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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.solaris,comp.unix.aix Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.cis.okstate.edu!news.ksu.ksu.edu!news.physics.uiowa.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!swrinde!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in2.uu.net!news.new-york.net!ritz.mordor.com!bet From: bet@ritz.mordor.com (Bennett Todd) Subject: Re: ISP hardware/software choices (performance comparison) Distribution: inet Organization: Mordor International - Jersey City, NJ Message-ID: <DL3Bv8.22H@ritz.mordor.com> References: <4cmopu$d35@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> <4cv8j1$59k@park.uvsc.edu> <4d37d4$j0l@gremlin.backfire.mn.org> <DL29Az.Ax2@ftel.co.uk> Date: Fri, 12 Jan 1996 22:59:32 GMT Lines: 32 Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:1934 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:2079 comp.unix.solaris:57141 comp.unix.aix:68638 >I am also heartily amused that the ``SunOS 4 is marvellous, what's this >5 crap?'' arguments are word for word identical to the abuse heaped on >SunOS 4 relative to SunOS 3. Sure are. A Sun 3/50 (16MHz 68020, video framebuffer on the memory bus, 4MB RAM non-expandable) running SunOS 3.5 was a whole lot more responsive and pleasant than a Sparcstation 2 running SunOS 4.0.1. By 4.1.3_U1b, Sun had gotten SunOS 4.x nearly as stable as SunOS 3.x had been, and everyone was running it on SS-5 and faster boxes with 64MB or more of memory. Then it didn't feel quite so awful. By 2.5 Sun seems to have made Solaris 2 nearly as useable as SunOS 4.x was 5 years ago. As long as you've got an SS-20 with 128MB of memory to run it on, it plods along OK (assuming you aren't masochistic enough to run CDE; that crawls dog-slow even on a top-end box). So yeah, 2.5 is OK, I can live with it; like any other non-standard, ill-maintained OS, I load all the GNU SW into /usr/local/bin, put that at the front of my path, and it doesn't hurt too badly. And some things are nicer than SunOS 4.x. Of course these things, like System V init, shadow passwords, etc can be hacked in to 4.x in reasonable time. It's a criminal shame that they abandoned a good OS for a foul one; they've pissed away many years, and still have loads of awful problems. Just think; if sun had stuck with a good OS (SunOS 3) when they had it, they could be shipping something as nice as FreeBSD now. It's a real shame. -- -Bennett bet@mordor.com <URL:http://www.mordor.com/bet/>