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NetBSD 2.0 vs FreeBSD 5.3 Benchmarks
diegocgteleline.es writes "According to OSnews, Gregory McGarry benchmarked NetBSD 2.0 against FreeBSD 5.3 and found that NetBSD 2.0 surpasses FreeBSD 5.3 in most of benchmarks. The machine used for benchmarks is a 3 Ghz P4 so it doesn't reflect the improvements of FreeBSD 5.3 in the SMP arena, which is where their developers have put their efforts in the last years and where NetBSD is still using a "big-lock" model. Newsforge is also carrying a interview with some NetBSD developers about the technology behind NetBSD 2.0."
FreeBSD's focus is typically on overall throughput of massive server, with responsetime as a tradeoff, while this benchmark with all of its timings of single OS operations is more something realtimish?
If NetBSD aspires to be a RT focussed distro/OS, they'd better have benchmarked it against some Linux with RT patches?
As an OS junky, I have used both of these BSDs, and am very impressed with them. I use FreeBSD on my P4 3GHz laptop, as Project Evil lets me use the WiFi card nicely, and ACPI kind of works. I use NetBSD on my Sparc Station 5 and my Athlon desktop, and I have found both to be wonderful for desktop use and as servers. I salute both of the groups of people who make these OSes, and wish that I had more time to contribute.
I would assume that FreeBSD has a "default install" as tested that supports at least 2-way SMP, given the focus that has been made in FreeBSD. This compared with NetBSD could make a huge difference, is NetBSD's default install also setup for SMP. It is a known fact that using an SMP compiled kernel on pretty much ANY OS will result in slower performance on a single processor, as the added overhead of locking data structrues will have to occur.
It is important to note that all of the tests that were performed where done on a uni-processor workstation.
The blanket statement that "NetBSD 2.0 has better threading and process management and network latency than FreeBSD 5.3" does not hold water when the test suite is run on 2 and 4-way SMP systems. FreeBSD 5.x is an amazing engineering effort in which various parts of the kernel have been locked down and decent thread concurancy can occur on multi-proc machines. Part of the latency that you see in these benchmarks are due to the mtx_lock() and mtx_unlock() overhead that is incurred.
It is also important to note that P4-systems with HyperThreading (As the one used in these tests) have been the "bastard child" on FreeBSD. For the longest of times, compiling anything with CPUTYPE=p4 would produce broken code (In all fairness, this was mostly due to a set of bugs in GCC 3.x). Significant work was put into 5.3 to ensure that the Pentium 4 lived up to the Tier-1 platform robustness standard. In short, it would be fun to see these benchmarks be run on i386/pentium3, i386/Athlon-MP, amd64/opteron and Alpha as well!
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 the Amazing 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
In the freebsd mailing list there was a troll using this test to come down on a couple of highly skilled developers. /. folks to enjoy:
;-)
Being lazy by nature I copy/paste my respone in the mailing list for the
Benchmark are made to be put into perspective, although everybody has a right to say what (s)he wants to say, this doesn't mean that you have to say it.
It seems to me that FreeBSD is focusing it performance onto MP 64bit processors. As we can see in the benchmark it has in comparison to other projects a negative impact on UP system.
But just put it in the perspective of processor developments, AMD (followed by Intel) is heading towards a multi-core 64 bit systems, what probably becomes mainstream at the end of next year.
With this technology the FreeBSD model could have a winner on there hands.
Doing the same job but not having the same philosophy on it, is always inefficient, but in the real world it leads to the Darwin effect.
What means that the best solution gets there chance of survival against the test of time.
Luckily these are all BSD's, good solution will spread, just take a look at PF.
OpenBSD has a good user base but not compatible to the sum of user base of the other BSD's. Still PF has spread there wings beyond the user base of OpenBSD.
FreeBSD is just a name for an OS, if any other OS can give me more "bang for the buck" and provides a full solution, I will use it.
Be it DragonFly/Free/Open/Net, MacOsX, GNU+Linux, Windows or any of the other hundreds of OS'es out there.
