On 7/15/05, Hans Witvliet
On Fri, 2005-07-15 at 09:18, steve wrote:
do almost everything that my Sun boxes do on x86 and x64, I think I'll stick with Linux on these platforms and leave Solaris on the Sparcs.
John
what's the difference between what I use, an AMDX2200 and a Sparc? Steve
Why leave slowaris on sparcs? Waste of cpu power...
I'm running Linux on Sparc since RH 4.1 With a brief period Suse 7.0 - 7.2 on Sparc Aurora (forked from RH), Gentoo and Debian ahve still uptodate releases
Some even say that tux outperforms Solaris on sun-hardware, while "true-believer" swear on *BSD on sparc-servers.
And about the difference? Totally incompatible! SUN used (!) to be way ahead of the others. Over 10 years ago while folks at AMD and Intel regarded 64-bit machines as redidulous, Sun was selling there first sun-4U CPU's in their Ultra-1 and Ultra-2 workstations...
From then on, less development for SUN, in contrast with the others. First IBM, next HP (PA-risc) and finally Intel (Itanium) and AMD
Hans
Well at the time of deployment, Solaris was supported for my apps, Linux wasn't and at the time Linux wasn't anywhere near what it is now. Since I have the hardware (E450's) already and the OS doesn't cost me a dime, I get nothing from ripping out Solaris just to install Linux on the servers. Now when it comes time to retire the hardware (but the hardware is tops and runs forever, hence the high price) then everything is back on the table. I can't comment on anybody else's experience with "Slowaris" as it has been mentioned, but mine has been very favorable and slow isn't how I would descibe it. Now Windows (any version), yeah. I've got web, genetics databases, Sun Ray server, and several other apps on a 4-way with 2GB RAM and that box doesn't break a sweat. And I can't remember the last time it was rebooted, I think it involved a drive failure when the server room AC went south. Now there's an area of complaint, Sun gear gets hot!!! and likes (loves?) eating electricity!!! Put a few of these in a cold room and it won't stay cold long. You could cook on SPARC processors. Our physical plant guys checked the temp coming out from the Sun boxes and were reading 109 degrees F. As for innovation, Sun and IBM had dual core before anyone else, so don't write Sun off yet. And Sun hardware isn't all that they innovate. NFS, pam, and Java just to name a few, all from Sun. So while they don't support Linux on their SPARC line, at least they do for their x86_64 boxes. And if someone wants to install Linux on SPARC, they can and users won't notice anything and the Solaris admin won't have to learn any new skills. It's a win-win situation. No matter what choice is made, and isn't that what's best, getting a choice? John