[comp.unix.misc] UNIX Performance Penalties

greg@anacapa.NCEL.Navy.Mil (Gregory K. Ramsey) (10/31/90)

I would like to ask the net on their learned opinions regarding
the performance penalty of a 386/486 UNIX vs. DOS.

Our situation;  we have a division doing AEC type work currently
using two 386/33 and several 286 standalone machines running
Autocad and some surveying, design and digital terrain modeling
packages.

We have 300Mbyte 28ms drives and VGA and expect to stay with this
for all the new machines.

Our idea is to upgrade everyone to 386 or 486 machines and
network them with some variety of UNIX & X-windows with one or
two servers and 10-15 clients.

My main question is what performance degradation (if any) will my
users see considering all the overhead that UNIX, X-windows,
network communication and system management processes will bring
along.

Will the 286 (8 & 12 Mhz) users see an apparent performance
increase, status quo or decrease.  The users perception is what I
am really interested in here, but if you have any (or know of
any) numbers that would really be appreciated.

What about the 386 users?

Would the performance be any better if we went with a Novell type
net.

Any comments on my questions or on any related ideas would be
very much appreciated.

Post or Email to me and I will summarize to the net if there is
interest.

Vendors are invited to send me their sales material particularly
if it address the questions, but I am particularly interested in
the opinions of users.

Greg

greg@anacapa.ncel.navy.mil

Greg Ramsey
Naval Civil Engineering Lab
Code L54
Port Hueneme, CA  93043
805/982-9720
FAX/982-1418