I like the BSD license so I will tend to stick to "gratis" BSD OS'es.
All of the disagreements in development is a healthy process to make sure the sort "BSD" an not the specie *BSD will survive.
Sure I have my disappointments about some decision, but hey so is live, this ain't a fan club for next biggest boy band (he he BSD-Boyz), where using an OS to provide solution for our technologic problems, you favor your solution but don't blind yourself.
And when you don't blind yourself you re-evaluate your situation and move forward with the best solution for your problem.
Sure it is a pain to migrate my boxes to another OS (well that is the fun part) and do some massive rewriting of my documentation, but thats my job and I tend to like it. Just standing still and not progress has its attractiveness when you had a very rough ride, but it gets dull very soon and then you find yourself back on the dirty tracks.
But these are my opinion only, however I like to share them
[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
// The +1 readers have already seen it - and appreciated it.
... facts are facts. ;)
FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."
NetBSD:
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (30 Sep 2004)
OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
*BSD in general:
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.
Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD keeps losing market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personae?
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.
I've been an avid follower of the developments in FreeBSD for around 5 years now, so my overview of the entire history of "glue that binds" FreeBSD together isn't complete. That said, I've come to be a bit disappointed at how events in the last 18 months or so seem to be pushing the project in a direction that has made things more difficult, instead of more successful, that has shown distain for experience and quality and made FreeBSD a platform for large ego's to push their personal projects down everyone's throat.
The statistics sample from 2001 over a year was a cheap attempt to minimize Matt's contribution to the project. The reason why he has been mostly silent is probably one of the most prominent signs of his superior maturity. The fact that the official defense (mostly fronted by Greg, atm) he wasn't such a substantial committer is crap, for the most part. If one wanted to go by the stats, Jeff Robertson (sorry if I munged the spelling) would be one of the key committers, and his UMA system isn't even entirely ripe yet, it's just been committed within the sample timeframe. That suddenly phk is at the top of the list, is simple a result of his newest attempt to add another large chunk of bit rot to the project that he can later claim not to have time to maintain "unless someone is willing to pay for my time" (like the atm bits, the half-finished devd monster, et.al.) One can hardly get him to look at his malloc bits, that put his name in lights at some point in the long past.
Matt didn't contribute because he was convinced that that the smp development direction that was chosen (my impression at least from the archives and my fading memory) was overly complex, too complex for the number and talent level of the contributers involved, and that it would delay a release from the -current branch significantly. So he was right. I'll almost bet that that was a constant sore for John, who still hasn't gotten his long-promised, but little delivered re-entrant work done, but he always had time enough to object to any other commits that might help along the way. Strangely Julian and Matt could work together. One might attribute certain commits to both Matt and Julian (if that would matter anyway, since -core is interested in proving the opposite statistically).
If the issue here had anything to do with IPFW, then you all better get out your C-coder hats and take a little more time to fix that rotting pile of muck that has been the standard broken packet filter interface for FreeBSD long past its possible usefulness. A packet filter with no central maintainer which is subject to once yearly random feature bloat through some wild university project from Luigi. The brokenness that Luigi introduced (and the repository bloat through backing out and recommitting, ad absurdum) was probably no less a threat to security than anything Matt did. If the security officer was to be blatantly honest with himself, ipfw would be marked broken for either a full audit or full removal (just port obsd's pf or something that someone actually actively _cares_ about).
You've alienated Jordan, Mike, Bill Paul (for all I can see), Greenman, you constantly rag on Terry, even though he's seen and done more with FreeBSD than most of you, O'Brien is on the verge of quitting (since he, like I, am not convinced that GEOM is anything more than an ego trip that will never be completely maintained or usefully documented). There are certainly others, too, that have attempted to make technically correct contributions, but didn't fit into the sort of paranoid "glee club" that core would like to have around them. You guys lack the talent to steer the positive from Matt into the project and let the crap fall by the wayside. I'm not saying Matt's rants are the most intelligent thing he's done, but he's sat by the wayside and watch the superstars beat up the code to a point where it's less stable, slower, and more bloated than it ever was. I, for one, can understand his frustration (as I can with Mike's, Jordan's, and a few o
Wow.. nice job, mod. :-/
I just went from FreeBSD 5.3BETA3 to 5.3-RELEASE-p2 on my fileserver, and moved to a new hard disk at the same time. Somewhere between beta3 and -release, the decision to make SCHED_4BSD the default scheduler was made, and SCHED_ULE won't compile because it has an #error macro.
