freebsd sparc64 buggy?

[xyyz]

i'm a huge fan of freebsd and all, but has anyone else noticed how crash prone it is on sparc64 machines? i've installed it on both an ultra5 and an AXi based system, and it's given me nothing but trouble.

anyone else have any experiences like this, or am i unique here?

is 5.3 any better?

 

[Sunner]

Yep, I tried to install it on an Ultra5, but the installer would get screwed up, leaving the menu system entirely unreadable.

5.2.1 by the way.

 

[djdrastic]

Yeah , i've had endless problems using 5.2.1 as well . Sysinstall / etc just plain freezing on me a couple of times

 

[xyyz]

5.2.1 here too...

any luck with upgrading to 5.3?

 

[Nothinman]

I had problems with 5.2.x on Alpha when I tried it a while back. I eventually gave up and put Linux on it since I'm not a big FreeBSD fan and Linux works almost flawlessly anyway.

As a side note, Linux also works great on sparc64 =)

 

[n0cmonkey]

OpenBSD runs great on sparc64, as does NetBSD.

I think the only tier 1 platform for FreeBSD is i386. Alpha got downgraded a while back, so it probably isn't stable.

Personally, I wouldn't trust a whole lot coming out of FreeBSD lately, especially the 5.x branch. Dillon would get my money these days, if I wasn't extremely happy with another OS.