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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!sgiblab!sdd.hp.com!nigel.msen.com!yale.edu!jvnc.net!nuscc!ntuix!eoahmad From: eoahmad@ntuix.ntu.ac.sg (Othman Ahmad) Subject: Re: 386BSD or LINUX? Message-ID: <1992Nov5.060658.639@ntuix.ntu.ac.sg> Organization: Nanyang Technological University - Singapore X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6] References: <1992Nov4.205620.8184@colorado.edu> Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 06:06:58 GMT Lines: 80 Drew Eckhardt (drew@kinglear.cs.colorado.edu) wrote: : : Linux +'s : : : Shared libraries. This results in a significant disk space savings, : especially in the case of 'X' applications that can shrink by : an order of magnitude when compiled with shared libraries. Let us compare sizes: bash$ size 386bsd text data bss dec hex 376832 20480 147996 545308 8521c (this is 386bsd with terry patches, generic ISA, Xserver,Uconsole, Nfs,Tcp, 10 ptys) sh$ size X386 text data bss dec hex 860160 40960 43696 944816 e6ab0 sh$ size xterm text data bss dec hex 532480 28672 17464 578616 8d438 bash$ ps -aux | more USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TT STAT STARTED TIME COMMAND eoahmad 927 0.0 0.1 492 0 p0 Is 12:59PM 0:01.81 (bash) root 926 0.0 0.1 892 0 vg S 12:59PM 0:07.70 (xterm) eoahmad 924 0.0 0.1 780 0 vg S 12:59PM 0:03.67 (twm) root 923 0.0 0.1 1664 0 ?? S 12:59PM 9:24.28 (X) : : Modern VM, with a unified buffer cache and user memory pool. I never believe in VM. Once we do not have enough RAM, might as well buy more RAM. Unified buffer cache? How much can we gain? CAn you tell us more about its algorithm, especially how it decides to choose which is to give priority to, and how it handles the paged user memory? : : Many kernel structures, such as pty's, are dynamically allocated. This : increases the amount of pageable memory that is available. How do we change its number? CAn we add pty indefinitely? : : More "odd" hardware is supported in the stock distribution. For : instance, SCSI support is there for Seagate, WD7000, Future Domain, : Ultrastor 14f, and Adaptec boards. : : There are more WhizzyFeatures (tm), such as /proc. : : Linux supports the MSDOS file system, and can run vm86 tasks such : as the DOS emulator, if you consider these +'s. Where is the source for this DOS emulator? : : I'd say that if you want BSD, because it's BSD, or if you want : stable NFS NOW, and not in two weeks, that it might be worthwhile. Have you forgotten that it has the VFS(?), which is the Posix complient file system. Or has linux used it already? What it does is to have long file names, faster throughput because of large block sizes(4K),without much fragmentation becaue it can go down to 1K block size as well,or am I mistaken? It also uses standard BSD library, which makes it easy to port software written in BSD systems which is widely used in Academic circles. This is the other reason why I choose 386bsd over linux. However it is not completely true because 4.3 BSD is slightly different from 4.2 BSD. Use of GNU utilities make it slightly incompatible with full blown mainframe BSD or those used in ultrix and Sun workstations. The other reason is that linux is more for hackers. Lynne goes to great lengths to make 386bsd installation easy for "idiots"/beginners. How about performance comparisons? I've posted the results of iozone 1 to comp.unix.bsd . -- Othman bin Ahmad, School of EEE, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 2263. Internet Email: eoahmad@ntuix.ntu.ac.sg Bitnet Email: eoahmad@ntuvax.bitnet