From owner-freebsd-mips@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Oct 27 19:49:22 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-mips@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E2E7716A4CF for ; Wed, 27 Oct 2004 19:49:22 +0000 (GMT) Received: from omx1.americas.sgi.com (omx1-ext.sgi.com [192.48.179.11]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 69F4B43D45 for ; Wed, 27 Oct 2004 19:49:22 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from b.j.casavant@ieee.org) Received: from flecktone.americas.sgi.com (flecktone.americas.sgi.com [198.149.16.15])with ESMTP id i9RJnKxT022954; Wed, 27 Oct 2004 14:49:20 -0500 Received: from daisy-e236.americas.sgi.com (daisy-e236.americas.sgi.com [128.162.236.214])with ESMTP id i9RJnFBV837854; Wed, 27 Oct 2004 14:49:15 -0500 (CDT) Received: from kzerza.americas.sgi.com (kzerza.americas.sgi.com [128.162.233.27]) by daisy-e236.americas.sgi.com (8.12.9/SGI-server-1.8) with ESMTP id i9RJnDq524240424; Wed, 27 Oct 2004 14:49:14 -0500 (CDT) Received: from kzerza.americas.sgi.com by kzerza.americas.sgi.com (SGI-8.12.5/SGI-client-1.7) via ESMTP id i9RJnDV2054553; Wed, 27 Oct 2004 14:49:13 -0500 (CDT) Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 14:49:13 -0500 From: Brent Casavant X-X-Sender: bcasavan@kzerza.americas.sgi.com To: Gregory Nou In-Reply-To: <1098890272.39238.69.camel@alfred> Message-ID: References: <1098890272.39238.69.camel@alfred> Organization: "Angeltread Software Organization" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII cc: freebsd-mips@freebsd.org Subject: Re: IRiX or FreeBSD ? X-BeenThere: freebsd-mips@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list Reply-To: Brent Casavant List-Id: Porting FreeBSD to MIPS List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 19:49:23 -0000 On Wed, 27 Oct 2004, Gregory Nou wrote: > I recently get an Octane Station > I have on HD with Irix, but since I do not have a license, I'm not > likely to use it. > I was wondering if I should try to get one, switch to freebsd, or > install a linux. > Could you tell me where the project is ? Is there a usable version ? All machines shipped by SGI have a license to run some version of IRIX. Chances are pretty good that your machine has IRIX 6.5 licensed for it, and thus can legally use any version of IRIX up to 6.5.25. The license is not tied to the media the OS ships on, but to the machine itself, and this license normally transfers with the machine. I know of no operating system other than IRIX which runs on an Octane, though NetBSD and maybe some others will run on O2 and other older SGI hardware. In addition, you are likely to be very disappointed with anything other than IRIX if you want to use an SGI box for anything more than curious OS hacking. In particular XFree86 does not (to my knowledge) support any graphics option in Octane, and only a few options on older hardware such as Indy (and even then, non-accelerated). As much as I love the BSDs, stick with IRIX unless you're interested in porting the OS yourself. Brent Casavant, SGI Kernel Engineer -- Brent Casavant http://www.angeltread.org/ KD5EMB -.- -.. ..... . -- -... 44 54'24"N 93 03'21"W 907FASL EN34lv