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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.
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.
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...
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
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.
:) Good luck.
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
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.
--Ben
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.