Re: Sun Support for Linux
* Craig Ian Dewick <craig@lios.apana.org.au> [020219 13:45]:
> > * Sun has released an application development tool, ABIcheck, to the
> > Open Source community. The tool helps ensure compatibility between
> > Linux releases.
>
> That's a strange one. We already know what Linux releases run on Sparc
> hardware that are anything decent - Debian and RedHat. I don't think any
> of the other releases are fully-committed to Sparc platform support.
Linux to Sun seems to mean "x86" and not "SPARC". Besides that, Redhat
does not support the SPARC platform anymore (6.2 was the last) and SuSE
has a good and current release (7.3/SPARC).
> > * GNOME, the most advanced Linux user environment, will become the
> > preferred desktop for Solaris OE when GNOME 2.0 begins shipping later this
> > year.
>
> And then all of us with non-current systems will have to make a massive
> resource investment because GNOME is such an immense resource pig. GNOME
> should be an option - not the default. Sun should totally dump CDE and
> support only two GUI options - *real* OpenWindows, and GNOME.
Wishful thinking... but the fact is that CDE was the default, and
switching to GNOME is more or less an upgrade.
> Dropping the real X Windows packages will preclude the use of Solaris on
> any older hardware that will still be supported when Solaris 9 is
> officially released as a production OS.
>
> This means anything like a Sparcstation 5, 10, 20, or Ultra-1 will need
> maximum RAM and the fastest CPU possible for the platform to get anything
> decent performance-wise.
>
> I really like GNOME's concept, but it's so top-heavy. 8-)
I run GNOME decently on my SS20 and U1 running Debian... switching to
Solaris with CDE wouldn't be much better. Sun has dropped Solaris
support for the sun4c... the sun4m is only a matter of time. Their
biggest care is selling new hardware, not supporting old hardware. I'm
sure GNOME, etc. will all run very nicely on a Sun Blade 100. Either
way, I'd say this portion of the discussion is off-topic (sorry folks).
Reply to: