Ubuntu vs. OpenSolaris vs. FreeBSD Benchmarks

[sbryant]

Phoronix: Ubuntu vs. OpenSolaris vs. FreeBSD Benchmarks

Over the past few weeks we have been providing several in-depth articles looking at the performance of Ubuntu Linux. We had begun by providing Ubuntu 7.04 to 8.10 benchmarks and had found the performance of this popular Linux distribution to become slower with time and that article was followed up with Mac OS X 10.5 vs. Ubuntu 8.10 benchmarks and other articles looking at the state of Ubuntu's performance. In this article, we are now comparing the 64-bit performance of Ubuntu 8.10 against the latest test releases of OpenSolaris 2008.11 and FreeBSD 7.1.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=13149

The introduction said you left things in their default state which might not be the best thing for a beta of FreeBSD. There is a strong possibility that it has debug options on which could impact performance.

I'm installing BETA2 currently (there's an RC2 out as well). So I'll post an update soon with the generic kernel configuration

[rivald]

The introduction said you left things in their default state which might not be the best thing for a beta of FreeBSD. There is a strong possibility that it has debug options on which could impact performance.

I'm installing BETA2 currently (there's an RC2 out as well). So I'll post an update soon with the generic kernel configuration

There's no doubt about it: FreeBSD runs with debugging turned on in all betas, and it's turned off in the RCs. It's certainly not uncommon to have debugging turned on in operating systems during the beta phases. I'm not sure why he chose 7.1beta2 instead of 7.0 release.

[kraftman]

There's no doubt about it: FreeBSD runs with debugging turned on in all betas, and it's turned off in the RCs. It's certainly not uncommon to have debugging turned on in operating systems during the beta phases. I'm not sure why he chose 7.1beta2 instead of 7.0 release.

Maybe because of scheduler? I don't think so if final release will perform noticeable better then beta. Btw. using default settings in all systems is stupid in my opinion. I bet that tweaked Linux kernel can perform ways better.

[sbryant]

Maybe because of scheduler? I don't think so if final release will perform noticeable better then beta. Btw. using default settings in all systems is stupid in my opinion. I bet that tweaked Linux kernel can perform ways better.

There are many things that affect performance, especially if there's more stuff to wade through. Think about it, allocating and setting memory to a certain value takes way from doing other things. Despite the scheduler, all that does is making sure it stays responsive, nothing can be done about the amount of time things require to complete. If it just allocates trash data, that's a lot less time then allocate, write.

On top of that if you have checks in the code for helping debug or generating a sensible core then ofcourse it's going to take up time. You should read up on what these debug options do.


Debug options (the big two are WITNESS and INVARIANTS):
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/...g-options.html

[deanjo]

Should be noted that some distro's also run their Alpha's and Beta's and RC's as well with debugging turned on. It's not limited to BSD.

[ebird]

it would nice to see a linux that is not cursed with ext3

btw, if you care about filesystem performance, read this;
http://bulk.fefe.de/lk2006/bench.html

in short, solaris lies, bsd sucks.

I don't think so. The Linux kernel has currently a big problem with heavy io. There is an issue which in not really testable with the phoronix test suite. The desktop responsiveness is awful since 2.6.22. And it is not an ext3 issue. I have tried jfs and xfs.

[bugmenot]

it's important to reiterate that all three operating systems were left in their stock configurations and that no additional tweaking had occurred. The performance differences between EXT3, UFS, and ZFS are clear.

uh, yeah. Holy non-sequiturs batman, if you left the hardware configured with random, unknown, and different stock-settings for each system then you are in no way assured to learn *anything* about the performance differences of the filesystems.

you are only learning about how fast they decided to make the stock disk settings configuration.

--
the above link gives a much better picture, linked tester said he enabled the fastest mode available for each.

[pcfxer]

SWEET! FreeBSD beat two OSes with debugging options enabled! Tisk Tisk!

Now, how about Phoronix back off the version and install RELEASE or wait a bit and use 7.1 RELEASE...ORRR even better, recompile the kernel with a stock make.conf and comment out makeoptions DEBUG=-g.

[kraftman]

I don't think so. The Linux kernel has currently a big problem with heavy io. There is an issue which in not really testable with the phoronix test suite. The desktop responsiveness is awful since 2.6.22. And it is not an ext3 issue. I have tried jfs and xfs.

Maybe your hardware is a problem, because I don't notice any responsiveness issue related to Linux kernel. Do you believe that such regression wouldn't be noticed for years?

@pcfxer

Fanboys comming... Are you dumb or something? Benchmark shows that Linux beat your FreeBSD... Idiotic attempt to make a flame war. If you're interested I can show you a benchmark in which Linux kernel 2.6.22 and newer one kick your lovely FreeBSD 7 or 7.1.xx.

And you registered to write such a bullshit? xd

EDIT:

@Bugmenot

I missed your post before. You're completely right!

[energyman]

FreeBSD had to compete with dead slow Ubuntu 8.10 (aka slow edition) and still lost.

What would happen if they had to compete with something fast?
It would be a massacre, that for sure.
And heavy IO? That is freebse's weakest points:
http://bulk.fefe.de/lk2006/bench.html