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Netflix have been heavy users of FreeBSD for a long time. It also had very good tracing tools before Linux did, so reasoning about performance bottlenecks is m

Netflix have been heavy users of FreeBSD for a long time. It also had very good tracing tools before Linux did, so reasoning about performance bottlenecks is much easier. The networking stack has also handily beat Linux for as long as I can remember.

bogomipz 9y ago
>"The networking stack has also handily beat Linux for as long as I can remember." Can you quantify what "beat" means here? Do you have a citation for this? I am doubting this is true in 2017.
jaak 9y ago
> The networking stack has also handily beat Linux for as long as I can remember. None of the TOP500 use FreeBSD [1]. I would have thought this would be a primary consideration for a supercomputer. Most of them are using Linux (99.6%!). 1. https://www.top500.org/statistics/details/osfam/4 https://www.top500.org/statistics/details/osfam/4
- wmf 9y ago
  HPC generally doesn't use IP, so they're using Linux but not the Linux network stack.
- kev009 9y ago
  Yeah I don't see FreeBSD entering the HPC market ever, except maybe for I/O nodes. Nothing explicitly wrong with that, you have to choose battles.
drewg123 9y ago
From an objective standpoint, the Linux stack is actually better in a lot of ways. They are generally much, much, much tighter in terms of cache misses and per-packet costs. They have a lot of features that FreeBSD doesn't, and a lot of innovation happens there (BBR). And they have a huge number of very smart people working on it. I've had the privilege of working with some of them at Google, and have nothing but respect for them.
- ksec 9y ago
  So basically from an Kernel / System programmer standpoint, There are no reason to use BSDs today apart from License?
  - kev009 9y ago
    From a business perspective, I think it's easier to pick up *BSD talent. Although the pool is smaller, the pool is more talent dense. If you can afford to not care about the kernel (serverless etc) Linux is fine, if you have to care about the kernel and hardware I'd pick FreeBSD 100% of the time. Also much easier to influence overall project direction and get patches integrated.

bogomipz 9y ago

>"The networking stack has also handily beat Linux for as long as I can remember." Can you quantify what "beat" means here? Do you have a citation for this? I am doubting this is true in 2017.

jaak 9y ago

> The networking stack has also handily beat Linux for as long as I can remember. None of the TOP500 use FreeBSD [1]. I would have thought this would be a primary consideration for a supercomputer. Most of them are using Linux (99.6%!). 1. https://www.top500.org/statistics/details/osfam/4 https://www.top500.org/statistics/details/osfam/4

wmf 9y ago
HPC generally doesn't use IP, so they're using Linux but not the Linux network stack.
kev009 9y ago
Yeah I don't see FreeBSD entering the HPC market ever, except maybe for I/O nodes. Nothing explicitly wrong with that, you have to choose battles.

drewg123 9y ago

From an objective standpoint, the Linux stack is actually better in a lot of ways. They are generally much, much, much tighter in terms of cache misses and per-packet costs. They have a lot of features that FreeBSD doesn't, and a lot of innovation happens there (BBR). And they have a huge number of very smart people working on it. I've had the privilege of working with some of them at Google, and have nothing but respect for them.

ksec 9y ago
So basically from an Kernel / System programmer standpoint, There are no reason to use BSDs today apart from License?
- kev009 9y ago
  From a business perspective, I think it's easier to pick up *BSD talent. Although the pool is smaller, the pool is more talent dense. If you can afford to not care about the kernel (serverless etc) Linux is fine, if you have to care about the kernel and hardware I'd pick FreeBSD 100% of the time. Also much easier to influence overall project direction and get patches integrated.