FreeBSD newbie general and SMP questions for i386]
Mark Wolfskehl
mark.wolfskehl at verizon.net
Wed Dec 17 14:40:48 PST 2003
Hi,
I'm a FreeBSD newbie. I'm considering installing either FreeBSD i386 or
Linux on a 2 AMD Athelon CPU machine. The motherboard is an ASUS
A7M266-D, and the machine has 2GB memory installed. I'm working on
trying to answer some key questions before making a final decision which
OS to install (right now the other alternative is SuSe Linux), but
perhaps if anyone has some quick answers that would be a help:
1. How stable is SMP support in 5.1, especially compared to the
stability of single CPU FreeBSD and Linux in general?
2. In general, how could I characterize the relative performance of
FreeBSD and Linux under an SMP kernel and/.or single processors?
3. I'm looking into whether my motherboard conforms to the FreeBSD
requirements. I don't know if the 'Intel MP' means you have to have
genuine Intel processors, in particular. If anyone can get a quick
answer to this, that would be critical, of course. ASUS's website is
www.asus.com, and you can just do a search for the motherboard model.
They have all the specs and the users manual in pdf online. Thanks in
advance.
4. How compatible is FreeBSD with Linux in practice? I understand there
is a Linux compatibility module for the kernel?
5. Will FreeBSD run VMWare Workstation virtual machine SW for Linux (in
practice)?
6. Anything else I should know as a newbie?
Whew! That's a lot, but thanks in advance!
Mark Wolfskehl
mark.wolfskehl at verizon.net
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