From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Dec 17 14:40:48 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5F92716A4CE for ; Wed, 17 Dec 2003 14:40:48 -0800 (PST) Received: from out008.verizon.net (out008pub.verizon.net [206.46.170.108]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EC44A43D1F for ; Wed, 17 Dec 2003 14:40:46 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from mark.wolfskehl@verizon.net) Received: from verizon.net ([141.150.127.237]) by out008.verizon.net (InterMail vM.5.01.06.06 201-253-122-130-106-20030910) with ESMTP id <20031217224046.OPQP19191.out008.verizon.net@verizon.net> for ; Wed, 17 Dec 2003 16:40:46 -0600 Message-ID: <3FE105FB.3060603@verizon.net> Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 17:42:19 -0800 From: Mark Wolfskehl User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Authentication-Info: Submitted using SMTP AUTH at out008.verizon.net from [141.150.127.237] at Wed, 17 Dec 2003 16:40:44 -0600 Subject: FreeBSD newbie general and SMP questions for i386] X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 22:40:48 -0000 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@verizon.net