Re: How big is the SPARC/Linux community?

> I was wondering how big is the SPARC/Linux community?

According to DaveM bigger than expected;-) But you won't get hard figures
from anywhere.

> I love my Redhat 6.2 and wonder when will something better come out for my
> UltraSPARC machines. [..] (I've been thinking about Aurora
> Linux but I guess it needs more time and a full release for me to try it).

I'd say it is high time you try it out. The second complete build (complete
rh7.3 intel minus platform specific stuff) is done. It has a good installer
for a majority of machines hanging around (SS10/20, U2/5/10, E250/450),
including a real nice GUI install on e.g. Blade 100/1000. With USB mouse and
keyboard.

Sound might or might not work, X will work, software RAID seems to be
flakey.

What definitely doesn't work can be attributed to lack of kernel support
therefor perhaps out of the reach of this project: network chips in late 1U
servers, bus/cpu/mmu in Server 1000, cpu/mmu in ss5/170, cpu/mmu in SS1 and
SS2, FC SBUS cards and arrays (soc/pluto). I don't know about USIII+ cpus
(280R, V880 and bigger;-).

What kind of machines do you have?

You will find download locations and information on how to subscribe to the
aurora mailing list on http://auroralinux.org.

For a true minimum install (to check that it installs at all; chose
"custom", then deselect every single rpm) you only need CD 1. For a rather
full install, you need 1, 2 and 3. For a network install on sparc32, grab
build-0.4 (cdrom install is fine there), for sparc64 make sure you get
build-0.42, no matter how you install.

Good luck!

Ingo