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Linux-Mandrake Available For UltraSPARC
Gael Duval, one of the Mandrake developers, dropped me a line to say that "Linux-Mandrake 7.0 for UltraSPARC is finally available. Although
it's a complete port (graphical installation included) of
Linux-Mandrake 7.0/final, it could still have some bugs, so please
consider the current UltraSPARC version as beta-software. You can download the ISO image from our Web site."
This question was about mindcraft tests and a little known fact was that FreeBSD and Solaris were tested with the same setup than Linux and NT. Included is a mail from freebsd-hackers mailing list from last summer. I should say that the numbers are this way because what was a bad setup for Linux (4xSMP/4x100MBit), was even worse for FreeBSD.
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Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1999 20:48:54 -0700 (PDT)
From: Julian Elischer
To: Karl Denninger
Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Ok well here are some real numbers for you..
Win NT 4processors 1GB ram + raid array + IIS
webbench... 4000 transactions per second...
FreeBSD.. Identical hardware..
1450 transactions per seccond
Linux: 2000 per second
Solaris86 6000 per second
With Netbench:
NT blows us away.
(we're talking an order of magnitude faster)
I'm not going ot give real numbers as I don't have them readily at hand but they are something like 12MB/Sec for
FreeBSD vs 90 MB/sec for NT and 120MB/sec for linux. Matt has some patches that raise the 12 to 35 and kirk
has some changes that may raise the numbers to 70 or more,
and John has some patches that may add more again, but it's all theory, and some of the patches have had less
results than we expected.
With Uniprocessor things are a lot more equal.
but we still suck on netbench.
This is due to the exact form of netbench which is exactly nonoptimal for FreeBSD.
Also becaosue of the GKL (Giant Kernel Lock) (see Solaris's results)
Basically there are some applications and benchmarks for which FreeBSD will really suck. We're working on
them but some things are just a result of how we do things.
So don't assume that NT figures must be bad..
we have too many weaknesses in our own code to throw stones.
I read somewhere that Linux supports Solaris Binaries on the Spark platform. How true is this and what is the quality of the support ?
Also I would really like to know where the performance status is these days. Not just under this mandrake but also with the 2.3.x kernels. I know Solaris kicks us around on really big spark boxes ( Ultra 10K etc... ) and Linux is allegedly faster on single CPU configurations but what about the lower mid range? The 2 and 4 way SMP boxen.
The only major production deployments of Linux on spark I have herd of recently have been Beowulf. I assume cost and performance have everything to do with that choice. Dose anyone have numbers ?
Finally. Mandrake 7.0 is the nicest Linux distribution I have used to date. It's also the fastest on my hardware. However with the leapfrog distros have been playing lately how do the latest RedHat and Caldera compare ?
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
I noticed that too. That topic seems to have cooled recently. I also think the some of the kiddies have left as a result...
I personally think quality has been on an upswing. I may be in the minority on this one.
ed
I see your point. Sun/Linux is IMO very well supported, and in the past I had really good experiences on that particular area. Granted, you are not likely to find a Sun/Linux guru in a 10 km radius (it is scary that you can find a pretty knowledgeable Linux user in that same area nowadays... or maybe I'm just lucky), but the number of people using Linux on Sun hardware is surprinsingly high. I wouldn't call debian-sparc a high traffic list, but it's not that low traffic either. This message regarding Debian GNU/Linux running on a e450 is amusing.
There are companies providing Linux preinstalled on Sun hardware (or at least Sun compatible hardware) like Kachina Technologies (no I don't work for them, but I admit I'm biased, I've got superb service from them in the past). I know there are more vendors offering Linux on Sun, but I don't have a list handy... sorry.
How the TCP/IP performance on the Sparc ports compared to the Intel ports of Linux (I'm thinking about the Mindcraft benchmarks here... would the different hardware have made any difference?)
"Oh linux blows goats in this benchmark compared to NT, but wait. We could find a super big, super expensive ultra sparc box running linux, and then we might beat NT "
Is this what you are trying to say?
I agree mostly with you. But Linux on UltraSparc is not all that worthless. It has its own little niche. Some people prefer running it on their workstations. Consider that Debian and Mandrake for example, have a package management system that is light years ahead of Solaris stuff. Second, you don't need to compile any freeware, it is all there part of a distribution (gcc, GNOME, etc)
But yes, I wouldn't trust my UltraSparc server to Linux. First of all, -NO- commercial software is available on it. Finally, Linux/Intel or Sparc/Solaris is much more proven and stable because both have been around for a while.
What do you mean by slow?
I am sitting in front of a +4 year old SparcStation4/110mhz/128mb ram running Solaris 2.6. It is not a screaming machine, but it is far from slow.
You still don't get the point, what an ignornat post you have there. You sound just like the "Windows" folks who don't get the point why anyone would run Linux.
You made a point that Sun hardware is very stable and reliable, So why not run Linux on it? Would anyone buy an Ultra to run Linux? Yes. Sun has an Ultra 5, 128mb ram, 8gig, 17 monitor for sale on their site for $1,300 now. Why should I buy a PC? If I buy a PC I will throw that shit out in 2 years, whereas I am sure I can have that ultrasparc going for 5 years. I have a couple of sparcs, and I got tired of my having to upgrade my PC's, so when my last PC running Linux died, the motherboard f'up. What did I do? Upgrade it? Heck no, not any more, I just threw linux on one of my sparcs. Now, I never have to worry about upgrade.
Now, I am using Linux on a sparc as a workstation, to surf the net, play with gimp, play mp3's, write papers, and do misc stuff. Are you getting the point why I would use Linux on a sparc?
Let's not start Solaris vs Linux war. I love them both, but sometimes somethings just work well for you. In Solaris environment, if you really really do want quality software, you have to spend money buying them, You might not have time to spend porting free software, so in such a situation, you might decide to run Linux.
Sorry, if I got carried away.
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
While SunOS is certainly a better choice than Linux for the big server, I think it would be nice to have Linux available on at least some of the graphics workstations. Not only does Linux have some advantages over SunOS, especially on a workstation (I personally would rather have the GNU tools available by default than Sun's proprietary versions), it would also provide a more diverse environment and allow us to develop programs on multiple OSs and architectures.
Sun? SMP? Enterprise 10k runs with up to 64 processors, AFAIK. It's also not uncommon to see 4-way SS20's back when the HyperSPARC architecture was at the top.
Though I have never used Solaris on more than 4 processors, from what I've seen, the quad-HyperSPARC SS20's we had at my old employers' place *smoked*. Of course, noone gets excited about 4-way SMP anymore *g*.
How the TCP/IP performance on the Sparc ports compared to the Intel ports of Linux (I'm thinking about the Mindcraft benchmarks here... would the different hardware have made any difference?)
Hrmm... since NT doesn't run on SPARC, I don't see how it would make a difference. Of course, if they had run a benchmark with NT on x86 vs linux (or solaris) on SPARC it would have looked different... as I recall they were benchmarking performance as a web server, and SPARC architecture is a big advantage there.
I remember back in '95 or so, when the SPARC port was just "finished" David Millar posted some benchmarks showing it had better TCP/IP than Solaris on the same hardware. Does anyone have that URL (or an updated version?)
I don't remember hearing that, and don't have a link. If it's true, I wonder how NetBSD would do - isn't it's TCP/IP implementation supposed to be superior to that of Linux?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
It makes more sense than you might think at first blush. As others have pointed out, Solaris is better on the larger machines - Linux can actually outperform it if you are using a smaller (single cpu) or older SPARC. If you are already familiar with Linux that might be a good reason too - being Unix, Solaris isn't too different, but it is different. If you are a free software person you would definately want to run Linux, not only because it is free and Solaris isn't (for personal use it's free-beer but still not free-speech, and it can be a pain to port GNU software to it.) Finally, if you are building a Beowulf cluster I believe Linux is your only choice.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Also, one might surmise that there's a good deal of "because it was there" going on too, as so often.
