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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!nntp.coast.net!news00.sunet.se!sunic!news99.sunet.se!news.funet.fi!news.helsinki.fi!news From: torvalds@linux.cs.Helsinki.FI (Linus Torvalds) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.networking,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: TCP latency Date: 14 Jul 1996 12:07:58 +0300 Organization: A Red Hat Commercial Linux Site Lines: 49 Message-ID: <4sadde$qsv@linux.cs.Helsinki.FI> References: <4paedl$4bm@engnews2.Eng.Sun.COM> <31E7C0DD.41C67EA6@dyson.iquest.net> <4s8tcn$jsh@fido.asd.sgi.com> <31E80ACA.167EB0E7@dyson.iquest.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: linux.cs.helsinki.fi Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.networking:45208 comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:4045 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:23573 In article <31E80ACA.167EB0E7@dyson.iquest.net>, John S. Dyson <toor@dyson.iquest.net> wrote: >Larry McVoy wrote: > >> It's kind of fun to contrast this with the Linux crowd: >> >> BSD guys: "your benchmark sucks! your numbers are wrong! you mislead the >> world! you suck! whine!" >> >> Linux guys: "Hey Larry, the null syscall benchmark is busted because we can >> do a null syscall in about 1 usec. You need to change it so >> it times in nanoseconds". > >I think that was a kind-of cute situation. We decided NOT >to special case the syscall that Larry uses for the >null-syscall case. John, John, John, calm down. You are suggesting above that YOU did not special case the system call that Larry uses in lmbench, and by implication you are claiming Linux does. Very subtly done, but YOU'RE LYING Check out the facts before you post. Linux simply _is_ that fast. If we beat you on system call latency (and I have to admit that I haven't even looked at the FreeBSD numbers, so I'm just assuming that from your post above), it's simply because Linux is faster. Not because we "special case" anything at all. Why can't you accept simple facts? As to _why_ Linux is that fast, the reason is simply that Linux has a better interface to the kernel than any other UNIX I know about. Instead of messing around with "u_area" etc crap, Linux does it _right_, and saves all the state on the stack (and saves _minimal_ state). You're almost as bad as MS in spreading FUD and misinformation. Why the hell can't you just accept that somebody else is better at something? Or are you claiming that your system call latency is better than Linux under load? John, instead of attacking people when you find out they are faster at something, and claiming the benchmark is bogus, how about you try to tell the world about what YOU are good at instead? Instead of being so damn negative about this all, why don't you try to find the POSITIVE stuff? Don't spread FUD and misinformation - try to spread the word about the things FreeBSD is better at, ok? Linus