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Byte: FreeBSD vs Linux Revisited
Beerwolff writes: "This time I have remembered the link to the Byte article that's a follow-up to two of Moshe Bar's previous articles comparing FreeBSD and Linux--This time with the new Linux VM. His Apache "results show that Linux is better at handling I/O cache than FreeBSD, and that FreeBSD is more efficient at building up and tearing down processes."" As usual, please take benchmarks with a grain of salt, caveat emptor, look before you leap, and so forth.
"As usual, please take benchmarks with a grain of salt, caveat emptor, look before you leap, and so forth."
In particular, be sure to read the very bottom of the article:
Before you fire up your e-mail program to contest the results or suggest some neat trick to get even more out of either the Linux benchmark server or the FreeBSD server, remember what I said at the beginning of this review: This was not a scientific benchmark in a professional benchmarking lab. All results are only valid within my own environment and you are certainly bound to see a different result on your machines. The benchmark was only about finding out how well Linux handles stress loads compared to FreeBSD, and I do not claim that one OS is better than the other one.
These aren't scientific. These are the results one person sees - and also note that the various problems presented to the servers give different results. FreeBSD and Linux both had strengths and weaknesses even in his tests.
Regardsless of what some reviewer comes up with, I have just found that they each do something specific. For servers, I would run FreeBSD. All of the daemons are ported, and the security is great. For my desktop, it's linux all the way. I think this is comparing apples to oranges.
Um, this is my sig.
the daemon's in the details, too.
(shurg) Very nice and interesting article anyone else care to verify or dispute the findings?
And a serious question; does linux and bsd scale well across various architectures?
I suppose if people get riled up about any comparison maybe there should be a catagory such as "from the benchmark or skidmark dept."
Heh.
If it is not on fire, it is a software problem.
This is good.
We should not be looking at whether Linux or BSD is better than the other. What we should be thinking about whether one will one be better than the other. All sides can agree that linux development has really taken off as of late and that the various BSDs have been in development much longer.
I wonder, with the growing popularity of the GPL, if the pace of Linux development can be kept up. I think that as products mature, it gets harder and harder to keep the speed of development the same.
Rather than focusing on where they are, we should be focusing on where they will be.
Not to flame or troll.... but......
How come Debian has such a PITA installer? Mandrake was nice, however, OpenBSD and FreeBSD have mega-top notch installers. Easy to use, easy to configure, just say "go".
I've tried Debian three or four times before giving up... 2 years ago... about a year ago and last week...
Downloading the ISO for FreeBSD 4.4 was the hardest thing I did with that. (Still can't quite get my Linksys WPC11 card to talk to my AP but that's a different issue).
We just switched our email, file and http/servers to FreeBSD. Why? Mandrake had become a horrid mess of dependencies and package problems. Building from source (painstaking and too labor intensive for a one person admin team) had become frustrating. The machines were inherited and had never had any documentation and administrative control. I got three machines to replace them (white boxen) and started fishing for what OS to put on them. Initially, I thought, well, Mandrake8.1. I did a test install. Gigs and Gigs and Gigs of useless crap and a horrible package management system to boot. Selecting packages individually took time I didn't have. I knew I needed samba, sendmail, ftp and apache (sshd too). An admin in another department suggested Debian. But (let me put my flamesuit on), another guy said "if you are going to use Debian, why not just install FreeBSD." I did a test install. 1 hour later, I had samba cooking and talking to our Win2K DC. I was sold. This after using Linux for 6 years. I wouldn't say "I saw the light" but as far as clean and Unixy goes, it doesn't get any more so than FreeBSD. I am interested in hearing horror stories about FreeBSD, cuz so far I am very impressed.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
that ever happend to FreeBSD, was Linux. The best thing that ever happened to Linux, was FreeBSD. Instead of fighting in the mud with those other guys, both can compete on the higher ground of techinical merit. As long as both keep leap frogging each other, we are all better off.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
What about the os for every thing. I wana see some benchmarks compairing a 8600 vax (runing netbsd) to this mans linux box.
This is going to piss some BSD fan off....
BSD was a better server. I have always regarded it as the best "under heavy load" server out there. I think that they are about equal now. Linux is currently about the fastest moving target of any major OS. From this I can infer that Linux will be the superior server OS in the near future.
I actually don't know if the above it true, but it seems resonable. I welcome informed flames.
...throw DOS in there. :)
SIGFEH
With all the media/capital hype surrounding linux right now, BSD doesn't stand a chance. Everywhere I go on the net I see linux cluster this, linux PDAs, linux games, linux servers, linux everything..
I'm waiting for the linux powered toilet brush, personally. I'd just hope that these people who are pumping their servers full of linux goodness don't do it just because the hype is there, they really need to get more information BOTH BSD & Linux, besides benchmarks with sendmail and what not.
Linux is not the only Microsoft alternative.
Slackware is clean, extremely simple, can be easily installed without all the unnecessary shit. It can also be installed with gnome, kde and enlightenment for the desktop. Makes it easier using the same system for servers and desktops... As for package management, I just build everything myself from source. Once you learn enough about the different packages you use all the time, there's no easier way to admin a server(depending on many factors of course, YMMV and all that).
Never even tried Debian... I'm sure apt-get is nice, but I have no use for it.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
MAXUSERS was set to 20!!
Jeez, I won't even set it that low for my personal machine. For the purposes of this kind of benchmark, I would have at least started with 128. If you want to be fair in I/O benchmarks, have BOTH machines mount the filesystems asynch. If you're going to do a comparison, at least compare apples to apples. Softupdates rocks, but I still think async is going to be faster.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
The NICs were a mix of Alteon and Intel Gigabit for the clients.
If he's using the Gigaswitch I think he's using, it takes two Gigabit Fiber Modules that each provide two 1000BaseSX ports. He's ignoring the twenty-four 10/100 ports and running a network on the backbone, as it were.
Not that it matters to a magazine columnist who has a Proliant to play with, but this is a little more expensive than 1000BaseTX, isn't it?
