FreeBSD s/390 Port in the works

brad-x writes: "It appears that an enterprising gentleman has taken the time to port FreeBSD to the s/390. It needs some work yet, as his project page suggests, but if he makes it happen it will definitely be very cool. Check it out!"

Comments

Does this mean that...

[j-turkey]

Since the S/390 is a pretty parallel architecture...does this mean that the FreeBSD kernel is getting better at SMP?

Does it run with more than 2 processors on the 390?

Is the 2 CPU limitation an X86-only thing that I'm ignorant of (quite possible)?

That's not to say that I don't love the BSD's, but they do have (or maybe they had) their limitations.


-Turkey

Re:Does this mean that...

[Strog]

I used to have several because I wondered the same questions. All my links are either dead or updated to 5.0 figures. Ignore the rest of my post if you consider it "too anecdotal".

I've seen some inhouse testing with identical hardware with both Linux 2.4 and FreeBSD 4.x tuned for performance. They would go back and forth in some real-world testing with the edge in raw performance going to Linux more often. Usually the differences weren't that much but sometimes there was a clear winner.

I would suggest that you get some hardware to test with and use both on this hardware in the situation(s) that you are going to put it in. It is real easy to get a system that each can support the hardware. If one or the other doesn't support the hardware you want or very well then go with the OS that supports the hardware well.

For me, the real choice is outside of the scope of raw performance since they are fairly close (close enough for me at least). A couple factors I look at.

1. A moderate to heavy loaded FreeBSD box still responds well while a Linux box under the same load will become extremely sluggish or unresponsive.

2. Updating the system is more solid in FreeBSD than Linux. Apt-get and other mechanisms work well but usually have more issues for me at least. Following -stable is very easy in FreeBSD.

3. Experience. Which system is the admin more comfortable with? If they have experience BSD or other traditional Unix then FreeBSD is the way to go. If they are more comfortable with Linux then it really needs to factor in to the choice.

4. Number of processors. If the number goes over 2 then you need to go Linux or look into FreeBSD 5.0 if you can wait or run the development versions. Probably Linux will suit you better on your quad+ box for now at least. It will take some time to wring the most out of FreeBSD 5.x

These are all opinions and suggestions. Use both in your setup and see which works for you. Alternately you could tell them both to take a hike and get an Irix box. That would open a whole new set of things to look at.

More the merrier

[atcurtis]

The more platforms supported, the merrier it will be.

Although, I don't expect to see FreeBSD on anywhere near the same number of platforms as NetBSD.

I'd like to see FreeBSD 5 running on RS/6000 hardware... That would be nice ;)

NetBSD isn't on that platform

[glitchvern]

The thing I think is interesting about this port is that it puts freebsd on the s/390 while NetBSD isn't. They do say a port of NetBSD to the s/390 would be relatively staightforward though.

Re:I wonder what it would be like ...

[Jay Maynard]

Before people get too excited about topics such as SMP, kernel threads, and I/O devices -- it only partially boots
Yeah...the project isn't to the point where it's usable for anything but system hacking yet.

on a mainframe emulator.
If it runs on Hercules, it'll run on the real hardware. Before you pooh-pooh the use of an emulator, consider that Alan Cox uses Hercules for S/390 work (not all of it, but quite a bit).