[geeks] OS for an Ultra 2

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Tue, 27 Jun 2006 @ 16:52 -0400, Joshua Boyd said:

> On Tue, Jun 27, 2006 at 05:01:39PM -0400, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> 
> > The alternative is to keep using NetBSD, moving up to version 3.  The
> > caveat is that its SMP support is not as good, though perhaps it is good
> > enough.  I gather mostly it is just not as fine-grained, but should be
> > reliable now.
> 
> Unless I missed a recent announcement, to say that NetBSD's SMP
> supported isn't as good is kinda like saying that a SS1 is only a little
> bit slower.
> 
> I think we are all eager for the day that we could  say that
> NetBSD's SMP support is not as good with a straight face.

Well, it was added in 2.0, and 3.0 was supposed to improve it and be
stable.

The primary reported problem was the giant lock performance issue, and
crashes in sparc64.

If they haven't made any useful progress in 3.0, then there is no
point in installing that on a U2.

Oh well... a NetBSD 3.0 install just awhile ago failed because I forgot
that the boot code can't read FFS v2.  The @#$%^ installer should not
let that be an option.  It's been a bug/feature for some time now.

That leaves Solaris and Linux.  Linux SMP on x86 is excellent, not sure
about SPARC.  I hated Linux on SPARC years ago, but I've been told it is
OK now.

I did manage to get all of Solaris 10 6/06, but wow... Solaris has grown
since my last install.

I've not had to endure the pain of Sun's installer for awhile now, so I
might as well get started.


-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["Consulting wouldn't be what it is today
without Microsoft Windows" -- Chris Pinkham]