Sun anyone?

[knavely]

we began our Unix section in c programming class today at school. :cool: and now i have access to the secrete Sun workstation lab. Of course i could do the unix assignments here on my Linux box :cool: but i must admit those Sun workstations are really neat. I went to the web site and you can get one for about 1000$ i am actualy considering this now for my next computer. The processor in the one im looking at is 500 mghz , my computer now is 667 p3, but i suspect much like the apples G4 whatever processor the Sun uses processes more commands per cycle?
Anyone have a sun? Any input on solaris would be cool too.

[AWebDesign]

Sun's processors are 64bit RISC chips, while intel's is just 32. So a sun 500 can do ruffly what a intel 1ghz would do???? (am i right guys?)
I want the sun blade 100!! Drool

Aaron

[soleblazer]

I am new to sun as well, but I dont think that the bit setting has anything to do with computation per cpu cycle, it has more to do with the address space available. The applications also have to be written/ported to support 64bit features.

Actually, you would probably have to recompile the kernel to support 64 bit, most of the binaries are built using the 32bit libraries.

Sun kinda sucks for workstations as far as a general use/ learning tool. They cannot compete with a fast dell box running linux. I would dump all hope of getting a great screaming sun box, stick with a fast intel box running linux, if you want to get sun for intel.

just my 2 cents.

justin

[slayer17]

Sun's are not the screamers that everyon thinks. They are very good servers, the best being hotswappable. But as far as fast goes, I wouldn't say that. If you want fast go with a Alpha. That is a ***** of a machine. But the last post was right a pentium with memory and a fast cpu running linux is fast as or even faster!

[Q-Gdoxl]

Wouldn't the AMD thunderbirds kik the intels?
everywhre i read the athlon still compares to the new P4.

Personally I am waiting for dual socket a boards!

A Closed Mouth Gathers No Foot!
Q

[Shadoglare]

I've been dealing with Solaris for several months now, trying to train on it for work.
I don't use a Sparc, but I can tell you right now Solaris is NOT the way to go for a home system. It's a pain in the butt even compared to Linux, and the software selection for it is like nil outside of the server role.
If you want to work on it as a server, fine, but if you want to use it for more than that I'd stick to Linux.
Now as far as if Linux would work better on a Sparc or Intel, that I don't know...

[stiles]

The box your looking at is a Ultra SPARCIIe running at 500mhz. It's roughly equal to a PIII @ 800mhz in floating point performance, and about equal per mhz in interger operations. The processor is intergrated with the chipset including all I/O's (akin to the medaGX from a few years past). It can only address 2 GB's of RAM and has 800MB/Sec memory bandwith, so the traditional advantages of 64 bit addressing is nada.

The point of a box like this isn't performance per say but to have a workstation that is a native Solaris platform (so you have binary compatibility with your production servers). I'm concedering getting one to use as a developement workstation for Oracle work (if I don't have to get another monitor to use the damn thing). I'm having second thoughts even at this price point.