*BSD News Article 35977


Return to BSD News archive

Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msuinfo!gmi!zombie.ncsc.mil!MathWorks.Com!news.cic.net!locust.cic.net!pauls
From: pauls@locust.cic.net (Paul Southworth)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: Re: Dual/Quad Pentium servers
Date: 19 Sep 1994 22:36:41 GMT
Organization: CICNet, Inc.
Lines: 31
Message-ID: <35l3pp$90n@spruce.cic.net>
References: <Robert-CCN.jrfq@sacbbx.com> <35igq3$2no@engnews2.Eng.Sun.COM> <35kbrn$s2k@qualcomm.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: locust.cic.net

In article <35kbrn$s2k@qualcomm.com>, Brian Ellis <bri@qualcomm.com> wrote:
>Jack F. Vogel <jackv@orpheus.Eng.Sun.COM> wrote:
>Jack, if you mean you've worked on the Solaris kernel, then I'm sure
>you know how drastically the kernel had to be re-engineered to go
>from SunOS 4.x. Frankly, I don't think the *BSD kernels could ever
>be made to run reliably on a symetric multiprocessing platform.

And naturally there's only one way to find out ;)

Personally I don't see a problem with someone trying it.

>>Your only real MP options are commercial OS's right now.
>
>Solaris 2.3 is a fine OS, and I understand that the newly released 2.3
>for x86 is built from the same source tree as the Sparc version.

IMO, Solaris 2.4/x86 is horsepucky compared to NetBSD.  It's slow, it's
a total resource pig, and it Doesn't Feel Right(tm).  It has certain
advantages coming from a major vendor.  None of those are related to
how good the operating system is in and of itself (ie, I'm sure that
more commercial apps will be available, WABI, etc etc).  If those
things are your deciding factors in an operating system, then SCO is
also better than NetBSD.  My 486SX with 4Mb RAM and NetBSD 1.0 is
vastly faster than my 486DX2-50 was with 16Mb RAM under Solaris 2.4.

My life became much easier after I deleted it.

--
Paul Southworth
CICNet Systems Support
pauls@cic.net