Bo Snyder <bobo_snyder@hotmail.com> wrote:
[...]
> How does it handle the gui compared to newer machines? I also have been
> playing with an old dual pentium pro box that I have that has a 6 gig ide
> drive in it and it has 392 megs of ram (72 pin simms!!!) in it . I put
> mandrake 9.1 on it which runs okay, but its stil a bit pokey, but then
> again, thats a much newer gui.

I couldn't find much information about your SS5 (cpu speed, frame buffer),
but even if you have one of the faster SS5's (110MHz/170MHz), don't expect
too much. I found things like KDE or Gnome to be unbearable on those machine
(I own a SS5/170). Also, most likely you'll have a cg6 framebuffer, which
is 8bit - which doesn't seem to go down too well with the newer desktop
environments, IMO.
On the other hand, when using a small window manager, it's not too bad.
You'll *definitely* need the extra RAM, though. I'm using Window Maker, but
it has issues with 8bit displays on Sparc (regardless of OS), which never
got resolved. Fortunately, I have a S24 frame buffer (24bit) in my SS5...


> Also I just downloaded and I am thinking of going with Aurora Linux instead
> of redhat 6.2, is that a good idea or is there any other OS choices that
> might be better or worse? Your opinions are valued greatly!!

Depends on what you want to do. RH 6.2 is definitely old now and it's
unmaintained (as Yann mentioned already). I made very good experiences with
Aurora Sparc Linux 1.0 and I don't find it unfinished - but then again, I
never tried Debian. One thing to note with Linux is that it tends to run
unstable on a SS5/170 (TurboSparc). RH 6.2 will not even install on those
(at least it never did on the two I had).

Another options is Solaris, which is interesting, as - being from Sun as
well - it's supposed to run best on Sparc hardware. Unfortunately, it has
licence issues: Unless you got your SS5 from Sun or an authorized dealer,
you'll have to buy a licence (which is more than the SS5 is worth) or run
Solaris illegally (you can *download* the actual OS for free).

Last but not least, there are the *BSDs. I myself only ever used OpenBSD on
the SS5, but I'd assume that NetBSD will work as well. My experiences with
OpenBSD were very good - I've used a SS5/170 under OpenBSD as my ADSL
firewall+lightweight webserver for quite some time. I've also installed a
desktop for test purposes once and it felt a tad faster than the same setup
under Aurora, though I didn't do any "scientific" measurements.

Cheerio,

Thomas
--
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Thomas Ribbrock http://www.ribbrock.org
"You have to live on the edge of reality - to make your dreams come true!"