[NTLUG:Discuss] GNU and Solaris -- WAS: O'Reilly Discussion Guidelines

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Thu, 2004-09-09 at 06:18, Will Senn wrote:
> Ed,
> Having 9.1 Pro on DVD has changed my perception of DVDs. I wouldn't go 
> back to a CD install, if you paid me - DVD is the only way to fly.

DVDs are nice.  But it is still static.

So I install via NFS because I can drop in the latest packages.  I have
my notebook and a tiny 5-port 10/100 switch with auto-RX/TX sensing so I
can drop in a Fedora install anywhere.

Of course, from that NFS repository, I can always build a DVD-R of it at
a moment's notice.

Once Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora Core offer integrated YUM
and/or APT in the Anaconda installer, even if its unofficial, I'll be in
heaven.  It might not happen in the EL4/CL4 series, but possibly
sometime late next fall as they ramp up the EL5/CL5 releases.

It's definitely possible because Progeny's Componentized Linux uses the
Anaconda installer for Debian and Fedora.

I'm working on a package list called "[Fedora(TM)] Quark" that includes
APT.  The idea is an minimal install for a corporation, so they can then
pull their "standard package configuration" from an APT repository.  I'm
working on the script that builds the CD, and I'm sure there are far too
many modifications to make to Anaconda for me to ever complete it. 
;-ppp  At least what I have time for.

> I think having a Solaris DVD would be great, too - of course there's a
> big difference between Suse and Solaris on Intel - Suse works, works
> well and all around rocks. Solaris will have to improve the setup
> program, administration apps and font smoothing in X to come anywhere
> close.

The problem with Sun used to be that the IA-32 (x86) port was always a
secondary consideration from SPARC.  But Sun has woken up to the fact
that SPARC cannot keep up with Opteron at its price/performance in both
CPU _and_, more importantly, aggregate I/O capability (which has
traditionally been the problem with Intel platforms).

So they are moving over to x86-64.  It's important to note that Intel
IA-32e (aka EM64T) as a platform is _far_limited_ in comparison to AMD
x86-64.  The latter, thanx to HyperTransport and NUMA support directly
in the CPU, is more comparable to IA-64 (Itanium) in terms of
interconnect architecture.

Heck, even 32-bit Athlon used the same EV6 interconnect as 64-bit Alpha
264.  Some BIOSes allow you to enable the on-chip Athlon AGPGART as a
40-bit I/O MMU.  Yes, even the 32-bit Athlon had >4GB (and >64GB PXE36
-- PXE36 being analogous to old "EMS") support, while even the latest
Intel "64-bit extension" chips have the same 4GB interconnect
limitations.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith                                  b.j.smith at ieee.org 
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