Date: Fri, 5 Dec 1997 13:11:37 -0800 (PST) From: Jaye Mathisen <mrcpu@cdsnet.net> To: david.myers@Corp.Sun.COM Cc: freebsd-smp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: A pointed question: SMP directions... Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.3.95.971205130437.21704E-100000@mail.cdsnet.net> In-Reply-To: <199712052041.MAA21802@concord.Corp.Sun.COM>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
I think the instability in -current is greatly overrated. I have just taken the path of "When I find a snapshot that works, hell must chill before I move to a new snapshot". Of course, the more people that install it and use it, and report bugs, the sooner it will be more stable, so there's kind of a chicken and egg problem. My 3.0 boxes from around the beginning of Oct (10/8) have been just solid little clunkers. I would suggest you install it and try it. You can always delete it. Of course, I can only speak as a pretty satisfied user with something like 4 3.0 boxes (all duals, the quad's firing up next week). Now the multithreading issue is a whole 'nudder story, but since I currently don't have a need for it, I haven't been following the discussions too closely, but IIRC, kernel threading was a way off, and I think was hampered a bit with some of the locking issues in the kernel that were being discussed recently. But I could be mixing apples and kiwis. On Fri, 5 Dec 1997 david.myers@Corp.Sun.COM wrote: > > Folks: > > Let me ask a pointed question as... delicately... as I can. I've been > using FreeBSD on my home machine for close to two years. Like it a > lot. Gotten very comfortable with it. Particularly like the ports > collection and the ease of bringing software up on it. But I've got > this nifty dual Pentium Pro box. As it happens, I also work for Sun, > doing mostly Java work. So Solaris 2.6 looms large. > > The pointed question to this list: rate yourself, guys. Rate your > progress in getting multiprocessor/multithreading BSD up and running. > How close are you to matching the SMP features of the Solaris kernel? > (And I think back to the couple of bad years we had when our kernel was > having growing pains...) Now, add to that the difficulties in getting > Java up and running under FreeBSD -- Kaffe will be very nice *someday* > -- and what can I say? I'm leaning towards Solaris. > > Note that I'm not a kernel hacker, and 90% solutions are probably > fine. I'm looking for that warm, fuzzy feeling that SMP FreeBSD will > be "rock solid", as the CD packaging says. I'm just thinking, we've > got some awfully smart people here at Sun, and it sure took them a long > time to get SMP right. > > Now, of course, Solaris is a little more piggish than BSD -- "meant for > mission-critical applications" as we would say around the office. I've > never liked SysV from a user and administrator point of view, but I've > learned to cope, what with a Sparc box sitting on my desk. And > attempting to master Solaris' bizarre PPP implementation is always a joy > -- a real problem for a home/hacker machine. But that out-of-the-box > multi-CPU support and the kernel Java support look nice... > > So I'd love to hear what the roadmap looks like; what the projected > feature set of SMP FreeBSD will look like. And timelines. How > far do you think you'll get by the time 3.0-RELEASE comes out? Comments > from users making/contemplating similar moves will also be appreciated. > > -David. > >
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.NEB.3.95.971205130437.21704E-100000>