> As far as benchmarks go, running 2D gridding operations in one
> or our geological mapping applications is about 3 times faster on the
> HP box under Linux than a 900Mhz Blade 2000 running Solaris
> 2.8.

That just makes me want to cry.

Sun need to realise that they are not competative in the desktop /
workstation market at all, and give us some machines with a bit of
power... and decent graphics.

But then, the only reason I run a Sun on the desk is for compatibility
with the big iron in the server room.

--
Steven Hill

``He who controls the Spice, controls the universe!''
- Baron Harkonnen, Dune.

Steven Hill <sjh@waroffice.net> writes:

> > As far as benchmarks go, running 2D gridding operations in one
> > or our geological mapping applications is about 3 times faster on the
> > HP box under Linux than a 900Mhz Blade 2000 running Solaris
> > 2.8.
>
> That just makes me want to cry.
>
> Sun need to realise that they are not competative in the desktop /
> workstation market at all, and give us some machines with a bit of
> power... and decent graphics.
>
> But then, the only reason I run a Sun on the desk is for compatibility
> with the big iron in the server room.

So if that was not a requirement, there would be no reason to run a
Sun on the desk? I think that was my point precisely. I don't need
that compatibility.

Chris
--
Chris Morgan
"Post posting of policy changes by the boss will result in
real rule revisions that are irreversible"

- anonymous correspondent

ECC vs. non-ECC was being discussed. Have Suns always used ECC, or is this
a new development? I ask because I had the impression that one of the things
that would have prevented or mitigated the 400MHz E450 debacle is ECC memory.

I know that can't be right, because that problem wasn't the memory, but something
to do with the ecache. But I seem to remember something about ECC in that
discussion. Maybe it was that the ecache wasn't ECC ?

Hmm, if it doesn't slow the machine down, and doesn't make it drastically
more expensive, I'd want ECC even in a PC. I like solid machines.

--
Griff Miller II | |
Manager of Information Technology | "Do Lipton employees take coffee breaks?" |
Positron Corporation | |
griff.miller@positron.com | |

On Fri, 19 Sep 2003, Griff Miller wrote:

> ECC vs. non-ECC was being discussed. Have Suns always used ECC, or is this
> a new development? I ask because I had the impression that one of the things

I don't know about "always", but all of their machines since
at least the SPARCstation 1 and Sun 3/80 have used ECC (i.e.,
9-bit) RAM.

> that would have prevented or mitigated the 400MHz E450 debacle is ECC memory.

That was ECC cache, not main RAM.

> discussion. Maybe it was that the ecache wasn't ECC ?

Yep.

> Hmm, if it doesn't slow the machine down, and doesn't make it drastically
> more expensive, I'd want ECC even in a PC. I like solid machines.

I think some PCs do have ECC memory, but don't quote me on that.
The closest I have to a PC is the Sun PCi IIpro card in my SB 100.

--
Rich Teer, SCNA, SCSA

President,
Rite Online Inc.

Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-online.net

Griff Miller <griff.miller@positron.com> writes:

> ECC vs. non-ECC was being discussed. Have Suns always used ECC, or is this
> a new development?

Either always, or for a very very long time

I ask because I had the impression that one of the things
> that would have prevented or mitigated the 400MHz E450 debacle is ECC memory.
>
> I know that can't be right, because that problem wasn't the memory, but something
> to do with the ecache. But I seem to remember something about ECC in that
> discussion. Maybe it was that the ecache wasn't ECC ?

That's it.

>
> Hmm, if it doesn't slow the machine down, and doesn't make it drastically
> more expensive, I'd want ECC even in a PC. I like solid machines.

It was too much of a price premium back when 10% extra cost in memory
made an appreciable different to total purchase price. Now it doesn't,
but it's too late, the majority of the PC crowd don't use it and don't
care.

Chris
--
Chris Morgan
"Post posting of policy changes by the boss will result in
real rule revisions that are irreversible"

- anonymous correspondent

At Fri, 19 Sep 2003 16:57:32 GMT, Rich Teer <rich.teer@rite-group.com> writes:

> I think some PCs do have ECC memory, but don't quote me on that.

All the PCs that I regularly use have ECC memory. These include:

* The Dell PowerEdge 500SC that I'm typing this message on, at Twin Sun.
* Two Dell PowerEdge boxes at home, one for me and one for my wife.
* A Penguin Computing Niveus 1X that I use at UCLA.

The Dells all cost about $600 each (sans monitor, but counting the
extra graphics card, and the ECC memory I added to bring them up to
about 1 GB RAM). The Niveus was more expensive; about $1200 if I
recall correctly. For what I want to do, this approach works well:
you can get faster CPUs than you can with the Sun Blade 1500, while
spending about a quarter or a third of what one would spend with an
equivalently-equipped Sun Blade.

My boxes all run Debian/GNU Linux, but I suspect you could take the
same approach with Solaris x86, though you might have to choose your
hardware carefully.

On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 22:44:00 +0200, Emmanuel Florac
<eflorac@imaginet.fr> wrote:

>Old legend. Stupid windows newbies complain hoooow Linux is difficult and
>arcane. However, for a skilled unix administrator it's a breeze. Current
>distributions install in less than an hour and just work. They recognize
>out of the box SCSI cards, Fibre Channel cards, Giga Ethernet cards, RAID
>cards and autoconfigure everything. Linux is WAY EASIER to install than
>Solaris, IRIX or whatver Unix you like.

This is a double edged sword. The more automated and "Boxed" the OS
is, the more PITA it becomes to adjust it to your needs and undestrand
it.

A "skilled unix administrator" must understand the systems under his
controll in and out and my general expierence was/is that it is easier
to do a plain barebone OS install and then expand it with inhouse
packages than to try and understand webs of dependencies, configs and
links on PnP systems.

This is not intended to be a linux-slaming, but rather a voice against
all those "GUI Installation Wizards" I see in most important distros
today (Linux folks bash FreeBSD, Solaris and others for their
text-based install nowdays, guess most of those "Sysadmins" never
installed anything from a serial console... sigh).

On Sat, 20 Sep 2003 02:46:35 +0200,
Kirill Ponazdyr <no@spam.com>, in
<m98nmv07gt57q94hqvsik6cgo3sc10i0d4@4ax.com> wrote:

+> today (Linux folks bash FreeBSD, Solaris and others for their
+> text-based install nowdays

Ummm...Debian is on line 1 for you...

James
--
Consulting Minister for Consultants, DNRC
I can please only one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow
isn't looking good, either.
I am BOFH. Resistance is futile. Your network will be assimilated.

Steven Hill <sjh@waroffice.net> writes:

> > As far as benchmarks go, running 2D gridding operations in one
> > or our geological mapping applications is about 3 times faster on the
> > HP box under Linux than a 900Mhz Blade 2000 running Solaris
> > 2.8.
>
> That just makes me want to cry.
>
> Sun need to realise that they are not competative in the desktop /
> workstation market at all, and give us some machines with a bit of
> power... and decent graphics.
>
> But then, the only reason I run a Sun on the desk is for compatibility
> with the big iron in the server room.

I think that Sun understands this second part all too well.

-SEan

Kirill Ponazdyr <no@spam.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 22:44:00 +0200, Emmanuel Florac
> <eflorac@imaginet.fr> wrote:

>>Old legend. Stupid windows newbies complain hoooow Linux is difficult and
>>arcane. However, for a skilled unix administrator it's a breeze. Current
>>distributions install in less than an hour and just work. They recognize
>>out of the box SCSI cards, Fibre Channel cards, Giga Ethernet cards, RAID
>>cards and autoconfigure everything. Linux is WAY EASIER to install than
>>Solaris, IRIX or whatver Unix you like.

> This is a double edged sword. The more automated and "Boxed" the OS
> is, the more PITA it becomes to adjust it to your needs and undestrand
> it.

I had no problems with Linux in this area. The process of adjustment
and customization is not much different from Solaris.

> A "skilled unix administrator" must understand the systems under his
> controll in and out and my general expierence was/is that it is easier
> to do a plain barebone OS install and then expand it with inhouse
> packages than to try and understand webs of dependencies, configs and
> links on PnP systems.

This is a trivial thing to do on many Linux systems, RedHat or Debian
in particular. You can start with a fairly minimal system and then
continue building it from there. Thanks to tools like apt-get or
up2date it is easy to add just the packages and their dependencies on
top of a basic system. I am not sure what you mean by the web of
dependencies, etc. The dependecies (I assume you mean the package
dependencies) exist on Solaris and other operating systems too. Even
without up2date or similar tool, I still don't find the package
dependencies to get on my way. I find that the packages produced by
RedHat and Debian teams are generally done well. Rarely I have been
wanting to replace something that they already package with an inhouse
package, something I can't say about many of Solaris packages.


-akop