Personally I would use FreeBSD for a server for the sheer fact that I can never crash it. For desktop uses I would definantelly use linux.
But both of them being free in the same world will always complement each other. The only thing holding FreeBSD back from the desktop is a pretty installer ...
though this _might_ count as a desktop varient of FreeBSD ...
The latest releases of mandrake and redhat are full of wonderful packages and resources that make linux more than a prime candidate for the desktop.
But Linux and FreeBSD will ALWAYS complement each other ...
SuperDuG
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Dear Moshe,
I have noticed that you no longer require 2.5 GB of RAM:
The machine came with 3 GB of RAM and two Xeon 900-MHz processors, but for this benchmark, I reduced the memory to 512 MB of RAM.
If this RAM is looking for a good home, I am willing to oblige.
Yours truely,
Sasha
As well as I like to see benchmarks, apache benchmarks none the less (seems kinda like the infamous Photoshop benchmarks for the average user), I'd like to see a comparison between *BSD and Linux on a desktop workstation. I've been happy using slackware for a while and would like to know the difference on a usability standpoint.
There are questions that are never answered for the average (above average for using some other platform than windows) user because of all the flame wars. How is compatability with software made for linux? Gaming support? Driver support? How do installs go? How much of a difference is there for setting up/configuring devices and other system preferences? These are things that I am interested as a perspective user and I am not that interested for this case about the differences between the BSD license and other free licenses which are important for some people. Is there a reason for me as a home non server user to switch to *BSD?
WikiAfterDark.com It's a sex wiki, go now!
Also, FreeBSD-CURRENT, which is the version 5.0, is already in beta, and it can kick Linux's a$$.
I think these kind of concrete results are what can help Linux out in breaking into the enterprise market. God knows IBM is pouring all they've got into it, and now that we have a killer VM, we'll probably be seeing Linux a lot more in mission critical systems such as database servers. All in all this is great news on the kernel front.
As always, many props to Alan, Linus, et al. who make this kind of innovation possible.
Is your company running tools written by ma
now, before we start, everyone remember that *BSD IS NOT DYING!
carry on.
Let's get drunk and delete production data!
Tell one person using OpenBSD that they should use Linux instead because the I/O cache is faster, and they'll tell you to GFY. Likewise if you tell a desktop Redhat 7.2 user that FreeBSD is going to suit him better because of process creation statistics.
It's just another stupid OS jihad that doesn't matter. People should take a lesson from Linus when people ask him what he thinks of the "competition".
...throw DOS in there. :)
I think you meant to say FreeDOS.
(What's a "blue screen"?)
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
linuxtroll doubleplusungood verging crimethink linux 2.4 infallible VM problems imaginary
stop immediate currentaction
suggest doublepluswhack head
suggest RMS doublepluswhack head
People who use linux have their reasons. People who use BSD have their reasons. After so much hot air, any one who would be converted in either direction by a /. post was converted long ago.
Actually, I disagree.. Many people using Linux or BSD are doing so out of habit or prejudice.. The more coverage both OS's get (both in contrast and standing alone) the more likely it is that someone like me who has never used BSD will be able to make an *informed* decision to switch a few servers.
Never comparing them leads to tunnel vision. Even fighting about the pro's and con's is better than nothing.
(Of course, I wasn't always this enlightened.)
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
because this will create more of a shitstorm than IIS versus Apache.
I hope you stupid fucking bigots, both Linux and BSD, can formulate an intelligent argument this time. And no, arguing about VM does not count.
I think tux is the shittiest mascot ever, while FreeBSD has that cool little devil dude (his name escapes me).
How can anyone take linux seriously if it's got such a pussy and unprofessional mascot? It just screams "one day gimp creation."
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
Slackware has always had BSD-like cleanliness and simplicity. No shit to dig through in scripts and packages and etc. etc. etc., just a nice, efficient Unix-like feel. I started using Linux with Slackware and for years saw Linux as just another Unix, albeit a newer, flashier one. The first time I tried Red Hat (at 5.0) I was totally startled to find that most people were seeing Linux as a whole other operating system...
And with Slackware, you'll get the extra drivers and hardware up-to-dateness that Linux offers -- the one place where *BSD really suffers, especially for desktop or small server applications. That's my FreeBSD horror story... trying to install it on modern (Athlon+AGP graphics) hardware and on my Thinkpad.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Because the BSD assumed a network connection, it could have on its distribution disk only enough smarts to begin, no need for everything to be available on disk.
I admire simplicity. If I were anything of a programmer, I'd help Debian fix their install.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Installing and running both freeBSD and two versions of Linux, learning what was different, how they laid out the file systems, where they liked to store things helped me emensely to understand unix systems in general, it was a major leap of understanding when it was all over.
They don't differ so much that someone who knows one can't just use and get by with man pages in the other.
Keep in mind I am not qualifed to make any technical judgements about "better" or "worse" implementations of anything, just the more obvious ways they differ in handling common tasks such as networking, users and groups, or dynamic libs.
So I suggest to find and learn what makes them different and you will gain greater insight into both, at least I think I did.
Wax on, wax off baby!
I run a small apache server with mysql and php modules on a pentium 133 with 48mb memory. Which would perform the best for a small 100mb database being used to generate dynamic pages?
OK, the more important question these days is which OS (or even distribution) is better for colocated machines? I'm looking at it from the perspective that my machine would be many hundreds of miles away and I don't intend to go drive to sit at the console to do an upgrade. What would be my choices? I believe FreeBSD supposedly is strongly suited to that type of environment but it looks like Debian GNU/Linux also has strong points there as well.
...for two days now. How odd that it shows up on Slashdot all of a sudden!
While both of us agree that Linux and BSD are great systems, the speed of BSD development, imho, is way too slow for the business environment. Want to do journalling with RAID in BSD? Sorry, you have to use Linux. Until the BSD people can update as quickly as the Linux people, they will not get the market share.
And, before the "but it's more secure" flames come, Linux, when properly patched, can be just as secure. It takes little effort to patch a Linux server, and the advantages of having fault tolerance in your software *and* hardware are tremendous.
And, contrary to popular belief, BSD is not dying either.
As an example of the power of this OS, consider the popular website adequacy.org. Apparently they switched from Linux to FreeBSD, because it can run Scoop up to 40% faster than Linux. (they claimed that Linux's TCP implementation perfomed poorly).
I think Linux needs to take a few leaves from the FreeBSD book, especially in the security arena. FreeBSD is streets ahead of Linux in this crucial area.
vi versus emacs
I personally can't wait!
NO CARRIER
.. Yes ... the flame wars start again .. with a vengeance ..
Any response to a question like this is bound to upset someone. I'll /dev/null.
answer with the caveat that this is my opinion that developed over the
past three years following them both as well as other commercial OSs.
Those of you offended in any way by this, please cat flames >
That said -- the differences between FreeBSD and Linux can best be
understood in the context of American politics. There are essentially two
philosophies: Republican (FreeBSD) and Democrat (Linux).
The FreeBSD organization is a republican structure -- we have our say as
users, but the final decisions devolve to the core team who take the final
responsibility for their decisions. FreeBSD takes a conservative approach.
In other words, better things should work correctly at the expense of a
minorities desires, than to please all of the people all of the time and
have unexpected components of the OS breaking on a regular basis. We are
free to vote our approval or disapproval by changing our OS.
Linux is a democratic group. There is no single authority to accept final
responsibility except for Linus as it relates to the kernel. Linux adopted
early on a consensus approach (POSIX, etc.). In a sense, Linux is much
like current Democratic politics -- the mob pretty much rules. The end
result is that there is really no such thing as Linux -- there are
distributions that use the Linux kernel and from then on you have
essentially different operating systems. Slackware, for example, doesn't
look at all like Red Hat. Describing Linux is much like describing Mach.
(There isn't much - both are just micro kernels. _Anything_ can be
implemented over them.)
So as I see it, it comes down to this: vote for the philosophy that
appeals to you. I use FreeBSD because I rely on my machine for many other
uses besides tinkering with operating systems. FreeBSD doesn't change the
world on me every 6 months. Linux is in constant change. New things are
showing up all the time. If you like tinkering with operating systems and
having things that used to work break, Linux may be your answer. If you
don't know Unix -- pick one and get started. You'll learn how to pick the
best choice. No matter which one you pick, it will be infinitely better
that Micros**t anything.
For the average person, unless FreeBSD was far more inefficient than Linux or visa versa, they wouldn't care. To be honest I don't. Both OSs are, in my mind, just as good as one another. They both have their good points and their bad points. I use Linux myself but I'd have no problem using FreeBSD or NetBSD or OpenBSD. The only thing I dislike about the *BSDs is that they forked.
Ah well...
I don't like trolls and mod against me if you like, but I'd prefer if you'd reply.
readily admitted by the debian community...
e .p hp?sid=503
http://www.debianplanet.org/debianplanet/articl
Debian comes close to this but in a much different way that is very top heavy in terms of people assembling packages, etc.
Care to go into detail on this, and exactly how it is top heavy compared to people having to maintain ports or system source? That stuff doesn't magically appear and keep itself fixed.
FreeBSD people can talk all they want about how easy it is to keep their stuff up to date, but frankly, it doesn't compare to apt-get in the ease of use department, not to mention the speed department on my crappy p100 NAT box that takes *forever* to cvsup and recompile a shit load of source. Course, on a beefy box that is less of a problem.
I like FreeBSD, but after using Debian, I wonder why I ever tolerated spending so much time updating my OS, GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, or otherwise.
This sig is false.
Nothing stopping you, go ahead, do it! I've been running multi-boots for years. Nothing beats running each O/S you're interested in, and determining for yourself what suits you best. Running multi-boots are also very handy if you are running development versions of an O/S. If the new version really craps out, boot the stable version, do your repairs, and you're back in business.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
So, are you saying that your email adress is this?
If it's a Linksys AP, upgrade to the latest firmware. There was an encapsulation bug that their Windows driver ignores, but the FreeBSD driver adheres strictly to the RFC. Once I upgraded the firmware on my AP, everything started working fine.
For 99% of the people here, the low-capacity applications they are discussing are going to operate identically on both platforms. Unless you are running AOL, Yhaoo, or Hotmail, you are not a corner case. Use whatever you like, it is not going to make one lick of difference in performance or stability.
If you really want to get more performance, consider upgrading that aged box. Its going to make much more of a difference than swapping OSs.
I think people who are aware of both and have a preference do have reasons. When I installed Linux (Slackware '96) I had never really heard of FreeBSD. I threw it on another 486 and mostly let it sit for a few months. When I really started using it I was like "whoa, this is more of what I'm looking for."
About 5 years later I'm running BSD on all of my home machines. I don't hate Linux, it's just not what I'm looking for.
I don't use BSD out of habit, but personal preference. I don't think anyone open minded enough to give an open source, free, alternative OS a chance would be too close minded to try another one.
Personally, I feel Chuck looks too much like Casper to be cool. Besides, how could Tux not be cool? Sarah Michelle Gellar tattooed it on her breast!
You die too easily.
I'm trying to get my feet wet with freebsd and perhaps replace my linux servers with it, at least the ones that need some performance boost.
/boot directory and nothing!
In order to try it out, I decided to make my personal machine a triple booting one. It had win2k and redhat 7.2. I decided to add a hard disk with freebsd.
I ended up reinstalling all the os's because freebsd chose the wrong partitions as my win2k and linux. Nothing would boot correctly except the damn freebsd. In linux it would be trivial to fix in lilo.conf, but I could not figure out how to change the entries in freebsd. I searched the web and looked through all the files in the
Of course, if I were to use freebsd as the server os, controlling the boot process would not be important, but it seems crucial while I play around with it on my personal machine.
Can some freebsd gurus edify me? Please...?
If you're doing colo hundreds of miles away, it'd make sense to figure out how you want to do OOB management. We use HP servers and they have a great out of band management capability -- power off, on, restart and console-level keyboard and text mode display capabilities independant of the OS. Couple this with a modem and you should be able to handle anything short of a total reinstallation.
Dunno what your colo environment is, but if you're buying a couple of U of rack space you could add one of those serial port management gizmos that does dialup and telnet access to a few serial port for greater flexibility.
That being said, I've had good luck with FreeBSD just doing makeworld and installworld remotely and rebooting without the machine going foobar on me. My drive is like 10 miles and the longest part of the journey is from the parking garage to the machine room, but I haven't had to make it but once due to a stuck management controller (fixed by BIOS upgrade) that required "F2" to continue booting but also locked out out of band management.
The key is being able to whack the box remotely without driving in. Unless you totally screw the OS to the point of reinstallation, most systems with OOB capabilities can get you going when the OS prevents a ssh-type connection.
Does he say which version of FreeBSD he used? I couldn't see it any references to it from browsing with lynx.
dave
I did my own test to compare the linux VM's on a couple different kernel versions. I booted the system into the test kernel, once loaded I ran 32 simaltaneous instances of mpg123. Using BSD process accounting (thanks tcsh!), I measured the elapsed time, kernel time, user time, major page faults, and minor page faults of each of the 32 processes. I then found the mean/stddev/min/max of these numbers.
:) The 2.4.8 kernel had a lot more page faults. But the vm might measure major/minor page faults differently, I don't know. Also, my kernel configs may have been slightly different but that shouldn't matter too much. If someone wants to do a more complete analysis let me know and I can give more details.
The mean elapsed time for the process and mean number of page faults are shown below: (I'd post all the number but the slash filter doesn't like the gratuituis white space)
kernel: 2.2.20 2.4.10 2.4.12 2.4.8
mean major page faults:
7833 7208 7285 8990
mean elapsed time:
88.62 86.81 86.52 88.44
so what's this show? not much
Anyway, in terms of number of page faults:
2.4.10 < 2.2.20 < 2.4.8
of course, YMMV.
What are you retarded? BSD can do everything Linux can and some. And if the features don't sell you, the organization will. FreeBSD is a billion times more organized than Linux. I guess thats what happens when you have a core team directing a complicated project vs. everyone throwing shit in the pile creating chaos(linux).
Note that this is systems benchmark, not a VM one.
There are a lot more different things in the two
kernels, than the VM. And note, that the server was
SMP, an area where FreeBSD folks admit "Linux is a
year ahead". It may turn out in the end that
actually the FreeBSD VM performs better, making
able the Big Lock BSD kernel catch up with more
fine graned Linux .
-velco
Lies, damned lies, statistics
You can do journalling with RAID in FreeBSD 4.4. Just turn on soft-updates when you newfs on your RAID.
He compared with FreeBSD 4.3, while 4.4 has been out since September. In 4.4, softupdates are on by default b.t.w. (licensing problems have been solved).
It is very clear from this article that this is a long-time Linux user who (being curious) wants to give FreeBSD a try. The difference in his expertise of Linux vs. FreeBSD shows.
Regarding I/O performance: As someone who is running both Slackware 8 and FreeBSD 4.4 on the same hardware, and being a benchmarking freak myself, I have to say that the result of his benchmark simply IS WRONG. This was (apart from a stupid MAXUSERS=20 setting) a one-sided benchmark, testing only a single program in a single (SMP) configuration.
FreeBSD is lagging in SMP lock granularity (which only affects certain programs) but any decent I/O benchmark shows that I/O of FreeBSD by far outperforms that of Linux (2.4.14): better bandwidth, response times and lower CPU usage.
There may always be some particular devices where the driver for either Linux or FreeBSD is particularly bad or good, but generally speaking when it comes to performance FreeBSD wins in almost all areas hands-down, and certainly for I/O.
Okay, I'll showoff my ingnorance.... If softupdates is so good, why has Linux not used the same approach? (I.e. why is Linux adopting a jfs instead?)
I could not help but notice the author's plug for Linksys over Cisco. Something about Linksys being a serious contender. I have a Linksys managed switch/NAT gear. If you turn on Linux ECN support (RFC2481), you can not manage the Linksys gear. I emailed support@linksys.com detailed information including tcpdump's similar to what I would provide Cisco support. Since I'm not paying the same price as I do for Cisco, I did not expect an immediate responce. But the support request was sent on October 12th. It has been OVER A MONTH and there has been NO RESPONCE. While the author may consider this to be a "serious contender," I can not afford too. Cisco will usually provide a RESOLUTION withen a month. Linksys support can not even provide a follow-up email?! Wow!
Another analogy I once suggested: the various *BSDs are like the myriad of leftist political groups: no one really knows what the difference between them is, but they really seem to like nothing better than fighting among themselves.
I was at the Linux Showcase last weekend and
it was deserted, a sharp contrast to the crowds
at Atlanta last year for the same event. Linux
is dying.
You call it "fast speed of development", and almost make it sound like a good thing.
I pity you.
Picture a pile of 50 different machines all running packet filtering. New version of linux comes - oh look! Time to rewrite ALL of your filtering rules! How fun!
In comparison, IPFilter is IPFilter no matter what version of FreeBSD it comes in.
Your statement leads me to believe that you have never worked in a reasonably sized "business environment" in your entire life. While at a previous job, we put off upgrading from AIX 3.2 to AIX 4.2 until the last possible moment. Why? AIX 3.2 worked, and worked fine! Don't futz with it. When dealing with large numbers of production machines, you _never_ upgrade without reason. I don't care if the kid who wrote the kernel says "it's better" - if it works, you LEAVE IT ALONE.
