Kent West wrote:
David S. Miller wrote:I want the machine to feel zippier than a Windows-based computer in a typical dorm room. This machine is one of four that will be in a university Computer Science lab, along with 16 SunBlade 100s running Solaris 8 that have been in place for a year. The 1000s will be running Debian. The 100s will be mostly used for Java programming classes, and some web browsing, etc. The 1000s will be more for tinkering.What exactly do you want to "go fast" on this sb1000 machine?I was hoping the students could see Debian in a very responsive fashion, so it's more attactive than Solaris on the smaller boxes, and more attactive than their (expectedly but no) slower Windows boxes back in their dorm rooms.
After a few more updates/tweaks on this box, the sluggishness doesn't seem so bad anymore. It at least doesn't feel any slower than the SunBlade 100s running Solaris 8.
And speed issues aside, while I was working on cloning this SB1000 to the other three, a student poked her head in and asked if the machines were about ready. I told her "Only this one, but here, log in; it'll let me get a better idea of what's broken for students." So I sat with her for about an hour and showed her some of the neat features of Linux, such as the ability to have more than one X session going at one time, and different window managers/environments, and the eye candy of KDE, etc. She was oohing and aahing and "I love this!"ing the whole time. As she was leaving the lab, one of the instructors passed by and she told him "I love Debian!" and he looked at me and tongue-in-cheek accused me of corrupting the students away from the grown-up OSes and the Microsoft-wannabe OSes. I just looked back and said "Yep. Another convert."
-- Kent