[SPARCbook] Which BSD, and will anyone ever do the pcmcia bridge?

[Thomas Roehr]

Koyote wrote:

>>Your comments on the lack of the pcmcia bridge chip support, and a
>>comfort standpoint from Solaris.
>>
>>A casual review of the kernel code shows the same level of support for
>>the pcmcia bridge between Linux and the BSD's.
>>    
>>
>
>so?
>
>That still does not make me wrong about linux in this case.
>  
>
To quote you earlier statements:

> SO, I'm torn between open and netbsd (I'm ignoring linux all together
> since it doesn't seem to have pcmcia bridge support 

You state that you are ignoring Linux since it doesn't have any pcmcia bridge support, when in fact, it has the same level of pcmcia bridge coding that the BSD's have. 


>>I find the 2.4 kernels that I run to be much snappier then Solaris
>>2.6, and it does not have heat issues. I have had up times of over 100
>>days with linux (and then I rebooted for a different issue). Once I
>>unpack from my move, I will build a 2.5 kernel on a 3GX, and report
>>the results.
>>    
>>
>
>sol 2.6 doing what? windowmaker? kde? I find a lot of the subsystems
>faster on 2.6- like scsi.
>
>  
>
>>As for Linux vs BSD speed, be serious. If you want speed, get a
>>different machine. You have already said you would use Solaris if you
>>can get a 802.11 driver, so now stating speed is important is
>>contradictory. The "My OS can context switch 10 usecs faster than
>>yours" is a little lame.
>>    
>>
>
>Stating that I would go with the 802.11 support over speed does not mean
>that I consider speed to be unimportant given the current lack of 802.11
>support. MY, but you are capable of reading a lot into things.
>
You said you would do it, I didn't read anything into it. Perhaps you forgot what you said.

> Well, that's the whole enchilada there. I'd deal with text console only
> if I had to to get wavelan on this. But it doesn't-as far as I can
> tell-exists for 2.6

And

> (yes, the wi driver for solaris 2.6 would be fine- even better, since
> I'd have full hardware support)

>
>Performance is always lame to when consider around linux. Yet- in the
>end- it can and does matter. Why do you assume that I should not care
>about getting the best possible performance out of old hardware just
>because it is old?
>
>
>Are you really suggesting that I run slower code because the hardware is
>slow? or even that it doesn't matter if I make the 'slow' hardware take
>performance hits? 
>

If it's really so important, then work on some of the coding yourself, 
instead of complaining. Tadpole has provided the technical documents, 
and there are plenty of examples from other systems.

> 
>  
>
>>I am sure you would happily use Linux if someone finished off the
>>pcmcia issues.
>>    
>>
>
>No. I'd use it, but I'd grumble. I'd even support whoever finally got
>the support going, but I'd grumble.
>
>Linux is longer so small and tight as to be comfortable to run on older
>hardware in general. And all the performance tweaking seems to be
>focussed on the x86 stuff.
>
And you base this on...??? What linux distro have you run on a 3GX? What 
kernel? I am curious on how you have determined this.

Tom