Oh, by the way, if you want rapid development, see 5.0-CURRENT. The last commit to that branch happened about a minute ago. BSD development does not happen slowly at all. In fact, it happens an order of magnitude faster than it does in linux. It's just that the BSD folks had the foresight to seperate the development and production branches in a much more clean-cut fashion than linus (odd minor numbers what? come on now).
In summary, you are factually wrong about the speed of development, and subjectively wrong about what is best for a professional environment.
anyway, what is important for everyone i belive is not the speed of an OS especially when the differences are so clos, as how an OS reacts under very heavy load and stress.
I'm just a newbie at kernel hacking, but I've always wanted to ask this:
If FreeBSD really has a much more stable TCP/IP stack and other 'cool' things, why can't linux build something with the same architecture (that's not even code theft, just idea borrowing).
Before anyone flames me on this: I just heard from some experienced hackers, on both the FreeBSD and the linux side, that some parts of the FreeBSD kernel are designed better.
It's all open source. Why can't we all just get along?
(And the same thing works the other way: FreeBSD users claim the lack of comptability with every piece of hardware is a small price to pay to use FreeBSD. Why can't linux drivers be ported to FreeBSD?)
I was actually thinking of trying to move the TCP/IP stack from FreeBSD to Linux myself, or at least get a close enough look at the differences between them, but looking at the code I realised I'm lacking the skills or mind stamina to comprehend linux's kernel code. Maybe some day...
My other
Please karmawhore with your own material if you have to.
Firstly I'm very suspicious about the moderation here..... but anyway I think this comment poses a very interesting question
....a very technically competent computer user who just doesn't happen to have had that much experience with linux.
What is an experienced computer user?
I'm a very experienced computer user
This guy obviously thinks he's one although I know many slashdotters would beg to differ
Is there really such a thing? Whith linux as popular as it is today, and its benifits and advantages (multiple platforms, open source, free etc. etc.) so blindingly obvious is it possible that there are many 'exerienced' and 'technically competent' users with little or no experience with linux? I guess there is but the gap is certainly narrowing
Back to my question: What is an 'experienced computer user' and how meet this clasification? Do you become 'experienced' by helping out a few of your mates at college with their minor computer problems?
Is there a threshold in years (1 year = newbie , 10 years = experienced jedi master)?
Does a qualification such as a CCNA or MSCE make you experienced?
Mabe some consider you inexperienced untill you master at least one language as this is probably where everyone learns the most about how computers work
What are other slashdotters definitions of an 'experienced' computer user?
Slackware is great for low-end and mid-end servers - and high-end servers if you can find the fsck-ing drivers.
Debian is for overworked admins. If you're in a relaxed environment, running Slackware will teach you a lot about *nix that package management systems hide from you.
Stop the brainwash
One problem is that the more packages you have installed the better the chances of there being security issues to exploit.
For instance, I installed Mandrake 6.0 onto a school network a few years ago. I was fairly new to Linux at the time, and the senior admin helped me out a lot WRT security checks. For instance, did you know that (at least in mdk 6.0) all of the Gnome and KDE games ran as setuid root just so that they could write a system-wide high score? On top of that there were _many_ other setuidroot programs installed by default.. Sure that's fine for the average home user, but in a (somewhat hostile..) networked environment this is just asking for trouble. And yes.. these were installed by default..
However, I'm using Mdk as a server right now, and it's working quite well.. (though I have to restart the adsl service every few weeks.. rather annoying, but not enough for me to do anything about it..)
As always, any system can be made relatively secure, it just takes some effort. Some distro's trade off security for flexibility. Whatever..
I use Debian linux on my workstation, FreeBSD on my server, openbsd on my firewall and netbsd on my old sparcstation. If you have the hardware lying around, you really can use the right tools for the right job.. (and oh, I run Mac OS 9 on my Mac and I have a BeOS partition somewhere...). But then, I love operating systems, and I love toying around with them, including the obscure, like hurd, minix, plan9 and this thing called solaris..
If I look at the numbers, I see that the difference between the systems in benchmarks are rather small. In fact, it reminds me a bit of a presidential election in a not to distant past...
With such small differences, the only thing that matters is which systems gives you warm fuzzy feelings... (Oh! Apt-get! Oh! make world!) (but wait, what if both systems give me warm fuzzy feelings?)
The FreeBSD kernel is able to run Linux binaries, once you have installed the Linux emulation port (it adds a kernel module that is able to work with Linux ABI binaries plus stores a couple of system libs compiled for Linux - so it is rather a different operation mode than an emulation).
Quake3 Arena for example works under FreeBSD just fine.
Where there is a problem is the support of acclerated graphics drivers. Where such a driver is open source, it has been ported to FreeBSD (Matrox drivers, the rather slow nvidia driver for XFree86 3.3.x series, ..).
Where there is only a binary driver, and most unfortunately, this is the case for the fast nvidia drivers, this has yielded no results yet.
The problem is that while the nvidia binary driver might work in theory on all x86 plattforms, with just a different kernel interfacing (for which the source exists), in reality it does only run with certain Linux kernels. Here is a report that goes into details.
Regards,
Marc
hawk
FreeBSD is at 4.4 while Linux is at 2.4.
that's right...it's just a comment....make a REAL POINT and I may have more to say....man, what's happened to discussion on /. ?
Yes it is. The vm subsystem blows donkey anus and every company that backed it besides ibm is now essentially on the metaphorical streets of LA sucking dick to scrape by with it's crack cocaine addiction.
I must now ask that you refrain from opening YOUR FUCKING IGNORANGE HOLE.
Republicans prefer more local control, less centralized decision-making. (Push a Republican far enough, he's a Libertarian.) It's the Democrats who want to run things from the top.
But for servers, I would never risk upgrading to a newer version of any OS. I always do a clean install on another machine and get everything operational and then swap drives, or copy it over, or whatever, depending on the server, how much downtime is acceptable and whatever.
