service or operating system, they expect to do BUSINESS with a BUSINESS. The idea of freedom is antithetical to the entire idea of a business, and as such, they don't understand or like it (as a general rule). When you buy Windows, you are doing business with Microsoft. If you have a problem, you call Microsoft. When you buy RedHat, you are doing business with RedHat. If you have a problem, you call RedHat. When you download and install (or buy a copy of from CheapBytes.com) Debian, you are NOT doing business with Debian. Debian isn't a business. When you want support, you call some third part that had nothing to do with creating the OS? This may make sense to some people. This makes sense to people who understand the OpenSource ethic. This does not make sense to businesses.
Maybe the people tht are using SPARC machines just aren't using redhat... I know that my SPARC isn't and even if it did run RedHat I wouldn't have bought it from redhat.
Have you read the typical license agreements that most commerical software companies put out?
Yes, but when you buy a suppourt contract (which is really RedHat's product, not the distribution), you're basically buying an arse to kick.
You can buy suppourt contracts from M$, but they're not great (and terribly expensive).
The software you buy as an end user, and the software you buy as a corporation are the same. It's the level of suppourt (and liability) that the vendor gives you that's different.
Personally, with the Linux-based solutions I've rigged up, I've always gone with a rolled-my-own home-brew distro or at least a heavily modified Debian. Trimming down and configuring Red Hat started taking too long ever since the 5.X days.
Look at it this way:
There's a Linux for Cisco. There's a Linux for Palm. There's Linux for S/390. There's always going to be a new Linux port for something. SuSE has Linux for SPARC. The current trend is to make Linux run on everything imaginable (if you had a toaster that had been hacked up, you could run Linux on that), and I doubt, with the amount of people owning SPARC-based machines that Linux on SPARC will die with Red Hat not supporting it.
Red Hat is a commercial entity. They make money off of Red Hat on x86. That's their plan. If SPARC ports don't make money, they cut it. However, I doubt that suddenly, because of this, the SPARC platform will be forgotten.
Time to move on, and try something different. My wife runs NetBSD on our SPARCstation 10. When we get a copy of SuSE for SPARC, we'll probably give it a go as well.
No harm done. Just a different path to take.
Long Live The Alternatives!
"And the band played on..." A man who can never have too many computers in one room.
Dude, you need to try out some other distro's. RedHat sucks bigtime. I would suggest Caldera or Mandrake.
----
"Oh, bother," said Pooh, as he hid Piglet's mangled corpse.
"Redhat is obvisoul not making any money from their sparc version...", Yes, but are they lossing money, and if so how much? Must they make money from everything? How about giving a little free stuff back to the community? Must everything they do be about making money? I didn't buy Redhat sparc cuz it sucked, I downloaded the first iso, was the installation a mess!!! Crashed 10x times, tried it on various sparcs, IPX, sparc 5, and 10. On the other hand, I am happy with debian and SuSE for sparc.
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
1. Have you managed solaris? Have you developed for solaris? Have you run solaris? Looks like you have not...
2. The biggest problem of RedHat is QA. Quality assurance. They have tons of bugs all the time. As Sparc is the only BigEndian RedHat platform (alpha is little endian under linux) it will be the first one to bite the bullet if someone in redhat's management looks towards decreasing bug fix tunraround times and improving QA. It is the obvious decision, but it is wrong. Guess why... Because auditing for endianness bugs gives an additional run on general bugs and solves them.
3. And another important factor is that there are very few people that will have both Sun kit and low bandwidth lines. Most of them do not pay for CDs. They do not need to. They can download an entire distro while going for a coffee break.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Uh, I'd question that statement, RedHat have always struggled with support, to date the web support is adequate, if you don't mind waiting a week or so for answers to your questions. Looks like usenet is still the best place to go for Linux support...
It came out this week, so maybe not such a big idea. But I am NOT reloading my OS again, Mandrake 7.1 is where I stay for now.
You can sue Microsoft but you lose becouse of the liccens agreement..
But people think if they can pick a target they can sue. So what targets dose Linux have?
If you use RedHat then you sue RedHat...
If you use Debian then you sue the Debian organisation.
Etc..
Alternitively you may sue the Free Software Foundation (As most of Linux is GNU software anyway and comes from the FSF).
All that asside.. If you sue any of thies organisations.. You'll lose..
Sue Microsoft... You'll lose...
Same deal.. diffrent group.. and there IS a target to sue.. So your legal team can look like dopes..
In the mean time...
Sence like the early 1980s software companys have included a shrinkwrap liccens that says they are libal only up to the ammount you paid for the software...
Thats right... I could never sue the people who wrote most of the software for my old Commodore 64.
But I had targets...
So for people who want targets.. Yes they exist.. sue the Distro... or alternitivly the FSF.
Not that it makes any diffrence.
I don't actually exist.
I'd just like to point out, we're talking about RedHat. I assume Linux support for Sparc is going to continue, it's simply that there will not be any more official RedHat releases for Sparc.
The university I am at has started using Intel based machines for most things, including running Solaris for the honours students. I beleive this decision was based far more on cost than anything else.
Basically, if people want to run Linux, they'll probably buy Intel. If people are buying Sparc processors, there's a very good chance they wish to run Solaris.
Of course RedHat isn't the only distro but the point is that they are the only known distro by the mass public. when newbies think of Linux they look at redhat. sure that is wrong but that is how it is. Alodda people when they see redhat not supporting sparc will say ok linux doesn't support the sparc so I'll stick with (some other crap) they won't "make thiere own" or goto debian
IIRC, Mandrake is based on Red Hat. I bet we'll see Mandrake drop SPARC support in the near future.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
I don't care that they've dropped SPARC support. Having put 7.0 on my home K6 box, there's no way this distro was going anywhere near my SS2 or my work box.
After using RedHat from the 4.2 days, I've now started to defect. I've got Slackware on my 486 again, and I've been thinking about trying Debian on the Sparc.
RedHat has got just too clunky.
think back, 6.0 didn't have support for ALPHA or SPARC that came in 6.1
Well, with the recent news of Suse now running on Sun, perhaps its time for one to inspect Suse as their distro of choice. It has the same functionality of RedHat, so give it a shot.
Hasues
futang futang!
Yes, I know, Debian (being the cool people that they are) has compiled a version that runs on sparc. And in the sense that they support the rest of the Debian distributions, the sparc version IS supported. But who is going to be the primary sort of people that run sparcs? Big companies perhaps?
The fact of the matter is that Debian simply does not have the same kind of real tech-support that RedHat does. You can't call someone at the Debian corporation and demand to know how to get Apache to stop segfaulting. You can't call Debian and ask for a recommendation between web-traffic analysis programs, or credit-card-verification systems. You can't call Debian at all - it's a collective. There is no real responsibility, because no one person is doing anything. There is no headquarters. Instead there are consultants who agree to give Debian advice. Tech support is an IRC channel. This isn't how a big business prefers to do business. There's no culpability, and above all, no one to sue when it all goes south. Debian's form of support is GREAT when they're dealing with individual users - heck, I'd even venture to say it's the best out there. But for a company, they don't want to have to rely on IRC (where someone can just sign off without answering any questions). They don't want to have to rely on consultants with no real tie to the COMPANY that provides the Debian service - and especially not when they charge a minimum of $100/hr.
Forgive if I'm wrong, but didn't Linus start out with Linux being only on i386, with no intent to make it cross platform? I know it's cross platform now, but wasn't Linus' original intent just to have a good Unix like OS on Intel x86 architecture? From what I understand, it wasn't until other people got ahold of the code that it started to become cross platform.
Exactly. If a company's going to shell out tens of thousand dollars for *each* SPARC server kit, they're not going to balk at paying a few dozen thousands for Solaris, so it will be supported by the original vendor.
Who this hurts, of course, are the individual owners of SPARC kits. Of course, these people who own the kits will probably not be buying their copy of RH at places like CompUSSR....
--
Furthermore, it's easy to see why. Linux on Intel is easy to install and find support on the Internet for. But I've done a few Linux on Alpha installs, and let me tell you that once you leave the warmth and light of the x86 world you are on your own.
Installing RedHat on my AlphaServer was admittedly a real pain in the ass, but installing RedHat 6.2 on my SparcStation was bone simple. Don't compare these two platforms. I'm not about to speculate as to the userbase of these two platforms, but I'm willing to bet the sparc userbase isn't "few to none."
Jason.
