*BSD News Article 48259


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From: jjs@dostoevsky.ucr.edu (Joe Sloan)
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject: Re: Sun/Solaris or Pentium/Linux for new server ?
Date: 4 Aug 1995 17:33:44 GMT
Organization: University of Calfornia at Riverside
Lines: 34
Distribution: inet
Message-ID: <3vtllo$f25@galaxy.ucr.edu>
References: <3vlpgk$rdk@graphite.comco.com> <3vpg3g$q35@shell2.best.com> <3vq3if$jmp@dodgson.math.psu.edu> <3vsc3k$io7@helena.MT.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: dostoevsky.ucr.edu

In article <3vsc3k$io7@helena.MT.net>,
Nate Williams <nate@sneezy.sri.com> wrote:

>Right, and in his lmbench #'s, the FS performance of FreeBSD is roughly
>1.5 times faster than a comparable linux box in all areas *except* for
>non-standard things like 'rm -rf *' and some directory updates.  And, it
>has yet to be proven safe throughout crashes.  Many people claim to have
>not lost files, while others claim the exact opposite.
>
>Until someone does a head-head comparison on the same hardware in bad
>conditions I will stick with the BSD FFS, as it's been tested for years.

I know this "anecdotal evidence" may not be scientifically valid, but 
I messed around with netBSD 0.9 a while back. I was impressed with the 
smoothness of the networking, and the general feel of the system; I 
was also running linux 0.99.15 on some other machines in the same lab.

Oddly, the netBSD machine had serious disc crashes on at least 2
occasions, resulting in a loss of key system files. During the same
period, the 4 linux machines running in the same lab, under the same
conditions, experienced no filesystem failures of any kind. Even when 
the power was shut off unexpectedly in a linux machine, the filesystems
would undergo the usual fsck and always come up successfully repaired.

I have no axe to grind against BSD, and it might have been some bugs
that have been worked out; I don't know, because I installed linux on
the machine, and have never had a hint of filesystem failure ever since.

just my $.02

--
 Joe Sloan     jjs@engr.ucr.edu   http://dostoevsky.ucr.edu
     Win95? No, none for me, thanks - I'm already running Linux...
 Microsoft is not the answer - Microsoft is the question; the answer is NO!