this thread is fucking stupid.
consider that the majority of machines are horribly underutilized, even
in large organizations where some of the machines are under heavy load.
the reason that everyone here is so dismissive of benchmarks is that
they do not translate to real world results. people hyperventilate all
day about how software X runs Y% faster under various OSes but i rarely
if ever see a concrete expression of this e.g. i switched from openbsd
to linux and was able to offer the same level of service with half the
machines.
part of the reason that one doesn't normally see concrete examples is
that there is far more to the 'performance' of a machine than just
benchmarks.
- how does the cost of administration scale with machine count?
- with what frequency will OS-related issues cause a catastrophic
failure in a production environment?
- is it easy to upgrade the machines?
- if i don't regularly patch the machines will they get rooted?
once you start thinking about the answers to these questions you might
see how irrelevant most of this discussion has been to date.
cheers,
jake
