[rescue] best OS for SPARCserver 10

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Fri, 12 Sep 2003, Dave McGuire wrote:

> On Friday, September 12, 2003, at 02:31 AM, Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:
> > NetBSD will work well.  OpenBSD will be faster.
>
>    Got details on this?  Last I checked (which admittedly was some time
> ago), they changed the SCSI driver and that's about it.

OpenBSD doesn't use bus.h-style I/O handling on 32-bit SPARC.  It talks
directly to sbus and mbus for each device.  This is a dirtier way of
handling things, but the difference in speed between OpenBSD and NetBSD
on sun4m is -amazing-.  It's like the difference between NetBSD and
Solaris.

Seriously, OpenBSD has matured a -lot- in the last two years.  It
warrants a second look.  I think you know me well enough to know that I
don't willingly spend a lot of time with crappy software if I can at-all
avoid it.

>    Ahh, the details.  Got a link handy?  I'd like to investigate this a
> bit.

I don't have a link, but you can troll the mailing list archives to look
for people whining about no bus.h support on sparc.  Theo almost always
replies with some performance details as a reason.

It's irritating to not be able to use the PCMCIA cage on my LX, but I
think it's a worthwhile tradeoff.

-- 
Jonathan Patschke   )  "Gamer weenies...are the sludge at the bottom
Elgin, TX          (    of the user swamp."           --Gary Nichols