Thank you Theo for making the point about OS's is exactly I wanted to convey
about CPU architecture. I have seen several articles with OS comparisons
but little when it comes to hardware architecture.
It looks like I have researching to do and I think I'll write my own article
on the subject.
Bill
----- Original Message -----
From: Theo Schlossnagle
To: S Destika
Cc: [email protected]
Sent: Saturday, October 08, 2005 12:11 AM
Subject: Re: [osol-discuss] Re: Re: Sparc ? x86 Comparison
Linux can beat solaris hands down running autoconf and ./configure. In fact
it often compiles faster. However, since I (personally) don't run many
production compile-farms or autoconf farms, it really is a case-by-case
basis.
Until just recently (last 2 years) the threading support on Linux was
abysmal and now it's just mediocre. It has improved dramatically and stands
to improve more over time. So, if you have an application that relies
heavily on threading you often see a tremendous advantage on Solaris over
Linux. On the multi-process model apps (like apache 1.3 and Sendmail, etc.)
Linux's extremely inexpensive clone()/fork() implementation serves it well.
Our apps tend to run faster on Solaris than on Linux when run head to head
in a lab. We make extensive use of Linux's special features like epoll()
and futexes, but still it doesn't hold up to Solaris. Linux is chock full
of pretty fabulous implementations of operating system primitives. It has a
excellent scheduler and a decent VM system. Solaris has these too and in my
experience tends to have much more robust and higher performing
storage-related facilities (SCSI layer, direct I/O layer, etc.). On the
flip side, I can set up a transparent ethernet bridge an apply firewall
rules on it in Linux, whereas that's just about impossible on Solaris. When
two entities' feature sets don't match one-for-one it is very hard to
compare them objectively.
Saying one is faster than the other is like saying a tank is faster than a
hummer. What's fast? over what terrain? under what stress?
Best regards,
// Theo Schlossnagle
// Principal Engineer -- http://www.omniti.com/~jesus/
// OmniTI Computer Consulting, Inc. -- http://www.omniti.com/
// Ecelerity: fastest MTA on Earth
_______________________________________________
opensolaris-discuss mailing list
[email protected]
_______________________________________________
opensolaris-discuss mailing list
[email protected]
