William Hargrave wrote in a message to Mike Bilow:
 MB> Another extremely cheap option, especially if the CD-ROM drives
 MB> require no security management, would be to put a Linux machine on
 MB> your LAN and install NetWare server emulation using the mars_nwe
 MB> package.
 WH> Actually, doesn't mars_nwe claim to sometimes be faster than
 WH> native netware, hardware-for-hardware? Can't say i've got
 WH> round to using it yet; one day I'll get round to testing
 WH> whether it works with Personal Netware or Caldera OpenDos. 
It seems very unlikely that anything on Linux could be faster than NetWare, 
but it could happen.  Linux takes a significant performance hit because it 
uses virtual memory, while NetWare uses direct physical mapping.  As a 
result, all memory accesses on the bus, particular DMA transfers with the 
drive controller, must go through the translation lookaside buffer.
I have never used mars_nwe except as a toy.  If NetWare IPX/NCP compatibility 
is not the driving issue, I would much prefer Samba.
 
-- Mike
--- 
---------------