Slashdot Mirror
Two papers On Performance Tuning FreeBSD
avleenvig writes "Finally I have completed my paper on tuning the FreeBSD system for various common tasks, to compliment the paper on compiling and tuning the FreeBSD kernel. These papers were written against FreeBSD 4.x systems but should be equally applicable to 5.x systems on almost all counts. Compiling and tuning the FreeBSD kernel:
http://silverwraith.com/papers/freebsd-kernel.php
Performance tuning FreeBSD for different applications:
http://silverwraith.com/papers/freebsd-tuning.php. You will find within, details on tuning your network, disks, sysctls and kernel for maximum performance under various conditions. "
this is also one of the easiest ways to boost your karma. there are SO many mod points to be had by posting non-troll comments in the BSD section.
-- http://www.cerastes.org
OK, I know this is very much OT but a busy site such as Slashdot should be able to help me out here. Bear in mind that I'm not trying to start a flamewar or anything; just want some good reasoned responses. Right...
Why should I use FreeBSD over Linux?
The reason I'm asking is this: despite having used Linux for many years, I'm constantly being told by FreeBSD fans to switch to their favourite OS. Some make pleasant suggestions, others act with great zealotry and tell me things I know aren't true. The way I see it is as follows:
Stability - Various BSD fans have told me that it's "more stable" and "crashes less". I can safely say that my Debian and Slackware boxes have _never_ crashed or kernel panicked in five years of use; yes, in comparison to a bleeding edge desktop distro such as Mandrake, FreeBSD is bound to be more solid, but proper, well-designed and thoroughly tested distros like Debian and Slackware are totally rock-solid.
Performance - I've been told by FreeBSD users that their OS is much faster than Linux. To make this judgement myself, I performed a few benchmarks with FreeBSD 4.8 and Linux 2.4.20, and also FreeBSD 5.1 and Linux 2.6.0-test. The differences were negligible, although on my 2-CPU box Linux was the clear winner. 2.6.0-test also showed more responsive behaviour on the desktop.
Hardware support - I had troubles getting FreeBSD running on my laptop. Linux supported the hardware much better, and has a significantly broader range of x86 support.
Software support - It's so much easier to find software that will compile natively on Linux. Yep, Ports are good, but they're nowhere near as tested and integrated as, say, Debian's stable repositories.
Security - Both OSes are pretty secure by modern standards, but I can't see the value in FreeBSD's updating method. With Debian, one simple "apt-get" command is needed to get the latest security fixes. With FreeBSD, a tiresome chore of CVSuping, compiling and installing is required, which is doubly annoying on lots of boxes.
Community - Even when I've researched my problem and read up on the docs, I've had BSD fans act incredibly obnoxiously towards me. That's not good at all.
Long term support - FreeBSD only supports each release for 12 months; this means that users have to upgrade. And although upgrading isn't too difficult, the end result is a slightly different system and difficult to target apps against (new features/bugs/changes is newer Ports releases etc). Meanwhile, Debian has over 2 years support for each release, and Red Hat offer 5 - perfect for corporate adoption.
So those are the criteria I judge an OS on, and while many BSD fans keep telling me to use FreeBSD, I can't see what it offers in the real-world over Linux (subjective licensing issues aside).
What concrete benefits does FreeBSD actually offer? Serious question. It appears that Linux wins in the above areas, but any input would be good to hear.
What We Can Learn From BSD
By Chinese Karma Whore, Version 1.0
Almost everyone knows about BSD's failure and imminent demise. As we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.
Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.
These early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of internal conflicts that would mar BSD's progress. In 1992, AT&T filed suit against Berkeley Software, claiming that proprietary code agreements had been haphazardly violated. In the same year, BSD filed countersuit, reciprocating bad intentions and fueling internal rivalry. While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.
As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became worse and worse. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD distribution make code sharing an arduous task. Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.
Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach. As argued by Eric Raymond in his watershed essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, rapid, decentralized development models are inherently superior to slow, centralized ones in software development. BSD developers never heeded Mr. Raymond's lesson and insisted that centralized models lead to 'cleaner code.' Don't believe their hype - BSD's development model has significantly impaired its progress. Any achievements that BSD managed to make were nullified by the BSD license, which allows corporations and coders alike to reap profits without reciprocating the goodwill of open-source. Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.
The failure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become bureaucratic and stagnant. As Linux gains market share and as BSD sinks deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.
It is practically universal knowledge that *BSD is dying. Indeed *BSD is hopelessly mired in an irrecoverable and mortifying tangle of fatal trouble. It is perhaps anybody's guess as to which *BSD is the worst off of an admittedly suffering *BSD community. The numbers continue to decline for *BSD but FreeBSD may be hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The loss of user base for FreeBSD continues in a head spinning downward spiral.
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 marketing 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 hobbyist dilettante dabblers. In truth, for all practical purposes *BSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking.
Fact: *BSD is dying
The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.
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.
The numbers continue to decline for *BSD but FreeBSD may be hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The loss of user base for FreeBSD continues in a head spinning downward spiral. In truth, for all practical purposes FreeBSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking. It's a fact: FreeBSD is dying.
A full grown stallion's cock, when fully erect, will measure some two to three feet long. It can be three to six inches thick at the base, to about two inches thick at the head. Horses are somewhat different from other animals in the way their cock head works
Horse semen is extremely viscous, if you touch your finger to a pool of it you can draw a thin string of it five to six feet long!
Horse cum has a nice flat taste to it...not at all bitter like man's cum. You can easily drink cups of it with no discomfort.
What We Can Learn From BSD
By Chinese Karma Whore, Version 1.0
Everyone knows about BSD's failure and imminent demise. As we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.
Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.
These early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of internal conflicts that would mar BSD's progress. In 1992, AT&T filed suit against Berkeley Software, claiming that proprietary code agreements had been haphazardly violated. In the same year, BSD filed countersuit, reciprocating bad intentions and fueling internal rivalry. While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.
As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became worse and worse. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD distribution make code sharing an arduous task. Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.
Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach. As argued by Eric Raymond in his watershed essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, rapid, decentralized development models are inherently superior to slow, centralized ones in software development. BSD developers never heeded Mr. Raymond's lesson and insisted that centralized models lead to 'cleaner code.' Don't believe their hype - BSD's development model has significantly impaired its progress. Any achievements that BSD managed to make were nullified by the BSD license, which allows corporations and coders alike to reap profits without reciprocating the goodwill of open-source. Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.
The failure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become bureaucratic and stagnant. As Linux gains market share and as BSD sinks deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.