which OS supports dual processors?

[Chooco]

my buddy just bought a dual P4 1.9ghz to run a few server things. i wanna know which OS can support 2 processors. he's not registered so i'm posting for him

right now he has WinXP Pro but i think that he should run Linux if he is serious about servers. does XP Pro support 2 processors? does Linux support 2 processors?

 

[cleverhandle]

Both XP Pro and any Linux/BSD/Unix support multi-processor machines. XP Home does not.

 

[ProviaFan]

Windows NT and 2000 Pro also support dual processors. Windows 2000 Pro might be a better choice for a server, since it eats less RAM than XP, and is about as easy to use.

 

[Chooco]

is there a way he can test if both processors are being used?

 

[bozo1]

If running W2K or XP, just look in the performance tab of Task Manager - you should be able to see the activity of both processors.

 

[ProviaFan]

Go into the task manager (right click on the explorer bar, the one with the start menu on it, and choose task manager...or press ctrl+alt+delete), and choose the performance tab. You should see two tabs for each processor if both are recognized. If not, go to the view menu, and choose cpu history, and there should be an option for multiple graphs for each cpu.

 

[freebsddude]

To the best of my knowledge, only certain BSD operating systems support SMP (dual processing).
I found out that OpenBSD, for example, does not support dual processors while
FreeBSD works fine. I believe that NetBSD also supports 2 cpus.

 

[Nemesis77]

Linux works flawlessly with dual-CPUs