As far as I know they don't write a bunch of new stuff, however they fund Kernel development, GNOME, gcc... Check into what the actually *DO* have their hands in. the spread a lot of money around.
Wait, I get it: too much time on your hands and too little to do with it.
--
Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
Yeah. The correct wording is:
There's no culpability, and above all, no one to *blame* when it all goes south
Cheers,
--fred
1 reply beneath your current threshold.
'nuff said
No, it's not. If it were part of the metric system, it would be 10 bunches = 1 shitload.
From ultralinux.org...
Here is the link....
Really people... This took 5 seconds to find. Don't make up stuff as you go please.
Who saw this coming?
"Electric Relaxation" - ATCQ
- Bwana
"Electric Relaxation" - ATCQ
- Bwana
WTF is up with the attitude? yes at one time Alpha documentation was scattered far and wide. Now that alphalinux.org exists you can find it all in one place including all the mailing lists for all the distros, searchable too. With regards to your fdisk question Rh-6.2's disk druid creates BSD disklabels for you AUTOMATICLY. Only for those who have harddrives that are misreporting their size or some other strange reason you have to use fdisk.Look at the SRM howto and learn howto BSD label disks properly and you're on your way.
maybe you didnt find the answer in the documentation but what you didnt do was ASK us a question in which i'd be more than happy to help.
And if their is a problem with the documentation nothing is going to be fixed until someone TELLS us.
Regards,
Peter
--
www.alphalinux.org
www.alphalinux.org
nuff said
I am quite likely to believe they dropped sparc support due to low demand. However, that's not even half the story. If you own a sun4c(Sparc 1, 1+, IPC, IPX, 2) machine, you will be advised to not run redhat because in simple terms, it sucks. From what I've heard, it is very rough on memory and will only run for a few weeks before crashing. However, this is due to the hardware being different in the memory. These machines though are probably the most common machines that someone would want to run linux one. Instead, people will choose NetBSD or OpenBSD. If someone has a newer machine (sun4m, sun4u), they are more likely to run Solaris still those machines are still well supported. I have no idea about the straight sun4 machines and linux support on them.
as well as Alpha, ARM, m68k, PPC, and sparc64, with work also being done on MIPS and PA-RISC. See http://www.debian.org/ports/
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
Anyway, if anyone thinks Windows really is more stable than that, it probably is, but I just had to FORMAT C: and reinstall to prevent it from crashing every time I moved my mouse. (Actually, I believe it has something to do with USB support, but I'm not sure.)
Windows is working now, and a quick lilo got my system back to dual-booting, but it was annoying enough. Your sig just seemed appropriate, somehow...
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian-cd/2.2_rev0_CDa/sparc/
or DEC Unix.... whatever it's called this week
Well, it used to be some RedHat with goodies.
It's not true today.
Their web page says Mandrake Linux is compatible with RedHat (because it uses RPMs and has mostly the same directory structure), but no more RedHat based.
Join KWSN - The coolest SETI team!
Ni!
As long as there is still the other members of LPI6 and the other major distros, ie Mandrake, Linux will still be able to support all that it needs to. Just because Red Hat changes something, does not mean that it will affect the rest of the distros..
öööööööööööööööööööööööööööööööööööö
How Jaded Are You?
I recently visited a large company here in England that use Linux on Sun Sparc. I'm not going to name them, but I will say that they are a Big Broadcasting Corporation.
HH
It's the nature of the beast.
Got Rhinos?
*shrug* I'm sorry to see that RedHat think there's no need for it. Unfortunately, next time I need to net-install Linux on one of these machines, where do I turn? Madrake and SuSE are pretty huge beasts, and I've always been unsuccessful at doing Debian net-installs...
To follow up my own message,
Neither I nor my workplace actually paid for RedHat releases on Sparc, but I have helped with support, bugfixing and development so I don't feel bad, and work's evaluation is still at a very early stage.
The sort of company that would run linux on sparc is likely to be very slow in taking up this new upstart operating system, "linux".
Ah well, I suspected there was more mileage in linux on the os390 because of the efficiency gains in reaching legacy data.
-- Don't believe everything you read, hear or think
Sun's Planning (to) Acquire Redhat Computing? Sun's Pretty Angry (at) Redhat's Cancellation? Sun's Petty Architecture; Redhat Cancels? Owwww.
EMUSE.NET
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
Well, there's something to be said about being a Real Man, and hacking your system together, piece by piece, from source. Mind you that this is a big jump from running a nice, friendly Red Hat system, Mandrake, while having its differences, is still very much like Red Hat, and as a previous poster mentioned they have a SPARC distro as well..
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
Um... 5.2 had ALPHA support (and SPARC). The thing is that the code redhat uses is not correct for alphas. (64-bit problems, devide by zero, etc.) So what they do (at least on alphas) is release the x86 SRPMS, and distro. Fix up the SRPMS (now ALPHA-SRPMS) to run on alpha, then build and release the Alpha release. They then incorperate the changes into the next release, which by then there are some more bugs, (a never ending cycle, while things like KDE aren't tested on Alphas. I have two of less than a dozen (based on downloads of a patch) alphas in the USA that run kde 1.94. anyway...) Wait for a while until Alpha, and hopefully SPARC builds come out.
So RH didn't sell that many copies. Oh, waaaah! As if it costs them anything. (If they've got the machines to do the builds now, then they'll have the machines to do the builds tomorrow. Builds can be scripted, so time = money is irrelevent.)
Sure, builds can be scripted, but that only works when the build actually works. Whenever something breaks someone's got to sit down and figure out what went wrong. Sure, it might only take a half-hour every build break, but over time it does add up. Nevermind the resources that are spent on QA making sure that, at the very least, you can install the damned thing and it'll boot. Plus, if they sell the distribution (with support, of course), then they have to have the support people on hand to deal with Sparc-specific issues. It's not just a case of having a Sparc in the corner churning out builds.
As for the hardware, who says they'll have the machines next week? They could sell them or donate them to some other organization that will find them more useful.
-j
well then, its a rough estimate.
Well.
First, RedHat is the major linux distributor. For many people linux==RH.
Second, RedHat have both an i386 and a sparc version.
The net result is that, in people brain, the drop of sparc by redhat will be interpreted by linux==i386.
Look: all the major software vendors that go to linux closed-source build their product for the RH distribution. RH dropping sparc means much less chances to have support outside i386
I, for one, have given a lot of credit to redhat only because of their sparc distribution (btw, do you know that Bjarne Stroustrup runs sparc-linux ?).
I had the (stupid) feeling that linux would become somthing like NeXTstep, where there was 4 versions (m68k,i386,hppa,sparc) absolutely identical. You seamlessly cross compiled from one version to another by checking a box. Binaries were fats (ie: the same binary contained version for several archs). I thought that RH would do more and more versions of linux on more and more different hardware, to get the ultimate portable ubiquitous operating system Vendors of applications would just get an i386 version, build with "-arch sparc -arch alpha -arch -m68k -arch arm -arch ppc -arch mips" and get their app on every RH platform.
Looks like they missed the grand scheme. But the most irritating thing is reading those kind of comments on slashdot:
> is making the smart decision to drop it
> it's a business decision, and a good one
I am pretty sure they made a lot of money on sparc, but *indirectly*. With your kind of reasonning, they should fire Alan Cox and the others, as they obviously don't *directly* make money from their work. You know, sometimes a vendor have to keep something for the 'prestige', or for having an edge against the competition.
It is a sloppy road they took.
Cheers,
--fred
1 reply beneath your current threshold.
Maybe so, but if I could get Linux for my Ascend (DAMMIT!) Max-4000's, I'd probably switch.
It's really quite simple to set up qmail if you READ the docs that come with it.
ls [A-Z]*
--------
Life is a race condition: your success or failure depends on whether you get the work done on time.
If you have a SPARC system, how exactly did you get it? Through Sun, right? I thought this was the only way you could get a SPARC machine (correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know, there aren't any mom and pop computer stores which build SPARC systems.) This plea for SPARC Linux is almost akin to the anti-Microsoft movement. Dell makes great x86 servers and still bible thumpers complain that they only ship with either Windows 2000 Advanced Server or RedHat; they want it to have BSD or Debian. Sorry to spoil your /usr/lib/bible/thump moment, but that's the way the computer business goes: components (hardware and OSes alike) are provided by the lowest bidder. VIA makes chipsets which crash the operating system; RedHat makes driver modules which foul up the hardware.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
FreeBSD with the SRM firmware was a breaze to install. It was just like the i386 install--easy. No dicking with the ARC firmware was great. Just "boot dka1" (that's my cd-rom drive. Type "show d" at the SRM prompt to get a list of your devices.)