Steff
> consider the current UltraSPARC version as beta-software
<RANT> Shoot, I consider the x86 version to be beta! I tried installing from a CD hooked up to the ProAudio Spectrum's SCSI connector. This particular driver has been available since I first installed Linux back in '95. The adapter was listed as a SCSI option, but when I selected it, insmod couldn't find pas16.o. I tried several things to get the stupid thing to work, to no avail. Looks like I'm sticking with RH5.2 for now. </RANT>
I'd have to agree with that. I think the main reasons are -
1. It's fun
2. If you're a Linux company, you want to see it everywhere, so if you can port it, port it while you have market mindshare and see what happens in the future - at least you won't be left behind.
any comments? or just sol junkies everywhere? .
Please don't try to be me.
(No I don't troll anymore.)
(Yes I still read slashdot.)
-- J.R.R Trollkien, son of Troll, son of Trall
...is the .edu price (students, instructors, administrators, schools, and research), $2000 is the Joe price.
http://www.sun.com/edu
Personally, I'd probably use a K6 or Athlon system with a decent disk subsystem as a server unless I could afford something like an Enterprise 250.
I've been spending the past few days working with Maple in one of my university's Math labs... on a Sun Ray 1 terminal/network applicance. I've only read of these things up until now, works pretty much like an xterm, except I can "logout" mid session and login on the a different machine with my session exactly the same (great for power outtages, etc). Did some research, sun sells these in packs of 20, 50, and 100, server included, for about $290 - $300 seat to education cutomers. That's SunRay 1, keyboard, 17" monitor, and a server (20 = Ultra 10, 50 = Enterprise 250, 100 = Enterprise 450). Still have to wire them up to 100bt switch, but seems like a pretty good deal to me. Suppose there are some PCs now for $300/seat. Any thoughts on this?
j html
http://store.s un.com/docs/specials/education/startsmart_common.
http://www.sun.com/products/sunray1/ index.html
Sun's ~$1300 Ultra 5 w/ monitor bundle will be making its way to my door soon (never believe Sun's "leadtime" estimates), and while I'm planning on running Solaris on it, I'll probably give linux a spin.
The UltraSPARCs are 64-bit processors. Is this port of Linux a full 64-bit implementation? I know that the versions of Linux that are made for Compaq Alpha processors are fully 64-bit and really scream on those systems. Hopefully the UltraSPARC versions are also fully 64-bit so they can take advantage of the processor architecture.
That's true nothing has changed bero ;)
Then we can IPO and make mad cash! w00p!
At my work, we have a handful of Ultra-10's that we're decommissioning as servers to replace with E250s and so forth, mostly because we'd rather do that than play around with cramming SCSI cards into the U10's to get more disk space, and we're starting to need enterprise-class hardware for these roles.
Those machines would make nice desktop boxes (that being really what they were designed for), and Mandrake is a better desktop daily-use OS than Solaris for the average person.
(*shrug) Just one place this might be welcome here in a month or three.
--
From the top of my head (not so long ago someone asked me this very question):
But I have to admit, the Linux Sparc and UltraSparc installations I've done (Debian) have been real fun!
It's FreeBSD that had a performace advantage over Linux on x86. I doubt NetBSD ever did, despite (I assume) sharing the same stack, because of the lack of emphasis on performance in that version of BSD. (A BSD expert might correct me here - is the Network performace of NetBSD & FreeBSD identical?)
While I have not tested it, I would be surprised if the top four positions were not held by the four BSDs. The exception to this might be OpenBSD since it does all sorts of secuirty sanity checking.
Well,
I always think of that also being some kind of R&D. Linux will mature more and more. The SMP always gets more finegrained. There are more and more really cool Open Source apps/features for Linux which first would have to be ported to Solaris.
