OT: Re: Bang for the Buck, comparing Celerons to Xeons (and

[Alan DuBoff]

George Bonser wrote:

> I would agree that Solaris 7 on SMP Intel kicks 2.2.x Linux's butt but the gap
> is likely to close some in 2.4 and still further later.  SGI seems to be
> contributing some to the development and they have some SMP experiance too.

The gap is closing, but Solaris has been down this road before. Some people
don't think that Solaris x86 is a viable option, as compared with Solaris
Sparc, but I think it runs just fine. They are about 95% common code between
x86 and Sparc.

However, aside from better performance, when comparing Solaris x86 to Linux
2.2/2.4, an important factor is the software that is available. Linux has the
market mindshare right now, people are installing Linux, people are developing
on and for Linux. Even though Solaris x86 runs better on SMP, most of the
vendors with Solaris Sparc software will not recompile for x86, a sad but
known fact (and it's basically a recompile, the code remains the same).

Maybe Sun will suprise everyone with a big x86 push, I doubt it. This is a big
reason why Linux is a better option for Intel machines.

FWIW, when I compiled the 2.3.18 kernel on my Debian box, the warnings that
were spew'd out kinda scared me away from running it. There were quite a few
of them.

Is anyone running a 2.3.x kernel on the BAD list? If so, can you give a
rundown of how it's working out for you?

-- 

Alan DuBoff
Software Orchestration, Inc.