From: johnsonm@stolaf.edu (Michael K Johnson) Subject: Re: Intel, the Pentium and Linux Date: Fri, 30 Apr 1993 20:49:36 GMT
In article <willmore.736144639@help.cc.iastate.edu> willmore@iastate.edu (David Willmore) writes:
You're not likely to see more than a few Linux systems with more than 32
Meg. There just aren't that many motherboards that will hold much more.
There's plenty of high-end m-boards that can hold 128 MB. You can
certainly get m-boards that have more than that, but I don't know
about 1GB.
[swap]
>256 MB.
Last time I checked, I was told 16Meg. Who's right?
16 MB *per swapfile*, although it is not difficult to change that in
the kernel. You can have more than one swapfile.
>64.
That makes it hard to support more than a fraction of that number of
users, doesn't it? If they start running 'screen,' you're in for even
fewer users.
There are rumors that 256 are being considered, by allocating them a
seperate major device number. And if we ever implement something
streams-ish, we can have a clone device, dynamically allocated pty's,
and be very happy... It would be feasible for large systems that you
want more than 64 (or 256) simultaneous connections to have several
pty major devices. With source code available, this isn't a very
immovable or daunting limit.
>> Does it have a good fortran? (ok, no fortran jokes)
>Well, *good* I dunno. We've got f2c, and the guy working on GNU fortran
>(g77) is using a linux machine.
Not here yet is the same as 'no'. DEC kept saying that OSF/1 for
DECstations was coming out 'any time now.' :) Sure, it's not the same,
but if it's not here, you can't use it.
What's wrong with f2c? It seems to work very well, by all accounts.
However, I am not a fortran programmer, and might not know something
about f2c that you do. Why can't you use it? Please elaborate.
Oh, and g77 is in alpha test and looking good, which is different from
vaporous promises of "We'll do it sometime."
>> Pascal?
>p2c is about it for the moment. But who wants to write in pascal, anyhow? :)
I fully agree, but some instructors don't. They still think that Pascal
is a good learning language. *shudder*
Again, p2c is quite good, and supports many different flavors of
pascal, including, I beleive, modula-2. Quite as flexible as a decent
compiler. What's wrong with it?
Also, it is good to note that GNU pascal is in development, among the
many other languages...
>I will admit to wanting an alpha, too, though. :^)
Me too... I'll wait, though, until there is a decent OS for it. ;-)
michaelkjohnson