Performance v.s. Quality

Posted Nov 6, 2005 7:32 UTC (Sun) by cventers (guest, #31465)
In reply to: Performance v.s. Quality by b7j0c
Parent article: FreeBSD Project Launches FreeBSD 6.0

>> once again, better man pages, superior code delivery solution
in /ports, and in my opinion, much better performance given heavy loads.

Having not spent a lot of time in the manual pages, I'm not going to
argue that point one way or another. Superior code delivery system I'm
going to have to disagree with, given that I'm now using Gentoo's portage
on every system I control. As for "much better performance given heavy
loads", perhaps you can point to recent benchmarks that demonstrate this?
I spent some time in freebsd-performance and I seem to recall lots of
posts arguing about things like, "Why does MySQL perform *so much better*
on Linux?" (so much better being 2x+)

>> haha are you serious? these installations are so tweaked they bear
little resemblance to your Gentoo box.

Some installations may be specialized, but that fact as a blanket
statement is simply pulled out of your ass. This article, linked below,
talks about HP's experiences running stock Linux on a 64-node Itanium2
superdome:

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39184546,00.h

I quote:

>> Running three different benchmarks on a standard Linux distribution
based on the 2.6 kernel, the Superdome showed linear improvements for
kernel compiling, memory bandwidth, and the HPL common supercomputer
benchmark.

Try that with FreeBSD and report back.

>> The HPL benchmark, which is used to measure performance when solving
large linear equations, produced similar results, rising from 18
gigaflops with one cell of four processors to 277 gigaflops with all 16
cells, or 64 processors, running.

>> "This was a standard Linux distribution," said Cabaniols. "The kernel
was able to discover the topology of the system and discover the memory
in a NUMA pattern."

>> freeBSD is not "forked" either. you don't see some people running
"freeBSD with featureX" and "freeBSD with featureY".

No, FreeBSD is not internally forked. If it were, they might have an
easier time porting features. Instead, you have NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD
and DragonflyBSD which share ancestry but can't directly share code
because they are all *different kernels*. In Linux, you have lots of
distributions to choose, but all of them ship kernels that are directly
based on Linus's tree.

>> you're purely amateur hour at this point. please head on over to the
openbsd boards and let them know that their detailed security work is
absolutely worthless (you might want to read up on rudimentary OS
security first), its all just ego.

Are you going to try to tell me Theo is not an asshole? Because you might
want to research why OpenBSD exists in the first place. Theo's CVS access
from NetBSD was forcibly removed:

(quoting Wikipedia)
In December 1994, Theo de Raadt, a co-founder and member of the NetBSD
core team for two years, was asked to resign from the NetBSD Foundation.
His access to the NetBSD CVS server was terminated and he was instructed
to e-mail any further changes to the system as patches, so that the core
team could check them. He was also informed that he no longer represented
the NetBSD project in any formal manner.

I'm not saying that BSDs don't contribute anything. I think OpenSSH, for
example, is an excellent project. What I was stating is that the reason
OpenBSD exists is not because Theo woke up one day and decided to create
a different distribution... it's because his personality was abrasive
enough for the rest of the NetBSD team to toss him to sea.

>> this hasn't always been the case. debian was 2.4 for quite a while.
i'm not saying this was a bad decision on their part, simply pointing out
that the linux world is rife with compatibility issues and minor nuances
that do not exist to the same extent on freeBSD.

Yes, and there was a time that FreeBSD 4 didn't exist! What the hell is
your point, exactly? Because "debian was 2.4 for quite a while" doesn't
say anything at all about compatibility issues or minor nuances - you're
totally talking out of your ass here.

>> you talk as if freeBSD does not have a good filesystem, good process
scheduling etc.

I'll call this pure opinion to avoid having to dig up literature on the
subject; but I do believe FreeBSD has a "good" filesystem and a "decent"
process scheduler. I also think that Linux has "lots of excellent"
filesystems and an "excellent" scheduler (and indeed, with patches on
their way in, "7 excellent schedulers"). Nevermind that Linux lets you
choose I/O schedulers on the fly on per-block-device granularity.

A few final points:

1. You assume I've never used FreeBSD. This is an assumption, because in
fact, I have used FreeBSD and have also assisted UNIX-novice friends with
FreeBSD for web server purposes.

