mprime vs. prime95
 

I was just wondering exactly how much slower mprime is than prime95. MicroS**t has annoyed me more than I can take, and I was wanting to switch to Linux 9.0. However, I heard that mprime is a bit slower than prime95. Does anyone know what the speed difference is?

They are the same...

The overhead on Linux can be a bit lower so in some cases... I have moved an exponent from Windows to Linux (on the same box) and seen a small improvement...

IMO, the biggest reason to move to mprime is all the other tools Linux offers makes managing mprime so much easier...

Oh yeah... Some of the newer features in 23.8 (The fancy torture test options) are not in mprime... Other than that, they are identical...

Where's a good place to find Red Hat 9.0? I heard it's the current version.

[QUOTE=ThomRuley]Where's a good place to find Red Hat 9.0? I heard it's the current version.[/QUOTE]
You must have heard that many [i]weeks[/i] ago! RedHat 9 is not even officially supported anymore. Try Fedora. [url]http://fedora.redhat.com/[/url]

Is it still free open source software like Linux is supposed to be? I kept finding versions of Linux offered for 39.99, or 59.99, etc.

[QUOTE=ThomRuley]Is it still free open source software like Linux is supposed to be? I kept finding versions of Linux offered for 39.99, or 59.99, etc.[/QUOTE]

Depending on which distro you choose there may be a charge. CDs are cheap but manuals are expensive - so if you want paper manuals expect to pay more.

Some distros offer their previous version as a free download and make a charge for their current version. With Linux I tend to look on paying for my distro as a charitable donation - so I pay a subscription to Slackware because I want Pat Volkerding to be able to go on improving it - even though I could get it as a free download if I wanted to.

[url]www.linuxiso.org[/url] theres a good one they have redhat 9 still up as well as many many many many other distros if you dont want redhat mabey something else check
[url]www.distrowatch.com[/url]

look at cluster konppix of you are intrested in building a cluster :banana:

Free Software has nothing to do with the price. Please visit [url]http://www.gnu.org/[/url]

You can download RedHat for free from [url]http://www.kernel.org/[/url]

But please consider buying a distribution or giving some donation.

I suggest you considering these distributions:
- SuSE Linux 9.1 Professional, US$ 90. Very easy for newbies. A free download version exists at ftp.suse.com
- Slackware Linux 10.0 for US$ 40. Very powerful for servers/workstations and not hard for users. Free download via BitTorrent. Please consider seeding (letting others download from you after you download the file)
- Debian GNU/Linux 3 from US$ 10. Very stable and very committed to the free software philosophy. Free download.
- I hear Gentoo Linux is great but i haven't tried it. Free download I think.

And BSDs are also good. FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD/DragonFlyBSD. They worth a try. All of them for free download (but OpenBSD is not in ISO format, the CD scheme is copyrighted, but you can still download the files and write them to a CD)