Linux 2.2 and 2.4 VM Systems Compared

Derek Glidden writes "I got sick of trying to figure out from other people's reports whether or not the 2.4 kernel VM system was broken or not, so I decided to run my own tests, write them up and post them online. The short conclusion is that the 2.4 VM rocks when compared with 2.2, but there's more to it than just that."

Comments

Re:Somebody help me out here

[DataPath]

Well, things changed enough between the 2.2 series kernels and the 2.4 series kernels that a change in the way of thinking MIGHT make things better. Someone came up with a different way of doing things... The debate between which VM could be compared to the Vi vs. Emacs debate. The "which is better" debate isn't always an objective thing. You can't simply say Emacs is better or Vi is better. The question becomes "what direction do we want to take the kernel." No only that, but Linus was butting in a bit on Alan's territory, which added some heat to the debate. In the middle of a stable tree isn't necessarily the best place to add a completely new VM subsystem. Linus thought it was important enough to add now. Linus'll do anything to squeeze out a few more points on the Infinite Loops Per Second benchmark.

Re:Somebody help me out here

[Alioth]

I think it's the other way around. Both Linux and BSD had a VM long before the "mainstream" OSes had proper VMs. When Linux first came out, Windows 3.1 was mainstream. BSD was around before Windows 3.1.

So really it's the other way around - the mainstream OSes are playing catch-up :-) (And I've had cause to need to find out about the gory details of NT4's VMM this week too).