🚀 go-pugleaf

Charles Stephens (cfs@eng.sun.com) wrote:

: There was negative talk about the sun4's (which really *NEEDS* Linux),

 The straight sun4 (plain sun4, no 4m, 4c, anything else) needs Linux, but
having used it for a few years (as well as several other OS's) I've found
it follows classic suit in "you get what you pay for."  My personal
preference has been and probably will always be some form of SunOS or
Solaris.

 I always pondered the reason why people would want a Sun box or any
"real" workstation to run a free-for-all OS.  There are many people who
tout Linux supremacy, I was one of them once.  It's no better than
anything else, in fact, I find in some of the nitty gritty things it can
be quite lacking.  Granted, it's been a few months since I've peaked at
any new kernel code, but I don't have time to read all the release notes
between 1.3.1xx (or whatever have you) and 2.0.1x or 2.0.2x or how many
ever there are now.  I like my commercial OS's with patches, VERY good and
standardized documentation, and wonderful organization.  The fact that
paid professional support people and evaluators checked for security holes
and functionality before it was distributed is another plus.  Linux can be
very overwhelming with information, some of it contradictory, and
especially after the loads of CERT advisories and security notifications,
I said forget this OS.
  Even in unsupported SunOS 4.1.1 for my little old Sun 3/60 sitting here,
I can
slap in a new BIND or whatever and know it will work.  In the Linux world,
I found myself constantly having to upgrade libs (take Quake for example,
only worked with libc.so.5 and ELF, I had libc.so.4.x and a.out primarily
and had only installed my system less than 6 months earlier!!!).  I got
SICK of stuff like that, it's for the birds.  Kernel source is a nightmare
to try to get straight and find stuff.

: but if the sun3 works out, the two MMU's are nearly alike, so it should be
: easy to port.

  What's wrong with NetBSD?  It's got its flaws for the sun3, but works
pretty well.  Why not concentrate your efforts with that team and get it
working well and not worry about reinventing the wheel AGAIN.  By the time
a Linux port is ready for the sun3, even more of those machines will be in
the junk yard (not including mine however).

-- 
Dan Kosack
kosack@fred.net