[geeks] OS for an Ultra 2

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 @ 10:24 +0200, Jochen Kunz said:

> NetBSD 3.0 (as well as -current) sparc64 (UltraSPARC) doesn't support
> SMP at all. There is some work, but progress is slow due to lack of man
> power. SMP on sparc (SPARC V7 / V8) works pretty well for two or three
> years now.

Yeah, I didn't realize it was that bad.  2.0 is the one I skipped over,
so I didn't get to see the messes people went through there.

I've been reading archives and a lot of work has been done, but it
hasn't been good for people using it, with some exceptions.

> Well. NetBSD is a volunteer project of a "few" people. It got SMP a few
> years back. Solaris / SunOS got SMP about 15 years back and is supported
> by a large company that can afford to pay many full time developers. So
> no surprise which system has more elaborate SMP...

Yeah, but here are some things which are surprisingly bad in Solaris
too, given the money and resources they have to put into it.

> For the Ultra 2: If it has only one CPU or only a few MBs of RAM I would
> go with NetBSD. If it has two CPUs and enough RAM, Solaris will do a
> better job.

I have Solaris 10 installed right now.

Runs well enough, but there are other factors to consider.



-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["And in billows of might swell the Saxons
before her,-- Unite, oh unite!	Or the billows burst o'er her!" -- Downfall
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