[wplug] Linux and Sparc

[Patrick Wagstrom]

On Tue, 2005-03-08 at 08:41 -0500, Chris Romano wrote:
> Does anyone have experience with Linux on a Sun box?  I am looking at
> machines to put in a data center to serve as a hot backup for my
> companies website and secondary DNS server. I want hardware that is
> rock solid.  Although I have never worked with sun machines, I always
> hear how good the hardware is.  Can anyone share some wisdom,
> suggestions, or links?

I've ran Linux on a couple of different architectures (Ultra 5/10,
SunBlade, SparcStation) and different distributions (Gentoo, Debian,
RedHat back in the day).  My experience has been mixed.  I've found that
unless you're going with the enterprise class hardware, reliability
really isn't much greater than you'd expect with x86 or PPC boxes, this
is especially true with sunblades, which were notoriously flaky (bad
motherboards, ram issues, etc).

I've got a few boxes that are still running Linux/Sparc in various
locations around the net and most are pretty solid, but they're not
doing much anymore (a few firewall machines and a web server or two).

With Sun machines one of the ways that they're rock solid is that
they've generally got pretty good support for the machines, however if
you install linux you can kiss that support goodbye, unless it's Java
Desktop System.

Unless you're looking for the newness of playing with a less common
architecture, you're probably better off picking up some x86 boxes.

--Patrick