From: eoahmad@ntuix.ntu.ac.sg (Othman Ahmad)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: 386BSD or LINUX?
Date: 5 Nov 92 06:06:58 GMT
Organization: Nanyang Technological University - Singapore
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]

Drew Eckhardt (drew@kinglear.cs.colorado.edu) wrote:
: 
: Linux +'s : 
: 
: Shared libraries.  This results in a significant disk space savings,
: especially in the case of 'X' applications that can shrink by 
: an order of magnitude when compiled with shared libraries.  

Let us compare sizes:

bash$ size 386bsd
text    data    bss     dec     hex
376832  20480   147996  545308  8521c
(this is 386bsd with terry patches, generic ISA, Xserver,Uconsole, Nfs,Tcp,
10 ptys)
sh$ size X386
text    data    bss     dec     hex
860160  40960   43696   944816  e6ab0
sh$ size xterm
text    data    bss     dec     hex
532480  28672   17464   578616  8d438
bash$ ps -aux | more
USER       PID %CPU %MEM   VSZ  RSS TT  STAT STARTED       TIME COMMAND
eoahmad    927  0.0  0.1   492    0 p0  Is   12:59PM    0:01.81  (bash)
root       926  0.0  0.1   892    0 vg  S    12:59PM    0:07.70  (xterm)
eoahmad    924  0.0  0.1   780    0 vg  S    12:59PM    0:03.67  (twm)
root       923  0.0  0.1  1664    0 ??  S    12:59PM    9:24.28  (X)

: 
: Modern VM, with a unified buffer cache and user memory pool.  

 I never believe in VM. Once we do not have enough RAM, might as well buy 
more RAM.
	Unified buffer cache? How much can we gain? CAn you tell us more
about its algorithm, especially how it decides to choose which is to give 
priority to, and how it handles the paged user memory?
: 
: Many kernel structures, such as pty's, are dynamically allocated.  This
: increases the amount of pageable memory that is available.

How do we change its number? CAn we add pty indefinitely?

: 
: More "odd" hardware is supported in the stock distribution.  For 
: instance, SCSI support is there for Seagate, WD7000, Future Domain, 
: Ultrastor 14f, and Adaptec boards.
: 
: There are more WhizzyFeatures (tm), such as /proc.
: 
: Linux supports the MSDOS file system, and can run vm86 tasks such
: as the DOS emulator, if you consider these +'s.

Where is the source for this DOS emulator?
: 
: I'd say that if you want BSD, because it's BSD, or if you want 
: stable NFS NOW, and not in two weeks,  that it might be worthwhile.  

Have you forgotten that it has the VFS(?), which is the Posix complient file
system. Or has linux used it already? What it does is to have long file names,
faster throughput because of large block sizes(4K),without much fragmentation
becaue it can go down to 1K block size as well,or am I mistaken?

	It also uses standard BSD library, which makes it easy to port
software written in BSD systems which is widely used in Academic circles.
	This is the other reason why I choose 386bsd over linux. However it is
not completely true because 4.3 BSD is slightly different from 4.2 BSD. Use
of GNU utilities make it slightly incompatible with full blown mainframe
BSD or those used in ultrix and Sun workstations.
	The other reason is that linux is more for hackers. Lynne goes to
great lengths to make 386bsd installation easy for "idiots"/beginners.

How about performance comparisons? I've posted the results of iozone 1 to
comp.unix.bsd .

--
Othman bin Ahmad, School of EEE,
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 2263.
Internet Email: eoahmad@ntuix.ntu.ac.sg
Bitnet Email: eoahmad@ntuvax.bitnet
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd