From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Jun 1 10:13:14 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from smtp6.mindspring.com (smtp6.mindspring.com [207.69.200.110]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6138637B422 for ; Fri, 1 Jun 2001 10:13:09 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from tlambert2@mindspring.com) Received: from mindspring.com (dialup-209.245.138.21.Dial1.SanJose1.Level3.net [209.245.138.21]) by smtp6.mindspring.com (8.9.3/8.8.5) with ESMTP id NAA14250; Fri, 1 Jun 2001 13:13:01 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <3B17CD35.CC721100@mindspring.com> Date: Fri, 01 Jun 2001 10:13:25 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Reply-To: tlambert2@mindspring.com X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en]C-CCK-MCD {Sony} (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Mike Silbersack Cc: Terry Lambert , hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: general speed differences between 4.1.1-RELEASE and 4.3-RELEASE References: <20010530101415.D71465-100000@achilles.silby.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Mike Silbersack wrote: > > As a friend of mine says "I can make it go as fast as you > > want, if it doesn't have to work"... > > You entirely missed my point. Yes, we could leave it at 0. > But if so, we should tell people so that they can make an > informed choice. If we don't make the choice obvious, people > are going to continue to be alarmed and confused as to why > their Linux boxes now run circles around their FreeBSD > boxes. This speed difference would be ok _if they knew why_. > > But they don't, at present. First of all, they do not "run circles" around FreeBSD; they kill the virgin reliability on the alter of the bloody god Benchmark. Second, FreeBSD has an incredible number of such options; this leads to several thorny questions: o How would you propose to offer people an informed choice? o How do you propose to convert the people from uninformed to informed? o Would you do this at install time? o If done at install time, isn't this a huge barrier to entry to new users? o Wouldn't a huge barrier to entry to new users be a worse liability than meaningless relative speed benchmarks, which can only be made after the system is installed? o Aren't what you really asking is to allow people to make their systems as unreliable as typical desktop systems? o People with servers which actually use their disks will typically use SCSI, and not see the problem anyway, right? So, are you going to put the "desktop vs. server" knob in sysinstall? Or are you going to write the: My Computer Properties Performance [File System] [Graphics] [Virtual Memory] Desktop widget for these people to use, so that the ease of use approaches that of the desktop systems in the second to last question? ...Inquiring minds want to know... -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message