[SunRescue] Re: Trolls and MP on rescued suns

[Ken Hansen]

IMHO RH Linux runs *similar* to Solaris on most older machines - any
comparison between OSs falls a apart as soon as you introduce differences,
and it is easy to introduce differences between Solaris and SPARC/Linux.

Notable issues:

    Sun vs. GCC compiler (Sun has better optomizer?)

    SMP (Sun has a better SMP kernel?)

    Memory (Solaris wants more memory)

    Platform (Solaris 8 does not support Sun4c directly - can be forced)

    Overhead (Solaris assumes fast CPU. large memory - Linux can work
reasonably with less)

    Included software (until recently, SOlaris had very little included
software, compared with all the SPARC/Linux software included wirh Linux)

The older the box, the more likely Linux will wring the best perfomance out
of it, if you have a very new box, Solaris may run faster (take advantage of
all new bells and whistles).

On my SS5/70 I run Linux, on my Ultra2/300 I run Solaris - other machines
vary (notably, I also run SOlaris 2.6 on my SPACRbook 3GX, an SS5/110-kina
machine w/64 Meg RAM, but that is because Solaris 2.6 supports the hardware
better than Linux - note, I have not tried *BSD on it yet...).

So, if you have an Ultra, Solaris my be better - if you have a Sun4M (SS2,
SS5, SS10/20, LX, etc.) Linux may be a better platform. SMP SS10/20s may do
better under an older Solaris (like R2.5.1 or 2.6).

Soory I couldn't be more specific, but your question is sort of vauge,

hope this helps,

Ken
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stout, Logan" <ldstout at broadband.att.com>
To: <rescue at sunhelp.org>
Sent: Monday, October 09, 2000 8:58 AM
Subject: RE: [SunRescue] Re: Trolls and MP on rescued suns


>
> Apologies in advance to those who find this question off topic, heretical,
> offensive, or just plain bad smelling.
>
> one or two people have mentioned running Linux on older sparc machines, so
> I'm hoping someone can answer a couple of questions.
>
> 1: does it run, slower, faster, about the same? as Solaris 2.6
>
> 2: anyone know any guru tricks for dealing with a system that refuses to
> properly boot after a Linux install.. for what appears to be, among
possibly
> other things, a problem with prom settings. I manually made a new devalias
> to try booting, but for some reason this still, at best gets me to a point
> where SILO dies..  (I realize this description is not super detailed, but
I
> suspect if it has happened to you, you will recall the event based on this
> info.
>
> Logan
>
>
>
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