On Mon, 04 Oct 2004 23:02:26 +0800 Zhang Weiwu <zhangweiwu@realss.com>
wrote:
| >Uh, a Linux kernel is one rather important thing that wouldn't run on
| >these laptops...
| >
| What? So you mean Linux kernel for sparc is not so very stable? Emm
| it's a big disadvantage. You know I am far from know kernel so good as
| you do:)
Linux runs just fine on *some* sparc hardware. It runs at least
reasonably on most sparc hardware. It does *not* currently run on the
newer non-Sun laptop models. We could *probably* fix this if we had
access to the hardware. As far as we know, it's just a case of the PROM
being slightly different to the extent that Linux won't boot off it.
| >If you fixed that up, audio support probably wouldn't
| >work, but xorg is mostly ok. mplayer is flaky with certain codeds.
| >We've got xpdf for PDFs...
| >
| So, how do I know when there will be a good ultrasparc notebook or a
| bad ultrasparc notebook will be supported well by Gentoo? Or BSD is
| okay too, I used to BSD in the early years. Thank you for the
| information and warning!
Well, you buy one and try it. If it doesn't work, either fix it yourself
or buy a couple more and donate them to your local friendly kernel
hackers.
As for BSD... Their support for modern sparc kit is kinda... uhm... bad.
--
Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (Sparc, MIPS, Vim, Fluxbox)
Mail : ciaranm at gentoo.org
Web :
http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm