FreeBSD Quarterly Status Report, January-March 2014

Post by mfb » Fri, Apr 18, 2014, 3:30 AM UTC

danford wrote: post #8

0161 wrote: post #2

This report has only made me want to try FreeBSD even more at some point. Some highlights for me were: - FreeBSD on Chromebook - Chromium port - Improved Wine port

I love FreeBSD and was planning on switching some servers from Linux but found that it consumed about 25% more power than my Linux boxes (even after extensive power management tweaks) and in the end didn't have much advantage. It's not hard to install freeBSD in a VM, set up ssh, run it headless, and ssh in. I suggest you give it a go. It's a great learning experience.

Post by pook1e » Fri, Apr 18, 2014, 5:03 AM UTC

ketralnis wrote: post #12

wcfields wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha, you beat me to it! https://wiki.freebsd.org/FreeBSD/arm/Chromebook I bought a refurb Acer C720 4gb and have found it perfect for everyday tasks / general use with Ubuntu installed.

I haven't been able to find the 4gb model, where did you get it?

Post by takeda » Fri, Apr 18, 2014, 7:28 AM UTC

danford wrote: post #10

networked wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I love FreeBSD and was planning on switching some servers from Linux but found that it consumed about 25% more power than my Linux boxes Wow, I wouldn't have thought there would be such a dramatic difference in power consumption on anything but portable hardware. Did you try to measure the CPU and I/O usage on your servers and compare them between Linux and FreeBSD? I wonder if FreeBSD's greater power draw was due t…

I wasn't using zfs at the time and I didn't do much comparison with CPU and IO, I used a wattage meter. I followed the FreeBSD guide ( http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/ac... ) and tried just about everything. My Linux box was running at about 9watts (idle) and freeBSD started out at around 18, but I got it down to about 12watts after making a lot of optimizations. I think most of the differen…

Post by takeda » Fri, Apr 18, 2014, 2:31 PM UTC

profquail wrote: post #16

takeda wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you remember which FreeBSD version and which Linux kernel version was it? Linux had tickless kernel + CPU scaling for a while. FreeBSD is lagging in this aspect.

The FreeBSD kernel is tickless as of FreeBSD 10: http://www.freebsdnews.net/2013/09/20/freebsd-10s-new-techno...

Post by takeda » Fri, Apr 18, 2014, 2:31 PM UTC

profquail wrote: post #16

takeda wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you remember which FreeBSD version and which Linux kernel version was it? Linux had tickless kernel + CPU scaling for a while. FreeBSD is lagging in this aspect.

The FreeBSD kernel is tickless as of FreeBSD 10: http://www.freebsdnews.net/2013/09/20/freebsd-10s-new-techno...