Re: What is Debian GNU/Linux like on an Alpha?
>Good day all,
>
>I am presently running Debian on my Celeron home computer, but would
>like to experiment with a 21164 based Alpha workstation. Any advice
>from the Debian Alpha community would be much appreciated.
Smart move.
>Packages: Having researched Paul Slootman's Alpha/i386 diffs page (
>http://auric.debian.org/~paul/alpha/diff/ ), it seems that the stable
>potato release of Alpha had roughly 116 fewer packages than the i396
>release. This seems pretty good overall. Does Debian Alpha usually
>keep up with the i386 packages this well? Are there any major packages
>missing from the Alpha distro?
They do a pretty good job. There will always be some packages that
i386 that alpha does not and vice versa.
>Compiling: My understanding is that the compiler released by Digital
>for use with Linux does a much better job of compiling than the standard
>GCC compiler - resulting in much faster code. Are the binaries compiled
>for the Debian Alpha distribution made using the Digital compiler, or
>GCC?
Compaq's FORTRAN and C compiler definitely create faster code;
particularly code that extensively uses floating-point operations.
But, for average use, gcc-compiled is just fine. I don't know for
sure, but I would speculate that the Debian-supplied binaries are gcc
compiled.
>Desktop practicality: Since this would be a home computer, the Debian
>Alpha system would mostly be used for web browsing, email, word
>processing, playing CDs, etc. No game playing though. While I know
>that Alphas are superb scientific and engineering workstations, how well
>do they manage in this sort of home user role?
Should do fine. However, you will not see a great deal of speed
increase over an i386 until you use it for crunching numbers; lots of
them.
--
/------------------------------------------------------------------\
|James D. Freels, P.E._i, Ph.D.|Phone: (865)576-8645 | | L | A |
|Oak Ridge National Laboratory |FAX: (865)574-9172 | H | I | L |
|Research Reactors Division |work e-m: fea@ornl.gov | F | N | P |
|P. O. Box 2008 |home fea@ispchannel.com| I | U | H |
|Oak Ridge, TN. 37831-6392 |world's best neutrons | R | X | A |
\------------------------------------------------------------------/
Reply to: