a bit about gentoo

this is one of the more refined distro of linux, and possibly one variant which runs on sparc,x86,ia64,amd,alpha and god knows what else.

i am sure there are other distro's around which can do most of the same stuff.

but get it running on sparc was so easy with gentoo, ofcourse you need to go through the documentation a few times (for an old guy like me atleast)

the other names i had looked at were ultralinux,aurora sparc project, debian and mandrake were also mentioned along with the word sparc. finally i kind of settled down on gentoo.

there is this utility called "emerge" in gentoo, this is the wishing well equivalent in linux.

you just "emerge this" or "emerge that" and you have this and that installed on your box. want to upgrade mysql , emerge mysql, and voila your wish is my command,of course you would need to have a nifty internet connection.emerge downloads the required packages from repositories on the net, and ensure that the necessary dependancies are taken care of,by downloading them too.

what else to you need in life.