Slackware Officially On Sparc

gags bunny wrote to us with the official word from Slackware that Slack now runs on Sparc. If you've got a Sparc sitting around the download site is live - else just grab the mini-ISO image and work from there. We had a story on this recently as well.

Comments

Re:There's some real pig-headed assumptions here.

[Rares Marian]

Re:There's some real pig-headed assumptions here.

Is that supposed to be ironic?

You can get a 133 Mhz Sparcbook (as fast as Pentium class 450Mhz) for $800 compared to a P450 Notebook for $1200+. 2/3 the price and 3 3/4 the performance. Almost 6x the value.

I'd understand this being done on the original Sparc, but I'll castigate the first person who puts Slackware on an UltraSparc II

That's kinda how Linux got the lead. People running Linux found it 2.5x faster than Slowlaris.
You wanna talk big iron, ok Linux is kinda behind in that arena. Does the caverage guy need big iron? No. You figure it out from there.

Somebody at ./ wanna close their link tag?????

[KlomDark]

Everything on the main page after the "grab the mini-ISO" is a link to the slackware FTP site.

Re:There's some real pig-headed assumptions here.

[gavinhall]

Posted by polar_bear:

Well, I suppose I should prepare to be castigated...

I have a Ultra 10 just "sitting around" right now...

I recently got an UltraSparc 10 from a company that owed me money but had a shortage of money, but surplus equipment. I'm not a fan of Solaris, and I have no interest in supporting a non-free UNIX. I've long been a fan of Linux, and Slackware in particular, and I think it's great that they're supporting Sparc and UltraSparc.

This is a great sign for Linux, it's moving beyond the limitations of Intel hardware. Linux has potential to be an enterprise OS, but Intel hardware is not up to the task of running enterprise solutions in the way that Sun hardware is. IMHO it would be nice if Sun (and Apple...) would realize that they're hardware companies and get behind Open Source solutions like Linux or the *BSDs. (Until I saw the Slack announcement, I was leaning more towards NetBSD...)

I'd be willing to bet that you'd never used Slackware before. The Slackware team makes a fine distribution that is the most UNIX-like of the Linux distributions (at least of the ones that I've used; Debian, Caldera, Corel, Red Hat, SuSE, Stormix, LinuxPPC, Linux-Mandrake).

Maybe you like Solaris. Great, go for it. But don't jump down the throats of people who don't want to use closed-source OSes. (Despite Sun's attempts to convince the media to the contrary, Solaris is not an Open Source OS. Visible source, maybe, Open or Free? No way.)

Is Slack ready to compete with Solaris on Sparc? Probably not yet, but the only way to reach parity is for people to install Slack on Sparc and continue testing and development, which is exactly what I intend to do.

Re:There's some real pig-headed assumptions here.

[codealot]

Chances are, if you have a Sparc machine, it drained at least $10,000 from your wallet and it's running Solaris 7/8.

So now who's making assumptions? We buy rack-mount SPARC hardware regularly, for general purpose servers. They are not Sun branded, they are built on OEM hardware, and can be purchased new for about $2300 and up.

It's easy to justify buying the SPARC hardware over x86:

• No surprises on chipsets, disk controllers, etc. Everytime we buy an x86 server it seems we need to download some new driver to make it work. Not so with SPARC.
• Excellent overall performance. The 440MHz US-II isn't quite as fast as the newest Athlon and PIII systems, but it's certainly close enough, and the 2MB L2 cache is blazingly fast.
• Remote management. No need for klunky KVM switches. One rack-mount device can manage 8 SPARCs by a serial console, allowing complete remote control from a single IP address.

Most of our SPARCs are running Solaris today. I'm considering installing Linux on some of those to simplify management: it's easer to manage a network of Linux machines than a mix of Linux and Solaris. The main criteria is whether we need a JVM... those running Java are stuck with Solaris for now.

Re:Cheap Sun Hardware

[OmegaDan]

Sun has an EXCELLENT edu program .. you can get 40 - 50% off on alot of things. (an a1000 for 11 grand!, we paid 33 for ours ...) ... but they have some machines around 1200$ for a basic setup ... I wouldn't take solaris off it though ...

Unfourtnatley the offer from sun expired on the 22nd, but they will most ceartinly continue it in a few weeks. http://store.sun.com/docs/specials/specials_index. jhtmlHeres a list of their promos:

If your not a student, goto a JC, pay 50$ for a class, get a student ID, and save 50% on a machine ...

Do your homework

[hndrcks]

Before you rush out and buy an unusable old crappy Sparc box for too much $$, check the following link:

Frequently Asked Questions About Buying An Old Sun System (FAQABOSS)

Don't expect much from the graphics subsystems - most of the frame buffers that are supported are only 8 bit and unaccelerated. My LX would run Gnome and KDE, but it was excruciating. I am now running most of my Sparc gear (IPX, 2 Classics, an LX and a 2xSM51 Sparc 10) on OpenBSD. The IPX makes a great firewall with the addition of another NIC, and the 'lunchbox' Sparcs are nice and tidy. Watch the heat issues, especially with newer high RPM SCSI drives...

By the way, does anyone know if the PCMCIA - SBUS bridge (nell) is due for attention? What about pthreads and mysql on the old Sparcs?

Re:There's some real pig-headed assumptions here.

[Jedi Alec]

So who wants to erase a professionally designed operating system that costs hundreds of dollars to replace it with Slackware?

There are people that payed for Windows 2000 you know...

Re:Cheap Sun Hardware

[garcia]

EBay is all right to start w/, but you may be hit w/extra costs of HD's, RAM, frame buffer, mice, and KB if you don't buy a full system. Remember that SPARC's use a different video card and mice and KB.

If you can find a full system that's great (there are plenty available) but you are going to pay a lot more than they are really worth. I honestly believe unless you got an UltraSPARC it really isn't worth it (but this is only my opinion). I bought one of the Alpha UDB's a while back and got partially screwed on parity RAM and a SCSI HD (w/external enclosure and stuff).

Just a warning :) Good luck.

Re:There's some real pig-headed assumptions here.

[Big Ben August]

In my experience, SparcLinux has been a nice way to give older (sun4c/sun4/sun4m) boxes a new lease on life (esp. the SS5/10/20 that still have a little power). I've run it on both an SS2 and an SSClassic, and other than distro-specific bugs (RH was the only Sparc distro at the time... ugh), they worked well.

Also, Solaris 8 drops support for the sun4 and sun4c boxes, IIRC, and it has way too much overhead for a lot of the pre-sun4u boxes.

PS: I'd put Slack on the Ultra 10/440 in my office... but only as a dual-boot setup with SunOS 5.7. Just out of morbid curiousity. I doubt I'd ever get XFree to fully use the Creator3D. :)

Re:Beans Means Heinz

[Octorian]

Finding old Sparc machines is actually very easy, and a lot of hobbyists use them. Just look at sites like "www.sunhelp.org". Second in line from that list would probably be SGI. But people have to work around the company to get them, as IRIX costs an arm/leg.

However, as a collector, I also have an IBM RS/6000. I've looked far and wide, and I'm convinced that there are only 15 hobbist RS6k users in the world. (which includes myself and the guy I got my POWERstation 350 from) On the other hand, old RS6ks kick the crap out of old SPARCs for performance. The "POWER" processor (well, chipset, actually) kicks ass.