FreeBSD (I've since tried NetBSD and OpenBSD, with similar success on older alpha) seemed to be much more polished on that architecture than other OSen.
Hope this helps.
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
I had no problems putting rh6.2 on alpha. I looked at the MILO-HOWTO, downloaded linload, and the MILO (I am lazy) for XL 300. Made a floppy, and that was all (aside from the CD not working, and having to barrow a SCSI CD-ROM).
Maybe years ago, it wasn't there, but now it is really easy to get to.
Oh, yeah, has anyone else noticed the problems with kde2 betas? there is a patch on alphalinux.org (somewhere), and kmail crashes.
EEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!
I have a jensen in my closet, collecting dust.. it's an interesting box, but wow, what a pain in the ass to load.. MILO is broken, it has no alphabios, and the ARC is kinda broken.. SRM booting (with aboot) is about the only good option.. I have worked with several alphas ranging from the jensen, multia, sx164, and lx164.. and I have to say.. the jensen is the worst one to work with as far as install goes.. (EISA is such a pain)
I don't mean to dis the hardware you obviously love--I like it too. I'm also not trying to say you (and the other Alpha Linux gurus) aren't doing a good job. I'm just saying that you don't have the critical mass needed to absorb very many news users at once--which keeps your numbers low in a viscious circle. With more users you get more questions and then more answers. Further new users doing searches find those answers and can jump in easily.
When I search for the answer to a problem with Intel Linux, I eventually find the answer among the hundreds of hits. When I search for the answer to a problem with Alpha Linux, I often don't find the answer among the dozens of hits.
As a datapoint: I've been using Linux for 4-5 years on Intel. I'm very comfortable installing it. I've been using Alpha Linux for 6 months and I've installed it on 3 machines (multiple times on 2 of them). On all 3 machines I struggled for at least a day (and in one case multiple weeks) trying to get Linux installed. Yes, I did eventually get it, with many thanks going to the efforts of the AlphaLinux people (and mailing lists). But it's still nowhere like as well-documented as Intel.
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
Would it have been better for them to choose another distribution that still supported SPARCs? That would be unfair. I suppose that they could have tried to make a comprehensive list, but whoever they skipped would be upset. And they probably would end up skipping someone. At least this is relatively neutral. Red Hat doesn't support all platforms. If you are on a Mac, you probably prefer MkLinux or Yellow Dog (if I should have mentioned someone else, sorry, I don't follow PPC Linuxes). It's not what the commercial market expects, but this is one way that room is made for new distributions.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Sun announces the new US-III, RH drops support for Sparc a week later. Coincidence?
comspiracy films at 11...
"a powerful and unexpected ally..."
I tried it out last week. Wasn't very impressed. The install finished with neither Backspace or Delete working (All that worked was CTRL-H) and JDK 1.2.2 segfaulted every time I used javac or java. With JDK1.3 for Linux still in the pre-release state, and my primary use is for Java development, I had no choice but to abandon ship and go to Mandrake 7.1...
*If* you really need Sparcs and *if* you can afford them, I don't see why you'd run Linux on them. Solaris seems to do just fine in that case!
Becasue there's a lot of sparc32 hardware out there going cheap (take a look a Ebay sometime), that Sun have dropped support for as of Solaris 8. If you want up to date software (IPv6 support, for example) on your IPX, you have to run something other than Solaris.
I've used RedHat on SPARC's for a while.
The problem with the SPARC-port is that older machines that people tend to have at home
are not supported well. I have had problems installing anything newer than RH 5.2 SPARC on sun4m machines even. No doubt would I have used newer versions on SPARC provided that they actually would work.
RedHat is probably realizing that the SPARC port of the kernel need too much work for their liking.
And now since solaris is "free" the demand for a linux port is probably diminishing. (unfortunately).
With a stock that is under-performing even Apple over the past 10 months, it is clear that Red Hat needs some changes in its business model if it is ever to reach profitability.
While no one like to see entire hardware lines dropped from compatability it may have been a neccesary decision for Red Hat. People may be using SPARCs with linux, but they are obviously not signing up for Red Hat support for those systems, hence Red Hat makes no money.
By the way, does anyone here has the latest figures from PC-Data?
Exactly. As far as I have seen, Debian on Sparc is much more flexible than RedHat. And yes, I have run both, Debian being the one that's still installed.
Both the NetBSD and OpenBSD ports to the Sparc architecture are quite good.
That is partly true. Performance with *BSD's is a (tiny) bit better than with Linux, but neither of them support SMP on Sparc. Although I personally run OpenBSD on my gateway SparcStation, I consider the inability to upgrade into SMP machine a major flaw.
______________
______________
OTTERS RULE.
The truth is, Redhat has always been unable to DELIVER for the sparc platform. I bought 5.1 and 5.2 for sparc in the store. When 6.0 came out, I called to order it, and it was not available and they would not take pre-orders for it. By the time 6.1 came out, 6.0 for sparc never showed up. Even today, no more sparc versions have showed up.
I also asked for a sparc version of their secure web server. I would have bought it if they had it. But they didn't, and even said they had no plans for it. I called again later and ask for it again, and they said no one wanted it when in fact they keep no records of demand at all.
The fact is, Redhat is not interested in supporting other than the one largest platform. As Microsoft is to all operating systems, Redhat is to Linux; they are the "big guys" and as such, they can do, and ignore, whatever they please. The sparc platform isn't in their business plan because their business plan has changed to pursue big corporations (which probably is the right thing to do for their stockholders). They should just tell the truth and say that sparc is just too small a market for their grandiose plans.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
bzzzz, wrong! ftp://ftp.valinux.com/pub/mirrors/redhat/redhat/ol d-releases/redhat-6.0/sparc/
Running it on a sparc right here... just about to install something different though, i'm sick of rebooting it twice a day.
Linux to me is almost synonymous to a free (almost) industrial strength system on an as cheap as possible, no-nonsense x86 box, preferably assembled on demand (à la carte).
I am not saying this is the right way to go but maybe Red Hat thinks the same?
The nice thing about Windows is: it does not just crash; it displays a nice little dialog box and let's you press 'OK'
While newer versions of Solaris still run^H^H^Hwork on some systems with older Sparc processors the performance is really poor since the software is optimized for the ultrasparc architecture. Upgrading to a newer version of Solaris therefore often results in a noticable loss of performance. Nevermind all the systems that Sun no longer supports. I just installed SuSE Linux 7.0 on a 4 cpu Sun 630 without problems. Solaris 2.5 or 2.5.1 was the last version of Sun's operating system supporting this box.
Oh... alphas there too
The conspiracy theories are just flat unlikely. It's a HELL of a lot more probable that they stopped supporting the platform because there were about 12 downloads of Sparc Redhat, and those were all the mirror sites.
Or, it could be that doing sparclinux gave someone a woody before and they're bored now. Hey, it's not always about money.
-30-
Jensens are one of the first alphas designed as straight workstations w/ standard PC busses on them (vs DEC's TurboChannel), and therefore are dinosaurs by current standards. it's like trying to find support for an 80286 these days.
I didn't like my experiences too much with linux on sparc. It was very buggy and X never supported the framebuffer card at more than 256 colors, while solaris could push it to 16.7M. and it was SLOW. the slowness was what got me the most out of the whole thing.
as far as documentation goes, Alpha Linux dot org has one of the best sets of docs on alpha on the net. They even have a searchable mail list archive that's been very handy for me when I've needed support on things.
there's a lot of sparc32 hardware out there going cheap ... If you want up to date software (IPv6 support, for example) on your IPX, you have to run something other than Solaris.
I hear this kind of reasoning a lot. I just don't get it. An IPX was a kick-ass system for it's day. Now, it's the rough equivalent of a P90 with much poorer support available for video, scanning and many other hardware periperals where under Linux for X86, you have all of the above plus the average P90 is going for even less than that IPX! Why would you waste your time?
The only reason to run Suns is 1) you have a broken application that cannot take advantage of multiple systems and so you need to build it a big old E10k pile of iron to run on (don't go Linux in that case) or b) because your management won't accept that Intel-based systems are "enterprise ready" (in which case they won't accept Linux for roughly the same non-reason).