Anyways, the point of this is that because I was going to a new hard drive, I was doing a lot of dumping and paxing to transfer things over, some before installworld, and some after. I noticed once in 5.3-release that heavy disk activity made the system far less responsive, although the throughput did in fact seem a little higher. This _is_ all subjective talk, but it was serious enough that opening a new ssh session on the machine took substantially longer than before.
I want to see some benchmarks on how various systems behave when the disk activity is up, and how much throughput they can actually accomplish. I know that schedulers give disk-bound processes more run-time in order to finish quickly, and it seems almost like sched_4bsd is exaggerating that. It would be interesting see some numbers attached to my predictions.
IT IS OFFICIAL; WIRED NEWS CONFIRMS: LINUX IS SUPERIOR TO *BSD
*BSD is Dying, Says Respected Journal
Linux advocates have long insisted that open-source development results in better and more secure software. Now they have statistics to back up their claims.
According to a four-year analysis of the 5.7 million lines of Linux source code conducted by five Stanford University computer science researchers, the Linux kernel programming code is better and more secure than the programming code of *BSD.
The report, set to be released on Tuesday, states that the 2.6 Linux production kernel, shipped with software from Red Hat, Novell and other major Linux software vendors, contains 985 bugs in 5.7 million lines of code, well below the average for *BSD software. NetBSD, by comparison, contains about 40 million lines of code, with new bugs found on a frequent basis.
*BSD software typically has 20 to 30 bugs for every 1,000 lines of code, according to Carnegie Mellon University's CyLab Sustainable Computing Consortium. This would be equivalent to 114,000 to 171,000 bugs in 5.7 million lines of code.
The study identified 0.17 bugs per 1,000 lines of code in the Linux kernel. Of the 985 bugs identified, 627 were in critical parts of the kernel. Another 569 could cause a system crash, 100 were security holes, and 33 of the bugs could result in less-than-optimal system performance.
Seth Hallem, CEO of Coverity, a provider of source-code analysis, noted that the majority of the bugs documented in the study have already been fixed by members of the Linux development community.
"Our findings show that Linux contains an extremely low defect rate and is evidence of the strong security of Linux," said Hallem. "Many security holes in software are the result of software bugs that can be eliminated with good programming processes. When we looked at BSD, we found a high defect rate that indicates very poor programming practices. It is clear to us that BSD is a dying operating system. We predict that it'll be dead within a year or two, except among OS dilettante dabblers."
The Linux source-code analysis project started in 2000 at the Stanford University Computer Science Research Center as part of a large research initiative to improve core software engineering processes in the software industry.
The initiative now continues at Coverity, a software engineering startup that now employs the five researchers who conducted the study. Coverity said it intends to start providing Linux bug analysis reports on a regular basis and will make a summary of the results freely available to the Linux development community.
"This is a benefit to the Linux development community, and we appreciate Coverity's efforts to help us improve the security and stability of Linux," said Andrew Morton, lead Linux kernel maintainer. Morton said developers have already addressed the top-priority bugs uncovered in the study.
*BSD Obituary
*BSD, 27, of Berkeley, CA died Monday, Jan. 6, 2005. Born July 3, 1976, it was the creation of a cluster of pot-smoking hippies who went to Illinois and came home with a reel of tape. Rather than smoke the tape, they uploaded it and hacked on it a little.
*BSD was known for its C shell and early TCP/IP implementation. After being banished from UC Berkeley, it was ported to the x86 platform, where it fell into the hands of heavier pot-smokers who liked to argue. Soon, the project had splintered into 12 different Balkanized projects. Until its death, there was almost constant fighting in and amongst these groups, sometimes degenerating into out-and-out fistfights.
*BSD is survived by its superior, Linux, as well as several commercial unix implementations. It may be missed by some who knew it, although most of them are said to be mere OS dilettante dabblers.
A funeral will be held at 2 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 9, at the Berkeley Chapel on the UC campus, with interment to follow via the burning of the original *BSD tapes and scattering of the ashes over the San Francisco Bay. The Rev. Lou "Buddy" Stubbs will officiate.
The family will receive friends from 7 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 8, at the funeral home.
3 people just replied to a disinforming troll.
... some actual facts. ;)
FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."
NetBSD:
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (30 Sep 2004)
OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
*BSD in general:
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.
Now, Apache uses a BSD style license but they have an open development model which allows them to take advantage of a very large developer pool in order to stay ahead of their competition. In fact although proprietary versions of Apache exist which perform better than the official releases, SGI has put out some open source patches which generate even larger performance boosts. This is the reason why they have such a strong showing in terms of market share.
BSD once had potential but the procedural problems they are experiencing hurt it when it comes to the market. I suspect that this is probably in part because the BSD teams are not interested in such things, and that is a shame... In fact, although I labeled it as an inferior OS, this is not due to lack of progress within BSD -- it has been progressing somewhat, but rather because all the improvements they make tend to be quickly copied by their competitors AND they lack the developer pool to stay ahead of this game (a problem which does not exist in the Linux or Apache communities, though for somewhat different reasons).
I don't think that there is enough widespread support for BSD to save the operating system. What must be done is an opening up of the development process OR a GPL-style restriction on redistribution. In many ways I favor the former.
Even in a worst case scenario, I don't see BSD completely dying. I think the developers are less into competition and more into a sort of idealized cooperation. As a result, even if BSD becomes more marginalized, I don't think that it will die outright. It will most likely outlive Netware, for example.
Finally, a *BSD related discussion on /. that's constructive and objective, with people giving valid points of view and opinions.. Keep it up!
[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 when you get distracted by the
In yet another footnote to BSD's and the Bay State clan's tragic history, the eldest sister of the late President John F. Kennedy was lobotomized at age 23 when doctors advised her father that it would help his daughter and calm her hard to handle mood swings. Joseph Kennedy had feared her mental retardation would cloud his political dreams for his sons.
"Rosemary was a woman, and there was a dread fear of pregnancy, disease and disgrace," author Laurence Leamer wrote in an unauthorized Kennedy biography called The Kennedy Women: The Saga of an American Family. Mr. Leamer soon followed-up with his Pulitzer nominated Rose Kennedy's BSD Kernel Secrets.
In a statement released after her death, the Kennedy family said, "From her earliest years, her mental retardation was a continuing inspiration to each of us, and a powerful source of our family's commitment to do all we can to help all persons with disabilities live full and productive lives. Millions of people of all ages have greater hope today because of Rosemary. In no small part the BSD operating system is a direct result of her occupational therapy."
The third child of Rose and Joseph Kennedy was born in Boston Sept. 13, 1918. Despite brain damage, before her lobotomy she filled diaries with fanciful tales of tea parties, dress fittings, travels abroad and a White House visit. She started development of the BSD kernel during those early years. Even after her lobotomy she continued work on the BSD kernel, albeit at a more relaxed pace.
Because of Rosemary Kennedy's condition, her younger sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, became an activist in the field of mental retardation. Shriver later founded the Special Olympics for mentally disabled athletes. In 1984, she took over her sister's care after their mother had a stroke. Thanks to a generous endowment from the Kennedy fortunes, Rosemary was installed as head of Berkeley's CSRG where Rosemary continued to pursue her dream of a free BSD kernel.
While Rosemary Kennedy was kept out of the public eye for more than 40 years, her retardation became public in 1960 just after her big brother was elected president. Although a low point in her life, she tirelessly continued to labor after her vision of a free BSD operating system. Rosemary's efforts were subsequently rewarded with the release of 386BSD, the forerunner to FreeBSD.
Shortly thereafter, Rosemary would go on to head-up the FreeBSD project as its director and lead architect. To this day FreeBSD is often jokingly referred to by insiders as "Rosemary's Baby". Indeed from this inside joke emerged "Chuckie" the cartoon devil which continues to serve as FreeBSD's mascot.
Rosemary lived most of her life in a Jefferson, Wis., institution, the St. Coletta School for Exceptional Children. In her memory, St. Coletta's has started an in-residence scholarship program for other BSD developers.
I just want to inform whoever modded this crap up (at +3!) that this is an old troll. It first appeared on the FreeBSD mailing lists in january 2004 with the false signature "Maxim Hermion", in order to imitate the name (and the email address) of the FreeBSD committer Maxime Henrion.
This is what the real Maxime Henrion says about it, in a reply to that troll message.
Please check the sources before modding things up...
[note: 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 when you get distracted
For those bitching that a microbenchmark's not worth beans, I ask that you beat this with FreeBSD (it's a bit old, but hey):
. se/LSR3-m/
Aparently the folks from the Swedish University Network (SUNet) at Lulea managed to break their previous Internet 2 Landspeed record for both single and multiple streams, using NetBSD again. Comparison:
Old record:
* 838860800000 bytes in 1588 real seconds = 4226 Mbit/sec o
* Distance: 16,343 km (10,157 miles)
* 69.073 Petabit-meters/second (12% increase)
New record:
* 1966080000000 bytes in 3648.81 real seconds = 4310.62 Mbit/sec
* Distance: 28,983 km (18,013 miles)
* 124.935 Petabit-meters/second (78.6% increase)
The big difference in distance and thus the record itself is due to suboptimal routing, crossing the ocean three times. Nonetheless, thanks to a newer version of end machines' operating system -- a prerelease of NetBSD 2.0 -- and some newer routers, this record was achieved on a production network just in the previous case. See the project pages for single stream and multiple streams for more information!
http://proj.sunet.se/LSR3-s/
http://proj.sunet
At the risk of burning my karma, I don't think this is acceptable.
:-/
The parent (modded at +4 right now!) made its first appearance on the FreeBSD mailing lists, with the false signature "Maxim Hermion", in order to imitate the name (and the email address) of the FreeBSD committer Maxime Henrion.
Here's what Maxime Henrion (the real FreeBSD committer) writes about it, in a reply to this troll message.
This being said, one can suppose that nobody who is intellectually honest would call this anything other than a defaming piece of crap, authored by a worthless troll.
Still, on this forum, a piece of crap like this has mysteriously managed to reach the +4 level, by doing nothing else than gratuitously defaming FreeBSD.
To the people that modded this up: nice job indeed... Maybe, according to your agenda, it really *is* a nice job.
--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.
How does a recent OpenBSD (3.5 or higher) on a typical non-SMP PC compare to a recent NetBSD or FreeBSD?
I hear it is slower but I'm wondering if anyone has any actual experience.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
Someone pointed out that I was wrong about the origin of that post - the original was actually written 2 years ago (Feb 2003) by Shaun Jurrens, a FreeBSD user (here's what he says about the troll I previously linked).
I apologize, but I googled before talking, and the oldest result I found was the troll I linked in parent (Jan 2004).
Still, I don't think that the text of a 2-year-old rant, copied and pasted by a troll, is objectively worth any modding up. And FWIW, what I think of the ones who do it doesn't change very much.
- NetBSD (fastest)
- OpenBSD (happy medium)
- FreeBSD (slowest)
Of course, by this time next year the rankings might change, as all of these operating systems are still under development.Thanks a lot. I kinda figured this, but I'd heard such bad stuff about OpenBSD's performance relative to FreeBSD, I figured it might still be last.
But have you actually run them youself on similar hardware?
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
since OpenBSD doesn't have UBC yet (NetBSD has had it since 1.6, linux has had it since 2.4, and FreeBSD has had it since 2.0.5), OpenBSD is slower than even FreeBSD 5.x for applications whch need large file cache. e.g. web server, nfs server, etc....
I am not trying to sling shit on OpenBSD here, I've been using it as my primary desktop, net connected servers and firewall OS for very many years and will continue to do so. However I had to do something new recently that caused me to switch to NetBSD 2.0 for this project due to massive performance gains that could not be ignored (this may be due to my scripts being far from optimum at the moment, but)...
I have been doing some intensive data mining on some large datasets (500MB - 1GB) on a 2GB RAM PC.
OpenBSD 3.6 was taking days to do what NetBSD 2.0 was doing in under an hour and it appears to have mostly come down to NetBSD's disk caching. Multi passes at the large files show the disk access light come on just once on NetBSD and then the analysis flies. After seeing OpenBSD 3.6 performing so much slower with this task, I tried Fedora Core 3 and found it to also perform very much slower than NetBSD. In both cases, disk light is hard-on for the very slow duration of the task (which I did not finish for the Fedora machine because it was quickly apparent that it was also very slow).
Both BSD installs had noatime, softdeps and same partitioning for the filesystems being thrashed. I'd be curious to see if the gap closes much when I switch this over to perl. Disk performance even for single pass time trials in NetBSD are better than OpenBSD.
From now on, NetBSD will be my number cruncher. I am really shocked. I expected a difference, but not such a huge difference.
I thought Fedora Core with a 2.6 Linux kernel and disk caching would have kept up or perhaps even been better. Any config tips for that? I'd like to give SuSE 9.2 a go too... Regardless, NetBSD has really won me at the moment for disk intensive tasks.
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.
As an IDS running snort, I've had problems with the FreeBSD nge driver. I need these NICs for monitoring gigabit links. Simply "upping" the interface caused FreeBSD to panic. I posted here and there, and opened a problem report, but got no replies. FWIW, I never saw a kernel panic until I used 5.3, but I do acknowledge that the technology added is new and results may very.
In the end, I am unable to use FreeBSD 5.3 for servers. I think the new SMP stuff is broken and unproven. I will continue using the 4.x FreeBSD line since it's much more stable.
One last comment, I must admit that in order to get something stable for my IDSs, I installed Gentoo. NetBSD might be a reasonable choice too.
Same old FUD, that has been disproved countless times...
OpenBSD doesn't turn on softupdates by default - you have to do it manually.
Neither does NetBSD actually. And if you look at his post another time you'll notice he acknowledges their functionality. The hard fact is NetBSD is a speed daemon.
Sam ty sig.
It's a pity that DragonFlyBSD wasn't benchmarked in place of FreeBSD.
{{.sig}}
Now, Apache uses a BSD style license but they have an open development model which allows them to take advantage of a very large developer pool in order to stay ahead of their competition. In fact although proprietary versions of Apache exist which perform better than the official releases, SGI has put out some open source patches which generate even larger performance boosts. This is the reason why they have such a strong showing in terms of market share.
BSD once had potential but the procedural problems they are experiencing hurt it when it comes to the market. I suspect that this is probably in part because the BSD teams are not interested in such things, and that is a shame... In fact, although I labeled it as an inferior OS, this is not due to lack of progress within BSD -- it has been progressing somewhat, but rather because all the improvements they make tend to be quickly copied by their competitors AND they lack the developer pool to stay ahead of this game (a problem which does not exist in the Linux or Apache communities, though for somewhat different reasons).
I don't think that there is enough widespread support for BSD to save the operating system. What must be done is an opening up of the development process OR a GPL-style restriction on redistribution. In many ways I favor the former.
Even in a worst case scenario, I don't see BSD completely dying. I think the developers are less into competition and more into a sort of idealized cooperation. As a result, even if BSD becomes more marginalized, I don't think that it will die outright. It will most likely outlive Netware, for example.