Re: OS desicion

Tom,

> You are asking the wrong question.  The best OS is the OS you (and/or
> the customer)  knows and can administer competently.

I'll have to 2nd this.

> The real
> performance differences between unices are so small as to be ignorable
> in this context.

Well, at least the difference between Linux and BSD.   There are substantial
tradeoffs should you chose to use Solaris or UnixWare.

> The context switching bug is not OS-dependent, but
> varys in severity across machine architectures (I understand it to be
> mostly P4/Athlon related, but don't take my word for it).

The bug is at its apparent worst on multi-processor HT Xeons and weak
northbridges running Linux 2.4.  However, it has been demonstrated (with
lesser impact) on Solaris/Sparc, PentiumIII, and Athalon.   Primarily it
seems to affect data warehousing applications.   Your choice of OS is not
affected by this bug.

--
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco