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I just want to jump in on the end here and offer some advice. Take it with a grain of salt though. Throughout this thread you had several suggestions to just install a fresh distro. I couldn't disagree more with these requests. Very few distros come with SMP enabled by default and who knows what other optimizations have been done on your machine. In all likelyhood your "upgrade" would downgrade the performance of the machine until you tinkered with it for weeks on end. Once you know more about your system and Linux then you might want to try an upgrade. As it is, you have been handed a working system in a freaking awesome machine (I really am green with envy here). Don't start fresh until you really need to. There is plenty you can do with that machine and just because it is an older version of Red Hat does not mean it isn't good.
I really am jealous here... does your friend want another buddy? I could use some hardware like that.
Originally posted by frob23
I just want to jump in on the end here and offer some advice. Take it with a grain of salt though. Throughout this thread you had several suggestions to just install a fresh distro. I couldn't disagree more with these requests. Very few distros come with SMP enabled by default and who knows what other optimizations have been done on your machine. In all likelyhood your "upgrade" would downgrade the performance of the machine until you tinkered with it for weeks on end.
Thats what my friend said too. I am a Linux newbie, so I didnt want to erase the good stuff that was already on the machine.
What is SMP? is that the multiprocessor stuff?
Quote:
As it is, you have been handed a working system in a freaking awesome machine (I really am green with envy here).
Ha yeah I didnt realize how good it was. Hell I didnt even know it had 4 processors installed at first because I was just playing with the software, I never opened the box.
Quote:
I really am jealous here... does your friend want another buddy? I could use some hardware like that. [/B]
ha ha unfortunately there were only 2 machines available, he has one and generously gave me the other one!
I found out why this machine was so good. Apparently, it used to be a console for an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scanner! Thats some heavy math applications right there so no wonder they have such a heavy hitter machine for it. They upgraded their consoles and gave 2 of them to my friend who works there, he gave one of them to me. If the machine I have now is this good, I cant imagine how good their upgraded box is!
Originally posted by frob23
Very few distros come with SMP enabled by default and who knows what other optimizations have been done on your machine. In all likelyhood your "upgrade" would downgrade the performance of the machine until you tinkered with it for weeks on end.
/me coughs...
Excuse me, but if he has ANY distro that gives him
the kernel source as well, getting SMP back on that
box (even with reading the kernels README's) wouldn't
take longer than a few hours. :}
I do, however, agree that a re-install is not necessary in
this case, and is bad practice in terms of using Linux.
Just because people re-install their windows on a
regular basis doesn't mean that Linux has to be (mis-)
treated the same way ;)
Yes Tinkster, I know you can enable SMP in any distro (even those that don't come with the kernel source shouldn't fight too hard if you download it yourself). But, this person doesn't make any claims about wanting to compile a kernel. And, very likely, isn't aware of what specific hardware is in the box... which would mean the kernel wouldn't be as efficient as the old one (assuming that was compiled strictly for the hardware). We all know about the .config file -- and with proper warning it can be saved to help guide building a kernel made for his system in the future. The future of this box is bright and is surely won't be locked into any distro but for right now it is a great system to learn on.
I know I am just repeating your statements in my words now. It seems, often, that most people on this site don't want to give advice to a person using an older distro (other than the advice to install a new one) and that scares me. It is taking something that isn't broken and "fixing" it.
I'm glad to see we are on the same page with this person at least.
Originally posted by frob23
Yes Tinkster, I know you can enable SMP in any distro (even those that don't come with the kernel source shouldn't fight too hard if you download it yourself).
[nitpicking]
Well ... for some distro's it is important to use their
customised kernels ... I've seen MDK 8.2 machines
rendered close to un-usable by using a stock-kernel
instead of the one provided by MDK
[/nitpicking]
Quote:
I know I am just repeating your statements in my words now. It seems, often, that most people on this site don't want to give advice to a person using an older distro (other than the advice to install a new one) and that scares me. It is taking something that isn't broken and "fixing" it.
:D
I'm glad to see we are on the same page with this person at least.
Absolutely - it's appalling practice. Hideous side-effect of
a "consumer society" that's used to a use & dispose practice. ;)
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