Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 27th Feb 2008 22:32 UTC
FreeBSD 7.0 has been released. "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE. This is the first release from the 7-STABLE branch which introduces many new features along with many improvements to functionality present in the earlier branches."
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RE[2]: Comment by sbergman27
by sbergman27 on Thu 28th Feb 2008 02:15
in reply to "RE: Comment by sbergman27"
Member since:2005-07-24
I don't think there is particularly anything wrong with it. On the contrary, I think it is very important information and that you are perhaps a little too sensitive.
I'll agree with all of you that "dissing" was no doubt too strong a term. But it seems notable to me that they felt it necessary to drag out that MySQL benchmark, yet again, in the press release. With benchmarks and server loads, YMMV is a universal truth. Heck, sometimes even that OS out of Washington gets lucky! ;-) I should say that while the differences between 7 and previous versions are impressive... the 15% difference clocked between it and Linux is still in the noise, statistically speaking. I'm not at all upset that they came out 15% higher in a benchmark. You see, I consider myself to be a Unix advocate ahead of being a Linux advocate. (My unix advocacy predates the *existence* of Linux by a good 3 years.) If FreeBSD can show Linux a thing or two, then that's peachy with me. In fact, I recall that back when we were having VM troubles, FreeBSD was one of the places we looked for guidance. So please do not take my original comment as indicating that I am displeased with FreeBSD's advances, poorly stated as it perhaps was.
It's more a matter of my feeling that FreeBSD has enough going for it that there is no need for them to compare themselves to Linux in the press release, when there are so many solid advances to fill it with, instead.
Ironically, in pointing out that they were coming across as a little defensive, I ended up coming across as a bit defensive, myself. ;-)
RE[3]: Comment by sbergman27
by evangs on Thu 28th Feb 2008 10:53
in reply to "RE[2]: Comment by sbergman27"
Member since:2005-07-07
It's more a matter of my feeling that FreeBSD has enough going for it that there is no need for them to compare themselves to Linux in the press release, when there are so many solid advances to fill it with, instead.
That is why you still need a comparison to Linux. On its own a 350% improvement is bloody phenomenal. But the big question on everyone's mind when they read such a statement is how does that compare to what we already have? So by comparing it to Linux, it gives people a point of reference. I'm sure they could have done a comparison with Windows too, but then Windows isn't exactly reknown for it's SMP performance
If anything, I find that the comparison to Linux is very good move by the FreeBSD team. If the FreeBSD team were some commercial entity whose only aim was to sell you FreeBSD licenses, their press release would say that FreeBSD 7 is 1500% faster than previous versions. 1500% > 350% > 15% so it looks better for marketing. You would then have to dig through the fine print to see how this 1500% improvement would translate to a 15% improvement over the 2.6.22 Linux kernel.
Which approach would you prefer?
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Member since:
2006-03-15
I don't think there is particularly anything wrong with it. On the contrary, I think it is very important information and that you are perhaps a little too sensitive. While FreeBSD never had performance issues on single processor systems, it has never been able to scale almost linearly on SMP based systems. This has been the focus of the project for several years and the comparison to Linux gives everyone a point of reference. What good does it do for them to state that there are substantial improvements compared to previous versions if they do not qualify what that exactly means? For example, if I was producing a car and stated that fuel efficiency has increased 1000% compared to last years model, are you going to run out and by my car? Well, you just purchased a car that gets 1 mpg. OTOH, if I qualify the statement and also inform you that efficiency rivals that of the Prius and in certain cases, you get 15% more miles per gallon, you now have a point of reference. I really think people need to be far less sensitive about things. If anything, I think it will give the Linux hackers more motivation to improve things.