On Tue, Jun 05, 2001 at 08:22:19AM +1000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> David Merrill wrote:
>
>
> > For me, the benefits outweight the pain, hugely. No contest. But that
> > isn't true for many other people who don't enjoy fudging with their
> > conf files, and enjoy computing as a hobby in its own right. In our
> > zeal to defeat the behemoth of Redmond, we all hate to admit the ways
> > that Windows is better than Linux. But we have to be honest about the
> > state of Linux, if we are to improve it.
>
> Which we are doing, slowly. I remember Linux before X-windows. :)
>
> > Remember the mindcraft fiasco?
>
> No...
Um, please forgive me.
That link I sent is to the original reporting. There was a lot of
other important information that came out only later. So, let me make
a short summary.
MindCraft did a study which included benchmarks showing NT performing
much, much better than Linux at basic server duties (http, file
serving, etc.).
Linuxers cried foul because system tuning wasn't done properly on the
Linux box.
Eventually, the fallout was that NT *did* perform better, although not
as much better as the test seemed to show, due to the lack of good
performance tuning on the Linux box.
This was one of the big (maybe THE big(?)) things that led to the
rewrite of much of the locking code in the kernel, leading to greatly
enhanced SMP performance.
The 2.4 kernel might never have made such huge strides toward
scalability (upwards, that is) if it had not been for the MindCraft
study. That's the point I was originally trying to make - that only be
accepting and recognizing the faults in our beloved system can it
continue to grow and improve as it has. The MindCraft fiasco is a
perfect example of that dynamic in action.
So, let MS and the others put heat on us. It makes us stronger and
better in the long run.
--
Dr. David C. Merrill http://www.lupercalia.net
Linux Documentation Project [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Collection Editor & Coordinator http://www.linuxdoc.org
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