Date: 25 Jul 1998 10:18:08 +0200 From: Peter Mutsaers <plm@xs4all.nl> To: Sascha Schumann <sas@schell.de> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD or LINUX??? - Which one should I choose? Message-ID: <873ebqfinz.fsf@muon.xs4all.nl> In-Reply-To: Sascha Schumann's message of "Fri, 24 Jul 1998 22:22:40 %2B0200 (MET DST)" References: <87n29yjrlr.fsf@totally-fudged-out-message-id>
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Hello,
I've run both Linux and FreeBSD for a long time. Currently running
RH5.1 with 2.0.35 or 2.1.110 kernel. But I'll move back to FreeBSD
soon.
>> On Fri, 24 Jul 1998 22:22:40 +0200 (MET DST), Sascha Schumann
>> <sas@schell.de> said:
SS> That must be "hearsay", all Linux changes are tested by
SS> hundreds (maybe thousands) people on the whole earth before
SS> they make it into the stable kernel (actually 2.0.35). So, if
SS> you use the stable kernel, you will always have a completely
SS> stable os.
Maybe, but from my experience, FreeBSD (even -current) is more stable
than Linux.
>> - Linux scheduling algorithm is poor on high system load
>> (THUS - to run an internet server I'd prefer FreeBSD!)
SS> Which of the scheduling algorithms do you mean? There are
SS> actually three I remember now (rr, fifo, other). And there is
SS> Linux-rt (realtime support). Does FreeBSD have this?
This is really true, and one of the reasons I'm annoyed right now. I
ran FreeBSD, now use Linux and am upset about the (relative of course,
Windows is much worse of course) poorer scheduling I experience.
Also FreeBSD's filesystem is much better. I've got both UDMA IDE and
SCSI disks, and on both bonnie shows FreeBSD has much better
performance and lower CPU usage during heavy disk I/O, and also during
simple sequential read.
Somehow my UDMA IDE controller isn't even recognized in Linux
(including in 2.1.110, 2.0.35) so I cannot use DMA in Linux, whereas I
can in FreeBSD. I was surprised, because Linux has the name of
supporting more hardware. Apparently this is not always true.
SS> And dont't forget: Linux supports SMP hardware since somewhere
SS> in 1.3.x days. FreeBSD does not. I read sth that FreeBSD 3.0
SS> might support it...
3.0 has been supporting it for a long time. In the Linux world, being
much less conservative (or more careless) 3.0 would have been the
stable production release already.
>> * The Linux development model is more liberal, the more restrictive
>> FreeBSD model guarantees uniform source code and better stability.
SS> Don't think so. Linux development is discussed by many people
SS> on the linux-kernel list, but the actual decisions are done by
SS> a few ones. All patches to the official kernel go through
SS> Linus' hands - he accepts or rejects.
Not true anymore. Alan Cox puts together the stable releases now. He
has been criticized a few times for putting new functionality in 2.0.x
causing instability, while 2.0.x should only get bug fixes and new
stuff should go in 2.1.x. But: it takes too long for 2.1.x to settle
(because of the chaotic development; I monitor linux-kernel list
closely) so there was a strong push to port back some important things
(such as FAT32 support) to 2.0.x.
SS> I installed FreeBSD some days ago on one of my machines and I found it
SS> first a little bit confusing... I searched for the /usr/src/sys tree a
SS> little bit too long ;)
SS> BTW, is there some "nicer" interface for configuring the kernel? While
SS> compiling the kernel first, I got some undefined references to
SS> __isa_devtab_cam which were solved with hacking around a little bit
SS> (#define _ISA_DEVTAB_CAM_NOT_EXTERN)
I must say that editing a config file may look less nice than Linux's
'menuconfig' or xconfig, but after a while it gets really tedious to
look through all the menues and tweaking a config file is clearly
easier (which is possible for the Linux kernel too, b.t.w.)
--
/\_/\
( o.o ) Peter Mutsaers | Abcoude (Utrecht), | Trust me, I know
) ^ ( plm@xs4all.nl | the Netherlands | what I'm doing.
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