Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 14:35:16 +1100 From: Michael Vince <mv@roq.com> To: gayn.winters@bristolsystems.com Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, 'Ted Mittelstaedt' <tedm@toybox.placo.com> Subject: Re: Status of 6.0 for production systems Message-ID: <43741174.9020303@roq.com> In-Reply-To: <02f301c5e610$4d3a51a0$c901a8c0@workdog> References: <02f301c5e610$4d3a51a0$c901a8c0@workdog>
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Gayn Winters wrote: >>There are some things broken in 5.4 that are still broken in 6.0 >>with regards to support of older hardware. In particular the ida >>driver is a mess - EISA support in that was busted years ago, >>then 5.X busted support for more 'modern' systems like the >>Compaq 1600R HP "DL" series of systems are kind of a moving >>target anyway, unfortunately. For those sytems I still use 4.11 >>(in fact I just setup 2 new 4.11 production systems two days ago) >> >>However, 6.0 is a requirement for currently shipping hardware, in >>particular the Intel series of boxed "server" motherboards, if you >>want to use raid and sata drives, since Intel seems to like to change >>it's motherboard chipsets as fast as most people change their >>underpants. >>I'm actually building a 6.0 production server today. (5.4 and earlier >>will not recognize the disk array) >> >>It would be nice if we could get more support for SATA raid in >>the atacontrol program. >> >>Ted >> >> > >On the plus side, I've thrown a lot of hardware at FreeBSD with great >success. On the other hand, FreeBSD's primary weakness seems to be the >support of newer hardware. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to hear of >problems with older hardware as well, and Ted's solution of pairing >older hardware with an older release seems reasonable if in fact one has >the experience to support the older release. > I prefer the idea of the FreeBSD team aiming at only the latest hardware, all I use is brand new server equipment. I don't like the idea that FreeBSD features and performance development could be hampered by the core guys trying to make stuff work on old hardware, in fact if it was a fact that a lot more performance and features could be in 6.x if they dropped support for everything below 1ghz for x86 I would be happy, I got a few older machines but they could go onto NetBSD since its a very similar OS as it has the same rc script system which FreeBSD imported from NetBSD to start with. Admittedly if Microsoft were trying to make Windows XP run well on a 486 it wouldn't be nearly as a likable OS it is today. AMD64/EMT64 appears to be the mainstream high performance future and should get the most support, although some technologists are saying that Itanium is going to make a come back believe it or not, check out the latest anandtech article for example http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2598 If theres some guy who uses a 386sx 25mhz to run his water gardening sprinkler system he should let go of demanding 6.x work on his system and just use what he needs such as 4.x And if he needs say the latest perl 6 to control his sprinkler system and its not available in 4.x any more then he should just use NetBSD, NetBSD is for all types of hardware and is a fine OS.
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