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Comment by icedchai | Hacker News Reader

You kind of proved my point: that's an embedded platform. No consumer is going to be running it. The last link indicates "VxWorks, PikeOS, and RTEMS operating systems available."

It appears there is a Linux kernel port: https://www.gaisler.com/products/linux-for-leon

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you can load a Linux distro on there. You have a couple other problems: there's no ethernet or wifi, and you only have 512 megs of RAM.

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> You kind of proved my point: that's an embedded platform. No consumer is going to be running it. The last link indicates "VxWorks, PikeOS, and RTEMS operating systems available."

"Consumers" can be running it just as much as "consumers" could be running Raspberry Pis, which could also be considered 'embedded' by some. SPARC is no less (or more) proprietary than ARM: you can license the ISA, fab a CPU, and sell some kind of hardware stack.

Do you think it would be more or less difficult to get a license from Intel/AMD for x86(_X64) than ARM and/or SPARC so you could fab your own chips?

So you don't think the complete lack of connectivity (video, networking, and storage) is going to be a problem for a normal person? There is absolutely no comparison with a Raspberry Pi. It has all those things and great software support. That Sparc platform is for a satellite!

But yes, you are correct, it's much easier to get a SPARC license.

> So you don't think the complete lack of connectivity (video, networking, and storage) is going to be a problem for a normal person?

Not someone looking for rad hardened boards with flight qualified bootloaders...

If you're looking for rad hardened boards, you're not a "consumer" in the general sense of the word.

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