Re: GURU needed: Linux vs. FreeBSD

Jason Venner (jason@idiom.com)
Tue, 03 Nov 1998 11:52:28 -0800


Hard bad numbers:

Linux uses far more cpu to move data to and from disk and to and from
network connections than freebsd does.

Simple test.

1)
A = disk partition

time dd if=A bs=32k of=/dev/null count=5000

linux box will use 90% of the cpu, freebsd will use 2%
[given a decent scsi system]

I find that for bulk tcp freebsd is about 20% leaner on the cpu usage
also, so a given machine under freebsd can serv more requests per unit
time before it's cpu saturates.

Given the above, I use linux for all my personal machines and Freebsd
for busy servers.

OTH freebsd doesn't use the multiple cpu stuff very well at present.
I think they use a single lock on the entire kernel at present -- I
don't know how fine grained the linux locking is.

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