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Date:      Tue, 3 Dec 1996 09:54:49 +0200 (EET)
From:      Linus Torvalds <torvalds@cs.Helsinki.FI>
To:        "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
Cc:        "David S. Miller" <davem@jenolan.rutgers.edu>, dyson@FreeBSD.org, dennis@etinc.com, kpneal@pobox.com, hackers@FreeBSD.org, lm@engr.sgi.com, iain@sbs.de, sparclinux@vger.rutgers.edu
Subject:   Re: TCP/IP bandwidth bragging 
Message-ID:  <Pine.LNX.3.95.961203093548.16867D-100000@linux.cs.Helsinki.FI>
In-Reply-To: <14423.849582120@time.cdrom.com>

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Can we kill this before it really escalates? We had the same d*mn
discussion just a few months ago if I recall correctly? Nobody offered a
better benchmark then, nobody got any constructive done then, let's just
drop it. 

I don't see why people get so hung up about a small bit of bragging in
somebodys signature.  It's not as if the signature said

	"FreeBSD is shit, look at our studly network numbers"

Instead, the dang thing is just a challenge to any other operating system. 
In fact, as the numbers were gotten on Sparc hardware, I'd say they are
much more of a challenge to the SunOS/Solaris "performance group" people
(hah!) than FreeBSD.

I've seen lots of people say "competition is good" - in fact it seemed to
be one of the slogans for BSD people when people asked about the split of
Free/Open/NetBSD.

Was that just lip service? Get over it - either you ignore the benchmark
(in which case I don't see the point of flaming David over using it: 
you'd be much better off doing your own benchmark), or you take it as a
challenge. Whining over it is just silly. 

Now, if you were Solaris engineers, I could understand some bad feelings,
as David certainly hasn't been exactly polite about the fact that Sun has
performance problems. But as it is it all looks like flaming over nothing. 

I'll try to ignore this thread as I'm still supposed to write my thesis. 
(Too bad that writing a thesis is so boring that I have problems in _not_
responding to the silliest postings ;) 

		Linus

PS. Larry is hopefully making a new version of lmbench sometime in the
future. And guess what? I actually _hope_ that it shows that Linux has
some problems. I'm not in this game to bash on others, I'm in it to make
the best damn system there is. 

So I really hope that the people who flame David could fine _another_
benchmark, and do a signature that says "FreeBSD does 102 million
FluxMarks(tm) per second - beat that!". I'd _like_ to have a new benchmark
we can put our teeth in. I never flamed anybody when lmbench used to show
that Linux sucked raw eggs in some areas (and yes, people rubbed my nose
in it, and not as politely or neutrally as Davids signature does). I took
it as a challenge. 




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