(Fwd) Linux experiences

[Clare & Peter Stubbs]

Hi All,

I've been trying to replace the Solaris sparc station on my desk at 
work with a PC running unix. I've been a FreeBSD user since 1.1.5, 
so I thought I'd be fair and try a good Linux. That would have meant 
that my desktop could have stayed as system V as well.  

I have to say that the GUI installation program on Caldera 
Openlinux 2.3 is superb. It detected everything correctly, even 
detecting the NIS domain and installing the client for that. It was a 
pleasure to use, and puts our installer to shame.  

Actually running it was a different matter. The replacement for XDM 
that it uses with KDE insists on making a little image for each 
user. That's fine with a few users in the /etc/passwd file, but with a 
800 user NIS domain it takes 15 minutes just to bring up the login 
window! Also, because it used fancy terminal types, I found it hard 
to work on remote machines. I'd rsh to a server and try to edit a file 
only to find that my terminal type was color-xterm, so vi would run 
in ed mode.  

It was also very slow, a PII 350 with 64MB took 5 seconds to open 
an xterm. It was so slow, that I couldn't waste anymore time with 
it, and went back to my sparc LX which performed better.  

I didn't try to build a custom kernel which may have improved 
things, but the kernel loadable modules seemed to be doing a good 
job of approximating my hardware.

My overall opinion was that OpenLinux was designed to look cool, 
but that in a working environment, the coolness made it hard to 
integrate with other non-cool environments.  

I'm going to put FreeBSD 3.3 on to the same machine and try to 
use that. I'll let you know how I get on.  

Cheers,
Peter