Path: sparky!uunet!amdahl!rtech!sgiblab!spool.mu.edu!hri.com! noc.near.net!ns.draper.com!news.draper.com!surname!ibe1109 From: ibe...@draper.com (Ira Ekhaus) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux Subject: Is Linux a viable OS for a stable multiuser unix system, not just a hobbiest's Unix box? Message-ID: <IBE1109.93Feb9142158@etbsun1.draper.com> Date: 9 Feb 93 19:21:58 GMT Sender: nn...@draper.com (NNTP Master) Organization: Draper Laboratory, Inc., Cambridge, MA Lines: 35 Nntp-Posting-Host: etbsun1.draper.com Hi, I'm interested in setting up a Unix box for a few researchers. It would be doing some fairly light computing (by scientific computing standards). I'm trying to determine the tradeoffs between The lower cost of *86 boxes compared to sparc's. vs the delays and distractions that an unstable operating system would provide. As the prospective system gets bigger the relative cost of the CPU becomes less of an issue (peripherals costing the same on both systems ) and I believe the SPARC workstation wins out. But for a low capital interim solution Linux might work because 1) the code I'd write would be unix generic 2) the 486 box is already there and 3) at the very least the 486 box would make a good Xterm (using linux of course). Has anyone else considered these tradeoffs? thanks, Ira ekh...@draper.com Phone: 617 258 1109 Draper Laboratories m.s. 7c 555 Technology Square Cambridge , MA 02139
Path: sparky!uunet!newsgate.watson.ibm.com!news.ans.net! howland.reston.ans.net!usc!cs.utexas.edu!qt.cs.utexas.edu!yale.edu! ira.uka.de!rz.uni-karlsruhe.de!fg30.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de!ig25 From: ig...@fg30.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de (Thomas Koenig) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux Subject: Re: Is Linux a viable OS for a stable multiuser unix system, not just a hobbiest's Unix box? Date: 9 Feb 93 21:48:48 GMT Organization: University of Karlsruhe, Germany Lines: 53 Message-ID: <ig25.729294528@fg30> References: <IBE1109.93Feb9142158@etbsun1.draper.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: fg30.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit ibe...@draper.com (Ira Ekhaus) writes: >I'm interested in setting up a Unix box for a few researchers. It >would be doing some fairly light computing (by scientific computing >standards). What is light? How many megs of ram do you expect to need, and how many megs of data do you expect to generate? >I'm trying to determine the tradeoffs between >The lower cost of *86 boxes compared to sparc's. >vs >the delays and distractions that an unstable operating system would >provide. Depends. I'd say (personal experience) that Linux is stable enough for lightweight scientific stuff. Where it misses out is on the availability of commercial software like the NAG libs, Maple, ... etc. Of course, if a copy of Numerical Recipies is enough for your numerical needs, you're fine. F2c, while being far from great (especially because of difficult source - level debugging) does a reasonable job at compiling even fairly largish portions of FORTRAN code. Oh, and just wait until I've uploaded fudgit to tsx-11 (should happen in the next few days :-) Always keeping up to date is work, sure, but it's not too bad if your box happens to be connected to the Internet. >As the prospective system gets bigger the relative cost of the CPU >becomes less of an issue (peripherals costing the same on both systems >) and I believe the SPARC workstation wins out. Depends... if your applications require > 16 Meg real RAM and SCSI drivers, go for the SPARC. If you are going to add gigabyte storage, use the SPARC as woll. If your plans are not as ambitious, I'd say Linux is a viable alternative. >But for a low capital interim solution Linux might work because > 1) the code I'd write would be unix generic > 2) the 486 box is already there and > 3) at the very least the 486 box would make > a good Xterm (using linux of course). Those three arguments certainly count, if nothing else does :-) >Has anyone else considered these tradeoffs? Yep... I have :-) -- Thomas Koenig, ig...@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de, ig25@dkauni2.bitnet The joy of engineering is to find a straight line on a double logarithmic diagram.
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux Path: sparky!uunet!news.claremont.edu!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!swrinde! zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!atlantis.psu.edu! wintermute.phys.psu.edu!ra!tantalus.nrl.navy.mil!eric From: er...@tantalus.nrl.navy.mil (Eric Youngdale) Subject: Re: Is Linux a viable OS for a stable multiuser unix system, not just a hobbiest's Unix box? Message-ID: <C28zzu.1q7@ra.nrl.navy.mil> Sender: use...@ra.nrl.navy.mil Organization: Naval Research Laboratory References: <IBE1109.93Feb9142158@etbsun1.draper.com> <ig25.729294528@fg30> Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1993 19:40:41 GMT Lines: 35 In article <ig25.729294528@fg30> ig...@fg30.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de (Thomas Koenig) writes: >Depends... if your applications require > 16 Meg real RAM and SCSI >drivers, go for the SPARC. If you are going to add gigabyte storage, >use the SPARC as woll. If your plans are not as ambitious, I'd say >Linux is a viable alternative. I feel that this should probably be qualified a bit. First of all, the current scsi drivers are quite capable with dealing with machines that have more than 16Mb. There is a slight overhead as the disk blocks are copied to memory locations < 16Mb, but other than a barely noticable performance hit, it will work just fine. If I were going to try and set up a machine for number crunching, I would probably go with either local bus or EISA for the disk controller. We have two machines here that we use for moderate number crunching with SVr4, and both have EISA motherboards. At the time we bought the machines the EISA disk controllers were still quite expensive, so we went with ISA controllers - it may not be the best, but we have an easy upgrade path available to us if the need arises. >>Has anyone else considered these tradeoffs? > >Yep... I have :-) So have I. When we made the choice (~2-3 years ago), linux was not available, so we went with SVr4. At the time, there was a real price premium for 483-33 machines, and I think that a loaded system with SVr4 went for around 10K$. A stripped EISA machine went for around 5K$. We could have gotten an entry level Sparc machine for around 20K$ (stripped it would have been around 10K$), but as I recall the price/performance ratios were about the same for the two machines, in terms of number crunching. -Eric --