FreeBSD 5.2.1 On SPARC64

JigSaw writes "FreeBSD has a solid reputation in terms of features and performance on x86, powering sites from Hotmail to Yahoo, yet it doesn't tend to be the first (or even second) OS that comes to mind with many people when thinking of Solaris alternatives for the SPARC platform. Tony Bourke tests FreeBSD 5.2.1 on his SPARC machine."

Re:Who cares

[tokki]

While Solaris can be downloaded for free, it cannot always be used for free. The Solaris Binary License has provisions that allow it for development use and educational use for free, but otherwise you've got to pay to play. No one seems to get that. Does Sun enforce those licenses? Not that I've ever heard, but it's still an issue of legality.

If you've got some old hardware, and you want to run some license-inencombered operating system, then the alternative operating systems are a great bet.

There a numerous other advantages as well, such as much more extended hardware support (Sun wants you to pay $400 for a FE card, where you can use a $10 off-the-shelf PCI card with FreeBSD, NetBSD, etc), access to the source code, perhaps a smaller footprint, access to security patches for applications that Sun might charge for (not all of Sun's patches are free).

While people shouldn't just abandon Solaris, I love it too, there are plenty of cases where the alternatives make more sense than Solaris.

Re:Woohoo for FreeBSD

[Strog]

I had installed KDE on my desktop and left it up when my inlaws were over. I had to go run some errands and when I got back my mother-in-law was playing games and surfing the internet just fine. My wife isn't technical but she didn't have any problem when I set her down on a *nix box running KDE either. The only deal breaker for her was Quicken because she could use everything else that she wanted quite easily.

I wouldn't expect either to update their boxes but I would feel safer with a non-updated *nix desktop behind a firewall than a non-updated windows box. It would be a lot tougher if they used a lot of different windows apps/games/etc. but a general desktop can be handled quite well with any *nix if you wanted to. Yeah, most people wouldn't want to bother with setting it all up but would be happy if you gave them a fully configured box that's ready to go.

Re:learn from your mistakes please

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, you can pkg_add http://URL, and it will automatically fetch dependent packages, but the problem is, you need to know the exact url.

You don't. Try "pkd_add -r package_name". It will fetch and install package that is appropriate for your FreeBSD architecture and version.