> I guess Debian isn't a distro?
>
> http://www.debian.org/releases/unstable/sparc/install

2.1.1 Supported Architectures

Sun SPARC         | sparc
                          |   - sun4cdm
                          |   - sun4u

there is no mention of sparc64, this was why i decided on SuSE

> or 2.4 isnt a new kernel?
>
> http://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/debian/pool/main/k/kernel-image-sparc-2.4/

and yes it is a newer kernel, but once again there was no mention of sparc64. 
unlike SuSE, they had sparc64-iso's and that was why i chose SuSE.

slr