Linux hacker compares Solaris kernel code:

[Sergio]

In the 24 post in this thread: http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...nchmarks/page3

Kebabbart's true name is Orvar Korvar.



So, Kebabbart == Orvar Korvar. What a stupid name, fitting for an anti-Linux/pro-proprietary troll. Seriously, who gave you that name, the nurse at the orphanage in which your teenage mom dumped you because you were so ugly?

Hahahahahahaha. Shut up you fucking loser.

[intellivision]

Quite funny to read, but there's a lot of truth in this article. However, I'd prefer it to be more serious, because some parts don't reflect the reality.

What truth? The guy clearly has no technical knowledge if he couldn't get to a command line login in FreeBSD.

[Ibidem]

So what? I was alone in that thread and there was lot of people throwing all questions at me. I simply did not have time to continue. I mean, when you have been "debating" with Kraftman (Pawlerson, etc) and the like - you will see that it is pointless to continue. Even when you post research papers, they will not be convinced. Have you tried to talk to lot of people at the same time, including people like Kraftman? Do you know how many hours it takes? When I write a long post, it takes me 2-3 hours, because I google links and white papers, etc. I do research. I do not post unverifiable claims. When I post 10 long posts, it takes easily 2 days. I dont have that time to do that.

Regarding that post you link to: yes, it was long. But you know what? He never answered to my question: why are there no 16 cpu Linux servers for sale? There are only 8 socket Linux servers for sale, and 2048 cpu clusters (SGI Altix and the like), but there are no 16 or 32 cpu socket Linux for sale. If you read his post, he never answered to that question, he ducked that question every time I asked it. Why? So, can somebody show me a 16 or 32 Linux SMP server for sale today? Or are you going to duck this question again?

And he claimed lot of things, that there are no SMP servers today. How does he know that? For instance, this server is SMP

http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/sparc/oracle-sparc/m5-32/overview/index.html

but he says: "no that is not true, it is not a SMP server, it is a NUMA server". Why should I believe him? Have he really checked that all servers are NUMA today? For instance, the old IBM Mainframes that are sold even today, are SMP servers. "There are no SMP servers today, all are NUMA" - yeah right. How can he prove that? If I would post such a claim, I would have posted links that shown that each big 32 cpu server is NUMA - then I would be able to conclude "there are no SMP servers today" - but he never did that. Instead he claimed false things, and ducked my question.

And again: where are those 16 or 32 cpu Linux servers for sale? How many times can people here duck that question? Actually, I have asked this question maybe... 50? times here in different threads, and I have never. ever. got. an. answer. I think it is funny. Benchmarks show Linux have performance problems on 8-socket servers, and there are no 16 or 32 cpu linux servers for sale. And no one have discussed this, everybody have ducked this.

For the 51th(?) time: where are those 16 cpu Linux servers for sale? Where are they? Can someone answer me this? Have you tried to ask a question 50 times, to different persons, and never got an answer? Wouldnt you wonder why? Where are those servers? Where? Someone? It just takes some links, and I will stop asking this question. But no one have posted links. I will ask this question 50 times more, but no one will ever show me 16 cpu Linux servers. Why? Because they dont exist. Why? Because Linux can not scale to 16 cpus.

Well, for one there's that M5-32 with Oracle VM Server--which is a Linux-Xen system.
But that's probably not what you meant.

And that is NUMA; if you don't believe me, believe Oracle:

Non-uniform memory access optimization in Oracle Solaris. With memory managed by each
SPARC M5 processor, these implementations represent a non-uniform memory access (NUMA)
architecture. In NUMA architectures, the time needed for a processor to access its own memory is
slightly shorter than that required to access memory managed by another processor.

(Quoting page 12 of http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/se...re-1920556.pdf)

[kebabbert]

http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...767#post259767

So what? I was alone in that thread and there was lot of people throwing all questions at me. I simply did not have time to continue. I mean, when you have been "debating" with Kraftman (Pawlerson, etc) and the like - you will see that it is pointless to continue. Even when you post research papers, they will not be convinced. Have you tried to talk to lot of people at the same time, including people like Kraftman? Do you know how many hours it takes? When I write a long post, it takes me 2-3 hours, because I google links and white papers, etc. I do research. I do not post unverifiable claims. When I post 10 long posts, it takes easily 2 days. I dont have that time to do that.

Regarding that post you link to: yes, it was long. But you know what? He never answered to my question: why are there no 16 cpu Linux servers for sale? There are only 8 socket Linux servers for sale, and 2048 cpu clusters (SGI Altix and the like), but there are no 16 or 32 cpu socket Linux for sale. If you read his post, he never answered to that question, he ducked that question every time I asked it. Why? So, can somebody show me a 16 or 32 Linux SMP server for sale today? Or are you going to duck this question again?

And he claimed lot of things, that there are no SMP servers today. How does he know that? For instance, this server is SMP

http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/sparc/oracle-sparc/m5-32/overview/index.html

but he says: "no that is not true, it is not a SMP server, it is a NUMA server". Why should I believe him? Have he really checked that all servers are NUMA today? For instance, the old IBM Mainframes that are sold even today, are SMP servers. "There are no SMP servers today, all are NUMA" - yeah right. How can he prove that? If I would post such a claim, I would have posted links that shown that each big 32 cpu server is NUMA - then I would be able to conclude "there are no SMP servers today" - but he never did that. Instead he claimed false things, and ducked my question.

