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Interesting post, it made me wonder. At one time FreeBSD swap usage/logic was far better than what Linux did. Is that still the case ?
by jmclnx 4mo ago
Interesting post, it made me wonder. At one time FreeBSD swap usage/logic was far better than what Linux did. Is that still the case ?
- shevy-java 4mo agoI remember how NetBSD promoted itself as running on many more toasters than Linux once. Then some NetBSD dev wrote on their mailing list that this is no longer true. Linux runs on more toasters now. (And also top 500 supercomputers, but toasters are the real metal to the petal test.) These fights always remind me of: https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html It's an interesting piece of history too. I kind of evaluate it a bit differently, e. g. my summary is "momentum beats academic perfection". Which is not completely what it is about, but it is my own imperfect TL;DR summary.
- bee_rider 4mo agoThis basically fits my stereotype of BSD being a little bit more hardcore while Linux is a little more accessible… when the question was “can you install an OS on a toaster,” BSD had an advantage. Now that normal engineers have to make IOT toasters (for some reason) Linux should have the advantage, right?
- sublinear 4mo agoNormal engineers don't do that either.
- Levitating 4mo agowhy did that url point me to a scrotum in an egg cup
- UnlockedSecrets 4mo agoSeems like at a glance that website if it sees a referral from ycombinator, it redirects to that image.... In a private window it loads the 'intended' page.....
- m0llusk 4mo agoHN has disappointed JWZ
- saghm 4mo agoJust blackholing the request would be kinder than taking it out on the person following the link, given that their gripe seems to be more with the one who posted it (and that as a deterrent, it doesn't seem to be particularly effective given that it's been years since the first time I've seen this conversation play out in comments)
- Someone 4mo ago> but toasters are the real metal to the petal test. Or is that a new tongue in cheek idiom? AFAIK, it’s peDal, not peTal, and the other way around: pedal to the metal. The literal meaning is to push your accelerator pedal down to the floor of your car, which is made of metal.
- goodmythical 4mo ago"metal to the petal" gives me more of a "gilding the lily" flavor, especially in cnotrast to the original construction. Still not sure if it was on purpose, but I read it as a reference to a "but can it run DOOM?" benchmark.
- 0x457 4mo agoYes, It's just not every tool is aware of ZFS ARC. Which is what this post is about. Author just describes in an odd way.
- mike_hock 4mo agoIt's a bit odd that you have to query a filesystem-specific value to get simple memory usage stats.
- man8alexd 4mo agoFreeBSD didn’t have memory overcommit and instead used strict swap reservation - each allocated anonymous memory page was supposed to have a corresponding swap page. This required 2x RAM swap space, otherwise you would get “out of swap” when forking a large process. FreeBSD implemented memory overcommit around 2000.
- jandrese 4mo agoOh, so that's where that old nugget of wisdom came from! I've heard the rule about making your swap at least 2x your RAM for ages and thought it was just some old rule of thumb from the 80s. I didn't know there used to be a legitimate reason for it.
- man8alexd 4mo agoSee this retrocomputing.SE question https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/32492/origin-of-the-rule-that-swap-size-should-be-2x-of-the-physical-memory https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/32492/ori...