Date: Fri, 10 Dec 1999 04:44:11 -0800 (PST) From: Alfred Perlstein <bright@wintelcom.net> To: Peter McGarvey <Networks.Manager@rncm.ac.uk> Cc: Jonathon McKitrick <jcm@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org>, questions <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: FreeBSD vs Solaris Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.9912100434390.4557-100000@fw.wintelcom.net> In-Reply-To: <NDBBJLAJELEHNLGABIJNGEAIDEAA.Networks.Manager@rncm.ac.uk>
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On Fri, 10 Dec 1999, Peter McGarvey wrote: > > I just heard a lecture on Solaris. The guy was emphasizing > > the scalability of Solaris, kernel threads, SMPT support, > > and also referred to fixing many of the bugs in BSD. How > > does FreeBSD today compare with Solaris? What advantages, > > if any, does BSD have over Solaris? > > Thing is, there are two flavours of Solaris. On for SPARC and one for > 80x86. > > Now, my experience of Solaris on a SPARC platform is best described as > simply the best experience I've had with a computer. However, this was a > dual UltraSPARC system with half a gig of memory so I suspect I fell in love > with the hardware and not the operating system. > > Solaris x86 is different. I got the impression SUN made it to show people > how cool Solaris was. And make a market for Solaris SPARC and SUN > computers. In some respects it is better than FreeBSD - it installs fairly > easily (except the bit where you carve up the HDD) and the out of the box > config means the user never sees a text login - it's CDE all the way. Which > is nice. CDE.. nice? > However, Solaris has one or two annoyances. For a start you don't get a C > compiler - you have to buy it or find and install GCC. You don't get perl > either. Or gzip. And tar doesn't work properly (to un-tar a MySQL > distribution I had to install Linux on a spare partition, un-tar the file in > Linux, then mount the Linux partition from Solaris and copy the files > accross). Oh yes, and the Solaris Boot manager is the most irritating thing > ever. > > And another thing, Solaris x86 is slow. I've had it running on a PII@400 > with 128MB RAM. My FreeBSD machine (a P166 with 64MB) ran faster. > I thought you said one or two? > To sum up... > > Solaris on SPARC is as good as FreeBSD on Intel. On an Intel Solaris comes > second. So if you can afford it get a decent Sun SPARC system. Failing > that use FreeBSD. I really disagree with you, if you can afford sparc hardware then you ought to buy 4 to 6 PCs with the money, you get both fault tolerance and cheap/easy fast part replacement along with probably at least twice the power of your single sparc system. The only time it's worth buying sparc is when you have the money to get several of them or you _really_ need big iron hardware, otherwise it's putting all your eggs in one basket. -Alfred To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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