*BSD News Article 61267


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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.os.linux.development.system
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From: root@dyson.iquest.net (John S. Dyson)
Subject: Re: The better (more suitable)Unix?? FreeBSD or Linux
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References: <4er9hp$5ng@orb.direct.ca> <311250C2.2781E494@public.uni-hamburg.de> <strenDM7Gr4.Cn2@netcom.com>
Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 12:13:00 GMT
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Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:13666 comp.os.linux.development.system:17207

In article <strenDM7Gr4.Cn2@netcom.com>,
Sam Trenholme <stren@netcom.com> wrote:
>[Since we are comparing Linux and FreeBSD, in hopefully a constructive way,
> I have posted this to both a Linux and a FreeBSD newsgroup]
>
>>On http://plastique.stanford.edu/ you'll find an extensive
>>work comparing Linux(1.2.8), FreeBSD 2.05, and Solaris 2.4.
>>
>>The jist is:
>>- Linux has best FileSystem-Performance (because it's doing FS-Updates
>>  asychronously)
>
>Hmmm.... I remeber a long thread where people were arguing this-- and I 
>get the sense that FFS was faster than Ext2Fs.
>
FFS on FreeBSD is signficantly faster on sequential transfers than EXT2FS
on Linux.  FFS on FreeBSD does synchronous meta-data updates conservatively,
while EXT2FS on Linux is more aggressive about write-behind caching of
meta-data (therefore the meta-data in memory is out-of-sync for a longer
time with meta-data on disk.)  The Linux approach is faster for bulk
directory operations, but -current FreeBSD does a bit to mitigate the
difference by supporting an async option for mounts.  FreeBSD IS faster
for copying large files (even the most recent Linux vs. most recent FreeBSD.) 

John Dyson
dyson@freebsd.org