Phoronix was kind enough to add a deliciously lengthy nine-page compare and contrast between FreeBSD 8 and Ubuntu 9.10 to their arsenal of articles. "Canonical will be releasing Ubuntu 9.10 at the end of next month while the final release of FreeBSD 8.0 is also expected within the next few weeks. With these two popular free software operating systems both having major updates coming out at around the same time, we decided it warranted some early benchmarking as we see how the FreeBSD 8.0 and Ubuntu 9.10 performance compares. For looking more at the FreeBSD performance we also have included test results from FreeBSD 7.2, the current stable release. In this article are mostly the server and workstation oriented benchmarks with the testing being carried out on a dual AMD Opteron quad-core workstation."
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Member since:2006-03-20
Let me explain the difference.
System A runs fast. 80 miles/hour. Its a porshe.
System B runs slower. 50 miles/hour. Its a truck.
Thing is, add more users, System A quickly slows to a crawl.
System B meanwhile doesn't slow down by much. Carrying 50 users it still maintains 49 miles/hour.
Speed itself doesn't complete the picture. Scalability adds the additional dimension.
Member since:2006-12-28
I can see where you are coming from and would agree, if we where talking about auto mobiles, but we aren't. We are talking essentially about calculations per second.
I agree that scalability is a factor when dealing with heavy loads but if your system is slow to begin with, it makes no difference how many more users you throw at it. It still crawls. Sure, it might crawl less than a system that is not optimized for high I/O but it still crawls.
All systems have limits, and some of these limits can be increased at the expense of others. This is a standard issue when dealing with system optimization. The bottoms line though is always that if one part of the system is significantly below par, it will drag the rest down.
We are not talking about different types of fuel, they both run on electricity in the end. We are also not talking about different types of engines, they where tested on the same hardward. I have always had the impression that FreeBSD scales horizontally (as in SMP) better than Linux, but frankly what does that serve you if your system crawls?
Member since:2005-07-06
System A runs fast. 80 miles/hour. Its a porshe.
System B runs slower. 50 miles/hour. Its a truck.
Thing is, add more users, System A quickly slows to a crawl.
System B meanwhile doesn't slow down by much. Carrying 50 users it still maintains 49 miles/hour.
Speed itself doesn't complete the picture. Scalability adds the additional dimension.
I don't know if that actually works as a comparison. We're talking about systems with the same hardware, running different tasks. It'd be like how fast could a single 2-seater Porsche get a person from point at to point B, versus how fast a 2-seater Porsche could get a family of 5 to soccer practice, pick up the groceries, etc. How well you handle a large number of tasks with limited resources (disk, IO, memory, CPUs), etc.
Member since:2007-07-27
There are some indications that Linux doesnt really utilize many CPUs that good, as for instance Solaris does. But Linux may be faster att small loads, with few threads. But when trying to use many CPUs on a large machine, Linux will have problems spreading the load. Whereas Solaris has no such problems. Solaris has run on 106 CPU machines S15k for long. I dont know about FreeBSD scalability though.
In short, I think scalability counts. Linux may win over Solaris on small loads, but I believe Linux will have problems on large machines. (Caveat, doing other things than a highly specialized task such as number crunching which Linux does now on large clusters. Such Linux clusters never handle many users, only number crunch with a tailored Linux kernel)
Member since:2005-07-22
There's a world of difference when an OS is heavily optimized for speed and only gets a marginal speed gain (as shown by the benchmark) leaving predictability and stability aside. FreeBSD may not be so fast in paper, but I bet mere milliseconds don't really matter at all if your data is at risk or your server stops responding when you load it.
Member since:2005-07-06
If you have reason to believe that a FreeBSD system would prevent all that better than anything else, as well as some benchmarks and some way of actually measuring that then feel free to share them. You'd make quite a bit of money. Otherwise, it's all shotting in the dark.
When a set of benchmarks come out telling you that one system is slower than another in some way you generally get some smart Alec who likes to point out that the apparently slower system is 'optimised' for 'something else'. That something else is generally always completely immeasurable.
Member since:
2006-12-28
Ehm, correct me if I'm wrong but isn't all optimization basically about speed? You can optimize for I/O, filesystem, multimedia, database and/or other applications but aren't all these optimizations always about speed?
You're going to have to be more specific. Optimizing for heavy load is no good if it crawls. If fact, a machine that is slow under heavy load is not optimized at all.