Sun will sell Redhat 6.1 Sparc version

Sun has announced that it will sell Redhat 6.1 Sparc version in it online store. This is due to the customers interest in RH 6.1 for Sparc. I wish I had one of those UltraSparc machines.. (Credit for the news goes to Linux Weekly news)

Comments

This is really important

[trance9]

Sun backing Linux is very important. Not only is it a good move on Sun's part, but it will GREATLY help with the consolodation of the Unix market. It will encourage Sun to develop and promote compatibility between Linux and Solaris. Sun is still the biggest commercial Unix vendor, so this is just amazing.

Now all we have to do is ensure compatibility between Linux and BSD. Bill Gates loves to try and drive a wedge between different Unix development teams and claim that the Unix market is fragmented.

I think he can shut up now :-)

no surprises...

[Capt Dan]

Well gi did it, so it figures that sun would do it too...

The ditro is the RedHat deluxe version @ $79.95 (RedHat's price, not sun's. I checked it against redhat's store)
Here's the link.

Here's the features list from redhat's store page:

Support & Services
180 day FREE priority FTP access- fast, easy
access to security updates and more!
30 day telephone support and 90 day Web-based
installation support

Software
Red Hat Linux CD
Red Hat Linux source code CD
Linux Application CD - access to over 40 of the most
popular 3rd party applications for the workstation
Powertools - over 300 packages of applications that
run on Linux
StarOffice 5.1a CD

Documentation
Comprehensive documentation - Installation,
Reference, and Getting Started Guides

Sun and Linux

[krital]

Over the summer, I had an oppurtunity to work with some very nice Sun boxes. In actuality, I was working as an intern for Sun in Europe. I got to work with a number of boxes, including 4-processor AxMPs, CP1500s, and an AXi. One of my tasks over the summer was evaluating how RedHat 5.1 (UltraPenguin 1.1) ran on the AXi. I have to say that installing it was a joy; it was as easy as it is on an x86 machine. In fact, everything was as easy as it was on x86. There were a few differences, mainly in the bootloader (SPARC boxes use SILO which I managed to only slightly figure out over the course of the summer, only enough to get new kernels running), but on the whole everything was the same as it was on an x86. Which, I believe, is one of the major selling points of Linux - having seen how transparent the hardware is to it is quite amazing.
After a while of setting it up to perform various tasks that I didn't know how to do using Solaris (such as a RARP server, which turned out to be VERY easy, and UFS works beautifully; I had not one problem setting up NFS to read/write from the UFS partitions), I started using it as a desktop machine. I had a higher resolution on that machine, and so I preferred it for viewing web pages over the others. I ran X with enlightenment 15 for a long time, and I found it to be fairly stable, although I had many more problems with X unexpectedly crashing (happened about 10 times in six weeks) than the kernel itself having an error (which happened not once).
Speaking of kernels, the kernels were a cinch to configure. There were a few options that I had never seen before, but other than that, compiling and running a new kernel was easily as easy as it was on an x86 box.

Nontheless, I'm very happy to see RedHat come out with an updated version for SPARC boxes. Maybe when I return to Sun to work this coming summer I'll be able to test it out on my AXi...
If anyone has any questions about running Linux on a SPARC system, I'd be happy to answer them (from what I remember).