> 
> Another thing not mentioned is paging performance.
> 
> I have a simple-minded benchmark that tests performance under heavy
> memory load (the code is appended). It iterates over an array that is
> a bit larger than main memory and touches every page. FreeBSD-2.0.5 is
> about 7 times faster than NetBSD-{summer95-today}, both on the time
> required for touching these pages and on executing other programs
> while this benchmark is running. This is the same machine, same swap
> disk and partition (P90-triton/ncr/barracouda, 32MB RAM, 256 MB
> swap). For the potential user, this is the last region where NetBSD is
> really slower than the alternatives.
> 
FreeBSD-2.0.5 is really behind the times, and FreeBSD-2.1 is mostly a
bug fix release.  FreeBSD-2.2-current is much much much better (technically)!!!
(Stay with FreeBSD-2.0.5/2.1 for production though.)

The whole problem is complex and a slow migration to "perfection"
is the way that we are going.
>
> I've heard several times that the core team doesn't "like" John
> Dyson's work for FreeBSD, without specific information. While FreeBSD
>
:-(.

John
dyson@freebsd.org