Linux vs. xxxBSD

[Bill Campbell]

On Thu, Jul 10, 2003 at 05:50:52PM -0500, Shawn L Johnston wrote:
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Michael Hipp" <Michael at hipp.com>
>To: "Linux Users" <linux-users at linux-sxs.org>
>Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2003 5:18 PM
>Subject: Linux vs. xxxBSD
>

>>I have an upcoming web application that will be pretty intense and based
>>around apache with a database backend. The server(s) will be headless,
>>tuned for the job, and no desktop apps.
>>
>> Is xxxBSD really more stable than Linux?
>> Is xxxBSD really a better performer than Linux?
>>

>>I'm asking because that is the contention of some ISPers I interact with.
>>Don't particularly want to learn xxxBSD, but would if the gains were
>>worthwhile - I'm a Red Hat guy at heart.
>>
>> Any thoughts appreciated,

I've been using Linux a lot longer than I have FreeBSD, but have been doing
quite a bit on FreeBSD recently (4.8 STABLE).

>I'm not real familiar with BSD's, so these generalities might be
>wrong... I'd think that performence is going to depend greatly on your
>hardware. In general I think Linux will perform better then BSD if
>your using a SMP machine. If your going to be using +1GB of RAM, I'd
>also suspect that Linux will perform better. If your using hardware
>RAID, Linux is probably going to perform better. If you have a large
>filesystem(s), I'd anticipate Linux performing better. If your using a
>vanilla white box, BSD may perform better.

I don't have any serious comparison numbers on the SMB capabilities.  We're
running a dual PIII 1GHz box here with SuSE 8.2 and a dual Xeon 550 with
FreeBSD.  Most of the work is program development and compiles.  Both work
well, but I don't have meaningful benchmarks.  The FreeBSD box feels
faster, but that may well be because I'm not running the XFRee86 server on
it, just X clients from the Linux desktop.

Hardware RAID is probably a push on given hardware since the hardware's
going to be the limiting factor.  When I did a google search on ``vinum
stability'' (vinum is the FreeBSD virtual storage manager) there were some
articles citing benchmarks that said that vinum was significantly faster
than hardware RAID solutions.  I've been running software RAID5 on an
internal server here for several years, but given that it's running on
Caldera OpenLinux 2.3 on a Cyrix 166, performance isn't anything to brag
about.

The FreeBSD networking is supposed to be the standard to which all others
are compared, and is probably better for things like IPSec, and IPV6
support.

>As for stability... This is probably a bit of a toss up. I'd give the
>edge to BSD, but if you have good hardware and a good install of Linux
>with well tunned applications the difference here may be non existant.
>I'd also give BSD an edge in out of the box security over Linux.

I can't speak to OpenBSD or NetBSD, but FreeBSD is noted for its stability,
and consistency.  Unlike Linux, there's one standard for file hierarchy,
and the FreeBSD ``ports'' distribution is quite well thought out and easy
to use.  One of my gripes with Linux over the years has always been the
lack of concern for backwards compatibility, and the multiplicity of
``standards'' for file system layout.

We're doing all our localization using the openpkg.org package management
system which allows us to use identical SRPMS on Linux, FreeBSD, and SCO
OpenServer, the main platforms we support.  There's a large set of packages
available on openpkg.org so this has made my life a lot simpler when it
comes to building new machines whether they're Linux or FreeBSD.

As for stability of the running systems, I haven't had any serious
stability problems with the Caldera Linux systems we used from 1996 through
the end of 2002 or the SuSE 8.x systems we've been deploying since the
first of 2003.  The systems we install are not out-of-the-box stock, but we
have always gone through them tightening security, and adding our own
maintenance and support software.  On the other hand, FreeBSD systems are
noted for their performance and stability, and are used by many very busy
ISPs for e-mail, web, and other services.

The bottom line is that I would rate Linux better for desktop, games and
office work.  As for servers, FreeBSD may be more efficient in terms of
network performance, and somewhat less prone to security attacks because
there are fewer crackers who're familiar with it.  The main factor is
probably your familiarity with the systems.  As an long-time Linux and Unix
geek, I can set up a new SuSE 8.2 system faster than I can an equivalent
FreeBSD server.  This may change after I've installed a few more FreeBSD
systems.

Bill
--
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