[SunRescue] NetBSD v. Linux v. Solaris 2.51

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On , December 6, 1900 at 16:03:54 (MST), Michael Hansen wrote: ]
> Subject: [SunRescue] NetBSD v. Linux v. Solaris 2.51
>
> Here's my hardware: SS1+ (going to work, not going to get a choice.)
> cg6 "GX" frame buffer, 64 mbs ram, 2x 500mb SCSI disks, Plextor
> 4x cd-rom,  and on-board 10Base5 Ethernet.  I know I can't expect
> thrilling speed from this machine, no matter how cool they were 
> back when I was in junior-high (I'm in my 3rd year of college, now.) 
> 
> To the point: I often hear "run your X server on another machine."

Indeed!

> Can that other machine be x86 based? If it is x86 based, will
> setting it up be non-trivial?  Assuming I do set it up that way
> would it be a heretical, blasphemous, evil thing, possibly
> a >bad< thing?

Yes, Absolutely!  (on all points!  :-)

You pretty much must run your X server on another machine (or stick to a
bwtwo frame buffer and only run your X server, and nothing else, not
even your window manager, on the SS1+).  The cg6 is rather slow on an
ss1+ -- too slow to really be usable in my estimation.  Even the bwtwo
has its limits if you try to move too many pixels on the screen at the
same time.  Of course if you downgraded to SunOS-4 or earlier and ran
SunView it would fly like the wind....  :-)

In fact if you're at all interested in graphics, and colour graphics to
be specific, any random desktop PC with a PCI or AGP bus, and a decent
graphics card in it with enough RAM, is going to blow the doors off
anything you could possibly dream of doing even on an SS2, let alone an
SS1+, even if you have only a cheap 166MHz Pentium or so.  Except for
the monitor you could build a decent PC for running *BSD and X for
around $200 or less (I just saw $40[cdn] AGP 16MB SVGA cards in one of
our local junk shops, and complete P166's for $150[cdn] -- the only
trick is finding a cheap system *with* AGP, and that's not hard either).

There are even those appliance-level PCs that'll boot diskless -- you
can run some *BSD or Linux with xdm and the X server as the only
application and boot from your SS1+, though with the price of IDE drives
these days you may as well buy a one and boot it stand-alone.  Setup
should be trivial if you run stand-alone -- just get a small hub and
ethernet them together.


I personally am explicitly not interested in colour graphics for my
primary workstation because I only use it for text (e-mail, programming,
writing, etc.), and my eyes hurt anyway after staring for an hour or so
at any colour monitor I've ever seen.

That's why I'm very happy with a little SS1+ and a bwtwo and a 1600x1200
monochrome paper-white Sun monitor.  This display is a full 100dpi, and
with a decent font (eg. GNU intlfonts) I can get a full 80 lines by 132
characters and still have ample room left for the clock, xbuffy, xloads,
the window-manager virtual workspace pager, etc., etc., etc..  It is
rock solid (i.e. the phosphor persistence is long enough to guarantee no
human visible flicker), and the focus is sharp enough that I can still
readily read text in the default xterm font (which lets me blow a window
up to 262x95 chars!  great for browsing syslog files, etc.!).

For the minimal amount of web browsing and other stuff I do I've got an
NCD HMX terminal running beside me with another half-decent 19" screen.
The plain HMX is only an 8-bit display though, so I do sometimes long
for something a little more capable.  If I could find a used HMX-Pro-24
though I'd be in heaven!  :-)

Of course I'm hoping new flat-panel displays will provide me with true
100dpi resolution, and flicker-free operation at an affordable price
before my last monochrome monitor bites the dust!

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

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