Debian barely benches faster than Ubuntu, if at all. Not surprising, since Ubuntu is based on it. Slackware and Gentoo are probably faster than Ubuntu but really aren't worth the trouble in a business environment. What would really be interesting to see is FreeBSD 64bit vs. The rest, since that's what OSX is based off of (actually NetBSD, I do believe).
Really, none of the major distros seem to be worth a shit these days, speed-wise. We just switched to Ubuntu from OpenSUSE because Ubuntu performed better and was a bit easier to manage, and we purchased a company that used RH, and that was underwhelming. And we're talking 8 core machines with 24gb of RAM. Sure it's fast, but not as fast as it should be.
It'll be interesting to see how fast the Mac Pro is when we get that in March. 8 cores at 3.2ghz, 16gb of ram.
For fun, I just tried this on my laptop (running Linux Mint 6 and Vista Home Premium), and Linux kicked Vista's ass. So for Windows 7 to crush Ubuntu like that... well, I'm starting to get pretty interested in Windows 7.
Of course, it's just a synthetic benchmark, but still, it's a rather dramatic turnaround.
As an update, several different distros have now been tried; SuSe 11.1, CentOS 5.2, Debian 4 stable. Very little difference, if at all, even if running with X11 (and therefore the GUI) killed.
Kinda disappointing, but oh well! We've also ran various CFD models too, so this isn't just synthetic benchmarking.
None of those are what I'd go for in performance; Slackware was mentioned (and for 'not worth the trouble in enterprise'... why not?), but as you mentioned FreeBSD should be interesting to see.
Also, OS X took a lot of BSD stuff, but the kernel is based on Mach, NOT a BSD. FreeBSD will probably be the one to benchmark since it's made for speed (as opposed to OpenBSD's security and NetBSD's running-on-a-toaster), but installing it has been nothing but a pain in the ass for me.
FreeBSD is one of those finicky operating systems that only supports a limited amount of hardware. If yours is not on the list, don't even try. A matter of fact, don't try anyway, just stick to Linux. :lol:
Now, if you're trying to build a secure, public FTP server, then there literally is no other choice. FreeBSD is ridiculously hack-proof.
I'm going to use it for some combination of router, NAS, and firewall when I get a cheap, low-power box working, but I take finicky software configuration as a challenge and won't let that bastard OS take me down without a fucking fight.
FreeBSD, I don't think you're reading this (seeing as how you're (1) inanimate, (2) not registered, and (3) not liberal enough for this board), but if you are, take warning: I *enjoy* Slackware, motherfucker, and your judgment will come soon! Fear the JBroll! Your lack of autoconfiguration, ATI support, and X configuration intolerance is no match for me!
I got FreeBSD running on a Dell 700m, which is a little 12" laptop (almost as small as a netbook, but with a real processor) and it works well, though I think it was a stroke of luck, since I didn't even bother checking hardware compatibility.
It's definitely faster than Linux, no doubt about that. I wonder WTF the kernel guys are doing these days? The 2.4 stuff was fast as fuck.
I was always under the impression that it was the other way around, that the 2.6 series completely smoked the 2.4 in terms of performance a few years back, but those impressions were completely subjective, as I believe yours to be now, and as such don't prove anything.
I'm not saying that you are wrong, and I'm not saying that you are right. All I'm saying is that I won't draw any conclusions from impressions, only from real, scientific data, i.e. benchmarks and numbers.
Another point I want to make is that blanket statements like "OS A is definitely faster than OS B, no doubt about it" are extremely misleading. The reality is far from that simple, as seen in this benchmark comparison between OS X and Ubuntu. The first few benchmarks are in 3D performance, and OS X clearly has an advantage here due to better drivers. However, Ubuntu outperforms OS X by a significant margin in several other tests documented in that article.
Even if Ubuntu turned out to be the winner in every single test, you couldn't conclude it to be the faster OS, you would merely prove it to be faster on that particular hardware, with that particular configuration (kernel, filesystem type, etc.), and within the scope of those benchmarks. On a different machine, the results could be vastly different than the previous set.
2.4 is a lot smaller and contains a shitload less (i.e. it's really outdated) 2.6 has all the newest stuff and drivers, etc. I have no idea which one is 'faster' though, but if you compile your own it'll be smaller and probably faster.
No doubts there - since stock kernels aim to support as much as possible you can cut down a lot of things you're not going to use, and compiling your own kernel allows you to use different optimization and get something that suits the system better... my current kernel (compiled in late December) is around 25% smaller than the Slackware default.
Jeff
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