For admins that are overworked, I'm sure Debian would be great.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
I think the numbers could show the cost of synchronous filesystem mounts (even with softupdates) simply cannot keep up with the raw performance boost of allowing the kernel to lie to processes about the completion of disk writes. EXCEPT THAT THERE WAS NO DISK WRITING IN THIS BENCHMARK EXCEPT *MAYBE* WEB SERVER LOGGING.
I'm also not sure about the granularity of buffer cache objects and physical disk IO operations on each box. How were the kernels set up differently by default?
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
In 4.4-RELEASE, LINT has maxusers = 10, while GENERIC has maxusers = 32. IIRC, the handbook says to use GENERIC as a baseline, but it does sound like he might have started with LINT - although I pity anyone who would spend that much time commenting out all the esoteric stuff in LINT.
-- Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
fdisk /mbr ? p
then maybe you could reinstall FBSD...ohwell...you'll figure it out
j/k
but trying em all out is a blast. Glad to see that some of us here try different systems, so at least we can bitch about differences with some information and experience to back it up.
On a side note, I usually try to run each for months, using different installations & configurations (even changing the hardware in the machine) just to see what everything does. Fun stuff.
I wouldn't say I'm part of the inner sanctum of any of the BSD realms, but as a user of both FreeBSD and OpenBSD, I have seen nothing but camaraderie. The different BSDs simply coexist; they are not in competition. And noone knows the difference? Come on, each BSD has a clearly stated focus, at which each excels handily.
-- Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
I know that Linux hardware support is at least more comprehensive, which is why I use it on the desktop. I am preparing to configure a server, and was wondering if I should do FreeBSD. I have used it in the past, and am reasonably self-assured in many areas, but I have lingering questions about these aspects:
Software RAID-5: I see vinum, is that as good as or better than linux equiv? Are there more alternatives?
lvm: seems to be integrated with vinum, is it relatively easy to shrink and grow fses and make more fses in a vinum managed group?
nat/firewalling: I've heard very little about ipf and ipnat, how good are they at what they do? Do they do stateful firewalling? How intuitive are they to configure blocking/forwarding rules vs. iptables (note I consider iptables to be extremely intuitive)?
ipsec: I see that there is support for ipsec, does it interoperate with FreeS/WAN? (Must connect to a site and tunnel network traffic with a linux FreeS/WAN box at other end.)
I have a small linux box performing the firewalling/ipsec right now. I plan to upgrade and have volume management over a raid array, as well as apache, nfs, nis, samba (file serving and PDC), and want to maintain configurability while insuring stability. 2.4.x series of kernels have seemed to be a little too flaky in my usage for a high-availability solution, and FreeBSD seemed rock-solid when I used it.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Like I've always said: Slackware is the "Seven of Nine" of Linux distributions. Beautiful, elegant, efficient, no-nonsense, huge "features" ;-)
I tried Windows XP on my machine a week ago ... all I can say is, it is the crappiest OS I have ever run. Nothing runs properly, and it is soooo slow that you can literally make a cup of tea while you're waiting for a window to open. I was running on a Celeron 500Mhz with 512MB of RAM, so I thought, no problem, I'll just upgrade... maybe my system is outdated more badly than I thought. So I got myself a Palomino AMD 1.4Ghz and an extra 256MB of RAM... guess what? Windows XP was still slow. Peice of shit. Plus it hardly ran any of the apps I tried to install, not even Win2K apps run properly under the stupid peice of shit. What a peice of shit! Who is responsible for WinXP ? They should be fired. This is the worst OS in the history of OSes. So I downloaded Win2K and tried that instead. Whew...what a difference. It's actually usuable... all I can say is, stay away from XP. It is total garbage and I can't believe that I fell for the hype.
I tried to swap the Win XP license for a Win 2K license ... they refused ... I even phoned Microsoft.... they lied to me ...they said Win XP was 36% faster and the most compatible OS ever, which just isn't true, in fact, it is bullshit. So I downloaded Win2K. That's the end of the story.
you'd have seen that a recent snapshot of 3.0 revealed the word "beta" if you did a uname -a
Screw the AP.. use ad-hoc mode, or simply upgrade the firmware on the AP, that'll fix it for sure.
There are considerably _less_ debs than Ports.
--
My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
Come on, what value is there in comparing OS development politics to the national political parties? It doesn't illuminate anything (the point of analogies one could say) and just serves to fixate a stereotype in the mind of the listener, or perpetuate a stereotype in the mind of the speaker.
Nothing to see here folks. Move on -- +5 be damned.
Unless you're the type who installs all the server apps to /usr/local from source, in which case you should be using BSD, because with slack you will be downloading and recompiling the source everytime there's a security problem or it otherwise needs updating.
I can't imagine running 50 slackware web servers and trying to update all of them because of a security problem. Debian and BSD do this all automagically.
BSD stands only to gain from linux' popularity.
Linux increases unix mindshare. More ppl familiar with unix = more bsd users.
Linux also helps commercial unices in this way as well, though it hurts them by stealing some big accounts (ouch).
Just like M$, IBM is gonna take over Linux in the end and IBM/M$ will dominate all you pathetic brain washed Lusers (Linux Users). I'm taking no part in being controlled by M$, and same with Linux. Don't you all see it yet?
I think he compiled LINT...
uname -a
LINT LINT@blah.com
unless of course its a comparison of threads between Windows and Linux. If Linux wins then obviously it is so much better then Windows and Bill Gates is so completely doomed because we are 1337 and he 5uX0r5.
ShloggieOS Tru UNIX 128: Ask for it by name. Accept no substitutes. It runs so fast it will make you nervous with giddy anticipation. It uses patented "make it go fast" technology.
It's your page fault, no it's my page fault - can't we all live in peace?
Linux is poopy
BSD too
I need a drink
After reading all of these responses I'm gonna go with linux. I've been going for all of the old computer parts that I can get and so now I'm gonna build a new one or um, old one but a computer none the less and now I'm gonn aput Linux on it. thanx for all of your input I'm goin Linux. :)
We seldom regret saying too little but often regret saying too much.
