Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 3rd Dec 2008 20:42 UTC, submitted by Michael
The choice of filesystems on Linux is vast, but most people will stick with their respective distributions' default choices, which will most likely be ext3, but you're free to use ReiserFS, XFS, or something else completely if you so desire. Things are about to change though, with btrfs just around the corner. To bridge the gap between now and btfrs, ext3 has been updated to ext4, which adds some interesting features like extents, which are already in use in most other popular file systems. Phoronix decided it was time to do some performance checking on ext4.
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RE[2]: Default filesystem options
by sbergman27 on Thu 4th Dec 2008 16:37
in reply to "RE: Default filesystem options"
Member since:2005-07-24
"""
Exactly my the same beef I have with them. Many options can be set for various diferent filesystems each of these effecting thier performance.
"""
Using the defaults for these benchmarks is reasonable and beneficial. One significant problem I've noticed with FOSS is a tendency to ship with really sucky defaults. Setting proper defaults is not given a high priority because FOSS users are assumed to be smart enough to modify them. (Hi PostgreSQL! Glad you're doing better now!) If XFS ships with poor default settings the devs deserve to be beaten over the head with benchmark losses until they notice the problem. This actually *benefits* users rather than just giving them the warm fuzzies with a reassuring published benchmark result. Most people trust the defaults. And if data integrity is important, with good reason. The default config is the most thoroughly tested configuration. I recall a case a few years ago where actual data corruption could occur on ext3 filesystems. However, as it turned out, the bug only affected people who mounted their filesystems with "data=journal". This turns on full data journaling, at significant expense to performance, and is thus only used by people who consider data integrity to be of paramount importance. Oops.
So, obviously, both the devs and the users must weigh the pros and cons of settings which potentially affect stability, even in nonobvious ways. Ext3/4 writes can likely be sped up with data=writeback. But I don't actually run machines that way, since they would then only provide the same data integrity guarantees as XFS does... and because I'm a big believer in using defaults unless there is a clear need to vary from them. Mess with them and you essentially become your own beta tester.
Edited 2008-12-04 16:41 UTC
RE[3]: Default filesystem options
by abraxas on Thu 4th Dec 2008 18:28
in reply to "RE[2]: Default filesystem options"
Member since:2005-07-07
Using the defaults for these benchmarks is reasonable and beneficial. One significant problem I've noticed with FOSS is a tendency to ship with really sucky defaults. Setting proper defaults is not given a high priority because FOSS users are assumed to be smart enough to modify them. (Hi PostgreSQL! Glad you're doing better now!) If XFS ships with poor default settings the devs deserve to be beaten over the head with benchmark losses until they notice the problem.
XFS doesn't ship with poor default settings. It ships with settings that aren't optimal for a desktop system but that's because it is used often for large disk arrays. That doesn't mean it isn't a good desktop file system also but distributions tend to use ext3 as the default filesystem and pretty much ignore all other filesystems. It would be trivial to export optimized desktop settings during install but there aren't many distributions that even offer XFS as an option during install.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 13:17 UTC
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 12:06 UTC
"According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.More News »
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2005-09-22
Exactly my the same beef I have with them. Many options can be set for various diferent filesystems each of these effecting thier performance. In a production server environment, the defaults are usually going to get changed for maximal performance on the desired workload.