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PPC Linux vs. Mac OS X Server: Linux Edges Out
Spencerian writes "Mac OS X is a very promising new BSD variant, but how does it rate as a server? Byte.com writer Moshe Bar has made an extensively balanced performance comparison of Mac OS X Server 10.1.5 versus SuSE Linux PPC with the 2.4.19 kernel. Both operating systems ran on the same hardware: an Xserve 1U rack mount server from Apple. While /.ers may guess (correctly) at his results, Mac OS X Server 10.1.5 wasn't as far behind the curve as you might think. Performance might've been better if Moshe had Mac OS X Server 10.2, with its faster GUI and other enhancements, but still, it appears that Mac OS X Server 10.1 was doing pretty good for a 1-year old."
What was the swap confirguration in linux during the test? I believe it was a SWAP partition rather than a SWAP file.
Whereas on OS X it should have been default(ed) to a SWAP file.
The difference in performance is quite considerable because for a SWAP partition the OS doesn't have to go through a lot of IO file system code.
Not really. As in most Unices, if the GUI is not being interacted with, it isn't eating up any cycles, either. The scheduler just puts it to sleep, awaiting an event (interaction).
Having a GUI on the server allows for simpler administration. Many folks that I know, that don't have a GUI on their server, also don't have a disply. Yet, they use VNC to more easily administer the server - or something like webmin or linuxconf in HTTP mode. Either way, you're still running a GUI.
Of course, console based administration is fine, too - but, Apple is about making things simple, even if you weren't raised a systems administrator. And contrary to Microsoft, their definition of "easy" doesn't correlate with the level of insecurity the system has.
Cheers.
I mean, thats like .04% wasted processor cycles.
Note to the clueless, the GUI doesn't consume much processor time if nothing is writing to the screen.
--
The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.
2) Moshe is not smart enough to boot Mac OS X into command line, "Since for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to shut down the GUI environment of OS X" -- Moshe "I can't use Google" Bar. Here's a tip Moshi, when the log on screen pops up, type ">console" in the user line.
3) MacSlash has already dealt with this.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Great question, and one the Novell NetWare guys keep asking. My answer is that if you have a shop of NT, Linux, Unix, Macintosh and NetWare, you will have to know the commands for each one. This can be a pain to do, so what normally happens is that you get someone who becomes an "expert" with one of those systems. Then comes in someone like Microsoft and says how much money they will save by "Standardising" on one NOS.
The other issue is that if some MCSE type is not comfortable at all working on another platform then they will ALLWAYS recommend a Microsoft solution. If they walk up to a system and it has a GUI that is similar to Windows and they can do their job, they tend to be more open to using that technology. I believe that this describes a lot of people, in that they don't want to spend a lot of time learning something totally new.
I was a Novell/Microsoft guy who decided to give Linux a try about two years ago. I found the migration easy. I used the GUI as a crutch until I could learn the command line equivilant, and found Mandrake and RedHat tools very easy to work with. Without the GUI I would still be pushing NetWare and Windows. To be honest probably Windows...
Lastly, I have converted most of our business over to Linux now... It has run great. I do miss a good directory service and the ability to add disk space to a volume on the fly (yes I know about LVMs, but most distros don't default to it) oh yeah and a good free equivilant to Groupwise/Exchange server.
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
These results, should they turn out to be reliable (which I believe that they are), speak volumes about the quality of MAC OS X. It is just slightly less efficient then Linux, yet still retaining a very high "ease of use factor". Not to mention it's amazing progess with the various components of it's GUI (Quartz - which creates two dimensional images, ATS, terrific OpenGL, the ability to save anything as a PDF, Aqua....) and easy to implement Cocoa and Carbon APIs.
I ran the Scimark 2.0 Java benchmarks on the same machine, running Yellow Dog Linux, kernel 2.4.19, versus Mac OS 10.2.
Here are my results
Yellow Dog 2.3: SciMark 2.0a
Composite Score: 139.92947174097748
FFT (1024): 123.98639890992068
SOR (100x100): 166.2888365390105
Monte Carlo : 11.87347214947242
Sparse matmult (N=1000, nz=5000): 119.76608441786847
LU (100x100): 277.7325666886154
java.vendor: IBM Corporation
java.version: 1.3.1
os.arch: ppc
os.name: Linux
os.version: 2.4.20-0.7bsmp
MacOS 10.2: SciMark 2.0a
Composite Score: 65.55278911110278
FFT (1024): 45.766180267285044
SOR (100x100): 148.7766358092264
Monte Carlo : 8.128496082717385
Sparse matmult (N=1000, nz=5000): 43.78407287809933
LU (100x100): 81.30856051818576
java.vendor: Apple Computer, Inc.
java.version: 1.3.1
os.arch: ppc
os.name: Mac OS X
os.version: 10.2
Machine:
processor : 0
cpu : 7455, altivec supported
clock : 999MHz
revision : 2.1 (pvr 8001 0201)
processor : 1
cpu : 7455, altivec supported
clock : 999MHz
revision : 2.1 (pvr 8001 0201)
bogomips : 999.42
total bogomips : 1998.84
machine : PowerMac3,6
motherboard : PowerMac3,6 MacRISC2 MacRISC Power Macintosh
detected as : 129 (PowerMac G4 Windtunnel)
pmac flags : 00000000
L2 cache : 256K unified
memory : 256MB
pmac-generation : NewWorld
Mem: 253776
The Darwin kernel is based on Mach. While not a performance demon, Mach offers some very interesting advantages for Apple. Primarily, they have full rights to the code and can relicense it, whereas Linux would have bound them by the GPL. There's some technical advantages too, though.
First of all, Mach was/is developed by Avi Tevanian. Avi is a old buddy of Steve Jobs and they've been working together since the NeXT days. Any questions about architecture? Ask the guy that wrote it, he's just down the hall.
Secondly, the micro-kernelish nature of Mach makes Darwin (and OS X) a highly portable platform. With Motorola on the ropes, being able to shift platforms quickly is far more important than raw kernel speed. Darwin gives Apple hardware options, and options are a very good thing for Apple to have right now.
Lastly, there's momentum. AFAIK, their kernel crew came over from NeXT, where they'd been using Mach since the eighties. Why bother learning the ins and outs of a new architecture, when you've already got something that works? Better to extend what you've already got.
Darwin offers a pretty solid foundation for Apple. Moving to Linux would have taken a large effort for questionable gains.
This