Re: various rants about 7-currnet on AMD64

Aryeh Friedman wrote:
> Sorry for the negative tone of this message but a little background
> may help.... about 1.5 months ago I bought a new machine for personal
> use [my only machine actually]... hw (upgraded from a p4-2.8):
> 
> intel e6850
> intel p35 mobo (ihc9)
> 4 gb (ddr2-667 1GBx4)
> 500 gb sata
> 8600 GS nvidia (replaced for reasons below witha 5200 GT)
> 20" widescreen crt
> direct cable connection to the net
> hp deskjet 6980
> 
> Being a FreeBSD users since the mid 90's I obviously started with
> it... in the quest for a working well tuned config (still a few issues
> even with the current config):
> 
> 6.2 (cvsup'ed to most recent PL) with i386 kernel
> 7-current  (cvsup'ed upto last night) i386
> 7-current amd64
> 
> The last shows the most promise so far:
> 
> Issues (all of which have been posted on -questions or -x11):
> 
> 6.2 --
> 
> * Horrid non-SMP kernel performence (acceptable after SMP was added)

'horrid' means nothing to anyone without some details.

> * Xorg (7.2) not working at all (vesa 640x480 with no mouse was the best I
> managed)

Again, no details.  This sounds an Xorg issue anyhow, right?


> * Many TCP/IP stack issues

?

> * All native java builds fail with compile errors

Copy/paste?  Did you email them to the java_at_ list? Ports list?

> * hplip fails immediately after install

Errors?

> * Doesn't recognize PATA drives if installed at the same time as SATA
> 
> 7-CURRENT i386 --
> 
> * Horrid performence under default kernel needed to switch to
> ULE/IPI_PREMEPTION/DEVICE_POLLING

Again, no details.

> * Kernel sees card after install of nvidia driver but Xorg (7.3)
> doesn't recognize it (vesa 1024x768 only)... many address conflicts
> reported... nv driver is no better

Did you look at the supported hardware for the NVidia driver?  How about 
the nv driver?

> * All native java builds fail with compile errors

Too bad you didn't include any of them.

> * hplip fails immediately after install

I'm sound like a broken record..

> * Diablo-jdk15 completely broken for any GUI oriented code
> 
> 7-CURRENT amd64
> 
> * Diablo-jdk15 completely broken for any GUI oriented code (jdk16
> works well though)
> 
> * Many desktop ports fail with i386 vs. amd64 errors
> 
> * Nvidia-driver does not support amd64 (but nv works now but only at 1024x768)
> 
> Misc Rants:
> 
> CPUTYPE naming --
> 
>     For people who have been around for a while (read mid-90's) and
> have never used any AMD mobo's we are used to "historical" differences
> between early pentiums and amd equivs (for that reason I have never
> bought a AMD machine)... so calling the 64bit x86 architure amd64 is
> confusing and misleading.
> 
> HARDWARE.TXT --
> 
>     hardware.txt sheds absulutly no light on the above issue except to
> make it clear that ia64 is not the right choice.
> 
> Suggestions:
> 
> * Figure out why xorg should care if your on a 32 or 64 bit addressing
> bus (has to do with placing pci's buffers at the high end of RAM I
> think)
> 
> * AMD64 should be recommended (or at least better documented) for all
> dual-core machines
> 
> * Both nvidia.ko and the nv driver need to be improved (I know this is
> nvidia's problem)

Suggestions for you:

If you want people to care about your email, you should include some 
details.  Your email above is almost completely useless to anyone, even 
if they really really wanted to help you out, they couldn't.

I'm only sending this because I hope you resend your details to all the 
appropriate lists, preferably one email per issue.


Eric