Slashdot Mirror
ULE Now The Default Scheduler On FreeBSD
Dan writes "FreeBSD's Jeff Roberson says that the ULE scheduler has entered into its probationary period as the default scheduler on FreeBSD. He says that if all goes well, it will remain the default through the rest of FreeBSD 5.* releases. He is requesting you to switch over and test it. The ULE scheduler was designed to address the growing needs of FreeBSD on SMP/SMT platforms and under heavy workloads. It supports CPU affinity and has constant execution time regardless of the number of threads."
er, post...
Think about the amount of posts about BSD proportional to the amound of posts about SCO reflects the amount of users BSD has.
And SCO ain't got no users, so draw your own conclusions.
So does it help BSD narrow the performance gap with Linux?
This is great news. The O(1) scheduler in Linux is awesome, and it's good to see FreeBSD keeping up. Now if we just had an O(1) way to squash *BSD trolls, Slashdot would be saved.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
GNU/KFreeBSD is a project that doesn't get enough press.
Most GNU systems use Linux as their kernel, but this doesn't have to be the case. The porting of GNU to the FreeBSD kernel is almost complete. (the project name changed from GNU/FreeBSD to GNU/KFreeBSD after a trademark discussion with some FreeBSD folks.)
FreeBSD people say that their kernel is rock solid, has the best uptimes, most robust networking, and now it's getting an improved scheduler. So it would make sense for GNU users to considering using the FreeBSD kernel instead of Linux.
Having everyone using the same kernel just makes life easier for worm writers, and corporate attacks such as the SCO fiasco.
Of course, adoption will be hampered by the marketing mistake of calling the whole OS "Linux", but I hope that choice of kernels will become more normal in the future. It would also help if they came up with a friendlier name than "GNU/KFreeBSD" (8 sylabyls!).
Anyway, I hope to start using the FreeBSD kernel soon.
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Click here for the *BSD schedule. Check early and check often: you don't want to miss the wake.
I uise freeBSD everyday, and I have to ask why you would care about GNU/freeBSD. The utilities are essentially equivelent. There is a little more bloat (read features) in some of the GNU stuff. Nothing really significant though.
Sure it is neat that they can do it. However to say everyone should want to run it? I don't get it.
For those who are too lazy to read the article, here is how it works.
Every BSD computer uses a Microtimer, which allocates 1 million time "slices" to each computer second. This is shared along with your processor speed. For example, if you have a lowly Pentium 200Mhz, you get 200hz a slice, and if you have a decent processor, such as the ones that come on those fucking expensive cheese graters, then you get 2khz/slice.
Around 1-1000 slices are used by the slicer.sys program that bsd386.exe uses to calculate the slicing/
Lets look at a sample process table and see the slices divded out
BSD gives slices out based on its priority, size and user modifier.
BSD:$ top.exe
Top for FreeBSD. Showing 5 processes
Xfree86 300000
KDE 500000
slicer 500
bsd386 39400
bash 20000
inetd 10000
bocod 30000
gimp 100000
100 bogoslicen.
...well when BSD dies, I guess we will move on.
You are in luck though - BSD is dying at an exponential rate!
Slashdot is safe, as the BSD section is has no importance at all.
It is now official - Slashdot has confirmed: The BSD section is dying
Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered *BSD community when recently I confirmed that relevant posts to the Slashdot BSD section account for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all posts.
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.
On Slashdot, a popular BSD News website, each BSD news story contains on average about 400 comments, of which, rounding up, 2 are of relevance to the subject. If 36,400 BSD users can generate 2 relevant posts, then it follows that there are 398 * 36,400 = 14,487,200 BSD trolls.
The trolling phenomenon is only a symptom, confronting BSD users with the reality that they fear. Before healing can begin there must be acceptance. That 14,487,200 people are so concerned highlights the obviousness of the truth. Yes, the majority of evidence tells us that BSD is dead and with it dies the BSD section. It is only a matter of time before the BSD section is replaced by a vigorous, younger, and more popular subject, such as adapting Linux for computerised sewing machines.
You don't need to be Nostradamous to see the inevitable end. As the clusterfuck that is the BSD section continues, potential users disappear into the ether, whereas existing users are literally torn apart by the back biting and politik of a thousand fragmenting incompatible kernels like shrapnel from a concussion grenade bursting out of a rotting pig's bladder.
Think of *BSD as a whale's corpse rotting on the bottom of the ocean, with the existing users the hagfish, tearing into the dank white flesh in a frenzy of self destruction. I would like to say BSD has gone to a better place, but I doubt it.
When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.
Hope this helps.
Now it all makes sense... CHEESE GRATERS.
So that's why I'm having trouble scaling on my Quad Xeon.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
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.
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current /2004-January/019501.html
t /2004-January/019478.html
t /2004-January/019480.html
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-curren
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-curren
Well EXCUSE ME, but look who is flaming who here!
Its FreeBSD developers ATTACKING people who don't agree with them. And you have the gaul to accuse me of that? Shame on you.
As much as I like FreeBSD, to say it is technically better than Linux just isn't true right now.
According to this, Con Kolivas suggests that the ULE scheduler is prone to the same problems that the Linux O(1) scheduler faced initially. Can someone with a more detailed knowledge of the workings of the ULE scheduler throw some light on this?
BSD is free today. But GPL is free tomorrow.