[geeks] Daily Dose of Unix

[Chris Byrne]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: geeks-bounces at sunhelp.org 
> [mailto:geeks-bounces at sunhelp.org] On Behalf Of Kurt Huhn
> 
> 
> "Chris Byrne" <chris at chrisbyrne.com> wrote:
> 
> > I know Solaris the best of any commercial UNIX. I know 
> 
> "Best" depends on who you ask.  I personall am not very fond 
> of it.  I use
> it every day out of necessity, but I'd rather use Irix.
> 

I wasn't saying that Solaris was the best commercial UNIX, I was just
saying that it was the commercial UNIX I know better than any other. I
don't think there is a single "best" UNIX, they each have their
strengths and weaknesses. 

Irix is clearly the best for multimedia and probably the best for
scientific computing, but it's security is among the worst. 

AIX is probably the best for large scale database work, but that may
just be because of DB2. I personally thin AIX + DB2 is the best of the
major commercial DB platforms out there now. 

HP-UX seems best suited for medical and financial work, but I think
that's more because those applications were developed for HP-UX earlier
and more often, and therefore tend to be more mature, than for any
particular characteristic of the OS itself. 

Tru64 is going away, and ocne again binary availability is an issue.
Though with the hobbyist program that may turn around.  

Solaris seems to try and balance out all of these purposes and be a good
all-rounder so to speak.


> R10k Octanes are a dime a dozen these days, and you can go to 
> dual R10k for
> $modest_num.  MXE is going to be expensive, but ESI+TRAM is 
> reasonable (and
> SI+TRAM is dirt cheap, relatively speaking).  To get the same graphics
> performance out of a U60 would call for a very large 
> investment of cash,
> last I checked.

I can get an Elite3D M6 equipped Ultra 60 with 2x300 and 1GB for
$1000-$1500. Near as I can figure dual octane MXE with a gig is gonna
run at least 2k, prolly quite a bit more. 

What is the difference in graphical capability between the two?

> For what it's worth, running Solaris on a U60 will also cost 
> you licensing
> fees, as the U60 is a dual-processor machine and Solaris9 is 
> only free for
> single-CPU systems.  If I'm wrong, I'm sure I'll be duly LARTed.
> 

Huh, you know I think you're right. I never bothered with it before.