Performance benchmarks pitting FreeBSD against Windows

[Mel]

On Friday 05 December 2008 13:58:18 Jerry wrote:
> On Fri, 5 Dec 2008 13:11:22 +0100 (CET)
>
> Wojciech Puchar <wojtek at wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl> wrote:
> >> tools like bonnie++, blogbench and postmark under cygwin and the
> >> results are abysmal. It might be due to cygwin, and it might not.
> >> I've used
> >
> >rather not. all cygwin do is wrapping calls like read, lseek, open,
> >write, close to windoze calls.
> >
> >> Windows Enterprise Server 2003.
> >>
> >> You'll probably not find any difference in computational (numeric)
> >> tasks
> >
> >unless microsoft is intentionally slowing down all programs or some of
> >them to "show" adventage of their programs.
> >
> >no i'm not joking. it's not just possible, i'm fairly certain they do
> >it.
>
> Slightly paranoid aren't we? It reminds me of an article I read several
> years ago in which the author claimed that all "Virus" and
> "Malware/Trojans" were being written by Linux users in an attempt to
> discredit Microsoft and then start charging for the use of their
> software in a fashion consistent with Microsoft. He went on to claim
> that 'open-sore' authors would reap windfall profits. Of course, like
> you, he offered no concrete evidence, just idle speculation.
>
> In any case, due to the multitude of flavors of *.nix and Windows
> machines, in addition to the thousands of possible configurations,
> systems, etc., getting a truly meaningful comparison would be a
> monumental undertaking. In any event, it would be obsolete before you
> ever finished it.

Well, one can find stories like this of course:
http://www.postgis.org/documentation/casestudies/globexplorer/

But I'm sure one can find some of the contrary. It does show the value of the 
benchmark: Is it economically viable to use configuration X vs Y, and 
performance is only one factor of the descision.

-- 
Mel

Problem with today's modular software: they start with the modules
    and never get to the software part.