Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1999 20:15:56 +1030 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: jm7996@devrycols.edu Cc: Konrad Heuer <kheuer@gwdu60.gwdg.de>, freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD - A User's Point of View Message-ID: <19990124201556.E36690@freebie.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9901240354030.215-100000@insomnia.local.net>; from James A. Mutter on Sun, Jan 24, 1999 at 03:58:32AM -0500 References: <19990124171121.A36690@freebie.lemis.com> <Pine.BSF.4.05.9901240354030.215-100000@insomnia.local.net>
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On Sunday, 24 January 1999 at 3:58:32 -0500, James A. Mutter wrote: >> On Sunday, 24 January 1999 at 0:35:52 -0500, James A. Mutter wrote: >>>> My current arguments (of different quality) for FreeBSD are: >>>> >>>> 1. FreeBSD has an excellent pedigree. >>>> 2. For someome who has experiences with SunOS, Ultrix etc. FreeBSD is >>>> more familiar. >>>> 3. Linux is a kernel plus distributor's work, FreeBSD is a complete >>>> operating system. >>>> 4. Linux NFS performance is bad. >>>> 5. Linux process scheduling algorithm is worse than that of FreeBSD if >>>> system load is high. >>>> 6. As far as I've observed, the virtual memory system of FreeBSD >>>> behaves better. >>>> 7. The Linux kernel has internal limits (e.g. max number of open >>>> files) which may cause troubles on bigger systems. >>> >>> Don't forget this one: >>> 8. The Linux filesystem, ext2, is _evil_ and not to be trusted. >> >> I'd be a whole lot happier if people wouldn't make statements like >> this. If it's evil, explain. If you don't know any good reasons, >> don't spread misinformation. > > The Linux filesystem, or ext2fs, if I'm not mistaken by default caches > writes to the disk. If the machine should suddenly go down, power > failure, unexpected crash, etc..., this information doesn't make it back > to the disk. I've known many a Linux user who has lost _entire_ file > systems due to this. UFS does this too. > It surprises me that the Linux vendors don't turn this 'feature' off by > default. They could include in the doc's an explanation of why it's > turned off and give the users instructions on how to turn it back on, if > they like. I don't know if it's possible to turn it off in Linux. You can't turn it off in UFS either. In fact, the manner in which disk writes are cached is pretty central to FreeBSD's performance. > Please correct me if I'm wrong. The only ``file system'' I know which doesn't cache significantly is Microsoft's DOS file system. The performance is correspondingly bad. I think you've made my point. This ``evil'' feature of ext2fs was probably borrowed, at least in concept, from BSD's UFS. Greg -- See complete headers for address, home page and phone numbers finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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