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- Path: sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!darwin.sura.net!mlb.semi.harris.com!uflorida!usf.edu!zeus!hughes
- From: hughes@zeus.csee.usf.edu (Ken Hughes)
- Newsgroups: comp.os.linux
- Subject: Re: LINUX vs 386 MACH from CMU
- Message-ID: <1992Aug25.140406.3612@ariel.ec.usf.edu>
- Date: 25 Aug 92 14:04:06 GMT
- References: <1992Aug13.213754.11916@usenet.ins.cwru.edu>
- Sender: news@ariel.ec.usf.edu (News Admin)
- Reply-To: hughes@zeus.csee.usf.edu (Ken Hughes)
- Organization: University of South Florida, Department of Computer Science and Engineering
- Lines: 35
-
- In article <1992Aug13.213754.11916@usenet.ins.cwru.edu>,
- mal11@po.CWRU.Edu (Matthew A. Lewis) writes:
- |> has anyone had any experience with this MACH BSD version on UNIX???
-
- I'm using Mach 2.6 on my 386/40 clone as a standalone system. It's
- got a 120Mb IDE drive and 8M 80ns memory. The system is loaded with
- X11R5 and LaTeX as well.
-
- The pros are that it works. The system seems fairly stable and with
- the exception of a flakey floppy connector which will crashes the system
- when it is accessed it runs most of the software I need and have tried
- to compile. LaTeX is not terribly slower than (maybe 30-40% slower)
- than a SPARC but seems faster than a sun 3/280.
-
- The cons are that without 8M you can't really use X11. I've trimmed the
- kernel down as much as possible but it still takes up 2.4M of memory and
- when I only had 4M it would thrash almost constantly when moving between
- windows. This version of Mach doesn't support (or doesn't seem to support)
- shared libraries which means that the binaries for most X11 clients are
- at least 100M and most (like xterm or xv) are 400M-700M. This also means
- that it you have alot of binaries you will not have alot of free disk space
- and vice versa. At 120Mb I've only got about 15Mb left for my work.
-
- And, of course, Mach isn't as easy to get as Linux (in terms of what you
- have to sign, etc).
-
- I'd love to use Linux since it seems to have everything I need (like shared
- libraries), but this machine is up and running right now and with working
- on my dissertation a priority, if it ain't broke I ain't gonna fix it (yet).
-
- --
- Ken Hughes | "Which button do I press to turn
- (hughes@sol.csee.usf.edu) | it off?" "Try the red one,
- FT-Ph D candidate, PT-ex-sysadm | allright?" "Which red button?"
- University of South Florida | .... _Heathers_
-