Date: Mon, 5 Jul 1999 18:34:24 -0700 From: "Mark Holloway" <mholloway@flashmail.com> To: <questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Alpha or Ultra 5? Message-ID: <000a01bec74f$ae6ee6c0$eb3bea18@lvcm.com>
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[-- Attachment #1 --] I almost made this a long, drawn email asking for advice. Then I erased it because I didn't want to be boring.. Simply put, for the last 6 months I have been SUPER EXCITED to buy a Sun Ultra 5. For $2500, I can get an Ultra 5/270mhz/256k cache machine with 64MB ram. I wanted it for the sake of learning Solaris and learning system administration tasks on the world's most popular commercial Unix. Then it hit me! After selling all my legacy equipment on ebay and having $2500 in cash sitting here in front of me, I DON'T WANT THE ULTRA 5! I used FreeBSD for several months last year and I though it was great. It's fast and geared towards the Internet just like Solaris. The only problem I have with buying an Ultra 5 is the cost of upgrading. Sure, $2500 gets me a cheap Ultra 5 with 256k cache and a SpecInt of 10.2 (equal to a Pentium II/233 - a 2 year old chip!). To upgrade the Ultra 5 from 270 -> 480mhz with 2MB cache is $4000. The $2500 Ultra ships with 8 Bit graphics and EIDE. The more I re-read the specs the more it makes me see Sun is not appealing to me with the "shaved down" machine. Besides, I want to learn "Internet" related administration, not OS specific tasks. That means Apache, DNS, Sendmail, Real G2 Server, things that are all available for both Solaris and FreeBSD. So, I figures instead of spending the $2500 on a very low-end Ultra 5, I could get more bang for the buck by getting a DEC Alpha.. A very good friend of mine sells used SUN, SGI, and DEC ALPHA machines. He has the following system for sale: DEC Alpha 500a, 128MB, 2MB Cache, 4GB HDA, 16MB PCI Video Card, CD-Rom - $1550.00 Simply stated: A Sun machine that is comparable to this is going to cost a fortune! My only question to you, the FreeBSD world (and PLEASE be honest), is in regards to learning FreeBSD versus Solaris - is there something I will gain by learning Solaris instead of FreeBSD? I'm an MCSE, Cisco CCNA and CCNP who is studying for the Cisco CCIE. As we all know, Cisco and Solaris are the two companies who are most prolific with the Internet. However, we all know FreeBSD lives here, there, and everywhere.. FreeBSD is by far the most popular platform that exists in multi-vendor environments. Many shops who use Solaris for one task use FreeBSD for 3 more tasks.. It just pops up all over the place. Because I'm spending over $1k this is considered a serious move for me. If I buy the Alpha and install FreeBSD then that's it - there is no turning back! If I buy the Ultra 5, the same thing will happen..there is no turning back! I don't have money to waste...whatever I get the first time is what I am stuck with. My instinct tells me buying the Ultra 5 will be fun for the first week but that I'll get frustrated with the SpecINT 10.2 performce versus the Alpha's 18.9 performance. Also, keeping up with FreeBSD is much easier.. Are there any known issues with the Alpha I should be aware of? Regards, Mark Holloway I appreicate ANY feedback! [-- Attachment #2 --] <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" http-equiv=Content-Type> <META content="MSHTML 5.00.2614.3401" name=GENERATOR> <STYLE></STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY bgColor=#ffffff> <DIV><FONT size=2>I almost made this a long, drawn email asking for advice. Then I erased it because I didn't want to be boring..</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT size=2>Simply put, for the last 6 months I have been SUPER EXCITED to buy a Sun Ultra 5. For $2500, I can get an Ultra 5/270mhz/256k cache machine with 64MB ram. I wanted it for the sake of learning Solaris and learning system administration tasks on the world's most popular commercial Unix. Then it hit me! After selling all my legacy equipment on ebay and having $2500 in cash sitting here in front of me, I DON'T WANT THE ULTRA 5! </FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT size=2>I used FreeBSD for several months last year and I though it was great. It's fast and geared towards the Internet just like Solaris. The only problem I have with buying an Ultra 5 is the cost of upgrading. Sure, $2500 gets me a cheap Ultra 5 with 256k cache and a SpecInt of 10.2 (equal to a Pentium II/233 - a 2 year old chip!). To upgrade the Ultra 5 from 270 -> 480mhz with 2MB cache is $4000. The $2500 Ultra ships with 8 Bit graphics and EIDE. The more I re-read the specs the more it makes me see Sun is not appealing to me with the "shaved down" machine. </FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT size=2>Besides, I want to learn "Internet" related administration, not OS specific tasks. That means Apache, DNS, Sendmail, Real G2 Server, things that are all available for both Solaris and FreeBSD. So, I figures instead of spending the $2500 on a very low-end Ultra 5, I could get more bang for the buck by getting a DEC Alpha.. A very good friend of mine sells used SUN, SGI, and DEC ALPHA machines. He has the following system for sale:</FONT></DIV><FONT size=2> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>DEC Alpha 500a, 128MB, 2MB Cache, 4GB HDA, 16MB PCI Video Card, CD-Rom - $1550.00</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Simply stated: A Sun machine that is comparable to this is going to cost a fortune! My only question to you, the FreeBSD world (and PLEASE be honest), is in regards to learning FreeBSD versus Solaris - is there something I will gain by learning Solaris instead of FreeBSD? I'm an MCSE, Cisco CCNA and CCNP who is studying for the Cisco CCIE. As we all know, Cisco and Solaris are the two companies who are most prolific with the Internet. However, we all know FreeBSD lives here, there, and everywhere.. FreeBSD is by far the most popular platform that exists in multi-vendor environments. Many shops who use Solaris for one task use FreeBSD for 3 more tasks.. It just pops up all over the place. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Because I'm spending over $1k this is considered a serious move for me. If I buy the Alpha and install FreeBSD then that's it - there is no turning back! If I buy the Ultra 5, the same thing will happen..there is no turning back! I don't have money to waste...whatever I get the first time is what I am stuck with. My instinct tells me buying the Ultra 5 will be fun for the first week but that I'll get frustrated with the SpecINT 10.2 performce versus the Alpha's 18.9 performance. Also, keeping up with FreeBSD is much easier..</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Are there any known issues with the Alpha I should be aware of? </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Regards,</DIV> <DIV>Mark Holloway</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I appreicate ANY feedback!</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV></FONT> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV></BODY></HTML>
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