If you're looking to build out high-capacity infrastructure you go with a large farm of identical 2u Linux or BSD systems (e.g. VA/Linux' FullOn 2xxx series which I have had nothing but good luck with) and you parcel them out as needed. For storage, you probably go with Network Appliance who have the baddest network-attached storage in the business (you'll never go back after taking your first snapshot... 200G of disk... backup time?... 5 seconds).
So, for the home enthusiast Sparc loses. For the the business user this is not even a question, as your constraints are likely pretty simple.
So RH didn't sell that many copies. Oh, waaaah! As if it costs them anything. (If they've got the machines to do the builds now, then they'll have the machines to do the builds tomorrow. Builds can be scripted, so time = money is irrelevent.)
This isn't about money, folks. If they can't afford to mass-produce, they can always produce in low-volume batches and charge the extra.
So what -is- it about? Beats me. Looks more like a decision made to stir up controversy than one made on sound business or programming reasons.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
the big deal? there is no notice that it is there. We do a linux install fest, Little johnny brings his pc home to show mom and dad, the computer spews profanity, and Linux along with the Linux user group get's a bad rap from one idiot programmer's idea of something that is funny to him (maybe to a 3 year old it's funny) it has more potential to damage than entertain, and it's there for purely sophmoric reasons. Hell i wouldnt bitch if the game start up screen said "warning this says OH SHIT" and then it would never have been included in redhat, and all pissed off parents,IT guys that are trying to demonstrate that it isn't a hacker OS to the CEO's, etc... Moron programmers that put that crap into programs un-announced jepordize the entire Open source movement. What do you think schools would do if solitare in windows emited "F**K off you D**K" when you messed up? It was a really stupid move on red-hat to include a program that they didn't inspect first. and it was super stupid of the Xboing's programmer to put profanity in there to begin with WITHOUT a notification in the readme/opening screen. I'm now wondering if VI is going to start playing an mpeg porno on screen if I type nipples.
If Red Hat were all about money, they would have used KDE rather than (assisting in) developing Gnome, they would have included MySQL long before now, and there would be closed-source components.
Red Hat has a moral dedication to Open Source and Free software, which is to be lauded. No, they are not perfect, but they have fought harder for their customers than any other vendor.
right, but in the 6.x string the alpha and SPARC ports didn't show up until 6.1
I've only got a lowly little old Sparc5, but I've tried Linux, OpenBSD, Solaris 2.6 and Solaris 7 on it. Guess which one I kept? Solaris 7. It's the fastest of the bunch. They were all equally stable as far as I could tell. I recently got a copy of Solaris 8 for it, but haven't even bothered to install it.
They've not been making a profit almost all along, their stock is taking a bath from where it was earlier, and they need to change what they are doing. The fact is, they are doing what they, as a business, see fit, and they do not give a damn about what we think as long as we keep buying it.
M
It is not free if you want to use it for business.
Then RedHat or SuSE are a lower cost alternative.
A lot of long-time Sun users prefer BSD over linux anyway, because it's closely related to the much-beloved SunOS 4 and under. I wish Sun would recognize its heritage and throw some weight behind NetBSD, whose ultra support is not well-developed, rather than Linux.
Hello,
Can someone point me to an actual announcement of this? I've searched the RedHat site and I can't find mention that they stopped supporting Sparc, although I can see why they wouldn't want to advertise this.
I did notice that only RedHat 7 i386 is shipping, but that's the way they always start out a new revision. Alpha and Sparc generally come several weeks (to months) behind Intel. Sad, but true?
I've hard reports from friends of mine in the industry that they would have ARM and PPC versions of 7, and that doesn't seem to be the case yet, either. Has anyone heard anything further about this?
Joe
I would conjecture that it is in the interests of Red Hat to leave Sun with an appropriate niche, if they are to forge a mutually beneficial alliance in the future. This is only conjecture, of course, but business-wise it makes more sense for Red Hat to not press Sun on "sacred ground".
I think RedHat are going a good thing. Why waste the effort on a SPARC version of Linux when Sun is shipping Solaris 8 for the price of the Media ($75). You still have all the same old tools available. Sure you can't do the ultimate lazy thing and just grab RPM's, but all the source is out there, as well as the EGCS compiler.
I'm very happy running Solaris 8 on my little Ultra 5 workstation. Still use WindowMaker as my WM, still run all my happy DocApps - life is good...
RedHat can now focus on important things for the disto as a whole and for the other platforms that are not as well loved by *nix vendors, like Alpha...
--- Brian the Wise Friend to Small Fury Animals Everywhere...
Sparc is dying. Sure, many big companies with deep pockets buy Sparc. But the little and medium size guys are migrating more and more to IA32. With IA64 just around the corner, Sparc will be in for a hell of a fight. In some respects, Sparc has the same problem as PPC. Both are primarily controlled by proprietary vendors, Apple and Sun respectively. What is killing both architectures is that no effort has ever been made to commoditize them. The main thing IA32 has going for it is that it has been commoditized. And for many tasks, a small beowulf cluster is more cost effective than a Sparc box solution. Ten years from now there will be no Sparc. The economics are against it.
I'm sitting on a Sun Ultra 10 right now running Solaris 7, and I can testify that Sun's OS is more stable, faster and better supported than Linux on Sparc. Redhat has never been the distro to do unprofitable things or to support unpopular products. They are the most mainstream linux distro, and they have to make choices like this to stay alive. There's nothing wrong with it, it's just a buisness decision. Linux for Sparc isn't going away, just Redhat for Sparc.
oh well.
//Phizzy
"Most European technology just isn't worth our stealing," -- Former CIA chief James Woolsey, referring to Echelon
Concerning MILO, were you trying to do it from SRM or from the ARC? (AlphaBIOS on later machines)... It is much much easier to get it to boot from the ARC. I have installed it on a multia, an Alphastation 233, an Alphaserver 300, an Alphaserver 4100, and even got to play with it for about 3 days on a new GS140 (8-way goodness).
I totally agree with you about support for platforms other than Intel. Most people have little to no experience with any other platform from the Intel norm, which makes trying to get help with a problem on an Alpha (or Sparc or MIPS or...) a total pain in the ass. Much of the documentation is outdated on these platforms.
However, the truth of the matter in the case of the Sparc version of RedHat is that I am sure it probably didn't sell well, if at all. Most businesses with Sparcs would probably run Solaris on them. I would guess that most of the Sparc Linux users are individuals who either are using Linux on Sparc workstations at work, or are using it on Sparcs that they own and run at home. The number of people running a Sparc in their house is significantly lower than people running PPC or Alpha, and is definitely miniscule in comparison to the number of x86 users.
RedHat is *not* Linux... true... but many people see RedHat as the representation of Linux, especially the PHBs. When they see something like this happening with RedHat, they assume that it is true for all Linux. That is where this is truly a tragedy for the community. RedHat is the leading distribution (usage-wise, I'm not wanting to start a distro flame war) of Linux. Until that changes, RedHat *is* Linux is the eyes of most of the public (that even know what Linux is).
My 2 x 10^-2
wolf31o2 Developer, Gentoo Linux Games Team
Adam Smith said we vote with our feet our our dollars. Don't buy Redhat if you dissapprove. SuSE and others still support Sparc. Send an e-mail to Redhat telling them you are buying elsewhere. They will bring back Sparc if it's profitable.
Kids, these people are a publicly traded company now. They have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders to MAXIMIZE DOLLARS EARNED. Quite a shock. No more "What's good for the Linux community" now its "Does it impact our quater?"
Paul C. Whalen, Esq.
www.manhasset.net
The Law Office of Paul C. Whalen, P.C.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
Sheesh. Besides, Alan Cox said 'Nazi' and it didn't kill the thread...
There's no culpability, and above all, no one to sue when it all goes south
Have you read the typical license agreements that most commerical software companies put out? They pretty much say that even if the program erases your hard drive, you're just out of luck. The whole "we need someone to sue" argument really is a load of crap.
We have a lot of Solaris machines where I work. The main UNIX guy gave an old pizza box to another one of the IS team to learn about it. He had a hell of a time getting Solaris installed on it.
So I suggested Linux. The UNIX guy overheard that and said that he would take the box back if the guy wanted to run Linux on it. "If you want a linux box, use a PC, that's what it's for."
With that kind of attitude, it's no big wonder that they're not selling very many.
Does anyone know if the 2.2 or 2.4 kernels are 64bit clean? It would be ashame to run a 450MHz Ultra Sparc II processor in 32bit mode. Anyone know if the lack of a 64bit Linux version had any bearing on this or Sun Soft's actions of late surounding Linux?
