Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!vsi1!altnet!uunet!wucs1!jps From: jps@wucs1.wustl.edu (James Sterbenz) Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Re: Don't Bash Suns Keywords: Bashing Good Companies vs Evil Companies Message-ID: <288@wucs1.wustl.edu> Date: 19 Sep 88 15:54:21 GMT References: <358@island.uu.net> <626@mace.cc.purdue.edu> <4210@thorin.cs.unc.edu> <3498@ihlpe.ATT.COM> Reply-To: jps@wucs1.UUCP (James Sterbenz) Organization: Washington University, St. Louis, MO Lines: 29 In article <3498@ihlpe.ATT.COM> stuart@ihlpe.ATT.COM (S. D. Ericson) writes: >On the sun, I may have to wait 5-10 seconds some times for a >menu to pop up! After choosing a new shell window, NOTHING HAPPENS >IMMEDIATELY. Often I think the machine lost my command and >re-issue it, only to find a whole slew of these windows popping >up on my screen. I find it VERY disconcerting that the machine >can't at least give an indication of menu acceptance (after all, >sometimes the commands fail - I don't just want to wait around). Sun seems to have a serious problem with their scheduling algorithm. The problem gets even worse with CPU intensive background tasks. Simulations running (nice'd) on our uVAX II have little to no effect on windowing (X rather than SUNtools). Just one simulation on our SUN 3 horribly degrades SUNtools performance. Either the scheduler stinks, or SUNtools are horribly inefficient. Observing the decisions to swap, etc., I suspect the former. BTW, what do people think of the SUN mechanically? When we got ours, I was suprised at how cheap the keyboard felt, kind of like on a PCjr. When we had a monitor go out, we paid $600, and got a recon back, that had obvious, and poorly done repaint to scratches in the on one side. Second replacement monitor not much better. Third monitor replacement not great, but we're sick of returning it. -- James Sterbenz Computer and Communications Research Center Washington University in St. Louis 314-726-4203 INTERNET: jps@wucs1.wustl.edu UUCP: wucs1!jps@uunet.uu.net