FreeBSD SMPng Interview with Scott Long

animus9 writes "There's an interesting interview with Scott Long over at the ONLamp.com. Scott explains the difference between the various locking methods, and the current status of SMP in FreeBSD 5. He also compares the new SMP implementation with that of FreeBSD 4.x, NetBSD, DragonFly, and Linux. Other items touched upon include scalability, the status of KSE & ULE, and much more."

Comments

Re:Why does SMP suck on FreeBSD?

[setagllib]

The frequency of releases seems to be in inverse proportion to quality. Linux releases half-arsed 'stable' releases which may not even work very frequently. The three 'definitive' BSDs typically release twice a year (this is a hard-coded tradition for Open*) and, excusing the developmental nature of FreeBSD 5.x, these are very solid and already have a full package tree and ready documentation, etc. which Linux never has had.

DragonFly has made one major release and another is on the horizon (if you read the lists or talk in #dragonflybsd on efnet). The first had an installer bug, they fixed it and released a new one immediately. The next should be in much better shape as the system is getting much more contribution and testing now (heck, even I submitted a trivial patch in response to joerg's request for GMP->OpenSSL arbitrary precision math translation).

It's the difference between the intelligent man who sits quietly and the idiot who never shuts up. "Those who release the worst, release it the most often".