Academic workstations -- Followups to comp.unix.questions ONLY

[Mike Markley]

In article <507 at lclark.UUCP> cullum at lclark.UUCP (Mike Cullum) writes:
>
>>We are in the process of considering the purchase of workstations for
>>a small lab in our Computer Science Department.  Our proposed 
>>configuration calls for 8 workstations (8Mb RAM, 200+Mb disk, large
>>monochrome display) and a server.  
>>...
>>Any advice?
>

It somewhat depends upon what your overall objective is but
here is my $0.02.  If you want a distributed file system where
you have access to all of your files from any workstation
without having to copy them to the local disk buy Apollo
workstations.  The Apollo file system is IMHO orders of
magnitude easier to administer than NFS.  The Apollo registery
is also easier to set up and administer than Yellow Pages from
SUN.  In SUNs favor is cost and amount of inexpensive software
available.  This is becoming less of a factor now that SR10
from Apollo is available.  Just configure your machine as a
BSD4.3 machine and the compatability questions dim.  If you
need to develop graphics software the SUN is easier to program
unless you go with X-Windows and then the systems are the same.
The X11R3 software is much more stable on the SUNs then it is
on the Apollos.  If you are looking for pure integer
performance than SUN is much more cost effective.  The
SparcStations are very fast in the integer environment.  For
floating point I would say consider buying a fast server and a
bunch of cheap diskless workstations.  You can put 2.8Gigabytes
on an Apollo DN10000 and then run all of you diskless stations
of of this.  It is several times faster than the SparcStations
for floating-point calculations.

My recommendation overall is to go with Apollo.  Their
workstations are IMHO much easier to take care of and their
network is much easier to grow.  A single command adds new
workstations, and the workstations file system(s), to the network.

Mike Markley
University of California, San Diego
markley at celece.ucsd.edu
markley at kubrick.ucsd.edu