Sparc compatability

[cochese]

I have an old SunBlade 150 that was given to me, complete with keyboard. I am wondering if there is a version of Mint that will run on the SPARC architecture, and if not is there any other distro that will? I am a newbie, just set up my first machine with Mint Cinnamon and learning the ways of Linux, and loving them!

[xenopeek]

Linux Mint works with x86 and x86-64 CPUs. So you won't be able to use Linux Mint on a SPARC CPU. Ubuntu also no longer supports SPARC; http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/20 ... anic_dead/.

I think this is a 64-bit SPARC processor, so according to DistroWatch you have the following options for Linux or BSD distros to consider: http://distrowatch.com/search.php?ostyp ... tus=Active

Debian will work according to that, so that would be nice. You might be able to compile any additional programs you want from LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) from source on that. Gentoo is available as an alternative Linux distro, though that is much more involved, if not complex if you are unfamiliar with it, than Debian.

You could also branch out a bit, and have some fun with one of the BSDs. FreeBSD (biggest BSD distro) or OpenBSD (most secure BSD distro), or NetBSD (with its saying "of course it'll run NetBSD!"m I could have recommended you that blindfolded ).

[bjornmu]

There is of course also Solaris but maybe that's what you already have on the box?

[cochese]

Thanks for the suggestions. Yes, the box has Solaris on it now, but no one seems to have the required passwords to get in. I am playing around with Linux and teaching myself the inner workings of computers at the same time. My thought was to boot from a live cd and just install over the old Solaris OS thus creating a useable machine once more.