In the opposite of what any might have predicted, the BSD in Mac OS X is now a formidable desktop OS, despite BSD users constant assertions of its server prowess.
In spite of the wars (and heavy casualties) between genome and kde on Linux, increasing vendor support has pushed Linux far into the datacenter (Oracle 8i/9i, Linux on an IBM 390, the recent Compaq release of the Non-Stop Cluster code, etc.).
BSD has nowhere near the datacenter penetration, and Linux has nowhere near the desktop elegance.
This situation is perhaps diametrically opposed to what should be, but this is what the market, the developers, and the users have decided.
Don't like this state of affairs? Port ReiserFS and XFS to BSD. Get Mac OS X running on a Linux kernel.
I got this with: /var/lib/apt/lists/* | wc
grep '^Package:'
13583 27166 1416287
If someone knows if that's a right or wrong calculation, please correct me. I know the number of packages has really ballooned recently, but I didn't think it was quite that much. OTOH, I think it must have had a lot to do with the opening up of the new-maintainer process, which happened between the last stable release and now. A lot more new maintainers means a lot more new packages.
After looking into the technical facts, it's
clear to me that FreeBSD is a more stable, more
advanced operating. Linux is just reinventing BSD. So, I'm going to run FreeBSD.
i think you've been trolled, in a way
re-read parent, and take it with a touch of sarcasm.
It will be interesting to see where things go.
I think that Linux and FreeBSD will continue to help eachother. It does seem to be true that in some applications, FreeBSD is losing to Linux, but this is happening very slowly and could easily reverse itself. The real losers to Linux are proprietary UNIX operating systems like Solaris and AIX which now more than ever have to justify their value.
I have said before that I think that Linux will "shield" FreeBSD from the proprietary UNIX OS's. In fact many people I know in the Linux community are fascinated by FreeBSD and so Linux's rise may well benefit both AND result in more portable programming.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
FreeBSD rocks!! (But Linux doesn't suck. I use both. In fact, I say use whatever is best for the job, as long as it isn't Windows, because Windows sucks. (Bear with me for a moment--this is not flamebait, just part of the overall presentation of my comment.) Yeah, Windows might be useful at serving a purpose sometimes, as long as whatever it is doesn't need to actually function properly most of the time. But then, I was talking about FreeBSD and Linux, not Windows. Because Windows sucks.)
Building up and tearing down processes is indeed one of the strong points of FreeBSD. I vaguely recall reading about that somewhere in the documentation on the website or the CD or somewhere. I also recall reading about how some older version of FreeBSD had an obscure timing-based vulnerability in some section of the forking code because keeping it fast requires it to be complicated. (Actually, it's not that complicated. It's just in deciding which parts of the process are copied to the new process and which ones aren't. Under very specific circumstances, something that wasn't supposed to be copied was, or the other way around. I just don't remember. That's what happens when you try to comment on something you read a year (or more) ago. Of course, this vulnerability has long since been fixed. The point is, I don't claim that FreeBSD is perfect while Linux isn't--they both have their strong and weak points and like I said, use whichever one is best for whatever you're trying to accomplish. And above all, like any machine, a system running any kind of operating system needs to be well maintained, and that is a big part of security. While there may be bugs in whatever parts of whatever operating system, proper maintainence will nearly always ensure that the system is kept running and is not compromised. (Unless you're running Windows, which, like I said before, sucks, so even if you maintain it properly, I am required by blood oath to tell you that it will be compromised anyway, just to make Windows look bad, even if it isn't all that bad for home use by computer newbies who just want to check out some website or whatever.))
In the Linux compatibility section of the FreeBSD manual, the author claims that FreeBSD executes some parts of Linux programs faster than Linux. (I'm sure it executes other parts more slowly. This is what happens when you run programs designed for other software--you can use some of your features (or just circumstances) to your advantage while other things just don't work out quite as fast as you'd like.) It would be interesting to analyse FreeBSD and Linux, figure out which parts are best in both in terms of efficiency at running, say, desktop software, and modify both systems for better efficiency. Oh well. I got too much work to do. Maybe tomorrow.
If you will examine www.dell.com/Oracle8i, you will find the Dell "Oracle Database Appliance." It is running SUSE.
You might also examine www.suse.com/us/press/press_releases/archive01/fas t_center.html
where you will learn that Oracle/SUSE exceeds Oracle/NT - were you going to argue that NO ONE runs Oracle on NT?
Don't know about Linux/390 yet; it's too early to tell.
BSD isn't dying either. BSD doesn't gauge its success on taking the desktop over from Microsoft. BSD is over 20 years old and there are more people running BSD now than any time in its history. BSD has a "critical mass" so it will continue even if there are more than ten times as many Linux users. BSD's license is more flexible than the GPL. It is basically open source without the politics. Even if Linux was as good or better than BSD in every way (which it really isn't) BSD's license would guarantee that it would be prefered for some projects.
I like Tux, dammit.
Do you assign the interrupt for an Ethernet card to a specific CPU in Linux?
I e-mailed the fellow and he confirmed that both the MAXUSERS and kernel version listed in the article were misprints. He used 4.4-R and MAXUSERS was set at 200 (still too low for a high-volume server, IMO).
FEWER... FEWER... the word is FEWER... Please, at least if you're going to _highlight_ the word, get it right.
You ignored the superior slackware package system, but even if you hadn't, Slackware makes sure they don't have ANY security problems before they make a release. You don't need to update them because of a security problem.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
I am the level of user that most people would call a newbie or Nub (for Non usable bodie) /. would not need nor use the documentation , and in fact would laugh at someone who does. I am not one of those people. The Red Hat was simpering , yet confusing at the same time. Technical information was given on the background and proccesses involved , without acctualy giving clear directions on how to get someinthg operational.
I recently needed a gateway for a network and went to an alternate to Windows since it was on my dime.
