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New Performance Mailing List for FreeBSD
An anonymous reader writes "FreeBSD's fast as is, but it appears that folks over there are going the extra mile to make sure that it continues to be the top dog according to this recent announcement. With 5.1 promising to have native threads and 5.1 only a few months out, it is really good to see performance being taken seriously."
Kiwaiti
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It'
FreeBSDs performance seemed to me to be quite close to say Linux 2.5 running on XFS. I couldnt tell which was better but I think both were quite close to the hardwares ability. I havent tried running many threaded apps, at least not under pressure..
I hope they dont take focus away from simplicity and robustness here. Multithreading is tricky, look at all the problems Linux had.. As a customer, I wouldnt want multithreading at all if theres any risk to the robust architecture.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
From the office of Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf :
BSD isn't dead.
(Unless you live in a cave, you will get this joke)
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
I just love BSD.
.
I used to go with Linux for everything a while back, but once you discover BSD, the ports system, IPF andPF, and the way everything is properly packaged, you just fall in love with BSD.
But when it comes to performance, from an user point of view, Linux still looks better.
My home workstation has both FreeBSD 5-current and Gentoo Linux. I lately installed a 2.5.x kernel (the current running one is 2.5.67-mm1), and I must say that I was really impressed.
Not sure how latest Linux kernels perform in a server environment, but on a workstation, everything is very responsive. Even when there is a lot of I/O (local disk-to-disk backups) or CPU activity (compilation), KDE is always smooth. Under load, Windows can take some time to refresh their content, but as soon as something is typed on the keyboard, or clicked with the mouse, the effect is immediate.
While FreeBSD is rather fast (it looks like there was a big speedup regarding disk I/O between FreeBSD 4.x and 5.x), I now find it slow when I switch from Linux to FreeBSD.
Slow is maybe not the right word, but there is a lot of "lag". When the system is busy, there's a slight delay between an action with the mouse or the keyboard and its effect. This is especially noticable with Konqueror. And when there is a compilation going on, XMMS oftens stops playing properly (there are cutoffs in the sound)
I also tried Mnogosearch (MySQL 4 + cache mode) on both Linux and FreeBSD 5-current. Searches are as fast on both OS. But during indexation, when the cached daemon flushes its buffers, FreeBSD nearly freezes. I mean that even logging in through SSH becomes very long. On Linux, although the hard disk seems to turns a lot, the system keeps being responsive for other tasks.
{{.sig}}
Why bother with mysql my friend when PostgreSQL is there.
Performance arguments do not work, see the latest benchmarks.
Mysql got whipped.
Take a look at FreeBSD's performance on the popular soekris hardware... > >> FreeBSD 4.7 39.6 Mbps / 28.5 Mbps > >> FreeBSD 5.0 30.4 Mbps / 22.3 Mbps > >> OpenBSD 3.2 32.4 Mbps / 24.4 Mbps > >> Linux 2.4 41.6 Mbps / 32.6 Mbps > > > > Was this with polling enabled? Interesting numbers. The ipfw overhead is > > higher than I'd have thought. > > OK, I finally got around to do some testing with polling enabled: > > FreeBSD 4.7+DEVICE_POLLING,HZ=2000 52.1 Mbps / 39.4 Mbps -SU
My own and others!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
If they could only make patching easier, so everytime a bind, sendmail, or other hack is discovered, one doesnt have to;
cvsup the source tree
rebuild the system
rebuild the kernel
boot single user
install new kernel
install new system components
mergemaster
reboot again.
This is a royal f***in pita, up2date looks sinfully easy compared to this.
Where do you want to be, What are you doing to get there.
[note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It's wh