[plug] Windows upgrades for people and Macs

[Craig Ringer]

> I was wondering how "current" I should go with regard to Linux
> compatibility.
Thats what I love about PCs. A lot of things are backward-compatable, 
and there's even a fair degree of forward-compatability in well-written 
software. You should have no problems. I'm very suprised that RHAT6 
fails on a P4 actually, it should just install i386 kernel by default 
and everything should be doozy. Weird.

> What I mean is that Linux RH 7.1 is obvioulsy compatible
> with my old AMD K6 233 but would Red Hat 7.3, which Paul is sending me, be
> written to accommodate and use all the features of an AMD 1800XP Athlon CPU
> (1.8 GHz) ... or isn't this an issue?
Well, Red Hat compiles (still?) for i386, so your OS is actuall using 
_none_ of your CPU's features. But this is true of most distros. I think 
Mandrake compiles for i586 (orig pentium) which can actually be worse 
unless you're running a pentium (not k6-2,k7,P2,P3,etc) due to the 
_weird_ way P5 optimisations work. Or so I've heard.
OTOH there will be many options for kernels for different CPUs, and an 
Athlon one will make use of most or all features. If you're worried, 
there's always "make menuconfig" and a new kernel for you...

So don't worry about processor compatability. You can even recompile 
RPMs for _big_ stuff (XFree86, KDE, etc) to optimise for your CPU if you 
feel the need. Most CPU optimisations are internal anyway and don't 
require application-level changes or recompiles, only stuff like 
mmx/sse/3dnow/sse2/3dnow-x/vector do.

> BTW.... I sold a graphic artist / Web Page Designer friend of mine an
> Atholon 1.8 GHz (he uses Windows ME), and talk about Faaaaasssst!!!!!!   In
> real life, not just in bench tests, if you look closely at a computer
> working with graphics and animations, the latest PIV seems to be a bit
> faster than the old Celeron 500 (my friend has both), but he is still
> shaking his head and raving about the speed of the Athlon - and this is
> after having it for many weeks.
*drool*
I'm still using a Duron 850, and even thats pretty damnn zippy. 
Something do do with having 512mb of RAM I think ( I do a lot of 
database work and such ).

Oh, I can't emphasise the importance of getting good harddisks enough. 
Its pretty amazing, and even more so if you ever expect your system to 
do any swapping, ever. DON'T GET 5400 RPM DRIVES except perhaps if 
you're going to host /home on one and want something HUGE and cheap. You 
won't regret a nice fast 7200rpm drive.

Of course, windows benefits more than Linux from fast drives because of 
mildly-braindead disk caching (ok totally braindead for win98) and such. 
But it still makes a big difference.

Case to point: I've got a dual PPro/200 firewall at home (cool, eh?) 
which is _lots_ _slower_ in many things than my dual P100 testbed 
machine. The PPro has 160 MB of RAM, the P100 has 48. Why the 
difference? The PPro has a Quantum Bigfoot (8G 5-1/4 " 5400RPM ATA HDD) 
and the P100 has 3 fast-wide SCSI II 7200RPM 1G seagates in it. Of 
course when the firewall is running from cache in RAM, its just not fair.

-- 
Craig Ringer                                IT Manager, POST Newspapers
http://www.postnewspapers.com.au/
GPG Key Fingerprint: AF1C ABFE 7E64 E9C8 FC27  C16E D3CE CDC0 0E93 380D