I have a Sparc64 machine, a Sun Ultra 10 which I installed Gentoo on but it’s just a little too much aggro to look after. Who wants to set a machine to recompile everything overnight and hand-merge the new config files once a week when a Debian dist-upgrade takes a fraction of the time. Frankly I prefer ease of use over speed of use first of all, I can strip a system down if I need to. Anyway, I digress.
I’d like to run Debian on it but I’m waiting for Sarge and also to hear if Sparc64 will get axed after Sarge. It’s also a good opportunity to look at FreeBSD and OpenBSD. I’d like to look at OpenBSD first of the two, just to see more of the Unix world and I looked at FreeBSD briefly once before, but OpenBSD doesn’t seem to support my PCI Sun Happy Meal 10/100Mb ethernet card and I can’t find any CD isos. Yes, it’s lazy, I can’t be arsed putting another card in there and trying to work out how to boot the installer from floppies or a network. I just want to plug in and go. I might be hideously wrong of course, more research involved there I think.
Debian it is then, probably, unless you think I’ve missed another free, non-obscure minority Linux or Unix for Sparc64. I Suppose I could look at Open Solaris or even Solaris Express…
FYI.. OpenBSD runs sweet on Sparc64! It supports your PCI happy meal card no problem. Try http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=hme&sektion=4&arch=sparc64
or
http://www.openbsd.org/sparc64.html#hardware
I run it on my Ultra5 w/2 HME’s (onboard & PCI). Let me know if you get FreeBSD going on it. I had frame buffer (video) problems installing it and after much hassle gave up for the breezey OpenBSD install.
Checkout PF (Packet Filter) & you’ll know the answer to your question on what to run. It is sweet! Look into it – you’ll like it!
BTW – I love Ubuntu, used it for a while but didn’t like waiting for 6 months for the next release. I switched to Gentoo & am addicted to emerge –sync… Everything you want to try is out there and it works ! I didn’t want to spend all that time on the Sparc though (like you), so I found OpenBSD. It’s so clean. I wish it had a more viable desktop solution though – it’s really a server OS. Good Luck!