From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Jul 25 13:23:23 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id NAA23971 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Sat, 25 Jul 1998 13:23:23 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from smtp3.xs4all.nl (smtp3.xs4all.nl [194.109.6.53]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id NAA23965 for ; Sat, 25 Jul 1998 13:23:19 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from plm@smtp3.xs4all.nl) Received: from localhost. (dc2-isdn167.dial.xs4all.nl [194.109.148.167]) by smtp3.xs4all.nl (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id WAA20870; Sat, 25 Jul 1998 22:22:48 +0200 (CEST) Received: (from plm@localhost) by localhost. (8.9.0/8.9.0) id WAA01050; Sat, 25 Jul 1998 22:22:46 +0200 To: Sascha Schumann Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD or LINUX??? - Which one should I choose? References: <87n29yjrlr.fsf@totally-fudged-out-message-id> From: Peter Mutsaers Date: 25 Jul 1998 10:18:08 +0200 In-Reply-To: Sascha Schumann's message of "Fri, 24 Jul 1998 22:22:40 +0200 (MET DST)" Message-ID: <873ebqfinz.fsf@muon.xs4all.nl> X-Mailer: Gnus v5.6.24/Emacs 20.2 Lines: 81 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Hello, I've run both Linux and FreeBSD for a long time. Currently running RH5.1 with 2.0.35 or 2.1.110 kernel. But I'll move back to FreeBSD soon. >> On Fri, 24 Jul 1998 22:22:40 +0200 (MET DST), Sascha Schumann >> said: SS> That must be "hearsay", all Linux changes are tested by SS> hundreds (maybe thousands) people on the whole earth before SS> they make it into the stable kernel (actually 2.0.35). So, if SS> you use the stable kernel, you will always have a completely SS> stable os. Maybe, but from my experience, FreeBSD (even -current) is more stable than Linux. >> - Linux scheduling algorithm is poor on high system load >> (THUS - to run an internet server I'd prefer FreeBSD!) SS> Which of the scheduling algorithms do you mean? There are SS> actually three I remember now (rr, fifo, other). And there is SS> Linux-rt (realtime support). Does FreeBSD have this? This is really true, and one of the reasons I'm annoyed right now. I ran FreeBSD, now use Linux and am upset about the (relative of course, Windows is much worse of course) poorer scheduling I experience. Also FreeBSD's filesystem is much better. I've got both UDMA IDE and SCSI disks, and on both bonnie shows FreeBSD has much better performance and lower CPU usage during heavy disk I/O, and also during simple sequential read. Somehow my UDMA IDE controller isn't even recognized in Linux (including in 2.1.110, 2.0.35) so I cannot use DMA in Linux, whereas I can in FreeBSD. I was surprised, because Linux has the name of supporting more hardware. Apparently this is not always true. SS> And dont't forget: Linux supports SMP hardware since somewhere SS> in 1.3.x days. FreeBSD does not. I read sth that FreeBSD 3.0 SS> might support it... 3.0 has been supporting it for a long time. In the Linux world, being much less conservative (or more careless) 3.0 would have been the stable production release already. >> * The Linux development model is more liberal, the more restrictive >> FreeBSD model guarantees uniform source code and better stability. SS> Don't think so. Linux development is discussed by many people SS> on the linux-kernel list, but the actual decisions are done by SS> a few ones. All patches to the official kernel go through SS> Linus' hands - he accepts or rejects. Not true anymore. Alan Cox puts together the stable releases now. He has been criticized a few times for putting new functionality in 2.0.x causing instability, while 2.0.x should only get bug fixes and new stuff should go in 2.1.x. But: it takes too long for 2.1.x to settle (because of the chaotic development; I monitor linux-kernel list closely) so there was a strong push to port back some important things (such as FAT32 support) to 2.0.x. SS> I installed FreeBSD some days ago on one of my machines and I found it SS> first a little bit confusing... I searched for the /usr/src/sys tree a SS> little bit too long ;) SS> BTW, is there some "nicer" interface for configuring the kernel? While SS> compiling the kernel first, I got some undefined references to SS> __isa_devtab_cam which were solved with hacking around a little bit SS> (#define _ISA_DEVTAB_CAM_NOT_EXTERN) I must say that editing a config file may look less nice than Linux's 'menuconfig' or xconfig, but after a while it gets really tedious to look through all the menues and tweaking a config file is clearly easier (which is possible for the Linux kernel too, b.t.w.) -- /\_/\ ( o.o ) Peter Mutsaers | Abcoude (Utrecht), | Trust me, I know ) ^ ( plm@xs4all.nl | the Netherlands | what I'm doing. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message