Re: Indy or Alpha the "easier" platform? Gnome?
Ralph Aichinger wrote:
> I hope this list is OK for my user level questions:
>
> I've just bought an SGI Indy (P22, 64MB RAM, small Disk) and
> two Alphas (300 MHz or so, not yet switched on or tested).
>
> Which architecture do you think is the "easier" one to start
> with? I want to install Debian or NetBSD on all machines in
> the long run, but I don't have too much time ATM, so if one
> architecture has more problems, I will try the other one first.
If the Indy has the 8 or 24 bit entry level graphics, it should
work fine. The "hinv" command tells.
> That particular Indy has no floppy. Will that be a problem
> (I can connect an external SCSI CD-Rom or setup a bootp/tftp
> server to boot from)?
No Indy has a floppy. :-) It would IIRC be a 21 MB floptical
drive, but I have never seen one. For Debian, you will need to
boot via bootp/tftp. CD boot is at the brink of being supported
in sarge, but needs in any case a CD drive which supports 512
Byte reads.
> Furthermore: With my experience of i386 hardware it seems to
> me that above Indy (with its 64MB RAM) is a bit underpowered
> for a full Gnome setup. I assume it is best used as a X-Terminal
> for an moderate PC "Host" to run the apps on (say, a 2GHz Athlon).
> Does that sound about right, or should I try to run the apps
> locally nevertheless?
Some lightweight applications (probably even xfce) run quite
decent on the box, but Gnome+Mozilla+OOo won't work that well. :-)
> Is there anything I should do while there is still Irix
> on that machine, before installing Linux?
You may want to run the "ide" hardware diagnostics (choice 2 from
the firmware). It needs an installed IRIX.
Thiemo
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