FreeBSD newbie general and SMP questions for i386

Hi,

I'm a FreeBSD newbie.  I'm considering installing either FreeBSD i386 or 
Linux on a 2 AMD Athelon CPU machine.  The motherboard is an ASUS 
A7M266-D, and the machine has 2GB memory installed.  I'm working on 
trying to answer some key questions before making a final decision which 
OS to install (right now the other alternative is SuSe Linux), but 
perhaps if anyone has some quick answers that would be a help:

1. How stable is SMP support in 5.1, especially compared to the 
stability of single CPU FreeBSD and Linux in general?

2. In general, how could I characterize the relative performance of 
FreeBSD and Linux under an SMP kernel and/.or single processors?

3. I'm looking into whether my motherboard conforms to the FreeBSD 
requirements.  I don't know if the 'Intel MP' means you have to have 
genuine Intel processors, in particular.  If anyone can get a quick 
answer to this, that would be critical, of course.  ASUS's website is 
www.asus.com, and you can just do a search for the motherboard model.  
They have all the specs and the users manual in pdf online.  Thanks in 
advance.

4. How compatible is FreeBSD with Linux in practice?  I understand there 
is a Linux compatibility module for the kernel?

5. Will FreeBSD run VMWare Workstation virtual machine SW for Linux (in 
practice)?

6. Anything else I should know as a newbie?

Whew!  That's a lot, but thanks in advance!

Mark Wolfskehl
[e-mail]



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