Running Linux, Third Edition

Installation Differences from Intel

Most of the installation procedures for Linux/SPARC systems are identical to those of Intel-based Linux systems. The differences that do exist are just a side effect of different hardware, different booting procedures, and other similar divergences.

Graphics and X

Graphics cards are different on each system, and Linux/SPARC systems use different X servers. All SBUS-based and several onboard SPARC graphics cards use the Xsun series of servers. They are named:

Server	Purpose
XsunMono	For monochrome graphics cards only
Xsun	For 8-bit color and monochrome displays
Xsun24	For 24-bit color graphics cards only, including Creator/Creator3d

Unlike Xfree86 on Intel, these X servers do not use a server configuration file for several reasons. First, the mouse and keyboard types are known on SPARC systems. Second, the graphics card and resolution can be completely autodetected and configured, so no specification of these parameters is needed in a configuration file.

The PCI systems start to bring in some exception cases for graphics cards. Several of the desktop systems (such as Ultra 5 and Ultra 10) have an ATI Mach-64 derived graphics card on the motherboard. Also ATI Mach64 PCI expansion boards are available as well. These graphics cards do use the Xfree86 servers and thus have a configuration file to set up.

For these ATI cards, you set up the XF86Config file just as you would for ATI cards on an Intel system. There are a few sticking points to be aware of: