\U@\h stated we both know why NFS is mostly implemented in kernel-land.
Because it's an ugly, god-awful hack that requires kernel mode support to even work? Or did you have a good reason for putting something that huge and ugly into the kernel?
They build a complete digital video storage server based on PC components and embedded FreeBSD. This is professional-quality stuff, used for record-to-air delays and such.
Just as in comparing BSD and Linux, Solaris depends on what you're trying to do with it and what you're running it on. If you're turning a PC into a workstation (where have I heard that before?) Solaris is not going to feel as fast as Linux or BSD.
If, on the other hand, you are running a heavily loaded server on a high-end 4-CPU server box with gigs of RAM, Solaris screams. It has arguably the best SMP support available, much better than NT or Linux, well tested and well developed multi- threaded servers (think NFSv3 here), and good commercial support for high-end applications like Netscape Enterprise server and Oracle database server. (Probably better support in the SPARC world than x86, but the x86 system is still very fast on high-end SMP equipment.)
You certainly won't be wasting your time or your ten dollars to order and install Solaris on a system and do some poking around. Make sure you have plenty of spare disk space, though, Solaris is huge.
NFSv3 isn't all that far off in FreeBSD. It's been in the releases for quite some time now, and with the recent work by Matt Dillon and a small army of bug finders and testers, might actually be working well soon.
I don't know if NFSv3 is really "NFS done right," I'll defer to Mr. Cox on that one. I assume you're referring to Alan Cox of Linux fame, rather than Alan Cox of FreeBSD fame.
Yes, FreeBSD has their very own Alan Cox. Now you see just how homognenous the projects are getting.;^)
Yes, you could make a new release based on FreeBSD, with a SysV init system. You'd be better off just developing an init system for FreeBSD that answers the limitations of both the BSD and SysV methods, each of which has plusses and minuses. You could not, however, call your system FreeBSD (tm) because FreeBSD is a trademark of FreeBSD, Inc.
Daemon's Advocate is the "back of the 'zine" column at Daemon News. The magazine is also not about Linux, but rather about BSD, so of course it is written from a BSD standpoint. Take a few minutes to read the rest of the 'zine and you'll begin to get the flavor. You're (apparently) a Linux user, so obviously you're not an idiot.;^)
The phrasing "step up" was unfortunate, I should have said "move to". The phenomenon of Linux users adopting FreeBSD, NetBSD, or OpenBSD *has* been a large portion of the new users of BSD in the past 18 months, and seems to be growing. This article was a comment on that trend, NOT an exhortation to Linux users to dump Linux and move to BSD.
As for a technical points, I'll point out one here that illustrates the difference in depth. In the virtual memory system, when a process needs a new memory page, both Linux and FreeBSD "zero" the page before handing it to the process, so the process won't get potentially privileged data, like passwords, from the previous owner of the page. On Linux, the page is zeroed as it is allocated. This works well. On FreeBSD, there is a queue of pages that have been released but not zeroed, and a queue of pre-zeroed pages. A kernel task running at idle priority zeroes pages from the free list and places them on the pre-zeroed list when the system isn't busy. This tends to make new page allocations faster when spare cycles are available.
Due partly to code like this, BSD has a well deserved reputation for running very well under heavy loads. It is commonly used by high volume web and ftp servers.
If you'd like to read more about details like that, read the white paper by Matt Dillon, or better yet, look into things yourself. This is only software, it's not voodoo.
If you really want to learn the technical differences between Linux and one or more of the BSD systems, the best way to do that is to install them both and live with them side-by-side. I doubt you'll find either one of the always the best for every task, but you may discover you like one more than the other for good reasons. Either way, you win -- you've made an intelligent choice rather than just clinging to prejudices and others opinions.
More like the FreeBSD folks know that it hits the same limitations as Linux. FreeBSD, like Linux, is a work in progress. Both will overcome this hurdle and continue to be better than NT in many ways.
Don't forget to stick those lovely "Powered by FreeBSD" stickers on the boxes after you get the penguins pried off. It's lovely to see the little smiling daemon keeping an eye on things...;^)
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\U@\h stated we both know why NFS is mostly implemented in kernel-land.
Because it's an ugly, god-awful hack that requires kernel mode support to even work? Or did you have a good reason for putting something that huge and ugly into the kernel?
http://www.plutotech.com/
If, on the other hand, you are running a heavily loaded server on a high-end 4-CPU server box with gigs of RAM, Solaris screams. It has arguably the best SMP support available, much better than NT or Linux, well tested and well developed multi- threaded servers (think NFSv3 here), and good commercial support for high-end applications like Netscape Enterprise server and Oracle database server. (Probably better support in the SPARC world than x86, but the x86 system is still very fast on high-end SMP equipment.)
You certainly won't be wasting your time or your ten dollars to order and install Solaris on a system and do some poking around. Make sure you have plenty of spare disk space, though, Solaris is huge.
I don't know if NFSv3 is really "NFS done right," I'll defer to Mr. Cox on that one. I assume you're referring to Alan Cox of Linux fame, rather than Alan Cox of FreeBSD fame.
Yes, you could make a new release based on FreeBSD, with a SysV init system. You'd be better off just developing an init system for FreeBSD that answers the limitations of both the BSD and SysV methods, each of which has plusses and minuses. You could not, however, call your system FreeBSD (tm) because FreeBSD is a trademark of FreeBSD, Inc.
The phrasing "step up" was unfortunate, I should have said "move to". The phenomenon of Linux users adopting FreeBSD, NetBSD, or OpenBSD *has* been a large portion of the new users of BSD in the past 18 months, and seems to be growing. This article was a comment on that trend, NOT an exhortation to Linux users to dump Linux and move to BSD.
As for a technical points, I'll point out one here that illustrates the difference in depth. In the virtual memory system, when a process needs a new memory page, both Linux and FreeBSD "zero" the page before handing it to the process, so the process won't get potentially privileged data, like passwords, from the previous owner of the page. On Linux, the page is zeroed as it is allocated. This works well. On FreeBSD, there is a queue of pages that have been released but not zeroed, and a queue of pre-zeroed pages. A kernel task running at idle priority zeroes pages from the free list and places them on the pre-zeroed list when the system isn't busy. This tends to make new page allocations faster when spare cycles are available.
Due partly to code like this, BSD has a well deserved reputation for running very well under heavy loads. It is commonly used by high volume web and ftp servers.
If you'd like to read more about details like that, read the white paper by Matt Dillon, or better yet, look into things yourself. This is only software, it's not voodoo.
If you really want to learn the technical differences between Linux and one or more of the BSD systems, the best way to do that is to install them both and live with them side-by-side. I doubt you'll find either one of the always the best for every task, but you may discover you like one more than the other for good reasons. Either way, you win -- you've made an intelligent choice rather than just clinging to prejudices and others opinions.
May the source be with you!
No, you got it backwards! BSD is the *Lite* side of the Source! It says right there in the CVS logs...
Don't forget to stick those lovely "Powered by FreeBSD" stickers on the boxes after you get the penguins pried off. It's lovely to see the little smiling daemon keeping an eye on things... ;^)