[SunRescue] 4/470 os's

[John Lengeling]

bobk wrote:

> My experiences with OpenBSD 2.5 vs. SunOS 4.1.3 on an IPX with 32 MB of ram
> show that the OpenBSD IP stack is TWICE as fast as SunOS. This was
> measured with ping response times and FTP transfer rates.
> 
> I haven't been able to get Linux installed on the IPX, but I think that
> low-load performance would be even better than OpenBSD. (high loads may be
> a different story. Lots of anecdotal evidence suggests that the BSD stack
> performs better than Linux under high load, but I haven't seen this
> myself)

I tried to load RedHad 6.1 on my Sparc IPX and had a bunch of problems
geting it to load cleanly.  It seams the sparc port of RedHat is a
little rough.  I finally gave up and loaded OpenBSD 2.6 and it worked
like a charm.  The IPX is a great NAT/Firewall box with OpenBSD.  

I also like the footprint since I can stash the IPX in a corner under
the desk and forget about it.  It is quite capable of doing
NAT/Firewall/DNS/Light WWW.  So if I was looking to run a free OS on an
IPX I would recommend OpenBSD versus Sparc RedHat or NetBSD.

johnl