Last month I bought the entry V470 for $599. It is a great laptop using an i3. I was planning on ripping off the Win. 7 64 bit, but the issue is SAS JMP which only runs on Windows now or Mac (I don’t do Apple anymore). My current config then uses VMWare version 8, which on an i3 allows 64 bit guests. I am using a 80 gig 32 bit 11.4 guest because I also have an existing Dell laptop using an old core 2 duo which cannot handle 64 bit guests, and I can run the vm on either box . I am telling you, this full screen 11.4 vm on the V470 is spectacular; no wonder VMWare is a very high flying tech company these days. I support the GNU/Linux movement - I buy most versions of OpenSuse and I give money every month to FSF, so I respect Stallman’s view of computing, but I live in the real world of USA and here very few people can survive in a pure linux world. For me the issue is SAS - it does not pay to force it to fit in a pure GNU/Linux environment. I have been learning R in Opensuse - it is great the way it works under OpenSuse but now R can work inside a JMP 9 session, so I want to experiment with this awhile.
Eventually I will put pure GNU/Linux on the old core 2 duo, but right now I am letting a friend borrow it while she takes some retraining classes and unfortunately she is only comfortable with what she already knows and that is MS Win.
I have got an old Sun Blade 100 which is a SPARC box. Has anyone tried Linux on one?
RichardET wrote
>
> I have got an old Sun Blade 100 which is a SPARC box. Has anyone tried
> Linux on one?
>
Never had access to try it on a sparc, but debian 6 should do it http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/sparc/
Btw, the real USA world you describe is not that much different from the
real world in germany in that I also have to use sometimes some applications
in virtualized windows. For example I also try to do most things with GNU
Octave and (to a lesser degree GNU R), but sometimes a customer has only
Matlab and there is no 100% compatibility (99% is sometimes not enough).
Same for some office documents where I have to fall back to MS Excel because
also there sometimes 99% compatibility is not good enough when you receive a
sheet with fancy functionality from a customer.
–
PC: oS 11.4 64 bit | Intel Core i7-2600@3.40GHz | KDE 4.6.0 | GeForce GT 420
| 16GB Ram
Eee PC 1201n: oS 11.4 64 bit | Intel Atom 330@1.60GHz | KDE 4.7.2 | nVidia
ION | 3GB Ram
Never did get debian to work right on the sun blade 100. The ati rage video causes issues. And
Formatting my disks via debian then screwed up using solaris newfs to go back to solaris.
but i now have openbsd running fine. I guess i should have stayed as solaris 9.
Martin,
I did not get Debian 6 working, but now have the system running OpenBSD 4.9; I downloaded the Gnome packages and Seamonkey - the stock xdm is better for this old box than gdm, and Gnome seems to not like the Sun keyboard - for instance it won’t print the ‘r’ key, so I am using xdm mainly but the browser works and I am on the forums using OpenBSD on a 10 year old Sun Blade 100. When I use xdm, the keyboard is fine - not sure why Gnome has issues with the Sun keyboard. Next step is to download firefox and R!
That is really nice that you got it running, OpenBSD is a variant I
never tried myself for anything (a bit familiarity with FreeBSD is all I
have, ok a bit more than a bit maybe two bits). How does it perform on
that machine beside your gnome/gdm problem, is it fast enough?
I somehow missed the post you have written before and which I see right
now where you say “I guess i should have stayed as solaris 9.”. Do you
still regret the move from it?
What I always found great with BSD is the ports and (I have to be
careful writing this on a linux forum) the good documentation in the man
pages (I have to think hard which of them this was a some years ago and
may no longer be valid, but there were some than you compared them to
similar linux man pages at that time the latter ones looked like written
by amateurs).
I hope you have much fun with your sparc, new hardware is sometimes
boring compared to working with old one where nobody seems to believe
one can install something more modern on it
–
PC: oS 11.4 (dual boot 12.1) 64 bit | Intel Core i7-2600@3.40GHz | KDE
4.6.0 | GeForce GT 420 | 16GB Ram
Eee PC 1201n: oS 11.4 64 bit | Intel Atom 330@1.60GHz | KDE 4.7.3 |
nVidia ION | 3GB Ram
