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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!yoyo.aarnet.edu.au!news.adelaide.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!yeshua.marcam.com!MathWorks.Com!noc.near.net!news.delphi.com!usenet From: John Dyson <dysonj@delphi.com> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: BSD vs. Linux Date: Thu, 10 Mar 94 20:10:30 -0500 Organization: Delphi (info@delphi.com email, 800-695-4005 voice) Lines: 30 Message-ID: <hc3onZ+.dysonj@delphi.com> References: <1994Mar8.141900.2906@wubios.wustl.edu> <2lk1jm$aor@simpson-01.cs.strath.ac.uk> <CGD.94Mar9180333@erewhon.CS.Berkeley.EDU> NNTP-Posting-Host: bos1b.delphi.com X-To: Chris G. Demetriou <cgd@erewhon.CS.Berkeley.EDU> Chris G. Demetriou <cgd@erewhon.CS.Berkeley.EDU> writes: >Perhaps some releases of *BSD (e.g. FreeBSD 1.0) weren't exactly... stable? >with 4M of RAM, but 386BSD worked fine w/4M of ram (it ran on my only I think that it is best to compare using the FreeBSD 1.0 update. We did have some problems, but unless someone is misinforming, *all* software releases have problems. Truth-in-advertising: take a look at the real Beta release of FreeBSD vs. the only currently available release of NetBSD (0.9). Our -current has startup time of in-memory segments 5X faster than previous and we are using that as a springboard for some very high performance enhancements. Being frank, I do not believe that 4MB is a good choice for a serious development environment (but people stuck with that, I do respect.) We have FreeBSD running reliably in 4MB (the OLD problem was a *bug* not a structural problem.) And now, we are still planning on *not* ignoring 4MB systems, but there is only so little optimization that can be done (You are really stuck with disk I/O.) Now we are working on improving and re-implementing algorithms allowing more users, faster response, and better over-all performance. FreeBSD-current has real and significant algorithmic improvements that are not NOT based on previous versions and are new work. The goal of FreeBSD is NOT to compete, but to get a stable and reliable platform. Summing up -- I *still* think that it is impressive to run X in 4MB!!! First of all after all of the research and statistics that I have done, and the severe lack of locality of reference, I think that it is great for any OS to do it as efficiently as FreeBSD!!!! John dyson@implode.root.com