2. The whole reason I've replied to this article is in response to the
claim in the FreeBSD press release that "a recent benchmark shows FreeBSD
having faster data throughput". Not saying there isn't a way they could
actually pull ahead in the race once in a while, but given the amount of
blind FreeBSD zealotry that is evident in the community (see: picture of
Tux getting raped by BSD daemon), and the number of times people make
unsubstantiated claims about FreeBSD being faster/better, I'm not
inclined to believe *any* claims of FreeBSD being faster at anything
until someone can demonstrate it in an objective benchmark.

And really, it doesn't matter. I enjoy Linux when I'm in Max Payne 2 or
Doom 3 or Quake 4 or UT2004 or Starcraft, or when I'm surfing the
internet with Konqueror, working with KDE, coding/doing web development,
or watching my cluster flawlessly handle lots of e-mail / pageviews /
database queries / telephone calls. I'm happy to coexist in the community
with FreeBSD (indeed, it's always good to have good competition).

Bottom line? I'm sick and tired of people blindly touting FreeBSD's
superiority without any way to demonstrate any actual basis in fact. Man
pages and release engineering don't help you crunch more numbers or serve
more web pages, and in the server capacity, that's what this is all
about.

Performance v.s. Quality

Posted Nov 6, 2005 10:13 UTC (Sun) by cventers (guest, #31465) [Link]

Apologies in advance... the ZDNet link needs to end in "htm", not "h"

Performance v.s. Quality

Posted Nov 7, 2005 4:35 UTC (Mon) by b7j0c (guest, #27559) [Link] (7 responses)

>> you have NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD
>> and DragonflyBSD which share ancestry but can't directly share code
>> because they are all *different kernels*

they are more than different kernels, they are different operating systems and different projects.

they have made no claims of portability between OSs, this is your hang up.

i have no idea why you are hanging this claim on them...why, because they all started with 4.4bsd back in what, 1991?

on that note i would like to declare severe problems with linux and solaris compatibility, after all, they are both written in C and support processes and work in intel systems.

>> Are you going to try to tell me Theo is not an asshole?

i don't know him. also if i want to say something like that to someone, i do it directly to them and with good reason, which is why i suggested you do so, signed with your real name of course (since you are insulting him by name). presuming that all you know about him is what you pulled out of wikipedia, you have no cause for insulting him in a public forum either.

>> Bottom line? I'm sick and tired of people blindly touting FreeBSD's
>> superiority

you keep syaing that, even though no one has.

Performance v.s. Quality

Posted Nov 7, 2005 4:50 UTC (Mon) by cventers (guest, #31465) [Link] (6 responses)

>> they are more than different kernels, they are different operating
systems and different projects.

Indeed, you're right! I'm declaring this to be a *problem* with BSD,
because innovation cannot be easily shared. What if all the developers
for Linux split the kernel into three separate projects? I'd speculate
that each project would still have more manpower than the most developed
BSD, but it would do seriously bad things to Linux's rate of innovation,
which I believe the forking has done to BSD.

>> i don't know him. also if i want to say something like that to
someone, i do it directly to them and with good reason, which is why i
suggested you do so, signed with your real name of course (since you are
insulting him by name). presuming that all you know about him is what you
pulled out of wikipedia, you have no cause for insulting him in a public
forum either.

You pick some really clueless vectors on which to attack me. What makes
you think that my first exposure to Theo is on Wikipedia? Don't you think
there was a reason I thought that might be a good place to look for
someone else's words on the subject?

Indeed, if you had any kind of short term memory, you might remember when
I said:

>> Instead, it seems that the noise I receive from the BSD community
includes things like Theo making arbitrary blanket statements in the
press like "Most people don't know how terrible Linux is"... (not that
Theo speaks for the BSD community at large).

Read this article:

http://www.forbes.com/intelligentinfrastructure/2005/06/1...

I, Chase Venters, hereby declare Theo De Raadt to be an asshole on
account of his childish slander that seems to carry no more substance
than sour grapes.

>> you keep syaing that, even though no one has.

I do keep "syaing" that, because of the claim that sparked this whole
flash of commentary - the statement in FreeBSD's press release that some
unspecified benchmark demonstrates that FreeBSD 6 is faster than Linux in
data throughput. I don't generally believe unqualified numbers, and I
certainly don't believe unqalified numbers from the FreeBSD project.

I'm going to voluntarily stop adding comments to this thread, because I'm
starting to feel like a Slashdot troll, and I'm quite fond of LWN as an
excellent resource.

