hi all,

i am sick of the *BSD guys and their holier than thou attitude. i read that FreeBSD is superior cos it's a tightly
integrated operating system whereas Linux is only a kernel. So theoretically a custom tailored system like LFS
should beat the crap out of any BSD running on the same hardware right?
wrong! there's an article by Moshe Bar at the byte.com/servinglinux which compares the Linux and OpenBSD
and BSD outperforms Linux in all the scenarios (though it's not LFS)
so i'm looking for comparative benchmarks like booting time, number of simultaneous processes that can run without bringing the system down, webserving performance, sendmail performance etc
i want to identify areas where linux can be tweaked or patched to make it outperform bsd.
check out an article at extremetech.com where they sayLinux proponents are supposed to be more interested in
beating commercial offerings whereas BSD developers are more interested in technology.regards
penseur2

From what I've read there's actually no clear performance difference between BSD and Linux. It depends on the benchmark, the hardware used, the version of the software, etc. I'd guess (although I don't run any servers) that the choice between BSD and Linux would more come down to which system you personally preferred, or which system had feature X, than a raw performance difference. For example, you might particularly like FreeBSD's "jails" or OpenBSD's code audit policy.

As for the custom tailored issue, LFS doesn't allow you to integrate your system like BSD, however much tweaking you do (e.g., glibc and the Linux Kernel are still developed by different sets of people with no official communication mechanism). IMHO I doubt LFS would have much of a performance advantage over a regular distro like Slackware.

Alex

The cool thing about BSD is the "make world" option, which (how I understand it) downloads all of the newest sources, and compiles the entire system. Also if you want to update a certain utility or library, it will get all of the dependancies for you and compile them too.

I think the performance advantage that LFS has over distros is that it is pretty much bare-bones, then you add ONLY what you want. There's no extra programs that you don't know about, or don't need that will take up both disk space and memory.

Ok, so when you build your "tweaked and patched" Linux system that outperforms BSD, what are you going to do when the next round of "tweaked and patched" BSD systems are built? I don't see any point in going off on people who do OS comparisions. Every once in a while I see grumbles in the BSD community about "Linux getting all the attention". Hopefully, someone will see those comparisons and pick an OS that they are comfortable with and then configure their system to get the performance they need.

I like like to pick the OS that I feel is appropriate for the job. I like OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Linux, and Solaris. Each OS has it's merits.

I've been running BSD at home and at work for quite some time now. Although I'm familiar with Linux (mainly redhat 7.x, mandrake 8.x, ancient slackware) I prefer BSD for several reasons.

Network installations are really easy, and it's very easy to stay up to date, too.

The ports subsystem has got RPMs running ragged.

System initialization is, to my way of thinking, much more rational; although I've gotten quite a bit of backchatter on this point from many different quarters.

Networking, firewalls, etc are easier to setup and maintain

All of that being said, I don't think that I am a BSD bigot by any means. I have run Linux distributions in the past, and may well do so in the future when I consider that to be the appropriate or prudent move.