Which distros have out-of-the-box SMP support?

T

tom61

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Feb 3, 2001
Messages
1,062
I'm curious which distros have SMP compilied kernels by default?

I know Knoppix does, but which others?
 
Just about every distro has a compiled multiprocessor kernel, you usually just have to install it after setting up your machine. Whether distro's come with one by default or not isn't something I would get bent out of shape over.

With that in mind, i'm sure you can specify which kernel to use at the command line of the installer, but the parameters for doing so I am not familiar with.

tom61 said:
I'm curious which distros have SMP compilied kernels by default?

I know Knoppix does, but which others?
Click to expand...
 
Pretty sure most do. And if they don't have SMP enabled by default its trivial to enable it.
 
The GENERIC-kernel for FreeBSD/x86 has supported SMP since sometime around 5.2 .
(In other words, you have to compile a custom kernel to get one without it.)
 
HHunt said:
The GENERIC-kernel for FreeBSD/x86 has supported SMP since sometime around 5.2 .
(In other words, you have to compile a custom kernel to get one without it.)
Click to expand...

Now this is what I'm talking about. I want, for no valid reason, to have SMP going since starting the installer. It's irrelevant to me whether I can switch to a SMP kernel after installation.
 
MDK detects the processor during install and installs an appropriate kernel, so if you have an SMP machine (or a CPU that supports Hyperthreading), it'll install and use kernel-smp.
 
if you want to restrict your options on some meaningless arbitrary requirement, then go ahead I guess.
 
Whatsisname said:
if you want to restrict your options on some meaningless arbitrary requirement, then go ahead I guess.
Click to expand...

Cool, thanks. This is a secondary system anyway.

My main box runs Gentoo Linux (installed via a nice GUI by Vida Linux) exclusively. I would probably run Debian on my main box too, but the current install CDs don't see my NIC (apt-get can't use telepathy, yet). Kinda interested on how much having an optimised system really helps.

Specs on the dual system (not my main box):
Dual PII 400 w/512K cache each
128MB of SDRAM
PCI Video card to be decided. AGP seems to be dead. :(
10GB HD, probably a 60GB will be added to it once it is running. Or, I might RAID a bunch of old 4GB drives together using some ATA-66 cards I have laying around.
 
The only distro I've ever used that didn't boot after install with an SMP kernel was Novell Desktop Linux. Everything that runs a 2.4 kernel should install the SMP kernel and boot with it.

I really can't say with Gentoo or Debian distros but I know Red Hat 6+, Suse 8+ and Mandrake 7+ all do.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top