Faster is all relative. What are you doing? Is it networking? Then BSD is probably faster than Linux. Is it something Linux is optimized for? Then probably Linux.
A general benchmark? Who knows, but does it really matter?
At the end of the day, you should benchmark your own workload, but also it's important to realize that in this day and age, it's almost never the OS that is the bottleneck. It's almost always a remote network call.
Is it just me, or is there some kind of asteroid game shooting bullets at my cursor while I try to read this [1]? I hate to sound mean, but it's a bit distracting. I guess it's my fault for having JavaScript enabled.
Interesting. I tried to follow the discussion in the linked thread, and the only takeaway I got was "something to do with RCU". What id the simplified explanation?
Not sure if that’s relevant, but when I do micro-benchmarks like that measuring time intervals way smaller than 1 second, I use __rdtsc() compiler intrinsic instead of standard library functions.
On all modern processors, that instruction measures wallclock time with a counter which increments at the base frequency of the CPU unaffected by dynamic frequency scaling.
Apart from the great resolution, that time measuring method has an upside of being very cheap, couple orders of magnitude faster than an OS kernel call.
While __rdtsc() is fast, be cautious with multi-core benchmarks as TSC synchronization between cores isn't guaranteed on all hardware, especially older systems. Modern Intel/AMD CPUs have "invariant TSC" which helps, but it's worth checking CPU flags first.
OpenBSD is many things, but 'fast' is not a word that comes to mind.
Lightweight? Yes.
Minimalist? Definitely.
Compact? Sure.
But fast? No.
Would I host a database or fileserver on OpenBSD? Hell no.
Boot times seem to take as long as they did 20 years ago. They are also advocates for every schizo security mitigation they can dream up that sacrifices speed and that's ok too.
Gotta disagree with you on your minimalist verdict, out of the box openbsd tends to have everything and the kitchen sink, I am not complaining, it is good solid well written software. but I have never found a base linux distro that was as well stocked as a base openbsd install.
a c compiler
a web server
3 routing daemons(bgpd, ospfd, ripd)
a mail server(smtpd, spamd)
a sound server(sndiod)
a reverse proxy(relayd)
2 desktop environments(fvwm, cwm)
plus many many more
Openbsd is not some minimalist highly focused operating system, I mean what on earth is it actually for? based on the included features, A desktop development system that is also the router and office web and mail server?
Personally I love it, after a fresh install I always feel like I could rebuild the internet from scratch using only what is found in front of me if I needed to.
I think OpenBSD has gotten quite a bit faster in the last 4 - 5 releases. Unfortunately we will need to wait for another round of benchmarks by phoronix as it seems to have problems every time benchmarks are ran.
Somewhere along the line may be it will become fast enough and certain applications may use it for different sets of reasons.
A better way to do that (sorry) is to increase the loading instead of modifying the test. I'm happy to hear reasons why their way could be a better benchmark.
32 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 47.2 ms ] threadFaster is all relative. What are you doing? Is it networking? Then BSD is probably faster than Linux. Is it something Linux is optimized for? Then probably Linux.
A general benchmark? Who knows, but does it really matter?
At the end of the day, you should benchmark your own workload, but also it's important to realize that in this day and age, it's almost never the OS that is the bottleneck. It's almost always a remote network call.
[1]: https://flak.tedunangst.com/script.js
https://archive.is/wMECM
(I don’t even know you could actually start mainstream games on BSD or not)
Now time to read the actual linked discussion.
On all modern processors, that instruction measures wallclock time with a counter which increments at the base frequency of the CPU unaffected by dynamic frequency scaling.
Apart from the great resolution, that time measuring method has an upside of being very cheap, couple orders of magnitude faster than an OS kernel call.
1 - https://lore.kernel.org/all/da9e8bee-71c2-4a59-a865-3dd6c5c9...
the author failed the first step.
everything that follows is then garbage.
Lightweight? Yes.
Minimalist? Definitely.
Compact? Sure.
But fast? No.
Would I host a database or fileserver on OpenBSD? Hell no.
Boot times seem to take as long as they did 20 years ago. They are also advocates for every schizo security mitigation they can dream up that sacrifices speed and that's ok too.
But let's not pretend it's something it's not.
Personally I love it, after a fresh install I always feel like I could rebuild the internet from scratch using only what is found in front of me if I needed to.
Somewhere along the line may be it will become fast enough and certain applications may use it for different sets of reasons.
linux: elapsed: 0.019895s
nanos (running on said linux): elapsed: 0.000886s
Could it be
https://web.archive.org/web/20031020054211if_/http://bulk.fe...
or is there another one
Defaults in current are in etc.amd64/login.conf. https://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/~checkout~/src/etc...
(p.s.: the bubble are cool. highly distracting to me, hence I could not read the article in full.)