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SS5 newbie



Hi listers,
I am lurking for some days on this list, facing some highly sophisticated 
traffic about Suns...
Recently I got an interesting offer, a Sparc 5 with 2 SCSI (SCA) disks, 64 MB 
RAM. It goes for about $ 100. So I browsed and read anything I could get on 
websites and HOWTOs, but there are many elementary questions left.
Not knowing anything about the performance and setup of these systems I have 
some trivial questions:

I plan to run Linux (Debian, Slackware). The Linux HOWTOs say that there are 
dedicated distribution for Sparcs. Sounds obvious. Though applications have 
to be compiled for Sparcs - is that right?

How is the performance of the SS5 (TI MicroSparc II 85 Mhz). The Specs talking 
about 70 bogomips - thats not quite exciting compared to contemptorary 
systems. But how does it perform with 'modern' software? KDE? Gimp?

How is the response of X11 over the sparcs graphic card? Annoying slow? Or are 
you even able to use xine? I have really no idea at all.. 

And the audio chip CS4231 - are there drivers?

These Sun Stations are an old dream since I work with computers and now its 
avalaible for such a little money. I hope theres somebody out there who can 
shed light on this exotic machines...

cheers
herbs



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