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Date:      Sun, 17 Jun 2001 10:21:18 -0700 (PDT)
From:      Matt Dillon <dillon@earth.backplane.com>
To:        Sergey Babkin <babkin@bellatlantic.net>
Cc:        "Albert D. Cahalan" <acahalan@cs.uml.edu>, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, mhagerty@voyager.net
Subject:   Re: Article: Network performance by OS
Message-ID:  <200106171721.f5HHLIu06985@earth.backplane.com>
References:  <200106162031.f5GKVfm16209@saturn.cs.uml.edu> <200106162104.f5GL4dX02015@earth.backplane.com> <3B2CDC8C.3C7E382A@bellatlantic.net>

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:...
:>     to know the first thing about the platform he is running his software
:>     on is a complete and utter idiot and the company that employs such a
:>     person has a hellofalot more to worry about then the performance of an
:>     untuned machine.
:
:We are telling people that FreeBSD is primarily a good server OS, 
:right ? Then it should come with the standard configuration tuned
:with this purpose in mind. Not "foolproof", not "workstation" but
:"high-performance server".
:
:IMHO this is a big problem with too many Unix (including Linux)
:and generally Open Source programs and systems. They allow to
:do great things after being properly tuned. However the default
:configuration supplied with them is utterly horrible by some
:mysterious reason. So the learning curve for them is quite steep

    But this isn't true at all.  How many people need to make thousands
    or tens of thousands of simultanious connections to a machine out of the
    box?  Almost nobody.  So to run a benchmark and have it hit these 
    limitations on an untuned machine and then say that this somehow proves
    that the boxes needed to be better-tuned out of the box is just plain
    and simply hogwash.

    Out of the box, FreeBSD (and Linux) work just fine for virtually
    anything you need to do, with very few exceptions.  If you need to
    run a huge multi-gigabyte database, or you need to run an EFNET IRC
    server, or a USENET relay, or a SPAM mailer, then you have a bit of
    tuning work to do.  Otherwise it will just work.  We tune our default
    configurations for what most people need.  We don't tune them to run
    stupid benchmarks.

:and requires to learn the product in deep and tune it before
:using. Well, I do enjoy learning things, however tuning the
:same things in each new version over and over again for the 10th 
:time becomes quite boring.

    Nonsense.  If you intend to work a machine to the hilt, and expect to
    maintain it for any length of time, and you aren't willing to spend
    some time tuning it, then the only thing wrong with the picture is
    *you*, Not the machine, Not the OS... but you.  Don't blame your problems
    on the machine if you aren't willing to lift a finger learning how it
    works.

						-Matt

:This is not to say that Windows is better: the default
:configurations are usually slightly better but there is no
:[reasonably easy] way whatsoever to make them decent.
:
:-SB



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