Performance v.s. Quality

Posted Nov 7, 2005 5:49 UTC (Mon) by b7j0c (guest, #27559) [Link] (5 responses)

>> Indeed, you're right! I'm declaring this to be a *problem* with BSD,
>> because innovation cannot be easily shared.

each project has separate design goals. they are happy to sail in separate directions. these design goals are oftne mutually exclusive. openbsd's performance may not be optimized, but its security features are. i would offer that openbsd is generally considered the most secure open source OS, so forsaking comprimise has worked in their favor. likewise with netbsd's portability. they don't want to adopt code that will forsake this design goal.

the entire point of the BSDs is to provide an implementation of a specific design goal, not to conflate all design goals.

Performance v.s. Quality

Posted Nov 7, 2005 10:49 UTC (Mon) by PaXTeam (guest, #24616) [Link] (4 responses)

as someone else mentioned it already, this is just another meme that some (Open)BSD users keep repeating. what is it exactly that allows a Linux or (say) NetBSD system to be compromised but doesn't allow it on OpenBSD? can you mention a few specific things or have you blindly repeated their propaganda only? and i'd also like to know who 'in general' considers OpenBSD the 'most secure open source OS'? i've spent quite some years in computer security and haven't run across any expert who thinks so. i submit we may differ in the definition of 'expert' here, to me it's the person who knows how to avoid/find/exploit/fix bugs, and has actually done so in a professional manner for a number of years, i.e., actual real-life experience is king and key here (and it excludes quite a few self-described 'experts').

Performance v.s. Quality

Posted Nov 7, 2005 17:01 UTC (Mon) by b7j0c (guest, #27559) [Link] (3 responses)

if you do not understand the security features of openbsd, you should not comment on them.

>> i've spent quite some years in computer security

yet you have never spent any time reviewing any of the information on openbsd in order to submit an informed post on the topic. i'm not saying that its featureset is not subject to criticism, but you aren't even doing that, you're just offering more hand-waving.

Performance v.s. Quality

Posted Nov 7, 2005 18:08 UTC (Mon) by PaXTeam (guest, #24616) [Link] (2 responses)

now where did you figure out that i "don't understand the security features of OpenBSD"? or that i "have never spent any time reviewing any of the information on OpenBSD"? did you read all that out of my post above? google up PaX one day then Mr. i-know-security-and-openbsd. sorry, i meant yahoo or whatever. once you do that and realize what it's been about for the past 5 years, you'll probably also understand why i can comment on their features (and have done so on numerous occasions, check bugtraq or undeadly.org).

also, you ditched my question so i'll ask it again: what is it exactly that allows a Linux or (say) NetBSD system to be compromised but doesn't allow it on OpenBSD? it's funny that you are asking me for submitting an informed post on OpenBSD security (not that this was the best forum for that, mind you), yet you fail do the same? you know what best describes you? your own words: your post is 100% content-free zealotry.

Performance v.s. Quality

Posted Nov 7, 2005 18:20 UTC (Mon) by b7j0c (guest, #27559) [Link] (1 responses)

>> what is it exactly that allows a Linux or (say) NetBSD system to be
>> compromised but doesn't allow it on OpenBSD?

openbsd is not designed to fix netbsd or linux security issues.

i never said netbsd or linux were insecure, you like every other poster here seems to only understand the pepsi-challenge mentality, that one wins and the other loses.

where did i say openbsd closes linux security holes?

where did i say linux has glaring security holes?

Performance v.s. Quality

Posted Nov 8, 2005 17:29 UTC (Tue) by PaXTeam (guest, #24616) [Link]

you said: "i would offer that openbsd is generally considered the most secure open source OS". if it's 'the most secure', then by definition the others are not the most secure, or in plain english, they're less secure. i asked what that 'less secure' is exactly and i have yet to receive an informed post from you. and in case you don't understand the word 'secure', i'll offer a simple definition: security is about information flow control, i.e., i expect you to give specific examples where OpenBSD provides information flow controls where the others don't (and 'provides' implies that such controls are bugfree, non-exploitable, else said controls are just an exercise in vain), and i also expect you to prove that all controls the 'less secure' systems have are also present in in OpenBSD (so that you can in the end prove that OpenBSD security is indeed a true superset of all the others). your turn sir ;-).