Return to BSD News archive
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.wildstar.net!serv.hinet.net!news.uoregon.edu!hammer.uoregon.edu!hunter.premier.net!news.mathworks.com!rill.news.pipex.net!pipex!dispatch.news.demon.net!demon!wgold.demon.co.uk!not-for-mail From: James Mansion <james@wgold.demon.co.uk> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: FreeBSD slower than Linux ? Date: Wed, 05 Feb 1997 19:29:25 +0000 Organization: Westongold Ltd Message-ID: <32F8DF95.57E3@wgold.demon.co.uk> References: <dkleinh.854654600@isotope.ps.uci.edu> <5crh6q$44j@synge.maths.tcd.ie> <5d830v$4bf@secmon.sarnoff.com> <5d85t9$ipd@helena.MT.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: wgold.demon.co.uk X-NNTP-Posting-Host: wgold.demon.co.uk X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0Gold (WinNT; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 61 Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:35015 Given that the number of users who: - want to do scientific computing - and (still) have a 386/486sx and no math copro is probably vanishing to nothing, wouldn't it make sense to: - test during install to see if a copro is present - install a library that uses the copro (or built in stuff) if its there - warn the user if not I can see that having a safe default is good, but it should be an easy one to fix during install. Or even to fix a link during boot. James Nate Williams wrote: > > [ Emailed to poster as well ] > > In article <5d830v$4bf@secmon.sarnoff.com>, > Ron G. Minnich <rminnich@sarnoff.com> wrote: > >: One thing that it might be is that the FreeBSD maths libraries don't > >: have FPU code in them the way they are distributed, if you recompile > >: them with HAVE_FPU=yes in /etc/make.conf this might make quite a > >: difference for some things. > > > >Say it isn't so. > > It is so. > > >Users who might want to use these boxes for real computing, > >have to recompile and reinstall the math libraries? > > Yep. > > >Maybe it's time to change this particular decision. This one makes my > >brain hurt. > > So does not being able to run alot of system utils if you're on a > 386/486SX class machine, which are still in common use by many folks > using FreeBSD. > > And, it's really easy to re-compile the math libraries. :) > > I suspect there are more users who are concerned about having everything > work right all the time out of the box than who are concerned about > having it go as fast as possible on the high-end hardware. > > I *always* recompile the math libraries on my boxes, and on high-end > hardware that has built in FPU is a 10 minute process (or 30 seconds > on a high-end PPro box. :) > > Nate > > -- > nate@sri.com | Research Engineer, SRI Intl. - Montana Operations > work #: (406) 457-9000 | > nate@trout.mt.sri.com | An unfeatured document is a bug. > home #: (406) 443-7063 | - John Polstra