Return to BSD News archive
Xref: sserve comp.os.linux.misc:627 comp.os.386bsd.misc:757 Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!foxhound.dsto.gov.au!fang.dsto.gov.au!myall.awadi.com.au!myall!blymn From: blymn@awadi.com.au (Brett Lymn) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.386bsd.misc Subject: Re: Why would I want LINUX? Date: 25 Aug 93 12:53:02 Organization: AWA Defence Industries Lines: 49 Distribution: world Message-ID: <BLYMN.93Aug25125302@mallee.awadi.com.au> References: <MIKE.93Aug19115915@pdx800.jf.intel.com> <250m5t$dmk@europa.eng.gtefsd.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: mallee.awadi.com.au In-reply-to: niemidc@oasis.gtefsd.com's message of 19 Aug 93 20:01:01 GMT >>>>> On 19 Aug 93 20:01:01 GMT, niemidc@oasis.gtefsd.com (David C. Niemi) said: David> Article-I.D.: europa.250m5t$dmk David> NNTP-Posting-Host: hengist.lab.oasis.gtegsc.com David> In article 93Aug19115915@pdx800.jf.intel.com, mike@ichips (Mike Haertel) writes: >In article <24vd7h$frk@horus.mch.sni.de> Martin.Kraemer@mch.sni.de (Martin Kraemer) writes: [lotsa stuff about the slenderness of linux deleted] David> Linux is still a very lean, fast OS compared to ANY of its competition Have you numbers to back this? I tried compiling jgraph and comparing the numbers from a Linux machine. I found that my 486/25 (running X at the time) was faster than a 486/33 Linux machine. Anyone in the linux world care to try a benchmark, it does not have to be anything particular, just something that is portable and meaningful on both Linux and *BSD. David> (even some versions of DOS!) You cannot really do a comparison with Mega-Loss as it is not in the same league. MS-DOS is a single tasking program loader (some people dispute is being an OS), comparing that to *any* multitasking system running on hardware of the same power you will lose. Basically because the task switching will have the effect of increasing the application time, you may win on the i/o throughput because Linux/*BSD cache the writes to devices but you are not proving anything really. David> There are not many OSes that let you run David> X-Windows in 4 MB and that can boot multi-user in 10 seconds (DOS takes David> longer than that to boot). Sure, X will run in 4Megs but can you do anything with it? I think it would depend on what you expected. Myself, I like having a lot of xterms open rlogin'ed to machines at work, run emacs (v19 :-), gdb and compile without having the machine thrash. Do not tell me I can use other tools that have had features removed to save space, I know about them but do not like the sacrifices made (this is MHO) to shoehorn them. If you are going to say X runs in 4Meg, tell us what you use and what you do with X. I found X in 8Meg was a bit tiresome when I started doing real development work, running emacs, a couple of gdb's, some xterms and compiling would make my system swap, increasing the RAM to 16Meg made life more comfortable. At that stage I was not running *BSD but a commercial unix with Xfree (before it was called that). -- Brett Lymn