Hi,
On Sunday, 28. May 2006 19:06, Matthias Kilian wrote:
...
> Oh, but comparing general performance of Linux vs. OpenBSD on a
> typical desktop/development PC, I *can* tell you that OpenBSD
> performs much better, especially when the machine does lots of IO
> in the background.
A daring statement.
> On my office PC (running Gentoo Linux), an "emerge-webrsync" pushes
> the box into a nearly unusable state for 10 to 15 minutes.
> Incomparision, when I rsync /usr/{XF4,ports,src} within my home
> network from one machine to another, or just run cvs up on those
> trees, the system is still usable. So much about Linux and performance
> (sometimes I've the impression that Linux is only fast when idling).
This statement is clearly ridiculous. This whole discussion is ridiculous and
pointless.
There is no such thing as "Linux" and there CERTAINLY is no such thing as
"Gentoo". Matthias, if /your/ Gentoo box is "nearly unusable" when you
"emerge-webrsync" then *you* certainly suck at maintaining an Gentoo
installation! :-) You really should consider running something else, maybe
something with sane default settings and a decently compiled kernel, since
obviously you don't know how to. Consider Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, SuSE and
the like.
I'm running OpenBSD 3.9 release branch and OpenSuSE 10.1 in dualboot on the
same 1400MHz Athlon, both with KDE 3.5.1. I haven't changed either kernel.
Converting the same Audio CD into OGG/Vorbis coded files takes 80 seconds
less running KAudioCreator in SuSE than it does running KAudioCreator in
OpenBSD 3.9. And guess what: the drive SuSE has to write the finished files
to is encrypted with AES256 which takes some additional CPU time. Both
installations remain responsive while doing this.
I'm pretty confident that if I'd change the SuSE kernel with a somewhat more
experimental kernel like one of the MM series, SuSE would still gain a little
bit.
But anyway, who the f*ck cares about this? I didn't choose OpenBSD because I
wanted the fastest, most performant system for desktop use! Then I'd probably
installed FreeBSD instead of OpenBSD which comes with a better package/ports
management, many more ports for desktop use and offers a great deal of what
OpenBSD offers in other respects as well.
I chose OpenBSD because of its small installation footprint, good
documentation, stability (because heck, it's certainly the most stable OS
I've ever used!), security and the chance to learn something useful. Trying
to get into Linux development is nearly impossible because there is no common
direction, every major company is trying to get their stuff into it no matter
what and interfaces change from kernel release to kernel release. There is no
strong link between kernel and userland and documentation is weak.
And then there are the distributors. Ever compared a Mandriva kernel against
the Vanilla one? Happy nightmares! It's hard to find a decent Linux
distributor. Debian has always been a stable choice yet their release cycles
are so darn f*cked up and they lack good people for a security response team
(one person just isn't enough!).
OpenBSD is a sane choice if you need stability and quality in general. If you
plan to use OpenBSD for a product or other solution, then these two count
more than the nebulous term "scalability" IMHO.
well, these were my two cents, for what it's worth.
kind regards,
Tobias W.