:-)
Enquiring minds want to know
Mostly for older, legacy boxen, but still...
Redhat is obviously not making any money from their sparc version, and is making the smart decision to drop it. If people were buying it, they would certainly keep producing it, it's a business decision, and a good one.
My question to the person submitting this article is, did you buy the sparc version, or did you download it?
I've got an even better question for the submitter. Are you willing to provide support a Sparc distribution?
There is, after all, nothing stopping you from rolling your own distribution. If you feel there is a market for it, do it yourself.
When will Windows be ready for the desktop?
Is it just I that remembers RedHat as a small company distributing Linux. Before they went public, before they partnered with a number of large companies, before they were worth many millions of dollars...
...they are unable to continue supporting Sparc?
see subject
I've installed Red Hat 6.2 quite successfully on SparcStation 20 machines and it's worked very well.
Oh really? Did you try downloading Solaris 8?
The Free dot-COM download rapidly turns into a
75$ US purchase without explanation.
I eventually found out a little FAQ explaining why: "oh, it would take too long for people to download cd images, so we removed the downloads".
What a bunch of @#%#$%#$%#$%#$%.
First, Red Hat isn't the only Linux that supports SPARC, and who says that Sun won't build their own at some point? A lot of these posters don't look at the big picture.
BTW, Solaris rocks. I know a lot of you don't like it, but I can't for the life of me understand why. It's been a lot more stable than Linux around here (and yes we do use both).
...Steve
That is the nature of open source software, it is free. many of us have worked on it and do not think that we should have to pay red hat for it. I see your point that we did not contribute but, why should we? they used OUR code to make their product. They make their money off of support and the reason they dont make any money off of SPARC is that it comes with Solaris, which is a pretty decent operating system.
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
SuSE has a special infrastructure in place to build their distro on a cluster of machine from the architecture wanted. That's why they now also offer PPC support, SPARC, Intel,.... I am NOT a SuSE fan nor user (debian rocks!) but I think they have one of the best infrastructure for the future. Of only they were not so reluctant to total GPL (Yast licence....)
There are quite a few bright people employed with Linuxcare: http://www.linuxcare.com/abou t-u s/os-dev/index.epl. I prefer postfix to qmail, myself:-)
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
Debian is a great choice for those comfortable with it, but for the type of user that really wants what RedHat offered, Caldera may be the best bet. All the points you brought up as to why some people would rather have RedHat than Debian are well dealt with by Caldera. Or SuSE, or Mandrake for that matter.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
But you're missing the point. SuSE and Mandrake also provide support and someone to yell at. Linux is more than just RedmondHat after all.
Debian still supports SPARC, see
http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/.
I gereally buy from a resleer instead of Sun directly nad get a better price? Isn't that illegal in 6 states?
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
But choice is rarely a bad thing, and it's sad that there will be less of a choice on the Sparc platform. But considering that SuSE, Mandrake and Debian are still supporting it, I don't think it's a real problem.
"Judging the entire Alpha line of boxen by it's first incarnation (the jensen) is not a fair comparision."
I'm not "judging the entire Alpha line...by...the jensen...". I am saying that lack of documentation of the Jensen is an example of lack of documentation in general.
And if you think that HOWTO is worth the electrons it's printed on, you have another think coming. When I was searching for information on how to install on the Jensen I found no fewer than three mutually contradictory sets of instructions (none of which was complete or completely accurate) along with numerous incorrect links to further information and even a bad firmware (?) file hosted on Digital's own FTP server.
As an(other) example of poor docs: During a RH install on an SRM-booting, "generic" Alpha how do you fdisk? With Disk Druid or with fdisk? Wrong! You use the "bsd mode" of fdisk--except that doesn't seem to always work. Don't bother responding with corrections to this, the fact that I haven't been able to find the answer in existing docs is the issue here, not this particular problem.
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
How hard would it be to make an unofficial "community supported" version of RedHat for Sparc? I'm comfortable with RedHat and I'd prefer to keep on using it, but I don't need support and probably wouldn't pay for an official CD to install on hardware that is worth less than the cost of the CD:-). Does anyone know of a source for information on how to build a RedHat distribution?
__________
You are indeed correct, I have never seen a
downloadable version. On the other hand I noticed
that they say that they are working on one.
But since time is money, $75 isn't such a big
deal for what you get. Compare that with winblows
and see. The use of the word free is a bit
exagerated.
One thing I found interesting is the change
they made on the licencing. Last time I looked
at the site they were not giving it for free
for business. I would assume that they would
make money with the service or most of their
business is in the big stuff.
The compile and make available a release for sparc. That's not exactly the same thing as "supporting" it.
I have never quite understood this..
What advantages does Solaris have over Linux?
Not a flame, just curious.
[By the way, the mirrors are here: http://www.linux-mandrake.com/e n/f tp.php3#usparc]
IBM is a major partner of Caldera as well -- Caldera's OS products are the only Linux products preloaded on IBM hardware by IBM -- but Caldera has a Sparc port. They don't offer commercial support for it, but they have it and have not announced that they're dropping it. I doubt that IBM cares about Sparc ports. When IBM offers a commercial OS that works well on Sparc hardware, then they'll have a say. Until then, I believe they are probably not interested in the existing Sparc market.
(Granted, Caldera's Sparc port is not the most recent version of their offering (OpenLinux 2.2 based, if I recall correctly), but it's there.)
I mean really... I think the SPARC is a great chip. And the Sun boxes are great, but must user's who buy a Sun box get Solaris... and to a lot of people, Linux = Unix = Solaris... so why bother?
So, what you have left using RedHat are the hard-core Linux on everything types (you know who you are...), and the "hey, i just got this thing on eBay... what can I do with it" types. And these aren't big money sources for RedHat.
So while it sucks that their won't be a SPARC version of RedHat, and for anyone that wanted to rid themselves of Intel hardware in exchange for Sun hardware that wanted to run Linux that there won't be any official (ie, paid) support, it is a decision that had to be made.
It's always been obvious to me that SPARC RedHat was doomed to fail... and I've always wondered why there is a SPARC version but no PPC version, considering that there are plenty more PPC's out there running an OS that isn't a Unix variant. This just isn't the case with the SPARC.
dennis
It won't annoy those purchasing old sparc stuff; we generally know our way about the mbus and can deal with installing an OS. Anyway, I find Redaht irritating. Now if Slack released a sparc version... WooHoo!
"Remember, any tool can be the right tool." -- Red Green
RedHat drops support for Sparc; millions switch to Debian!
On i386, alpha, arm, m68k, PowerPC, sparc, and even Sparc64, Debian is still the breakfast of champions. Once you get past dselect, that is. But they're working on it! That's what apt is for.
Right. Red Hat is simply trying to fill their wide market, they're not trying to fill every niche. There's also no Red Hat support for non-x86 handheld platforms, but that's not stopping Linux from being there.
This would matter if RedHat was the only Linux distro that provided SPARC support. As it is, there are quite a few distros which will still support SPARC far into the future. And, I'm sure that just because Red Hat quits making official RPMs for SPARC, that won't keep the zealot from doing so. I have the feeling that SPARC users will install another distro and load up their favorite utilities, the ones they became addicted to via RedHat's SPARC CD.
This really doesn't harm SPARC users, as another distro will happily step up in RedHat's place. It's a bad move on RedHat's part, however. Now the door has been opened for competition. Who'll be the one to take the SPARC market? Only time will tell.
Does anyone know if any other hardware platform is in jeopardy? Will PPC support be there next release?
Let the nail biting commence.
aÍÍ©ÍÌÍ£Ì'̽ͩÌÍzÍYÌÍÌY
Hi,
you have Solaris 8, its FREE up to 8 CPU's, and for SPARC is the best choice.
Of course is a pity RedHat no longer support SPARC, but like someone already said, you have many other distros with SPARC support, and in my opinion better than RedHat.
Best regards,
DrBrain
This happens all the time. With RedHat 6.2 the alpha version was released later than the x86 version. I think most Linux distro's show the same behaviour: develop & release for x86, then patch up & release the "weird" ports. The x86 version is the one that brings in the $$$. Give them some time...
True, true, but once you have it you can install it on as many platforms as you like. And, in Suns defense, there are something like 10-15 CD's in the package - I have it and it comes with two full booklets of CD's, plus assorted multi-linugal install manuals, etc. Not a bad deal.
