Free Sun bash

[Miek Rowan]

In article <24947 at bu-cs.BU.EDU>, madd at bu-cs.BU.EDU (Jim Frost) writes:
> 
> Hmm.  I use a Sun 2/120 with x11r2 and it's not "unacceptably slow"
> for most things.  If you put xterm into "jump" mode you get good speed
> on the scrolling.  Of course you can't read it then but most people
> can't follow stuff running out at more than 4800 baud anyway; that's
> why "more" is there.

I wasn't just speaking of X11R2, but obviously "acceptable" means two
different things between us.   Even with more (or less), it can take
more that 3-4 seconds to paint a window of text, and not just in X11R2.  

Come on, you can't tell me this is ok to you?  

> work done on, though.  If you want real performance I suggest using a
> Sun 3/50 (or better a Sun 4/110) as a smart graphics terminal to
> something like an Encore.  Yanking all the non-graphics stuff off the
> Sun and putting it on a scream machine gives very nice performance and
> is fairly transparent under x11; even my Sun 2 runs nicely when I
> offload the application to a Silicon Graphics 4D.

Why not use an X Terminal then?  Why bother with the headache of Sun's
OS and all the related problems?  My biggest point was the state of
thier source distribution, and it carried over to other things.  The only
security problem is that a user could have direct access to a ethernet line
which is a problem with the Sun workstations too.  

> 
> It's true that Sun's are sometimes plagued with hardware problems, but
> my experiences with their support were all favorable.  In addition
> they understand that not all users are stupid and allow them to do
> board swapping and the like, something that I appreciate.  I haven't
> any experience with their newer machines (we have 2 Roadrunners and a
> few Sun 4's coming, but nothing yet) so I can't comment on increasing
> or decreasing reliability.  So far I've had one mono card blow up on
> me, a disk problem, and a couple of mono screens have flipped out, but
> Sun dealt with them quickly so I've no complaints.  I have no
> idea just how long my Sun 2 has been around, but considering that it's
> a Sun 2 I'd say that it's been awhile.

>From talking to some engineers, the quality of the internal hardware is pretty
low (I wouldn't know though), and the external hardware (mouse, keyboard..)
is definatly low grade.   

> 
> As for their software, it's a good and bad thing.  I *like* SunOS, at
> least 3.5.  Some of the networking stuff -- like the yp server -- is
> pretty hairy and not so reliable, but if you don't have a big network
> you don't need it and it runs very cleanly.  NFS setup is simple and
	
Considering Sun's claims about networking and their products, that is 
a pretty big thing to just blow off.  

> In summary I don't think you've voiced a valid complaint.  There is

I think I voiced quite a few valid complaints and you mostly avoided them
with work-arounds.  Gee, if you don't use this and if you fixed this 
the system is really nice.  And, oh, don't do anything locally, let another
machine do all your work.

> virtually nothing else that works as well as Sun workstations in their
> price range.  386 PC's don't have anywhere near the networking support
> that Sun's do, almost never have good support, and cost nearly as
> much.  Higher-end workstations (eg Silicon Graphics) often address
> these problems but they're for a more specific audience and cost a lot
> more.

Consider programmer-time when talking about price ranges.  I think that
you will find a Sun network *much* more expensive to purchase, setup 
and maintain than a lot of other systems availble.

mtr