From owner-freebsd-doc Sat Jan 6 7: 8:23 2001 From owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Jan 6 07:08:19 2001 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Received: from fledge.watson.org (fledge.watson.org [204.156.12.50]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AB55337B400; Sat, 6 Jan 2001 07:08:18 -0800 (PST) Received: from fledge.watson.org (robert@fledge.pr.watson.org [192.0.2.3]) by fledge.watson.org (8.11.1/8.11.1) with SMTP id f06F8H716099; Sat, 6 Jan 2001 10:08:18 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from robert@fledge.watson.org) Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2001 10:08:17 -0500 (EST) From: Robert Watson X-Sender: robert@fledge.watson.org To: doc@FreeBSD.org Cc: adrian@FreeBSD.org, dcs@FreeBSD.org Subject: Patch for features.sgml Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: robert@fledge.watson.org Sender: owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Well, I finally got sick of seeing the old features page pop up whenever I pointed people to www.FreeBSD.org, so Adrian, Daniel, and I put together the following patch. It probably has non-ideal SGML, and other things could be added, but I figured it was a starting point. As such, I'm looking for a bored docs committer who feels like taking this one the rest of the way to commit-land :-). Robert N M Watson FreeBSD Core Team, TrustedBSD Project robert@fledge.watson.org NAI Labs, Safeport Network Services Index: features.sgml =================================================================== RCS file: /home/ncvs/www/en/features.sgml,v retrieving revision 1.13 diff -u -r1.13 features.sgml --- features.sgml 2000/04/03 10:42:51 1.13 +++ features.sgml 2001/01/06 15:00:51 @@ -45,61 +45,42 @@ operating systems design to give you these advanced features:

    -
  • Bounce buffering gets around a limitation in the PC's ISA - architecture that limits direct-memory access to the first 16 - megabytes. - -

    Result: systems with more than 16 megabytes operate more - efficiently with DMA peripherals on the ISA bus.

    • -
  • A merged virtual memory and filesystem buffer cache continuously tunes the amount of memory used for programs and the - disk cache.

    Result: programs receive both excellent memory + disk cache. As a result, programs receive both excellent memory management and high performance disk access, and the system - administrator is freed from the task of tuning cache sizes.

    • + administrator is freed from the task of tuning cache sizes.
  • Compatibility modules enable programs for other operating systems to run on FreeBSD, including programs for Linux, SCO, - NetBSD, and BSDI. + NetBSD, and BSDI.
    • -

    Result: users will not have to recompile programs - already compiled for one of the compatible OS's, and will have - access to a greater selection of off-the-shelf software, like the - Microsoft FrontPage - Server extensions for BSDI or WordPerfect - for SCO.

    - -
  • Dynamically loadable kernel modules allows new filesystem - types, networking protocols or binary emulators to be added to the - kernel at runtime without having to generate a new kernel image. - -

    Result: Much time can be saved and 3rd party vendors can - deliver complete subsystems as kernel modules without having to - distribute source or have lengthy installation procedures.

    • - -
  • Shared libraries reduce the size of programs, saving disk - space and memory. FreeBSD uses an advanced shared library scheme - which offers many of the advantages of ELF, and the current version - offers ELF compatibility for both Linux and native FreeBSD - programs.
    • +
  • Kernel Queues allow programs to respond more efficiently + to a variety of asynchronous events including file and socket IO, + improving application and system performance.
    • + +
  • Accept Filters allow connection-intensive applications, + such as web servers, to cleanly push part of their functionality into + the operating system kernel, improving performance.
    • + +
  • Soft Updates allow improved file system performance + without sacrificing safety and reliability, by intelligently + analyzing, caching and rewriting or reordering disk meta-data + operations.
    • + +
  • Support for IPsec and IPv6 allows improved security in + networks, and support for the next-generation Internet Protocol, + IPv6.
    • +
-

Naturally, since FreeBSD is an ongoing effort, you can expect newer - features and higher levels of stability with each release.

- - -

What experts have to say . . .

- -
-

``FreeBSD has an outline-structured visual configuration editor - ... you can enter the configuration of every device the OS supports - and can therefore get a successful installation on the first try - almost every time. IBM, Microsoft, and others would do well to - emulate FreeBSD's approach.''

+

Work in-progress includes support for fine-grained SMP locking in + kernel, allowing higher performance on multi-processor machines, + support for Scheduler Activations, allowing parallelism in threaded + programs, file system snapshots, fsck-free booting, network + optimizations such as zero-copy sockets and event-driven socket IO, ACPI support, and advanced security features such as Mandatory + Access Control.

-

---Brett Glass, Infoworld, April 8 - 1996.

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