Re: Alpha recommendations
On 15 Oct 1998, John Goerzen wrote:
> I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask these questions or not,
> but I haven't found any better place, so please bear with me.
No prob. Actually, it's not a bad place to ask at all :-)
> I am seriously considering a new Alpha in the 600 MHz range as my next
> computer. The benchmarks I've seen indicate that such a machine will
> easily trounce a Dual PII/450 that I had been looking at, and the
> Alpha is about the same price, so -- the decision is not terribly
> difficult. However, I've got some questions for y'all:
Well, benchmarks can often be deceiving. While I love my Alphas, I do
only compare them to Intels when applicable. For instance, application
support on the Alpha tends to be "not as rich" as the Intels, mostly
because it's a newer platform supported by the Linux kernel. In terms of
FP performance, Alphas usually kill Pentiums easily, but it's not as good
under Linux as under DEC Unix due to unoptimised math libraries and
routines. This is being worked on heavily in glibc 2.1, however, and
can only improve at this point. Integer performance, however, tends to be
on par with Intels or sometimes below depending on which Alpha processor
is being used to compare.
> * Is there a Netscape available for Alpha? I've never seen anything
> but i386 binaries on their site. If not, what does everybody
> do for a web browser??
I don't use one, to be honest. I have a Pentium with Win95 on it that I
use for web stuff (it can't really do anything else). I *just* got an
announcement for a project to port Mozilla over (the successor to Netscape
that was released into the public's hands) to the Alpha. I'm hoping for
good results and, after I finish up my binutils package update, I intend
on putting some work into that effort as well. There are a couple of
lesser-known browsers in our archive, but I haven't tried them, so YMMV.
> * There exists an emulator for Alpha that can run i386 binaries.
> (I met the guy that wrote it at LinuxExpo). Does it run well with
> Debian?
Again, never tried it. I personally disagree with the whole concept of
emulating an x86 on an Alpha. I figure that, from what I've seen, the
emulator is pretty slow and for a tiny amount of money, I can probably buy
an old Pentium motherboard that'll outperform the emulator easily.
Besides, I don't think we've packaged em86 anyway, so it would have to be
manually-installed software.
> * What are good vendors of Alpha-based Linux systems? So far, I've
> found Linux Hardware Solutions, Microway, and Aspen Systems. Aspen
> Systems seems very reluctant to give out prices on their website
> (hmmm). LHS seems to be about $150 cheaper than Microway. Anybody
> had experience with these, or other, vendors?
I've bought all of my Alphas third-hand and not from a vendor, but I've
heard good things about Microway and DCG. Haven't heard too much about
the others, but what I have heard has been good. FYI, a good place to ask
about vendor experience is Redhat's axp-list. They've got TONS of people
on that list and alot of them have bought from just about every Alpha
vendor around.
C
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