Date: Fri, 10 Dec 1999 09:21:23 -0400 (AST) From: The Hermit Hacker <scrappy@hub.org> To: Alfred Perlstein <bright@wintelcom.net> Cc: Peter McGarvey <Networks.Manager@rncm.ac.uk>, Jonathon McKitrick <jcm@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org>, questions <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: FreeBSD vs Solaris Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.9912100913280.500-100000@thelab.hub.org> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.9912100434390.4557-100000@fw.wintelcom.net>
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On Fri, 10 Dec 1999, Alfred Perlstein wrote:
> 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?
CDE is nice...especially when you have a Novell/Windows guy in the other
office who wants a "similar working environment" while still using Unix
(Network Management station)...not as feature rich, IMHO, as KDE, but I
don't have the inclination or desire to make Solaris look *that* good...
> 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.
Depends on your application...RC5 *flies* on Intel vs Sparc, Setiathome is
slower on Intel then Sparc...same hardware used in each scenario...same
operating system...
I'm slowly moving life here over to Intel from Sparc, due to cost (and,
since most of our operations here are int based, speed), but if I could
get equivalent Sparc over Intel, for close to same price, I'd be a fool to
think that Intel was better. Our sparcs, other then the occasional hard
drive failure, I've *never* had a problem with them...from delivery to
full production. The Intel's, on the other hand, tend to be "fun" on
initial setup, with stuff like IRQs and all that...
> 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.
My experience is that that "one basket" is made of suitably thick lead
that it isn't that big of a risk. All our servers are (or are moving
towards), full 0+1 mirroring, and I've yet to see either memory or CPU
fail...or power supply. and I've *never* had problems with the SCSI bus.
You want something fairly maintenance free, go Sparc...you do get what you
pay for. Now if only FreeBSD ran on it, I could have good hardware *and*
operating system in one box :)
Marc G. Fournier ICQ#7615664 IRC Nick: Scrappy
Systems Administrator @ hub.org
primary: scrappy@hub.org secondary: scrappy@{freebsd|postgresql}.org
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