*BSD News Article 30993


Return to BSD News archive

Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au!munnari.oz.au!ihnp4.ucsd.edu!swrinde!gatech!prism!prism!not-for-mail
From: gt8134b@prism.gatech.edu (Robert Sanders)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: Re: Linux or FreeBSD?
Date: 29 May 1994 14:48:31 -0400
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology
Lines: 99
Sender: gt8134b@prism.gatech.edu
Message-ID: <2sao1v$guc@acmey.gatech.edu>
References: <CqH2z7.29E@dit.upm.es> <2s618a$34t@pdq.coe.montana.edu> 	<2s86fj$cn4@acmex.gatech.edu> <hastyCqJBED.9yz@netcom.com> 	<2s8mbn$e1o@acmex.gatech.edu> <JKH.94May29030102@whisker.hubbard.ie> 	<2s937t$7sp@acmex.gatech.edu> <JKH.94May29093959@whisker.hubbard.ie>
NNTP-Posting-Host: acmey.gatech.edu

jkh@whisker.hubbard.ie (Jordan K. Hubbard) writes:

>Linux's interactive response.  When I met Linus in Holland last year,
>one of the major points of discussion was, in fact, Linux's VM and
>scheduling algorithms and how FreeBSD would do well to take a closer
>look into how interactive processes were scheduled in environments
>with small process counts.  It should always be noted, of course, that
>there's no free lunch with these things.  Linux's scheduling and VM
>code does offer superior performance with light job mixes, but the
>`ramp' of performance vs number of system intensive processes actually
>declines much faster on a Linux system as well, so you have to pay the
>price somewhere.  At least this was my experience with Linux 0.99, and
>also backed up by a number of others (some of whom were die-hard Linux
>fans).

I agree as well.  On the ephemeral compile benchmark, a FreeBSD system that,
to my Linux-trained senses, seemed like it was struggling actually outran
my underloaded Linux system.  There have been at least 2 alternate
schedulers for Linux written and posted.  

This issue of interactive response vs. performance under heavy load is
one that needs to be tunable for both systems.  I usually prefer interactive
feel to overall performance, but there are situations in which I'd like to 
have a hardier system.

>UNIX itself is what's living a somewhat besieged life here, not
>FreeBSD or Linux specifically.  If we want to extend the lives of both
>in the face of competition from a number of `young turk' operating
>systems now coming down the pike, we may someday have to seriously
>consider working together just a little more (and I almost cry at the
>amount of effort being gratuitously spent on parallel efforts or
>competing implementations where there's _really no need_ for a lot of
>it).

In some ways I think it's unavoidable.  To be sure, the iron curtain
keeping *BSD code from migrating to Linux has been the USL/BSDI lawsuit,
and the barrier in the other direction has been the GPL, but even if
we resolved all that, parallel development would still continue.  Some
people are more interested in having fun hacking on something than in
creating the perfect OS, and I don't blame them.

It would be nice if efforts from one side could benefit the other, even
if the original effort didn't take that into account.  I imagine part
of this problem could be solved once in code (i.e. kernel interface 
emulation layers), but it'll never go away.

>case.  I personally think that Linux and FreeBSD are also not so far
>apart, ideologically speaking, and if FreeBSD and NetBSD cannot enjoy
>a closer working relationship (though in truth it's far more cordial
>as of late) then perhaps FreeBSD and Linux can.  I'd be more than keen
>to extend the requisite olive branches!

The problem is that Linux is more like a cheap sci-fi hive organism; it's
difficult to decide where the head is.  Linus is the obvious person, but
he doesn't do most of the work anymore.  There are three people that I
think already have an olive branch or two: Hannu Savolainen, the author
of the VoxWare (nee Linux) sound driver, Matthias Urlichs, who single-
handedly ported the BSD networking code to Linux, and Bill Metzenthan,
who (I believe) re-released his math coprocessor emulator under a BSD-like
copyright so *BSD could benefit from his excellent work.  These are
all Linux people who decided to write for everybody, not just Linux.

Then again, I think Alan Cox et. al are doing a bang-up job on the Linux
networking code, and who am I to say that they should just drop it all
and adopt that of BSD?  Like Ted T'so (I think) once said long ago, it's
not always useless competition; sometimes it's nice to explore different
problem spaces or to check the effectiveness of different solutions.  The
*BSD people didn't like Linux shared libraries, so they didn't use the
Linux work.

The fact is that some Linux developers aren't as committed to the end
product as the *BSD teams are.  To us, Linux is a wide open hacking ground,
and whether some luser likes the OS isn't a real issue.  I'm not saying
that's a good thing (in many ways it's not), but that's how it is.

You know where I'd really like to see a coherent development effort?  I'd
like to see some good people get together and write a Unix word processor.
More so than the many competing flavors, that issue is killing Unix.
FreeBSD, NetBSD, and Linux are all very competent operating systems,
but you've got to give people something to *do* under them.

>Did you know, for example, that OI lets you
>create your own subclasses interactively, flesh them out, then bring
>them up in the builder?  Probably not since Linux's OI version has
>never allowed you to do this (and boy, was I annoyed when I found this
>out since I was trying to use the OI port to Linux to do some work!)

Well, no, because I've never used OI :-)  Like I said, I'm helping to
port perl5 to Linux, and Linux really is the black sheep of dynamic loading.
I got word that the next binutils will support ELF on i386, so maybe
Linux is just a short step away from having a much more palatable
alternative.


-- 
 _g,  '96 --->>>>>>>>>>   gt8134b@prism.gatech.edu  <<<<<<<<<---  CompSci  ,g_
W@@@W__        |-\      ^        | disclaimer:  <---> "Bow before ZOD!" __W@@@W
W@@@@**~~~'  ro|-<ert s/_\ nders |   who am I???  ^  from Superman  '~~~**@@@@W
`*MV' hi,ocie! |-/ad! /   \ss!!  | ooga ooga!!    |    II (cool)!         `VW*'