Hey,

On Wednesday, May 31, 2006, at 03:42 PM, nick thompson wrote:

> william,
>  we seem like very similiar people. on another note, i am getting a sun
> sparc 5, sparc 1, and sparc 1+ for free this weekend. all religious bsd
> vs linux aside, what is the FASTEST free os for these old beasts?
> (actually i am excited about the sparc 5, it ain't that old of a beast..
> :) )

To be honest.. usually NetBSD is just the fastest thing, although on 
some boxes linux is pretty decent too. Usually linux just needs more 
ram. I talk from NetBSD 1.6 and OpenBSD 3.3 experience though, i'm not 
well informed about newer versions since I have difficulties installing 
them (or some of my boxes are sadly unooperative lately due to failures).

NetBSD 3.0 on my IIci doesn't feel fast as 1.6 but I can't say if it is 
the kernel or the userland.. I know I have almost 4 times the ram than 
at my 1.6 times so I expected it to be better...


On old sparc boxes NetBSD is very fast. But Linux will run on your sparc 
5 decently too, so it is really up to you. And to what hardware and os 
combinations are supported in your case.
Also bear in mind that generally I found porting and compiling stuff on 
linux is easier (due to people writing crappy stuff). So if you need to 
go beyond what the base OS offers you..

Have fun,
   Riccardo