Can Linux Do it?

Dark Fiber writes "The AGE newspaper has a big article (great big 3 page spread) on Linux that is very interesting. Lotta questions, Lotta answers." One of the better mainstream articles- it gets distributions right, covers the GNU/Linux connection, and more.

Comments

time is on our side-nitpicks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well overall the article was ok. Nitpicking time now.

"Dan Kusnetzky, the operating environment program director of the research firm IDC,boldly predicts that GNU/Linux will be the fastest growing PC environment until 2003."
Why until 2003? What will happen in 2003?

"Debian comes with 2,250 free software packages, many of which are small utilities - things you would expect to be built into a commercial operating system.This is an important point: you have to cobble the environment together yourself."

Depends. Is the default enviroment acceptable?
If it isn't then only a few changes might be needed to be made to make it acceptable.


"To set up GNU/Linux properly you will need expert installers. This is also the case with big Microsoft Windows rollouts too, but after an initial Windows installation, power users or
less experienced IT staff are more likely to be able to set up subsequent machines."

Umm with Linuxes better consistency someone who is doing multiple installations will find it easier.
Anyone who's done windows installation is familiar with its non-determanistic nature.

""They told me: 'No need for powering down the box, Linux is stable enough to run for months and does not need periodic shutdowns like some systems.' They didn't even think people paying the power bills might power down their computers when they are unused.""

The above quote came from the server side of the article. Most servers are kept running in a nearly continuoes bases anyway. besides the cost of keeping them on isn't that great and the reliability is improved by not stressing your system thru thermal cycling.

"But according to project leader Lalo Martins, "Ox" as he calls it, is having difficulty garnering support.

"There was a lot of manifest interest in a 'complete' object model like Ox," he says. "Even Richard Stallman liked the idea and embraced it into the GNU project. But it is a very experimental field, and there weren't enough developers to really get the project off the ground. It's a pity. I'd really like to see free software once more do something that hasn't been done yet, instead of playing catch-up on proprietary software."

Umm, two things Lalo.
One you need to get the word out about your project. I can't begin to tell you the number of projects I've stumbled across in my searches that don't seem to be commonly known.
Two how many in the Linux development community are well versed in Object Oriented technologies?

"The sentiments of Martins lend credibility to the view of Microsoft vice-president Jim Alchin that the rebel OS is just "chasing the tail-lights" of the others. And to deliver a business advantage to its users a platform must offer services which are beyond that of its competitors"

Microsoft isn't noted in the industry for creating innovation (marketing excepted). This until fairly recently was a sore point with Bill Gates.
A lot of MSes so called "taillight technology" has really came from outside the company, not within.
So Jim Alchin and MS really don't have as much bragging rights as they would like to think.
Come up with something that was as great a step as the WIMP interface was from the command line, and then you can start bragging. Otherwise your just another "follow the leader".

Jobs gained or jobs lost

[AshNazg]

I find the article quite balanced, and this quotation is interesting:
"One way is the dumbing down of computing and IT by increasing reliance on monolithic solutions from a single supplier. The other is increasing the knowledge base at every level of computing and choosing from an increasing range of sources."

It goes on to describe how the adoption of Linux would create more jobs for technical people.

This arguments contradict quite nicely the guy at
www.microsoft.com that argued that free-software would cause job losses.

In reality it can change the focus from ant-like programmers working for Microsoft to independent programmers/admins working for the small companies empowered by Linux.

It's started...

[Matts]

Articles about Linux are now quoting the DH Brown report, just because it's the first one of its kind. How soon before they start quoting the Mindcrafty study? I bet not long.

If Red Hat or VAR don't do some serious Linux benchmarking soon, and prove its SMP capabilities, then Linux will simply get this information perpetuated. Hurry up with those benchmarks!!!

(Oh, and someone needs to write some performance tuning docs, including SMP + Large memory info...)

Matt

file system benchmarks

[ChrisRijk]

I don't suppose you've been using lmbench have you? I had someone quoting me Linux VS Solaris on Sparc the other day, using lmbench, and was somewhat dubious as to the results. That's not to say they were rigged, but more like they were not representative of real world situations, especially since I have used Solaris, Linux and also FreeBSD in real world server situations for quite a while.

For a bit of fun, the other day, I wrote a simple little Perl script to do some simple benchmarking:
#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use Time::HiRes qw(gettimeofday);


my $test_dir = "t/";
my @tests = (\&create_files,\&delete_files);

foreach my $no_files (10, 30, 100, 300, 1000, 3000, 10000) {
foreach my $test (@tests) {
my $start_time = gettimeofday();
my $name = &$test($no_files);
my $end_time = gettimeofday();
printf("%6d %10s: %s\n", $no_files, $name, 1000*($end_time-$start_time) / $no_files);
}
}

exit(0);

sub delete_files {
my ($max) = @_;
my $num;
foreach $num (1..$max) {
my $file = $test_dir.$num;
unlink($file) || die "Failed to delete '$file' :$!";
}
return "Delete files";
}

sub create_files {
my ($max) = @_;
my $num;
foreach $num (1..$max) {
my $file = $test_dir.$num;
open(DA_FILE, "> $file") || die "failed to open '$file' :$!";
close(DA_FILE);
}
return "Create files";
}


# Results - the values are average time per file in mili-seconds.
#
# SPARC Solaris 2.6
# 10 Create files: 17.3946022987366
# 10 Delete files: 8.25690031051636
# 30 Create files: 16.6551351547241
# 30 Delete files: 8.31733147303263
# 100 Create files: 16.6641497612
# 100 Delete files: 8.32810044288635
# 300 Create files: 17.0558432737986
# 300 Delete files: 8.49879026412964
# 1000 Create files: 19.0030739307404
# 1000 Delete files: 8.36658298969269
#
# Linux 2.2 x86
# 10 Create files: 0.0998973846435547
# 10 Delete files: 0.678598880767822
# 30 Create files: 0.0572681427001953
# 30 Delete files: 0.0586668650309245
# 100 Create files: 0.0708794593811035
# 100 Delete files: 0.0524997711181641
# 300 Create files: 0.0964502493540446
# 300 Delete files: 0.0535901387532552
# 1000 Create files: 0.223060011863708
# 1000 Delete files: 0.0744880437850952
# 3000 Create files: 0.529780666033427
# 3000 Delete files: 0.0793236494064331
# 10000 Create files: 1.90500370264053
# 10000 Delete files: 0.145310199260712

The Solaris 2.6 system above is a 270Mhz Ultra 5, with a simple SCSI setup. The Linux 2.2 system is a 400Mhz PII system with striped SCSI - ie it had the better discs as well as processor. I did also benchmark a 3 year old Ultra2 (it had a 200Mhz UltraSparc-II - I didn't even know they went that slow!) but that had Solaris 7, and I put file-journaling on (file-jounaling is a standard option on Solaris 7, even free Solaris 7 for x86) - but I don't have the exact numbers for that. But it was pretty steady at around 2ms per file for create/delete, even up to 10000 files. I've also benchmarked on a Solaris 7 x86 (300 Mhz K6-2) with an IDE drive, which was a bit faster than the Ultra2 system - for file creation, it was faster than the Linux system above, for the 10000 files value. Sorry I don't have the exact numbers - the two Solaris 7 boxes aren't available to me at the moment. (this looks dodgy I know, but I wasn't expecting to be quoting these figures right now)

Incidentaly, on FreeBSD (2.2.8 anyway) it was a bit slower than Solaris 2.6 on a similarly spec'ed machine.

I criticise lmbench above. The same criticism can be equally applied to my program - it's pretty rare you get cases like this.

I certainly don't have much problem accepting that the standard Linux FS is faster than the standard Solaris FS. However, I do know that the Linux FS does cache very agresively. Some would say too much - problems with file-system integrity are much more common on Linux than Solaris or FreeBSD. This also means that if memory useage is heavy, the Linux file-system will slow down much more compared for FreeBSD and Solaris. Basically, with the Linux fs even though the operation has completed, what is on the hard disc is another matter. Because they cache much less for writes, on FreeBSD and Solaris when the tests finish, the hard disk is up to date, ignoring the hard disc's own cache. (I'm only mentioning FreeBSD and Solaris because that's what I've used. It would be pretty similar on other Unix systems)

So, for the file-system, Linux has sacrificed some stability and reliability for performance. For desktop users this probably isn't too bad, but I (most sysadmin I know agree) wouldn't find it acceptable for anything 'mission critical'. Indeed, I have had a Linux installation die on me, and have had to bounce Linux servers, which always makes me kinda nervous. I've also seen Linux run fsck on bootup, even when I did a 'clean' reboot. However, on Solaris 7 (with file journaling on) fsck doesn't even need to be run on bootup because of the way file jounaling works. (incidentally, you can even turn file journalaing on/off under Solaris 7 while the system is running)

On another note, Linux does have a file jounaling file system in the works (I don't know if it is a full log file system) which would make things even faster, and also, more reliable. However, Solaris does have full log file systems available now (there's one from Sun, another from Veritas, and maybe even others), and they have been available for some time. (you just gotta pay for them). Most other commercial Unixes have file logging/journaling.

I have also seen cases where for servers under heavy load, Solaris could cope, but Linux couldn't - this was on indentical x86 hardware. This does reflect that fact that Solaris scales better than Linux. You can actually see this on the values I quote above - as the number of files in increased, the speed under Solaris was pretty constant, but with Linux it started to slow down - basicaly as the limits of Linux's cachine was started to being pushed.

However, this all proves very little because nothing I have shown here is even close to being a proper test. I'm not an expert on these things either... but maybe it'll give you some things to think about.

Linux can't touch Solaris?

[Yasha]

In the tests I've done, Linux is overwhelmingly faster than Solaris on the same hardware. Do some file system benchmarking.. ufs vs. ext2. You'll see what I mean. Talk to the Sparc/Ultra Linux boyz.. they have done an incredible job of actually taking full advantage of the Sun hardware.

This article -seems- to be reasonably okay, but I see a great deal of off the cuff remarks that are unsubstantiated. Yes, I realize they are obtusely referring to non-technical issues, however that is not entirely made clear here.

They make a couple of good points, I think, about the difficulty of migrating to Linux from Windows, but then that's not a Linux issue, is it? It's a culture issue.

And the statement about how there are a 'miniscule' amount of apps on Linux compared to Windows.. umm.. I think that's a bit harsh. It's true that you can't just go to EggHead and buy a paperclip energized office suite, or a nifty 3D screen saver, but Linux has a fair amount of apps. And more to come in the next year. :)

So overall, I think the article was a good read, but was biased a bit, and lacking vision. Heh. Grade: C.

----