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
Member since:2006-12-28
As a Unix system engineer, I install big iron serves as a job. All of these installations include optimization and I'm sorry to say this so bluntly, it never just "depends". In fact, if I where to say that to a customer, they would tell me to get lost.
When a customer buys a system, they are always for a particular task, be that database, java applications, backup infrastructure, the list goes on. Every time we optimize for a task, it is always on the basis of speed.
If a customer wants a system to be good at heavy user loads, then we optimize for I/O and filesystem speed and try to keep the amount of background processes to a minimum. With java applications, it's all about cutting the system down to the minimum and making sure the app server has as many resources as possible. Believe me, java app servers are hungry. As for databases, it's about filesystem block size more than anything.
What do all of these have in common? Speed. There is no way that your system is optimized if it's slow. If your system runs dog slow to begin with, it is not going to be any faster under high load.
I have been dealing with high end Unix systems for the past seven years and that is no rule of thumb. That is a fact. Yes, I can throw a thousand users at a Solaris or AIX box, but I can do that just as easily with a Linux box. And it'd be half the price on a Linux machine to boot.
Member since:2008-12-26
Member since:2007-11-06
Funny, I always had the exact opposite impression (BSD = bad SMP). "
Not quite. Since 7.x it has got significantly better. I can only see SMP even more improved in 8.0.
Member since:2009-05-20
Member since:2005-07-06
Historically yes, until Linux's not-so-fair scheduler came in. Things have probably improved since then (last year), but FreeBSD's SMP system is a lot better than it was. With all these multi-core machines around it has to be these days.
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?