*BSD News Article 58226


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From: cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de (Martin Cracauer)
Subject: Re: FreeBSD or NetBSD
Message-ID: <1995Dec27.141044.1151@wavehh.hanse.de>
Organization: BSD User Group Hamburg
References: <4ag00h$ckk_001@martis-d221.sierra.net> <4avnbd$clc_001@martis-d228.sierra.net>
Date: Wed, 27 Dec 95 14:10:44 GMT
Lines: 38

jiho@sunset.net (jiho@sunset.net) writes:

>> About the only thing to recommend either BSD over Linux is hard drive 
>> performance.  The BSDs are very fast.

>Well, actually it's not so simple.

>Linux 0.99 at its best was somewhat slower than BSD at its worst, and like BSD 
>was all over the map, depending on where you were on the drive, how files were 
>allocated, what you were doing before the test, etc.

>Nowadays, drive access in Linux 1.2 seems to have been considerably revised. 
>It no longer exhibits such a broad range of performance, and the narrower 
>range it does exhibit seems much closer to the average performance exhibited 
>by BSD.  So BSD at its worst is somewhat slower than Linux 1.2 at its worst, 
>and BSD at its best is substantially faster than Linux 1.2 at its best.

>Linux's virtual memory management really seems to get in the way of drive 
>performance in some circumstances, where it has no substantial impact in BSD.

>Anyway, thought I ought to revise my statement a little.  Not much to do with 
>deciding between the two BSDs, but people sometimes react to these sloppy 
>tangential commentaries....

>Like I said, FreeBSD is somewhat faster than NetBSD, but not dramatically once 
>you tinker with a few kernel build details, like MAXBSIZE.

I recommend ignoring messages as this one that talks about speed and
doesn't provide a single number.

*Of course* BSD is faster than Linux :-)

Martin
-- 
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Martin Cracauer <cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de>  -  Fax +49 40 522 85 36
 BSD User Group Hamburg, Germany   -   No NeXTMail anymore, please.
 Copyright 1995. Redistribution via Microsoft Network is prohibited