> As for PostGres, I will say that it is pretty scalable. I once got the
> thing to work on a 386 with 8MB RAM! Try doing that with MySQL! It
> system requirements are definitely lower. You don't even need POSIX
> threads to use it, but that's also a disadvantage because lots of
> requests would benefit from a threaded architecture.
U-uh, I don't agree. First of all threads on linux is a misnomer because it
isn't supported by the kernel. A kludge is done to make it seem to be a thread
but it is actually a fork in disguise.
Justfiably so, POSIX threads isn't exactly the best way to implement a
multi-tasking program consisting of 'threads'. The best example of an internal
threaded design for me would be the design of SQUID. Of course, without a
model and library to base the design on so that other efforts could base their
work on the model of squid, it's essentially useless as well.
Here's a snippet from last week's LWN on what the kernel hackers think of POSIX
threads:
===============================
POSIX threads. The issue of support in the Linux kernel for POSIX threads came
up again this week. Many people who are looking for a clean, cross-platform
implementation of threads get frustrated that they are not fully supported by
the Linux kernel. The final answer is that they won't be implemented. The
concensus among the primary kernel developers appears to be that doing a POSIX
threads implementation is impossible to do both correctly and efficiently.
Here's a sample of some of the opinions:
Alan Cox:
"posix threads is a braindamaged pile of crap".
Stephen Tweedie:
"although a lot of the POSIX threads are reasonable, things
like requiring uid/gid updates to be instantly effective across all threads in
the process are just insane".
Linus Torvalds:
"Note that the reason the kernel is not POSIX-compliant is: - the POSIX
standard is technically stupid. It's much better to use a cleaner fundamental
threading model and build on top of that. - things like the above are just so
much better and more easily done in user space anyway."
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