Take for example the new NWFS (Novell-File System), ReiserFS etc. Or this SCO app-server (tarantula?).
It's open source, it's linux, it will be mature.
True, linux isn't as "enterprise" as Solaris is, but it's slowly eating it's way up there.
I bet Sun has no chance in staying ahead up to 8 Prozessors past Linux 2.8/3.0. But it's valuable to have linux available _now_ on sun-hardware because the developers can design advances with portability in mind and test them. Not to say that linux on UltraSparc isn't worthy now, I just want to point out that it can only get better, both kernel and app related.
That's what I'm talking about. Since the (web serving) performace of Linux on x86 was contrained by the TCP/IP stack, I'm wondering if the different hardware of a Sparc would have made much difference - all that extra Bus I/O (if that is what the "architecture advantage is"?) might not have made much difference if the TCP/IP stack got saturated early, like it did on x86.
It's FreeBSD that had a performace advantage over Linux on x86. I doubt NetBSD ever did, despite (I assume) sharing the same stack, because of the lack of emphasis on performance in that version of BSD. (A BSD expert might correct me here - is the Network performace of NetBSD & FreeBSD identical?)
How the TCP/IP performance on the Sparc ports compared to the Intel ports of Linux (I'm thinking about the Mindcraft benchmarks here... would the different hardware have made any difference?)
I remember back in '95 or so, when the SPARC port was just "finished" David Millar posted some benchmarks showing it had better TCP/IP than Solaris on the same hardware. Does anyone have that URL (or an updated version?)
If this is for real, Solaris has some pretty amazing performace.
I'm a little surprised that BSD did so badly though, esp. since people are always boasting on /. about the TCP/IP performance of BSD. Why does the multi-processor effect BSD so badly on NetBench?
Thi s paper compared x86 Solaris, BSD and Linux back in '95.
Summary:
Our results show that:
Linux has the best performance on file metadata operations because it updates metadata asynchronously;
FreeBSD has the best network performance;
Solaris' performance generally lies between that of the other two systems
Please bear in mind it is pretty old, though.
(please don't turn this into a BSD vs Linux flamewar)
However, if you're running a prog (like an IDS or a firewall) that's supposed to be recieving a lot of packets, Solaris is not necessarily the best idea. BSD is. It would be nice to have the hardware flexibility of Sun's machines, and the OS power of Linux & BSD. I think this is a great idea.
>>>Uniformity? There are some differences that matter. Think for example a situation where upper management is stupid enough to decide on Sun boxes but the people who are actually going to use them know zip about Solaris (administration wise) Impossible you say? I've seen it.
Fair enough, that makes a lot of sense. Ideally, you wouldn't by Suns without someone to support them, but if you are a Linux shop that aquired Suns, this option makes sense. Why a Linux shop would buy Suns is a different question, although I could see a situation where an NT shop whose IT staff includes a bunch of geeks who played with Linux aquire Suns because management wants Unix... in that case, this scenario makes a lot of sense.
>>>Not all the Sun hardware is super high end. There are some pretty low end Ultras, on which Solaris is a molasse. The nickname Slowaris is not just a pretty joke. Upper management (see previous point) got you stuck with a pile of expensive crap, you have to deal with it.
My more Unix loving friends rip on the speed of the Sun workstations, so I'm inclined to agree with you. This scenario makes sense. Although I'm curious, would it make more sense to buy Sun workstations of vanilla Intel/AMD workstations in this scenario? A friend who is a real Solaris lover has a HP Pavillion running Solaris x86 because he wanted Solaris and the HP gave him the most power for his budget. Sun's hardware is amazing in large part because of well designed chip architecture that supports a very scalable number of SMP processors, which makes a difference on the high end. Given the size of and value of the x86 market, can Sun's processors compete in the midrange, or does the high-end x86 just have more power?
>>>"On Sun hardware, Solaris is robust, Linux is not" is just FUD. You are not going to install Linux on that Enterprise 10k, but Linux on a Ultra 30 is a really good option.
Is it? The reason, in part, that Linux is so solid (I've been amazed with the robustness, and my attempts to administer a personal system are amusing at best) is the millions of eyeballs theory. Not only do lots of people fix things, you have a lot of users who can notice problems. Also, because Linux developers tend to be accessible and users help newbies, bugs are very likely to be reported. While bugs in MS systems tend not to get reported because users wouldn't no where to begin.
Sun/Linux however is a small niche, so it wouldn't have the HUGE support that Intel/Linux has. Solaris is heavily tested by Sun on their hardware platforms, and given that there hardware is sold in certain configurations with the OS, I trust that they have a great ability to debug and test their systems, and that bugs when reported are dealt with quickly. Does Sun/Linux have the same situation?
Alex
Running free and public domain software is NOT dependant upon running Linux. You can compile those tools for any Unix/Unix-like system. The question here is:
if I want a Linux box, do I buy an Intel based system or a Sparc.
if I have a Sun box, do I run Solaris or Linux
In the real world, people don't do things because they have the machines (machines bought for a purpose tend to stick with it until being decommissioned), they get the machines to run the task.
If you follow the intelligent thread of discussion on this topic, we were discussing the merits of getting Sun hardware to run Linux on them. If you want to run the daemons that you are discussing, wouldn't it make more sense to get a vanilla x86 box and run Linux? The Ultra 5 is pretty slow for a server, and a K6 or Celeron based PC for $600 would be as fast as the $1300 (people say, I saw it for $2K when I checked their site today) Ultra 5.
So, why spend $700 more on your "low end" server? If you are looking cheap low end, don't x86 machines make more sense?
Alex
Solaris is very finegrained for good SMP performance, but Linux wipes the floor with it when running on one or 2 CPU's.. anymore then that, and Slowlaris makes more sense...
;-)
(as long as you don't do someting dumb like run Gnome on it... Ok, I use Gnome sometimes, but it is a quite resource hungry setup. If you want more speed, use afterstep or just about anything else
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
The above note is definitely a fake.
I actually worked for Mandrake until some time last summer. There have been a couple of problems, but no plans whatsoever to go proprietary back then, and I'm absolutely certain this did not change (I may work for the competition now, but I still know the people around at Mandrake).
Anonymous coward: Do you work for Microsoft, by any chance?
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
Running Linux on Sparc hardware makes sense, UltraSparc hardware, less so. As I understand it, Linux runs faster then Solaris, although it lacks the robustness and scalability to multiple processors. As a result, older Sun machines that would be decommissioned can find a little more life left with Linux.
My question is this, would anyone buy Sun Hardware to run Linux? Sun machines are generally more reliable and robust, better tested, and better supported. However, what would be the point of running Linux on one.
With Solaris, you have many Enterprise level tools that just aren't available for Linux. Additionally, any software with source can be compiled on either system, most Solaris admins that I know start by downloading and installing the GNU tools. With Linux, you have that same software.
Shrink wrapped software for Linux is all i386 only, so Sun users won't benefit from these improvements. Overall, I'm wondering what the point is of UltraSparc/Linux.
If the purpose is merely: because we can, that makes sense, it is neat. If it has a real purpose in a real computing environment, I'm curious as to what it is.
It seems to be, that as of now, corporations that are using Linux are mostly using them in low end servers because it is cheap. They put it on several hundred dollar vanilla servers. Sun Hardware is found in corporations that spend the IT dollars on quality. While I'm not suggesting the Linux is rubish, what makes Linux a better selection than Solaris other than it being free? While freedom is very important for people, for a company, it seems less so.
I'm curious, what is the business case for using Sun/Linux as opposed to Intel/Linux, AMD/Linux, or Sun/Solaris, all of which seem more logical choices to myself.
Alex