Judging the entire Alpha line of boxen by it's first incarnation (the jensen) is not a fair comparision. Jensens are totally different from any other Alpha. It's the equivilent of a 286 in terms of age. There is a great step by step howto on installing RH on a Jensen at alphalinux.org, it was just updated recently for use with aboot-0.7 and all supporting files updated as well. http://www.alphalinux.org/docs/jensen.shtml .
All other Alphas (except maybe ruffian) are a breeze to install linux on and the documentation is plentiful.
Regards,
Peter
--
www.alphalinux.org
www.alphalinux.org
RedHat made the decision because obviously spending more time on development for the other platforms that they support is more profittable. When a company makes a stategic move, it isn't a blow to the community, unless it's like, massive layoffs and closing their doors. RH is doing fine...
Eh...
You, and all the people who are agreeing with you are either
- not in the real world
- independently wealth (see above)
- dumb
I say cheers to RedHat for being bold enough to support Sparc in the first place, and again for being smart enough to drop said support. I hope they are able to improve the core capabilities by removing Sparc from their support, design, and testing.Besides, I'm sure that nine out of ten of you whiners don't even own a Sparc and are just upset in principle, that you're no longer getting something for free.
"Don't trolls get tired?"
For a good corporate-suported Free UNIX on sparc, NetBSD + Wasabi Systems http://www.wasabisystems.com/ would seem to fit the bill. I've always had much better results on non-x86 hardware with NetBSD, too. It Just Works [tm] instead of being a constant uphill battle because most kernel coders, distro maintainers, etc. don't use that hardware.
I own tons of sparc hardware and on my 32bit sparc systems I tend to run Linux because it's easier to maintain and usually faster than solaris. But on my Ultra 5 I run Solaris, because otherwise it will be a really expensive Linux box and a PC would be a better option. I bought the ultra to run Solaris. Ultra's == Solaris, Others == Linux
It just works. And besides, you can make solaris do everything linux can with a little determination.
-Aaron
----------------- Who is Jesus?
Both SuSE and Mandrake offer Sparc distros, and both, though especially SuSE, offer excellent support for businesses. Linux isn't about RedHat and a motley crew of hacker distro's. There are several large commerical and professional organisations willing to help.
The hardware producer manages to put out a decent OS of their own (Solaris, heard of it?) so its not as if the hardware was descending into the Windows arena no is it...
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
If this had been closed proprietary software we would in fact have been screwed. However, it's not, so we are not. Anyone can takeover and do a redhat based distro for sparc. Sure it might be a little behind what redhat's current release is, but it could be done is the point.
This seems like a good opportunity for Sun to step in and possibly redeem themselves a little by partnering w/ redhat to takeover the sparc port???? At least I think it would be a good idea.
I agree that the 'Oh shit' gets tiresome after awhile with XBoing. But they're all plain vanilla au files that you can update as you wish, so what's the big deal?
Of course NetBSD has supported Sparc for a verry long time and will continue to.
Maybe RH is trying to work some deal with Intel? Maybe it's because Solaris is mostly free and has full driver support for all hardware?
Well, if you have a 10 year old SS2 , Linux might be useful. But it is beyond me why people insist on using linux instead of much more scalable and proven Solaris OS.
Also, you have to be a full to run linux on a new sun box. Why should I run Linux on my $20.000 SUN E250 if Linux
1) is not optimized optimized for that hardware well. SUN's C compilers kick gcc's ass
2) Lots of hardware is still unsupported
3) No applications.
4) Lousy NFS and NIS+
Don't run CDE and choose what services you install and it should be fine. If you weren't supposed to run solaris on these boxes why would sun include support? Personally I find linux much slower than BSD on sparcs. Don't get me started about the mmu slowdown bug and scsi bus issues. Once during each boot it would panic and reset the scsi bus, although it was fine after that no other OS had problems.
Have you ever used the redhat sparc support? They admitted to only do install support. Forget it if you had issues with RAID disks and such.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
It may not be a major blow, as more and more companies are using Intel processors in their servers (whether this is a good idea is another matter :-)
Can't blame them, since they're generally cheaper...
So it does not say anything about Linux usage, more about Sparc not being a competitive offer (I think/guess)
It is a pity however, the more platforms supported the better, ofcourse!
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
While those people posting with the "but there are other distros..." have a point, they're missing the primary concern. Redhat, actually provides support, which seems to be a sticking point with big business. They want someone to yell at when everything goes to shit....Redhat is that someone.
PRAY FOR MOJO
I work at Sun and I'm not pleased at all... I wanted 7.0 for my machine at home.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
I've installed RH sparc on an old IPC over NFS and apart from not RTF'Ming the instructions about the boot disc properly (ok not RTFM'ing at all) i didn't have any problems. In fact I'd bet it's slightly easier than on intel because you don't have the hassles over configuring the hardware. I also tried it booting off the CD on an Ultra 1 with no problems at all.
Bear in mind that the kind of people that are running on sun hardware (outside of Universities) are probably going to trade in their old hardware for new sun stuff and anyway RedhHat are chasing an inherently smaller market on Sparc anyway.
The article's subject should be "Red Hat Linux 7.0 possibly won't be released for sparc".
The sparc machines are still part of our build system, and we won't just drop it off.
If we ever decide to discontinue sparc support commercially, the sparc port will be turned into a community effort.
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
People should keep in mind that RedHat 6.0 didn't support Sparc or Alpha (I don't remember which) either. They didn't have the time to get everything cleaned up and ready for the .0 release. But Sparc/Alpha support reappeared in 6.1, after all the other changes had time to settle.
If Red Hat doesn't wish to support us, then to hell with them!
Time to change distributions... After all, Red Hat isn't the only one out there.
Perhaps better support - but performance? No way - from what I've seen, Red Hat Linux runs circles around solaris on sparc boxen.
As far as RedHat never being the type of company to do unprofitable things: well - they are a linux distributor in compliance with gpl, which is arguably an unprofitable move in the first place (arguably, I said - this isn't really my opinion), and they are a publicly held company, which by law demands that they do everything they can with their business model to become profitable.
I don't see the big deal here really - if you want to run redhat 7 on a sparc, the sources are available, just compile and upgrade! I'm sure we'll see all the rpm's made available by non-redhat sources anyway.....
I've used Solaris on SPARC since the days of SunOS 4.0 on a SPARCstation 10 and Linux on SPARC and x86 since around 4.x. I do have to agree that Linux/SPARC has been a godsend for older machines that are begging for a faster OS (such as a SPARCstation 1, 2, or even a SS20), but I have never seen Linux/SPARC outperform Solaris on any UltraSPARC-based Sun (Ultra 1 on up). Especially now with Solaris 8 6/00 (which feels even faster than Solaris 7, I don't really see any need for Linux on any Ultra. Perhaps there may be a situation with the Ultra 5 or 10 (same logic board) where the Linux IDE drivers work better than Sun's own, but I haven't witnessed this myself.
Like my friend said, "Installing Linux on a Sparc is like installing Linux on a Cisco router"
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
Sheesh, this is very microsoftish. Just like there is no more NT support for the alpha. Now redhat is playing demigod? what's next? olny release i386 versions? change the filesystem a tad so that you must use redHat "blessed" binaries/rpm's/source? Oh well, after seeing their take on the software they include without screening it for appropateness (How about hearing a "OH SHIT" out of xboing during a demonstration to a group of kids and their parents on how linux could be used at home. Good frigging job for the moron that wrote Xboing!)
I ahve an IQ over 140... and I love to act like a fool!
Red Hat is one of the best companies I've ever seen in terms of not taking advantage of anyone. They really and truly do have their customers' best interests at heart, and I think for that reason alone they will ultimately be wildly successful.
The conspiracy theories are just flat unlikely. It's a HELL of a lot more probable that they stopped supporting the platform because there were about 12 downloads of Sparc Redhat, and those were all the mirror sites.
It's not a popular platform for Linux. Aren't they being smart by re-allocationg their Sparc guys to some other project that will benefit more people?
and Linux on SPARC and x86 since around 4.x.
ugh, meant to say that I've used Linux since they days of the Red Hat 4.x distro. Didn't mean to sound like a 12-year-old L33T linux h4x0r that doesn't know the difference between distrobutions and kernels. I need my coffee.
Apparently no one wants support for the SPARC version. So why would any company want to provide support for a product that has no market?
