Freebsd and performance

[Ryan Sommers]

n.v.t n.v.t wrote:

> Know you guys coming close to the 5.3 -stable release alot of users 
> are going to upgrade/switch, right, because this is what we have been 
> waiting for. What about the performance that 4.X had? Will the 
> performance be equal ? Will it be having better performance? Even on 
> low end machines? And especially sinds freebsd is becoming more and 
> more ready for desktop use, performance is a big issue on 
> desktops.(look at Gnu/Linux for example, which I have been using for a 
> very long time know, and all I can remember is that almost all of the 
> releases have scheduling/latency issues. When I was using 2.2/2.4/2.6 
> All I have seen where low latency patches. What about freebsd?


I speak for myself only and not re@, but no. 5.3 will not (yet) have the 
same performance 4.x had. So far 5.x has been about upgrading some of 
our major subsystems with more modernization, like a multithreading 
kernel, multithreaded kernel subsystems, eliminating Giant, etc. All of 
these things are not the tried-and-true of 4.x, they are new. Likewise 
they may not outperform 4.x, yet. I imagine once RELENG_5_3 is cut and 
-STABLE is adopted we will see more and more performance related 
patches. Eventually the 5.x branch will achieve the stability 4.x has to 
offer.

> I have only been reading the bsd section at slashdot so I don't know 
> much about the progress you guys are making on the feature release. Is 
> there a offical news site for freebsd users? Like openbsd has 
> *deadly.org.

www.freebsd.org. www.daemonnews.com I think carries some news. 
Otherwise, subscribe to current at . That's a pretty good way to see 
information about what is going on.

> If those things are taking a while to be there, does fbsd have any 
> kernel patches like linux does to improve desktop performance? For 
> example like: http://members.optusnet.com.au/ckolivas/kernel/

Lord, I hope not. One of the reasons I dislike Linux (and there are 
many) is how much independent, unofficial, hard-to-find, incompatible, 
and distribution specific development goes on. If you have patches that 
would benefit the project, why not submit them?

-- 
Ryan Sommers
ryans at gamersimpact.com