Why is MySQL nearly twice as fast on Linux?

[JG]

We have a rather long discussion brewing over at the freebsd-amd64 mailing 
list:

Subj: 
<http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-amd64/2004-May/001272.html>Why 
is MySQL nearly twice as fast on Linux/AMD64 Vs. FreeBSD/AMD64?

@ http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-amd64/2004-May/thread.html


Chris Elsworth also just posted a similar message on the MySQL general 
users list:
http://lists.mysql.com/mysql/165908

He is on i386 architecture, so this problem seems to be universal for FreeBSD.


I have been benchmarking many different configurations for several days now,
and MySQL under Linux consistently SIGNIFICANTLY outperforms FreeBSD on the 
same hardware.
Most of the time handling twice as many queries or more.

After reading the posts at the mailing lists mentioned above,

Do you have any suggestions or ideas as to what the problem is?

Thanks


- Jeremy