RedHat decided to do this so they wouldn't have to throw money away, they do have a commitment to their shareholders now to make money. You know, if you see this as an un-claimed market, you could start your own company and support a SPARC version of Linux.
But, alas, it's a bad choice to pursue linux on SPARCs.
I'm guessing the major demand for a SPARC version of linux comes from people who have aquired old sun boxes and just want to fool around. These people don't purchase support.
But, keep in mind Linux != RedHat. RedHat may be considered the premier distro for companies who are looking for support from the vendor, but Debian, SuSE, et. al. are in many folks minds (and for many purposes) as good if not better than RH.
So, this is not a blow to Linux. If anything it should allow RH to put more effort into their x86 distro.
"but I'm sure there are a lot of people who appreciate having a distro they can stick on some old SparcStation."
Which is precisely the reason they're dropping it. Of the small fraction of Sparc machines running Linux instead of Solaris or the ancient SunOS, I'd hazard a guess that most of those are old recycled hardware.
The open-source aspect of Linux is certainly nice given Sun's tendency to leave certain Solaris bugs unfixed year after year. But few people are going to buy new Sun equipment and reload it with an OS that makes mediocre use of the latest hardware.
No, I suspect Sparc Linux is what gets loaded on machines too old and underpowered to run the recent versions of Solaris well. Linux is a good way to get a modern, up-to-date *nix running on all those old 125 MHz Turbosparcs.
And if you're still updating 125 MHz Turbosparcs, you're probably not spending money on packaged OS media and support contracts.
For another thing, why run Linux on new Sun hardware? You're paying a premium for hardware that doesn't run optimally under Linux. Linux can't do SMP as well as Solaris, and you're giving up things like hot-swappable processor support and so forth. Next, you're using this fancy hardware to run what? Apache, MySQL and BIND? It would be nice to be able to run big, scary software like Oracle, DB2, Domino and WebSphere on that fast hardware, but none of those commercial apps are available for Sparc Linux.
Phooey. If you run Sparc Linux, you're unlikely to have been paying for support anyway. Why should RedHat pay people to build and tune Sparc versions of their distro? You're free to grab the RH7 sources and compile them yourself, or put together a team to do so, or switch to something like Debian, Mandrake or SuSE.
For an example of a low-demand OS's demise really disrupting things, consider OS/2's death, officially taking place in the summer of 2001. It may not be in wide use on desktops or even on network servers, but it's got a large market share in the voice-mail systems industry.
Don't moderate me down if I'm horribly misinformed, but...
Solaris is pretty good stuff. Who exactly is using SPARC Linux on anything but old equipment (except as a political statement)?
/Brian
Do you ever notice how everyone thinks their own needs are the most important?
Redhat is obviously not making any money from their sparc version, and is making the smart decision to drop it. If people were buying it, they would certainly keep producing it, it's a business decision, and a good one.
My question to the person submitting this article is, did you buy the sparc version, or did you download it?
________
Consider this: With the exception of those of us with old Sun IPX boxes lying around (*grin*), Sparc customers tend to be people who need "big iron." I.E. 8, 16, or more CPUs and oodles of memory.
:>)
Solaris is well tuned to this sort of hardware environment, and the needs that produce demand for that kind of hardware. Linux still has some deficiencies in this area. Consider Linux's 1-1 thread/process model. Linus considers this to be a Good Thing(tm) and just wants to reduce the cost of a context switch as much as possible. Cetainly admirable but Solaris's 1-m thread/process model tends to be the Right Thing(tm) for this type of environment. Our MySQL server running on a Solaris E4500 is serving 4,500 active connections at any given moment during peak usage hours. It would probably need more but that's what we have our MAX_CONNECTIONS set to right now. We're considering upping that as high as 6,000 in the not too distant future.
Between the relatively high cost of a thread on Linux (in terms of spawning and context switching primarily -- I'm less concerned about the 16KB or so of overhead per thread since that's actually quite reasonable) and the remaining coarse-grained kernel locks, plus the somewhat flawed I/O in 2.2 (ladder-I/O starvation anyone?) Linux isn't quite ready to handle 8+ CPUs in a high demand environment just yet.
But even when Linux *does* get to that point (and it *is* getting there -- the kernel team is doing an incredible job with 2.4, and with companies like IBM helping out at the high-end they certainly have a lot of information at their disposal...) you must consider that usually Sparc hardware comes as a bundle with the software and support. This provides a strong disincentive to use Linux -- you've already paid for a generally excellent OS and top-notch support for it.
This tends to relegate Linux/Sparc to older castaway Sparc hardware which has the distinction of not being cost effective to keep up anymore. Performance vs. space and the cost of maintaining one more box (read: TCO) tend to make it cheaper to replace two of those old Sparc machines with 1 brand-new Intel machine.
Personally, I'm more interested to see Linux on IBM's NUMA-Q based machines with 64 processors... IBM is investing a HUGE amount of energy into making Linux *the* OS for such machines. *drool* (Yes, I'm aware that Linus thinks NUMA is fundamentally the Wrong Thing(tm)... It's still VERY fast though...
-JF
MrJoy.com -- Because coding is FUN!
"Not to mention that they have the support in place to handle what large companies demand."
And ONLY what large companies demand. Of those large companies using Linux, how many are using it on Sparc? Few to none, is my guess.
Furthermore, it's easy to see why. Linux on Intel is easy to install and find support on the Internet for. But I've done a few Linux on Alpha installs, and let me tell you that once you leave the warmth and light of the x86 world you are on your own. This isn't to say that AlphaLinux is no good--far from it. I like the hardware and the software. But the support is hard to come buy--if the mailing list doesn't respond or doesn't know you are pretty much toast. Sparc Linux, being even more rare is probably 10 times worse.
I'm sure to be marked as "flamebait" unless I include some examples, so here we are:
Installing on a Jensen.
Using MILO (I've read and re-read the howto and damned if I can figure it out)
The many many (many) patches and updates you need to install after getting a distro (say, RedHat) installed (system clock date to 2020, net-tools, etc).
Again, I'm not saying the above problems make Alpha Linux bad--I'm saying that the poor documentation of the above problems makes Alpha Linux scary.
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
They have a major issue with Sun, and they have even better relationship with RedHat than IBM.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
I suppose this isn't the time to mention my own preference for Debian, which has supported sparc for a while and will continue to do so...
If you are modding me down because you disagree with me, use the "Flamebait" category, not the "Troll" one.
I run a few machines with sparclinux, and have been involved with it for quite a few years (as a lurker). Its painfully obvious that SUN don't provide the same levels of support for their hardware that you can find from any other vendor (eg. Digital{now Compaq} providing Linus with an alpha, coding efforts within IBM and SGI...)
Yet, SUN are happy to gain news inches on the back of linux.
Looks like I'll have to move to debian or suse though...
and of course, if the sparc based machines have to move then my intel ones will have to follow.
-- Don't believe everything you read, hear or think
So demand for SPARC support from Red Hat is low ?
Well, I hate to spell it out for the Linux advocates among us, but maybe it's because Solaris is solid enough on their own boxen that you don't need to run Linux on it.
No, interesting that you choose to ignore the irony. As that implies, I meant exactly what I wrote. Red Hat dropped the sparc port for lack of demand. One might then expect that there is a lack of demand, but, ironically, SuSE, one of the few other major commercial Linux vendors, has decided in the very recent past to expand their product line to include a sparc port. Perhaps you would prefer the irony in Microsoft investing in Corel, and obtaining a Linux distribution thereby? It does more easily compare with the quote you have favoured, although I would argue less correctly. Anyway, I shouldn't argue English with myself, for I would be sure to lose.
If you are modding me down because you disagree with me, use the "Flamebait" category, not the "Troll" one.
Wonder What IBM Had to Do With That?.....Seeing as how *they* compete with Sun alot more than Redhat does, and IBM is a major partner with Redhat.
I'm still working on a clever footer.
Ade_
/
Big Bubbles (no troubles) - what sucks, who sucks and you suck
How many people is "low demand"? I mean, it's not like it would ever be anywhere near the demand for x86, but I'm sure there are a lot of people who appreciate having a distro they can stick on some old SparcStation.
Pope Felix the Scurrilous.
Pope Felix the Scurrilous.
Computer Geek by day, religious Icon by night.
Linux on Sparc blows the doors off of Solaris on Sparc. It's just SO much faster. The funny thing is that Solaris on Intel is faster than Linux on Intel, too. It's a backwords world we live in.
