[ale] Fedora and RHN?

James P. Kinney III jkinney at localnetsolutions.com
Thu Nov 6 20:38:39 EST 2003


On Thu, 2003-11-06 at 18:26, Preston Boyington wrote:
> > I do not plan on going AMD64 until Linux does. I do not know enough
> > about the AMD64 to know if it *truly* makes a difference.
> > 
> ask JPK3, he bought a 64 bit unit a'while back.  
> 
> James, how about an update on your experiences with the new machine? 
> I have seen dual processor 64's advertised and am currently seriously
> thinking of making the jump in a few months, provided there is good
> feedback about supported software.
> 
I've been quite happy with it :)
I have not yet begun to push what this machine can do. Over the next few
months I will be developing and testing some very specific code that
will push the box (physics modeling application for studying surface
physics of diamond during high-temperature annealing followed by
ultra-low pressure surface doping with metals like copper and gold
{think: putting contacts on a diamond-based semiconductor})

I have seen (and gloated over) some reports comparing the Opteron to the
Itanium (I made the right choice) and the new G5 chip (still made the
right choice!).

Software support: What I am running is a beta version of RedHat AS v 3
with the WS packages added (this is why I am royally unimpressed with
their new pricing plan). There are some missing things that are a
serious hold up. For desktop use (some of use _use_ a desktop machine:),
no java (64-bit) means I can't compile (readily) a working version of
OpenOffice.org v 1.1. Suse beta (which I also ran for a while), came
with a 32-bit jre that was linked in nicely, but no OpenOffice. 

One the whole, the Suse beta ran better than the RedHat beta does. The
redhat setup seems to slow down over time and memory management doesn't
flush out buffers (or so it seems). The ram usage creep is irritating
and prevalent only in X. As the default environment is
Gnome/Bluecurve/Nautilus, I suspect nautilus more than anything else as
being the the ringleader for the ram consumption (What?! It's not like
it has a stellar performance in i386 either. 64-bit means it can clog up
twice as fast!)

I would like to put the fedora distro on it but I don't have time to
build a boot CD with an installer. There are no .iso's for any platform
other than i386 right now.

So to sum up: Dual Opteron is still bleeding edge. Of course one of my
favorite quotes from Despair.com is "If you're not living on the edge,
you're taking up too much room".


-- 
James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC        \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244                    \.___________________________./
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7
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