And again: where are those 16 or 32 cpu Linux servers for sale? How many times can people here duck that question? Actually, I have asked this question maybe... 50? times here in different threads, and I have never. ever. got. an. answer. I think it is funny. Benchmarks show Linux have performance problems on 8-socket servers, and there are no 16 or 32 cpu linux servers for sale. And no one have discussed this, everybody have ducked this.

For the 51th(?) time: where are those 16 cpu Linux servers for sale? Where are they? Can someone answer me this? Have you tried to ask a question 50 times, to different persons, and never got an answer? Wouldnt you wonder why? Where are those servers? Where? Someone? It just takes some links, and I will stop asking this question. But no one have posted links. I will ask this question 50 times more, but no one will ever show me 16 cpu Linux servers. Why? Because they dont exist. Why? Because Linux can not scale to 16 cpus.

[liam]

Don't forget about who you're talking to.

http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?68134-Oracle-Has-Yet-To-Clarify-Solaris-11-Kernel-Source&p=259767#post259767

[kebabbert]

So this is another point I don't get. Linux doesn't scale to 8 CPUs yet the supercomputer at my university with more than 100.000 cores (I believe 2 16 core CPUs per node) runs Linux. Sure, there may very well be other systems that scale better, but saying linux has a "hard time"? Come on!

You must differentiate between different types of scaling. Linux scales very well on clusters, large networks with embarassingly parallell workloads, just like supercomputers. For isntance, the SGI Altix Linux server with 2048 cores, is a cluster. These are called HPC servers (i.e. cluster). And these supercomputers do not run stock Linux, they run heavily modified Linux. For instance the IBM Blue Gene supercomputer, runs Linux to distribute the work load out to each node, and then each node use another OS to do the simple computing. No complex things going on here, just number crunching.

On the other hand, Linux scales very bad on SMP servers. That is, one big fat server with as many as 32 or even 64 cpus, for instance, IBM mainframes, Oracle M9000/M5, HP Integrity/Superdome. There are no Linux SMP servers for sale today, with more than 8 cpus. Linux has a very hard time scaling to 8 cpus. These big SMP servers, typically weigh 1000kg or more, and costs many millions. For instance, the huge IBM P595 server, with 32 cpus, used for the old TPC-C benchmark, costed $35 million list price. Not a typo. One single server costed $35 million.

So I say like I said in the other thread: show me a Linux SMP server for sale with more than 8 cpus. Last I checked, there was no vendor that sold large Linux SMP servers. The question is: why? These SMP servers costs millions and if Linux can offer a 32 cpu server for a fraction of the price, then everybody would buy. Clearly there is a market opportunity, but no Linux vendor is offering SMP servers. Why? Is it because no one wants to earn millions, or is it because Linux does not scale? Hint: see 8-socket benchmarks with Linux and discover yourself how bad results Linux gets.

[RealNC]

I'm not blaming him, because of BFS or his work. I don't like his attitude.

You usually need to hear the accused's side of the story too before forming a final opinion:

http://apcmag.com/interview_with_con_kolivas_part_2_his_effort_to_improve_linux_performance_on_the_desktop.htm

[znby]

Yeah, right. HTC people care about OS price. It also a fact Solaris has higher memory footprint and introduces higher overhead in comparison to Linux. You don't have to believe me, but you can check this yourself and you can even find about this in google.

This is true, but it's also true of mainstream Linux. This is why IBM and Cray have their own cut down operating systems that are run on the compute nodes of large scale HPC systems (AFAIK, the IBM one is not based on Linux, but the Cray one is).

The front end nodes often run Linux, but I believe in the case of some IBM systems, AIX is used instead. Probably depends on what the customer wants.

I can't agree more. In fact there are a lot of people who agree with Pawlerson the BSD and Solaris = Shit:

http://aboutthebsds.wordpress.com/20.../bsd-vs-linux/

BTW, this blog is really interesting and enlightening. I'd recommend it to everyone, especially those pro-BSD fools.

Quite funny to read, but there's a lot of truth in this article. However, I'd prefer it to be more serious, because some parts don't reflect the reality.

Nope, it's not enough. If you say it's slow or bloated, then the market share is not enough. The market share weighs a lot other factors too, mostly related to price. Then, you could argue "but they're all free". Except, support is not, and IT's are not. And it's far easier to find Linux IT's and Linux support companies than FreeBSD's or Solaris' ones. And easier usually implies cheaper, too. AND, it happens Solaris is not free for production use. So, it could have nothing to do with speed or memory footprint, as long as none of them are stupidly slow or bloated. So, facts, please.
I use Linux, mostly because I'm comfortable with it.

I don't have comments on anything else, just found this to be nonsense and had to answer.

Yeah, right. HTC people care about OS price. It also a fact Solaris has higher memory footprint and introduces higher overhead in comparison to Linux. You don't have to believe me, but you can check this yourself and you can even find about this in google.