Hopefully there will come a time when RH will re-commit to the Sparc platform.
---
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
Why on earth would you want to run Linux on a Spark anyway. I mean solaris has its annoying quirks, but it kicks ass.
Someone you trust is one of us.
I think the main problem of Linux on Sparc is that it suffers a big handicap on the workstation market, which is the lack of commercial scientific software.
It is little surprise that Linux is not that big on the Sparc servers market. These machines are often big SMP machines, used in a critical production environment, with SUN's tech support, etc... So these machines stay under Solaris. This may not be technically justified, but that's just the way it is.
Yet, one could have expected a greater success of Linux on Sun workstations. The problem is that most ubiquitous scientific softwares, such as Matlab or Maple, are simply unavailable. This is also the case for image processing software, 3D technical software, etc... Most of these softwares have their own language, and every user has its code written specifically for it, are in a position that is close to monopoly, and as such are mandatory.
I think some people may be worried about this because of the viscious circle that unpopular platforms get into. I don't even think there is a name for it, but I'm sure everyone has thought of it at one time or another.
:-) Now, if the platform has no applications, it ain't much use now, is it?!? But what makes applications writers write applications for THAT platform? Money, of course. I admit this is more true in the proprietary (read: M$) world than in the open source world, but even so, I seem to recall that even Bob Young of Red Hat admitted once that unpopular platforms do suffer from the viscious circle: The platform is not very popular, because it doesn't have any apps!! This does make it kind of a useless platform, right!?!? But now why does it have no apps? Well, because the platform isn't popular... And hence no reason to develop apps for it.
The thing is, people don't generally buy into an OS or a platform merely for its own sake. If they buy an OS, chances are that they bought it because a) they need to do something with it, and b) they need to do something with it.
The question now becomes: HOW do you break this viscious circle? This is exactly the viscious circle companies like Microsoft hope will continue forever, which has helped them keep their monopoly position for so long!
Maybe some people are worried about SPARC Linux never being able to take off, since it was never popular do begin with?!? But surely if Red Hat discontinues it, they aren't helping to solve the problem, but rather making it worse, since now it will become even MORE unpopular!
Just food for thought! Then again, I could be wrong.
That's really unfortunate, because my primary computer at work is a Sun Ultra 1 running 6.2 and I absolutely love it. Once you take the hour or so to tie it down (change out wu-ftpd, close up inetd, install ssh, etc. etc.) it's pretty damn cool. Even X is pretty speedy on it. It's by far one of the best "work computers" I've ever used.
Oh, by the way, I'm also a Windows NT administrator.
Too bad Red Hat dropped the ball.
When I was picking which distro to use so that I didn't have different strains running around and have to keep up on two or more security release lists, the members of #debian on Efnet pointed to data that suggested that debian at the time didn't run well on the Ultra Sparc platform. I had used RedHat before and was, again, comfortable with that distribution and picked that to run on all my boxes. I've been a purchasing RedHat customer ever since.
Now that RedHat has stop developement for the sparc platform, I have to go looking elsewhere for my distro to keep my systems up to date. As I use the same distro for all my servers, I have to look at moving all of my servers from RedHat to another distro to keep things managable, patch wise. I suppose that would extend to my home computers as well, and if I don't have the latest RedHat releases at home, it would exclude RedHat from the distros I recommend to my friends and members of the local LUG I attend because I won't be able to help them with RedHat's distro simply because I don't use it anymore.
In a time when RedHat is trying to be all things to all people, it doesn't make business sence to stop supporting a well versed group, sparc users, most of which might very well be admins, that makes trusted recomendations to beginning users on which distro they should use.
Mr.Phil
I suppose I should remove my powered by redhat stickers and redhat bumper stickers now...
My roomate gave an ultrasparc with no root pass (wouldnt boot in single user mode to change net settings so i reninstalled since i have not the 75$ for solaris into redhat 6.2 runs great all scsi comp with 64 bit (I just gotta compile all the cool apps from source oh waaaaah.) But I have found that this is about running linux from the first year getting into linux from a microserf history (and true open-source zealot since then) that redhat is great for the newbie. Debian is a HARD install (And if you say it's not then your too `leet for me i don`t care whatever-piss off) but I have got it up and running well and would very much appreciate a redhat install for sparc as long as i can get X up w/ nutscrape well for those used to windoze (with a pretty window manager to wow when the time is right for compamy) Then I am happy -I even will use a WM if it is pretty..... Please do not take sparc support away from us for the new user just learning may want to learn on a REAL 64 bit comp without waiting for x86 patched up crap from intel because some of us are already there Vaughn "It only gets darkest right before it gets pitch black."
Vaughn "Its always darkest before it goes pitch black."
*sigh* I was hoping you'd be one less person in the world misusing the term "ironic." Ever since that damn Alanis Morisette song, the number of people using it incorrectly has tripled at least. :P If you couldn't figure out why your example wasn't truly ironic, I'm not going to waste my time giving you an English lesson.
--------
-------
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
As far as I know, Suse sells Sparc Linux versions.
:~(
;-)
Yep, they do.
At the moment, they have SuSE 7.0 for x86, PowerPC, Alpha and S390 (prerelease). And they have announced SuSE 7.0 for SPARC too.
However, I don't think that my old Sparc 5 clone will be supported..
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong though
Who cares about those fucking sparcs? Now that Windows Datacenter is available, I'm gonna run myself a 32 processor intel box.
Interesting... Where do you get your figures from? Sun has had some pretty good sales this year, and they don't seem to be hurting at all.
Sparc hardware is great hardware. I know, I've used it, and serviced it. Very stable, very dependable.
IA64 is not going to give Sparc much of a fight. Just look at Intel scrambling to get SOMETHING out the door in time! AMD beat Intel to the gigahertz mark, and they're on track to having their 64-bit processor in production before Intel as well.
Sun does have a clone market, don't forget. You can get cheap Sun machines... You can even get a dual-proc Sun motherboard that is ATX form factor, and stick it in a PC case. Sun parts are becoming more and more affordable, and one can now purchase an entry level system for under $3000.
Like I stated before, Sun has had some really good sales this year, and it looks like they'll continue on this route for some time. They've got good hardware, good support, and Solaris 8 is a pretty nice OS.
My personal opinion about RedHat dropping Sparc support is I could care less. RedHat is a terrible distro, IMHO. The only Linux distro I would ever care to run on Sparc is Slackware, but there's no port to Sparc, yet.
I've been using Sparc Linux for about 5 years now, and Red Hat bringing out a Sparc distribution was one of the things that legitimised the platform in the early days. Now, of course, there's Debian, SuSE and probably others, but I like Red Hat. I'll be sticking with RH on my Sparc for now, with kernel upgrades as appropriate. As major upgrades become necessary, I'll probably recompile stuff myself from now on. It's not really surprising. Everyone that has a Sparc has a lifetime license for Solaris, so the incentive to switch to Linux is much less than for other platforms, and there really isn't a good business case for continuing to support Sparc. I wonder how that'll affect RH emplyees like David Miller and Jakub Jelinek, who still use Sparc as their primary development platform, AFAIK. Obviously, the Linux/Sparc effort isn't going to die, and Sparc support in the kernel will continue indefinitely.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
(1) RedHat isnt the only Linux based OS on the market that has/does support Sparc.
(2) Linux isnt the only kernel on the market that supports Sparc.
What about Debian? What about all the other Linux distros that run on sparc?
Both the NetBSD and OpenBSD ports to the Sparc architecture are quite good.
If you have a sparc, I would think you would be running something other than RedHat anyway.
Just my 2 cents.
Maybe not for a cluster of sparc 10000's, but a cube farm of 500+ ultra10/5's would find debian much better and easier.
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
This will other vendors a chance to come in and hopefully get a bigger piece of the market.
I don't really this this as being a huge problem. I doubt very many people buying new, or nearly new, Sparc hardware are going to be running Linux. If you have that much to spend on hardware you are likely to go with the vendors OS
Granted this will annoy people who pruchase old sparc hardware, but they are few in number ( hence Redhat dropping sparc support ). There is also nothing to stop anyone interested taking RH6.2 sparc and updating it.
You are a bit confused as to the meaning of the word "ironic." First, read a definition of it here. Especially note the example "Hyde noted the irony of Ireland's copying the nation she most hated"
SuSE picking up support while Red Hat drops it is not ironic. It's interesting timing, yes, but not irony.
--------
-------
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."