[Aurora-sparc-user] Help all?

[T. Ribbrock]

Second try - SPF didn't like my "From:" - grrrrrr....

On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 08:27:41AM +0100, Jos van der Ende wrote:
> You can try Solaris 10 or OpenSolaris,

OpenSolaris is still not available for Sparc.

I have Solaris 10 on my U60, but coming from a Linux background, I'm
still unimpressed - configuration and administration seems a lot more
cumbersome when compared to e.g. Ubuntu (or even Aurora). Just getting
some security patches installed takes a lot of patience and stamina...
(unless you do it manually via command line, in which case you have to
spend a lot of time pinpointing the correct patches). At least half of
those problems will be related to habit, of course, but coming from
Linux, it's not a straightforward transition.
The biggest upside of running Solaris on Sparc, though, is that some
applications are easier to get running, as "Solaris/Sparc" is better
supported than "Linux/Sparc" or "*BSD/Sparc" by non-OSS developers.
Things like Java and Flash used to be a problem there, if you need
them - though I have not checked whether that's still the case.


[...]
> Yet another option is NetBSD. I've heard good things about it,
> especially security-wise, but I have little personal experience with
> it. I've only installed it once, out of curiosity.

And - for completeness - OpenBSD, of course. I've had Sparcs (IPX ->
SparcStation 5 -> U1 -> U5 -> U10) running as firewalls/webserver/fileserver
at home for years under OpenBSD. For that kind of task I have yet to see
an OS that is as straightforward (if you're technically minded and
willing to read documentation), welldocumented (the man pages of the
base system are a *dream* compared to both Solaris and Linux), stable
and secure.

For the desktop, however, I prefer a Linux-version, as in my opinion all
GUI-related things are better integrated (though I'm very certain some
OpenBSD-fans would want to argue about that... :-) ). Same goes for
patches/updates (of which more are needed if more apps are installed).

My EUR0.02,

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!"