Date: Tue, 3 Dec 1996 08:33:48 -0500 (EST) From: "John S. Dyson" <toor@dyson.iquest.net> To: torvalds@cs.Helsinki.FI (Linus Torvalds) Cc: jkh@time.cdrom.com, 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: <199612031333.IAA01138@dyson.iquest.net> In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.95.961203093548.16867D-100000@linux.cs.Helsinki.FI> from "Linus Torvalds" at Dec 3, 96 09:54:49 am
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> > 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. > I use LMBENCH for the same reason on FreeBSD, and it is useful, but I don't think that it is valuable to use in marketing hype. Frankly, the discussions that I had with you caused me to waste time working on low level perf -- and in reality gained nothing but improved lmbench results. The system is not significantly faster in the real world for the reason of that specific work. Yet with a different view of things, I have done more for real world performance in a few days what two months of low level optimizations did. I believe that it is best to let the users who care about perf and stability to test/use FreeBSD and Linux side by side. We win alot of those comparisons hands-down. If people don't care about performance, then they can choose NT or Linux or whatever their evangelist coworkers use (to keep peer pressure under control.) We have some OS/2 people at work, and they are irritating, not because their OS isn't good, but because they are just irritating trying to say how good their OS is. FreeBSD has vulnerabilities also, but citing lmbench results tells such a small part of the story that it almost misinforms. Many times a low level benchmark that shows a 10% difference actually means a .1% difference in the real world, and other factors overshadow that easily. I know how to interpret lmbench, but many people out there might think that it is the be-all end-all of benchmarks. Horsepower in a car isn't either. It is how the car works (at least for me.) I have heard claims that low level performance measures some kind of "quality.", so be it, I measure quality by things (programs, not necessarily benchmarks) working and working quickly. John
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