[GRASS-user] install GRASS on linux, which is better -DELL Precision 690n or SUN Ultra 40 M2

[gary]

Solaris is available for free, so I experimented with it on a PC I built 
before going back to my usual Suse. I've used Solaris at various places 
I worked, so it is linux like. However, I had a hard time installing 
linux software on it. [Granted I'm not the most linux literate person, 
but I find installing software on Suse to be straightforward.]

The Dell seems quite overpriced, but I haven't bought a PC off the shelf 
in years. Seems to be a local store could configure that for under $2k. 
I have twice the video RAM, 4x the hard drive, but used a 4400 AMD 64 
bit dual core. AMD has bombed the price on the processors, so you could 
get a system using the AMD 64 X2 6000 for nearly half the price of my 
4400cpu.

If you run Suse 10.2, it has software raid drivers for the Nforce4 
chipset. I can't see building a system without RAID these days. A 
hardware RAID will have better performance, but GRASS is mostly CPU 
intensive rather than I/O intensive.

If you go with Dell, you need to insure that you get the full 4Gbytes of 
RAM actually being recognized by the mobo. There is an issue loosely 
known as the "memory remap". The bios has to perform this function on 
some mobos to get the full 4G in use. Note also you need to build GRASS 
youself rather than use a binary if you want to use large amounts of 
memory. For a 64bit OS, you would want to compile it anyway.

In the SCSI days, I bought a Sun hard drive, which was really a Fujisu. 
It was really loud. Never again. Everything I build uses Seagate drives.


Brent Wood wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> 
> I think GRASS & most of it's dependencies & related applications are 
> much better tried, & may be better supported on Linux than Solaris. 
> However, I'd rate Sun hardware as generally superior to Dell. Also if I 
> read the specs correctly, the Sun has 2 dual core CPU's, the Dell has 
> one, so with 15 users & everything else being comparable, the Sun should 
> be a better platform for your purposes.
> 
> I guess someone using Solaris may confirm that everything works fine, 
> but with Linux, you pretty much know it will, so I suggest seeing if Sun 
> will ship with Linux instead (generally I believe they will) & if so, go 
> that way.
> 
> I'd also check that ALL the packages you want to run will work OK in a 
> 64 bit environment. I'm still occasionally bitten by finding a 32bit app 
> that won't run on 64bit (such as highly optimised applications with some 
> assembler in them).
> 
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Brent Wood
> 
>> Hi, All
>>
>> Need to make decision for purchasing a computer to install Linux and 
>> grass on it. I am looking at dell and sun – Ultra 40 M2 and Dell 
>> Precision 690n.
>>
>> Maximum users for using grass will be around 15 – for a GIS course.
>>
>> Could you commend on this and suggest some alternatives, if the 
>> following are not the best choices? Thanks.
>>
>> Jun
>>
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------
>> Ultra 40 M2 $3,745
>> Sun Ultra 40 M2 Workstation. 2 x AMD Opteron 1207 Rev F Model 2214 
>> (2.2 GHz/dual-core) processor, 8GB (4x2GB) DDR-667 ECC memory, 1 x 
>> 250GB 7200 rpm SATA HDD with Solaris 10 pre-installed, NVIDIA Quadro 
>> FX1500 PCI-Express graphics card, DVD Dual, 2 x 10/100/1000 Ethernet, 
>> two x16 PCI Express slots, two x8 PCI Express slots, one legacy PCI 
>> slot. Standard Configuration. RoHS-6 Compliant.
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> BUILD YOUR SYSTEM $3,326.80
>> Dell Precision Workstation 690n - 750W Dual Core Intel® Xeon® 
>> Processor 5160 3.00GHz, 4MB L2,1333 edit
>> Operating System Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS v4 for EM64T 64bit system 
>> w/ 1 YR RHN, w/ Media edit
>> 2nd Processor None edit
>> Memory 4GB, DDR2 SDRAM FBD Memory, 667MHz, ECC (4 DIMMS) edit
>> Graphic Cards 128MB PCIe x16 nVidia Quadro NVS 285, Dual DVI or Dual 
>> VGA Capable edit
>> Boot Hard Drive 250GB SATA 3.0Gb/s,7200 RPM Hard Drive with 8MB 
>> DataBurst Cache™ edit
>> CD-ROM, DVD, and Read-Write Devices 48X CD-ROM edit
>> 2nd Hard Drive 250GB SATA 3.0Gb/s,7200 RPM Hard Drive with 8MB 
>> DataBurst Cache™ edit
>>
>>
> 
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