Re: Which Linux distribution for a SparcStation20?

> Question to those who mentioned running BSD on their sparc32 boxes:
> For what reasons did/would you choose BSD over Solaris on a sparc?

Did?  Because it was open source, which Solaris wasn't.

Do?  NetBSD (my favourite BSD), as compared to Solaris:
- Is substantially more familiar.  (Admittedly a historical reason.)
- Runs on far more heterogenous hardware.  (I have sparc32, sparc64,
   i386, macppc, shark, hpcmips...of those, only two are supported by
   OpenSolaris according totheir webpages.)
- Has substantially saner licenses.
- Is opener; anything that has to resort to tacking "open" onto its
   name generally isn't.  OpenSolaris appears to be largely still owned
   by Sun.
- Has drunk substantially less of the "the Web is the only interface
   anyone needs" kool-aid.  (Using the Web is difficult and unpleasant
   for me, and there are few surer ways to keep me from more than
   glancing at something than to give it naught but a Web interface.)

> ([...] those running BSD also made a decision of not running Solaris)

Personally, only in the sense that I also made a decision of not
running any of the various other things that run on the SPARC.  At the
time I started, NetBSD was, as far as I could tell, the only
open-source OS for the SPARC.  Now, cross-platform compatability cuts
just about everything else out.

However, NetBSD is nosing over into a power-dive (personal opinion),
and it's not at all clear I'll still be running it for that much
longer.  As yet I have no idea what I may be using instead.

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