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Linux VMs For Everyone
Over at Newsforge, Grant Gross has written an interesting overview of the options available for hosting multiple Linux installations on virtual machines; interestingly, it's not just for those with the big bucks for high-end IBM hardware, though that's surely nice.
1st post
how GROSS!
Please continue with your business.
autodot/0.4 (perl/5.006001)
No, I didn't have any reason for posting this. I just thought it was interesting.
Slashdot editors try to silence criticism!
The new Northwood 2.2gHz 0.13-micron P4, as I mentioned earlier, seems made for Windows-XP. It's got special chipset drivers; it's got an 'application accelerator'; it's got Rambus working overtime.
For Linux it's got nothing special to offer -- no accelerators or drivers. Just 2.2 in clock speed and a memory controller that exploits RDRAM nicely, which is definitely nothing to sneeze at. But it's got that on Windows as well.
So imagine my surprise when I benchmarked it with the only test I know that crosses the great divide between Linux and Windows -- the Quake-3 FPS benchmark -- and found that the performance of this Windows-loving kit was considerably better on Linux, at least in that context.
A brief re-cap of the hardware:
One Intel D850MVSE mobo with Northwood P4; 512M PC800 RDRAM; two Maxtor D740X 20G ATA-133 drives on the mobo's onboard ATA-100 controller, one booting Win-XP Pro on FAT and one booting SuSE 7.3 Pro on ReiserFS and both installed clean and subsequently patched; and a 64M DDR GeForce AGP4.
The Windows drive is patched with whatever the MS auto-update cloak-and-dagger process does to it. The Linux drive is patched to kernel 2.4.17. The video and OpenGL drivers for both OS's were upgraded with the most recent files from Nvidia's Web site.
On the Windows drive I installed all the Intel chipset drivers and the Application Accelerator. The Linux kernel is reasonably optimized for the HDD and the P4, but with APIC disabled, as it just won't run on the 850 mobo otherwise.
But that's hardly a problem.
Both operating systems, obviously, had to be running at the same level of display detail, and the limitations of XFree86 pretty well determined that for me. Both desktops were set at 16-bit color depth, and in both cases Quake was set with the following display options for the first series of runs:
Mode: 1024x786
Color depth: 16-bit
Lighting: lightmap
Geometric detail: high
Texture Detail: maximum
Texture quality: 16-bit
Filter: trilinear
It seems a bit skimpy, but rich detail takes more from the graphics accelerator whereas less detail gives us a better look at the CPU, chipset and system memory.
Win-XP returned an average of 72.7 FPS, which is worse than I'd expect from a P3 800 on '98 with about 128M RAM, or a 486DX 100 on Win 3.1 with about 16M RAM. (You see the pattern here....)
Linux returned an average of 80.2 FPS, which is significantly better, though hardly brilliant. But let's keep in mind that the system I'm using here is virtually Linux-hostile. The next one won't be.
With even less detail, further reducing dependency on the graphics card, we got better numbers from the CPU. The breakdown was similar, though Windows narrowed the gap a bit.
Mode: 640x480
Color depth: 16-bit
Lighting: vertex
Geometric detail: low
Texture Detail: minimum
Texture quality: 16-bit
Filter: bilinear
This gave us averages of 272.2 FPS on Windows and 304.7 on Linux.
We can infer that Win-XP is so greedy for system resources that even the most potent (and most expensive) CPU on the market, coupled with a hefty chunk of very fast RDRAM (also very expensive), only suffices to make it work nicely.
Other considerations
It's quite difficult to compare the performance of a given system on both Linux and Windows. The Quake benchmark is a rare exception, but basically it's apples and oranges. For example, what can we learn from evaluating the performance of Photoshop on Windows and the Gimp on Linux? Damn little, I reckon.
For that matter, what can we learn from running Netscape, StarOffice and the Gimp on both? It's entirely possible that these applications could have performance issues on a given OS which would skew the results.
I'll certainly try a number of tests like that during the weekend. This way, I hope, a single performance oddity won't cause too much distortion.
It's also worthwhile trying to match a system with an OS. For insight we can look at some of the everyday tasks common to both OS's, and compare them on different systems. I've taken a few common-sense measurements on both SuSE and Win-XP with the Intel 850/Northwood combo, but these won't have meaning until I repeat them on a different system and see where they differ.
