Kubuntu on SPARC II

Well, I got Ubuntu installed on my Ultra 5! I had some confusion at first about why I didn't have a desktop environment, as I had selected the "SPARC-Desktop" download ISO. Of course, after some head scratching, I realized that whether you choose "Desktop" or "Server" for SPARC, you get the server ISO (I couldn't find a SPARC desktop ISO). So, this gave me a choice... Gnome (standard Ubuntu) or KDE (Kubuntu)? I've used both in the past and somewhat preferred KDE. So, I ran sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop, worked on something else for an hour, and viola! Desktop Linux on my old Sun. Woot!

Linux fun

I'm feeling a bit masochistic today, so I thought I'd have a second go with Linux.  My first experience was a dual-boot of Debian on my Athlon XP 2 GHz machine at home a few years ago.  I had some help getting it started but I had some issues getting it to talk to my Apple Cinema Display at 1920 x 1200 and I never got sound or 3D graphics working properly (my help bailed on me once I got it booting to the desktop -- "check the forums!").  So, I just use XP on that machine these days.

I also have this Sun Ultra 5 workstation (400 MHz 64-bit UltraSPARC with 128 MB RAM) that I got for free with Solaris installed... and I don't think it's worth my time to learn Solaris (ugh).  Since I have some famailarity with Debian, and I've heard good things about Ubuntu playing nicely with Sun machines, I figured I'd give that a shot. Right now, I'm in the middle of the install process and it seems to be going pretty smoothly. Wish me luck!