Date: Mon, 29 Jan 1996 10:47:43 -0600 (CST)
From: Mark Tinguely <tinguely@plains.nodak.edu>
Message-Id: <199601291647.KAA07920@plains.nodak.edu>
To: hackers@freefall.freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Good news -- pipe stuff
Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Precedence: bulk

>  First, the Lai/Baker talk spent 9/10ths of its time benchmarking the 3
>  various systems (Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris) and going into great and
>  wonderful detail about how they strove to make each benchmark fair and
>  complete.  That was fine, and I had no problems with it up to that
>  point when, in the last 1/10th of the talk, in a somewhat bizarre
>  segue they threw all of the preceeding data out on its ear with the
>  pat statement that "performance really didn't matter anyway."  They
>  chose Linux because they liked whichever mailing list or IRC channel
>  they hung out in, and they made no effort to compare the level of
>  support they'd received with FreeBSD or make any qualitative
>  statements about it whatsoever.  Small wonder, I suppose, since none
>  of us could remember being contacted by any of the principles either
>  way.

I listened to the talk via the MBONE and could not believe their methodology
and that USENIX would accept the paper.

I agree with your statement they did not quantify/qualify the Linux/FreeBSD/
Solaris user count and support. They seem to make the implication that only
Linux was widely used and had a large base of supporters. That rubbed me the
wrong way more than anything else.

It seemed the conference had a large Linux bias. In the next talk (by Carl
Staelin or was it Larry McVoy from SGI), the speaker said he will not be
happy until Linux was running on all machines (a bold statement from a
person that is employed by company that sells their own version of Unix).

I think the major Unix producers should look at the projected P6 numbers and
glowing praise of free unix-clones and (in the words of Staelin/McVoy talking
about the P6), "be afraid, be very afraid".

--mark.