Which I'll do, early next week.
I hope they'll finish the job.
...alguém aí fala português também? Esse slashdot deve ter bastante Brasileiros como eu... ou será que estou errado? Se algum brasileiro ler essa notícia por favor responda! ;-)
Hahaha. Fuck.
This incident happened in 1980, when I was 15 years old. My sister rented an
apartment that had a finished basement. In the 1960's, a couple lived on the
2nd. floor of this building. One day, the husband went crazy and strangled
his wife, and then hung himself. At first, I really liked this apartment. It
was like my second home, until a couple moved into the apartment upstairs.
They were cool. We hung out on weekends and even though I was only 15, I
would drink beer with them. Strange things began to happen gradually over
time. Small things began to disapear, windows shaking on windless days, cold
spots in different places. My sisters kitten vanished one day and we never
found it, although we could here it mewing for weeks!!!!! We were sitting
around partying one day,and a noise came from the kitchen. ( my sister had
beads in the doorway that you moved in order to get into or out of the
kitchen.) When we looked over, the beads seperated as if someone was walking
through them!!!!! Ther was nobody there!!!!! I was sitting in a chair in the
corner of the room, middle of summer, no air conditioning. I was all of a
sudden, frezing cold!!!!! My brother ( Thank god he's changed his ways!) had
a gun hidden in the basement. He went to get it one day and a voice from out
of nowhere, demanded him to " PUT THAT GUN DOWN"!!!!! Needless to say, he
did. He never went back into that basement again. For that matter, not even
into the apartment. I should have taken his advice, not to go into the
basement. I was drinking a bit to much one night, and I got sick. My sister
got upset ( rightly so.) She told me to go down the basement to sleep it off.
Now, I know what you are probably thinking. " This guy's drunk and imagining
things". NOWAY!!!!! I staggered down into that basement not really knowing
where I was. I passed out almost instantly. I woke up with a slap to my face
and a voice yelling at me to quote; " GET THE F--K OUT OF MY HOUSE, YOU
DRUNKEN BASTARD"!!!!! I was instantly sober!!!!! I never went back to that
house again, until-------- Years later, in 1996, I was driving a taxi cab. I
did'nt recognize the address at first, but for some reason, I felt uneasy
about the job. I saw the address on the house when I pulled up, and my first
thought was, "OH S--T"!!!!! I rang the bell ( reluctantly) and a man came to
the window, looking very angry. I thought, " Great, another happy customer".
A woman answered the door and got into my cab. She seamed to be upbeat and
happy. I told her I was sorry for making her wait so long for a cab, and she
said it was ok. I told her that the guy in the window did'nt look very happy.
She said, " What guy? I live alone"! I did'nt have the heart to tell her my
story.
I plan to provide "Virtual colocation" based on
UML and (alternatively for people who don't want Linux) VMware for 30$/mo in February.
Physical hardware will be dual 1.6Ghz Athlon MP.
If you are interested in being a beta customer, please contact me.
-alex
canada #1...imho no
I just moved here (Ontario) from southern Texas to be with my girlfriend. after I went to eat her out today, there was old dried cum or toilet paper down there, so naturally I was like 'heyyy....hold on a sec.' this made her cry, she stormed out of my apartment, then came back, sat for like 2 hours ignoring my and negating my feelings. stupid @#$!!. then she left for work and left me upset.
and its like 20 fucking degrees when I'm used to it being about 70ish this time of the year.
the 401 is a joke to drive on too - the people are utter maniacs and every trucker in north America must be on it.
i got hassled at the border and had to pay $500 to get in, even though Canadian immigration's website says U.S. visitors come for 6 months with no visa or anything. real nice set if cohesive rules ya' got here, eh?
the tax in Ontario is 15% on all goods purchased which just reeks of socialism.
the only saving grace I see here so far is the people are nice and I laugh internally at thier accents. my gf's mom sounds like a goose though.
so far my impressions on Canada is that they're a backwards quaint society (although friendly) who likes to get drunk and watch hockey. and wear long johns. ugh. the way things are looking right now I'm going to be very glad to get out come June 15th.