From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Jul 24 10:12:07 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A89DD16A4DA for ; Mon, 24 Jul 2006 10:12:07 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from tedm@toybox.placo.com) Received: from mail.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com (mail.web-strider.com [65.75.192.90]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 24F3C43D4C for ; Mon, 24 Jul 2006 10:12:06 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from tedm@toybox.placo.com) Received: from coolf89ea26645 (nat-rtr.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com [65.75.197.130]) by mail.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com (8.11.1/8.11.1) with SMTP id k6OABqx45059; Mon, 24 Jul 2006 03:11:52 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from tedm@toybox.placo.com) Message-ID: <002101c6af09$aacf32f0$3c01a8c0@coolf89ea26645> From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" To: , "Greg Barniskis" , "Nick Withers" References: <20060713181058.56349.qmail@web33309.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 03:12:26 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1807 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1807 X-Mailman-Approved-At: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 11:43:03 +0000 Cc: jerrymc@clunix.cl.msu.edu, danial_thom@yahoo.com, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Are hardware vendors starting to bail on FreeBSD ... ? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 10:12:07 -0000 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Danial Thom" To: "Greg Barniskis" ; "Nick Withers" Cc: ; ; Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2006 11:10 AM Subject: Re: Are hardware vendors starting to bail on FreeBSD ... ? > Burying your head in the sand is a common method > used by stupid people that have no answer to the > truth. I don't blame you; you guys don't want > your employers to know that you've wasted man > 1000s of their dollars because you don't know the > performance characteristics of the hardware > you've recommended. It must be thoroughly > embarrassing. > I have been busy with other things the last week so I missed this interesting thread, but I will still add my $0.02 cents. I've used FreeBSD since 1.0 and 386BSD before that. As for claims that the newer versions of FreeBSD are equal or faster than the older versions, that is simply absurd. The older versions of FreeBSD are faster, in many cases a lot faster. Why? Very simple, they are -smaller-. They take less core ram, their kernels are smaller, there is less code there. All you have to do to see this is try booting FBSD 6 on a 80386 and compare it's performance to FBSD 3.X on a 386. Only in the area of filesystem performance - such as if you have a system like a Usenet News system with many hundreds of thousands of files scattered over the disk, are the newer versions faster. But, the fact is we are (hopefully) not all building our servers on 80386's these days. When the cost of multi-gigahertz equipment is as low as it is, and the cost of even 2-3 year old single gigahertz name brand servers are so cheap, this discussion is really of no importance whatsoever. Historically in 95% of installations out there, the way they solve speed problems is to throw money at faster hardware. As a business owner it costs me less money to replace every last stick of server gear in my big business every 2 years than to pay for the insurance on the van out back that the delivery boy drives. Only in extremely esoteric and high end database centers and suchlike do they start to care about code optimization and speed. And I will wager that nobody on this list is running one of those installations. I do agree with Danial that most USERS on this list are burying their heads in the sand on this issue. But I will point out that there isn't really any reason they shouldn't be. What the market wants is features, not speed. And that is what the FreeBSD developers are working on. Ted