Having tried Red Hat and FreeBSD , I personly much prefer the FreeBSD.
many of youon
FreeBSD was clean , concise and technical, wihout needing to have extras thrown in to make the book bigger. I would not venture to say that one buld is better than the other , because I know I don't know enough to back it up. I will say that on my way t learning enough to tell the difference I'll be using FreeBSD for the best reason of all, It works for me.
I know nothing...It is Ok because I am from Barcelona!
I run both (slack-8/2.4.14 and FBSD 4.4) on my workstation. I find FreeBSD way easier to manage and generally have better performance, more pleasant to administer.
/ports section is IMHO one of the most elegant approaches to software packaging ("make compiling and installing from source as easy as installing a binary-only package under any other os would be").
... painfully). Redhat is comparable, with other tradeoffs not really worth detailing here. Ditto for Suse.
.deb created is easy and painless for the impatient.
... which is why choice is so marvelous and why I use both).
... a compliment of the highest order to both approaches.
I use both FreeBSD and GNU/Linux (debian testing with some packages from unstable), and have used Redhat, Mandrake, and Suse in the past. All are excellent systems, with their own unique advantages and disadvantages. Your reference to the maintainability of FreeBSD is right on point, it is excellent, and the
Mandrake has the smoothest, easiest install, but is often plagued with bugs early on, and really isn't upgradable without reinstalling (I've tried
Debian, on the other hand, has a very dated install that is quite demanding, requiring the user to have a fairly high level of competence and familiarity with their hardware prior to installation. Nowhere near as easy as setting up any of the other three GNU/Linux distros mentioned, nor as easy as FreeBSD. However, it is amazingly simple to maintain and upgrade. I have literally installed ancient versions of the distro because those were the disks I had handy, pointed apt to a (much) newer testing or unstable release by editing two lines in one file (/etc/apt/sources.list for the curious), then running two commands at the command line, namely "apt-get update" (update the list of available packages) followed by "apt-get dist-upgrade."
This is like upgrading from Mandrake 7.0 to 7.2 or 8.0, or upgrading FreeBSD from 3.4 to 4.0 or 4.1. In two painless commands, which grab the latest packages from one of the numerous debian package servers and installs them. Never again installing from scratch, even for major upgrades. Security patches? While they make it into testing last of all (a really critical machine such as a firewall should really be running the staid but rock solid "stable" release, for which security patches come out within 24-48 hours, or better yet, some version of *BSD), pulling them down from unstable as source via "apt-get source [package] --compile" followed by a "dpkg -i [packagename].deb" of the
The point of all this rambling? FreeBSD is great. GNU/Linux comes in many flavors, all of which are generally compatible but each of which has its advantages and disadvantages. For maintainability, stability, and quality Debian is IMHO at the front and very comparable to FreeBSD (in some ways better, in some worse
Others value other aspects of their respectively favorite distributions of course, which again is what makes the freedom of choice we as Free Software users enjoy so marvelous. I toute my own favorite merely to point out that, if maintainability and managability are your primary concern (as they are mine), you may definitely wish to give Debian a gander. Install off the old "stable disks," point sources.list to testing or unstable (I typically point the deb lines at testing and the deb-src lines at unstable, but others have other strategies for finding their comfort zone vis a vis stability vs. bleeding edge fun), run a couple of commands and you're good to go.
That having been said, FreeBSD's source-based "ports" section is the only software distribution approach I've ever seen that in many ways I actually prefer to debian's approach (though the paradigms are in some ways apples and oranges to each other)
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I find it amazing that someone would set out to test for VM performance, and run the tests that he ran. Sendmail? Tweaked and (even more than usual) unreliable Sendmail? Someone is going to choose Linux over FreeBSD for a mail server because of this article. I serve email with qmail on FreeBSD with no softupdates and even the hard-disk cache turned off. Why? Because this is the most reliable mail configuration that I know of, and there are good reasons for all of it (but you have to RTFM to know why..) I can pull the plug amidst a flury of email and *know* that none of it is lost, and the machines can still move 100x more mail than they do. Tuning for max performance is the Linux way. Unreliable async filesystem operation is the norm in the Linux world. Getting max performance out of a system that doesn't compromise on corectness and reliablility is the BSD way. When you choose to turn on softupdates on your FreeBSD machine, you still know that you can punch the reset button at any time and your filesystem metadata will still make sense. In fact, under Linux, you can fsync() a file and still not be sure that the metadata is updated when the call returns. Humbug!
If you will examine www.dell.com/Oracle8i, you will find the Dell "Oracle Database Appliance." It is running SUSE.
s t_center.html where you will learn that Oracle/SUSE exceeds Oracle/NT - were you going to argue that NO ONE runs Oracle on NT?
I'm sure sales are off the charts.
If you will examine the original claim, you will notice that I said no one runs it, not that you couldn't buy it.
You might also examine www.suse.com/us/press/press_releases/archive01/fa
Your performance numbers really go a long way to show me how linux has gained acceptence in the world of hardcore databases, don't they? Oh, wait, they don't. If I asked your mother's maiden name, you'd tell me you liked ice cream, and expect that to be a reasonable answer.
Don't know about Linux/390 yet; it's too early to tell.
Well, you have my prediction. Be sure to let me know as soon as the S/390 world embraces linux.
p.s. 1. We run Oracle on HP-UX - hope this doesn't disturb your generalization too much.
Well, my point was that no one runs oracle on linux - this statement seems to be doing a fine job of helping me prove it, now doesn't it?
2. If soft updates are so great, show me a commercial player who has implemented them.
Once again, you bring up something that has nothing to do with anything - but that's ok, I'll play along and pretend commercial players imply technical superiority. Email Kirk (mckusick at mckusick dot com) and ask him personally how much cash Sun handed over for Soft Updates. I'm sure that mr reiser and whatever clown hacked journaling into ext2 were compensated just as handsomely. Oh, wait, I'm being sarcastic again, could you tell?
Who needs the clue?
You can't even run a LINT kernel.
Read the post, stupido. I don't *want* to synchronise my ports tree.