Date: Mon, 2 Dec 1996 21:19:50 -0600 (CST) From: Joe Greco <jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com> To: davem@jenolan.rutgers.edu (David S. Miller) Cc: jkh@time.cdrom.com, dyson@FreeBSD.org, dennis@etinc.com, kpneal@pobox.com, hackers@FreeBSD.org, torvalds@cs.helsinki.fi, lm@engr.sgi.com, iain@sbs.de, sparclinux@vger.rutgers.edu Subject: Re: TCP/IP bandwidth bragging Message-ID: <199612030319.VAA25727@brasil.moneng.mei.com> In-Reply-To: <199612030217.VAA18178@jenolan.caipgeneral> from "David S. Miller" at Dec 2, 96 09:17:34 pm
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We clearly have two irreconciliable viewpoints here. Let the jerk win, because clearly Linux is superior. We all run FreeBSD because it sucks rocks and because we like running something that is inferior. Benchmarks are always meaningful. Real world heavy duty applications mean nothing. Clearly I am not someone in the "real world" as my clients only invest six digit figures to implement my FreeBSD-based recommendations. Marketing tally sheets are authoritative. So is the MIPS rating, a venerable benchmark. Let's all start using that! The abacus is clearly superior to both a scientific calculator AND the UNIX "bc/dc/expr" programs. Buying SPARC equipment is fiscally responsible. These and all sorts of other fallacies are all free for the taking. Obviously David Miller believes a lot of them! But that's okay, because it's a free country. And he is free to believe whatever he wants, whether it is bullshit or fact. The real shame is that this rivalry is antagonistic. I would gladly recommend Linux any day over Windows, 95, NT, OS/2, SCO, etc. Having experience with a multitude of operating systems, including (but by no means limited to) Linux, 386BSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, Solaris x86, SCO, DOS, Windows, 95, NT, and OS/2, I have concluded that I believe the best general purpose OS to be FreeBSD. I would recommend it over Linux any day. But we need to keep sight of the fact that FreeBSD and Linux are free software cousins - and I would rather see someone run _some_ free OS rather than a Gates Borg-osity. Look, folks, benchmarks are benchmarks. They are not real world performance indicators. They are simply relative artificial performance evaluators, and as such can be influenced by a wide variety of factors, including OS tweaks. I never make the mistake of taking a benchmark's results as an absolute comparison of apples and oranges. Hey, Linux may have some great benchmarks. I promise you that I can skew them in favor of FreeBSD. Hey, FreeBSD may have some great benchmarks. I promise you that I can skew them in favor of Linux. Hey, I can skew benchmarks to favor _SOLARIS_. Now there's a real performance lion! My recommendation: drop this silly thread in the bit bucket. Concentrate on writing more free software. That's what the world really needs. Nobody will give a shit about any of this in a few years when we are looking at ten gigabit networking technologies. Every- body will win if people do something constructive and write new cool code to take advantage of it. "Sheesh." ... JG
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