{"id":1521,"date":"2011-09-13T12:27:29","date_gmt":"2011-09-13T17:27:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/?p=1521"},"modified":"2012-08-14T18:08:19","modified_gmt":"2012-08-14T23:08:19","slug":"what-os-is-good-for-sparc64","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/what-os-is-good-for-sparc64\/","title":{"rendered":"What OS is good for SPARC64?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"250\" height=\"251\" data-attachment-id=\"1572\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/what-os-is-good-for-sparc64\/sparc\/#main\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/sparc.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"250,251\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-title=\"Sparc64\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/sparc.jpg\" src=\"\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/sparc.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Sparc64\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-1572\" srcset=\"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/sparc.jpg 250w, https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/sparc-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/sparc-177x177.jpg 177w, https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/sparc-35x35.jpg 35w, https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/sparc-164x164.jpg 164w, https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/sparc-185x185.jpg 185w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Recently, I received a SPARC64 machine (Sun Blade 100) as a gift. If you are not sure what is SPARC64, it is a CPU primary manufactured by Sun\/Oracle. It is quite different than Intel x86 \/ AMD 64, so anything that is compiled to run on these two platforms will not work on SPARC64. Besides, Sun\/Oracle is currently shifting toward to Intel now, which means the SPARC64 will become less popular in the long run. Since I don&#8217;t want to let my Sun Blade becomes a paper-weight \/ foot stool, I decide to explore some options on what I can do with it.<\/p>\n<p>Notice that this list only includes some popular operating systems I&#8217;ve tested only. I am pretty sure that there are lots of more choices available.<\/p>\n<p>If you don&#8217;t want to go through the entire list, here are some quick recommendations:<br \/>\n<strong>Good<\/strong>: FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, OpenSolaris<br \/>\n<strong>Okay<\/strong>: Debian<br \/>\n<strong>Avoid<\/strong>: Fedora, Ubuntu<\/p>\n<div style=\"margin:10px 0px 10px 0px;\">\nThe following operating system are listed in alphabetically:\n<\/div>\n<h2>Debian Linux<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Recommendation<\/strong>: Yes if you don&#8217;t care about the performance<br \/>\n<strong>Support Status<\/strong>: Active<br \/>\n<strong>Comment<\/strong>: Although Debian provides a 64-bit version, the applications are run in 32-bit mode (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.debian.org\/ports\/sparc64\/\" target=\"_blank\">Source<\/a>). It can not only cause performance issue because the application does not utilize the full power of the CPU. For example, a 32-bit application can only handle unsigned integer from 0 to 2^31-1 (2147483647).<\/p>\n<div style=\"border-bottom: 1px dotted #999; margin:10px 0px 10px 0px;\"><\/div>\n<h2>Fedora Linux<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Recommendation<\/strong>: No<br \/>\n<strong>Support Status<\/strong>: Seems Discontinued.<br \/>\n<strong>Comment<\/strong>: As of today, the latest version of Fedora is 15. However, the latest version for SPARC is 12\/13. Seems like the support in this architecture is inactive.<br \/>\nSource: <a href=\"http:\/\/fedoraproject.org\/wiki\/Architectures\/SPARC\" target=\"_blank\">Architectures\/SPARC<\/a><\/p>\n<div style=\"border-bottom: 1px dotted #999; margin:10px 0px 10px 0px;\"><\/div>\n<h2>FreeBSD<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Recommendation<\/strong>: Yes<br \/>\n<strong>Support Status<\/strong>: Active<br \/>\n<strong>Comment<\/strong>: The command <strong>freebsd-update<\/strong> is not supported in SPARC64. In the other words, you have to rebuild the kernel from scratch in order to upgrade the system to a newer version<\/p>\n<div style=\"border-bottom: 1px dotted #999; margin:10px 0px 10px 0px;\"><\/div>\n<h2>NetBSD<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Recommendation<\/strong>: Yes<br \/>\n<strong>Support Status<\/strong>: Active<br \/>\n<strong>Download<\/strong>: <a href=\"ftp:\/\/iso.netbsd.org\/pub\/NetBSD\/iso\/\" target=\"_blank\">Here<\/a><\/p>\n<div style=\"border-bottom: 1px dotted #999; margin:10px 0px 10px 0px;\"><\/div>\n<h2>OpenBSD<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Recommendation<\/strong>: Yes<br \/>\n<strong>Support Status<\/strong>: Active<\/p>\n<div style=\"border-bottom: 1px dotted #999; margin:10px 0px 10px 0px;\"><\/div>\n<h2>OpenIndiana<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Recommendation<\/strong>: Yes<br \/>\n<strong>Support Status<\/strong>: Active<\/p>\n<div style=\"border-bottom: 1px dotted #999; margin:10px 0px 10px 0px;\"><\/div>\n<h2>OpenSolaris<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Recommendation<\/strong>: No<br \/>\n<strong>Support Status<\/strong>: Discontinued<\/p>\n<div style=\"border-bottom: 1px dotted #999; margin:10px 0px 10px 0px;\"><\/div>\n<h2>Ubuntu Linux<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Recommendation<\/strong>: No<br \/>\n<strong>Support Status<\/strong>: Inactive<br \/>\n<strong>Comment<\/strong>: Ubuntu already dropped support to SPARC64. Forget about it.<br \/>\nSource: <a href=\"http:\/\/lwn.net\/Articles\/400985\/\" target=\"_blank\">Ubuntu drops support for ia64 and sparc<\/a><\/p>\n<div style=\"border-bottom: 1px dotted #999; margin:10px 0px 10px 0px;\"><\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently, I received a SPARC64 machine (Sun Blade 100) as a gift. If you are not sure what is SPARC64, it is a CPU primary manufactured by Sun\/Oracle. It is <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/what-os-is-good-for-sparc64\/\">Continue Reading &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[94,144,6,69],"tags":[89],"class_list":["post-1521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-problems-computer-help-pc-support","category-sever-problem","category-technology","category-troubleshooting-technology","tag-sparc64"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1sqzr-ox","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1072,"url":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/installing-freebsd-on-sun-blade-100\/","url_meta":{"origin":1521,"position":0},"title":"How to Install FreeBSD on Sun Blade 100","author":"Derrick","date":"November 19, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Recently, I received a Sun Blade 100 as a gift. 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