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Xref: sserve comp.os.386bsd.misc:4142 alt.folklore.computers:67996 Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msuinfo!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!uxa.cso.uiuc.edu!rkb55989 From: rkb55989@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Rafal Boni) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc,alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: BSD sluggish compared to Linux? Date: 20 Nov 1994 04:11:52 GMT Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana Lines: 38 Message-ID: <3amia8$iiv@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> References: <3am248$7kv@itu1.sun.ac.za> <3am2s0$7nl@pdq.coe.montana.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: uxa.cso.uiuc.edu nate@bsd.coe.montana.edu (Nate Williams) writes: >In article <3am248$7kv@itu1.sun.ac.za>, >Antony Richfield <arichfld@cs.sun.ac.za> wrote: >>I have heard rumours such as the one in the topic ... >As rumors go, this is pretty much false nowadays. Linux needs more >resources than it used to, and FreeBSD uses less than it used to. Not to start a flame war with the topic, but I have a case study: PC A: 486DX2/50, 16Meg RAM, 1Gig SCSI disk, Linux 1.1.50 PC B: 486SX/25, 6 Meg RAM, 170 Meg IDE disk, NetBSD 1.0_BETA First of all, PC A did a lot of server-type work [ie, it ran SAMBA, the NetBIOS server for *NIX, it was used as a print server, it ran XDM for a couple of Xterms...]. PC B was my personal workstation, so it did things like compile, read mail + news, telnet out to the world, etc. However, even with the Linux machine [PC A] running an almost minimal load [like on a weekend when I was the only person there and most of the machines that used it as a (whatever) server were off, the BSD machine seemed MUCH snappier. But, to confuse matters, I installed NetBSD 1.0 on a machine that was using the same MB and processor as the Linux box [486DX2/50] but with only 500 Meg of disk and 8 Meg or RAM. BSD seemed to crawl on this box, even compared to my 486SX/25. I blew away the BSD installation, re-installed DOS and Windows, and noticed that the machine was STILL crawling. The problem: no L2 cache on that machine as opposed to 64K L2 cache on the 486SX... And it made a BIG difference. The moral of the story: They can both run pretty well or pretty crappy depending on the hardware and amout of work they do. --rafal