[ale] Linux or *BSD for Samba

[Vernard Martin]

> I know there are some BSD+Linux folk around, so I feel comfortable
> posing the question here:  given a need to create an NFS server, is BSD
> or Linux (2.4 kernel) a better choice?  I have heard for a long time
> that Linux' NFS is "iffy;" I have messed with it only a little with some
> joy, but I really want NO ISSUES exporting to AIX or Linux clients.

Usually asking if one particular OS is better than another OS is considered a
troll but since your question seems sincere, I will try my best to answer it.

In the past, Pre 2.2 kernels, NFS under linux had abysmal performance. I mean
_really_ and truly horrible performance. Much effort was put into determining
exactly what the problem was and how to fix it. As of the late 2.2 kernels and
the 2.4 kernels, the performance is reasoanble if not actually exceptional.
Howver, its very difficult to get over the stigma of horrible performance from
years ago.

BSD is actually several OSes and not just one. The three big contenders are
NetBSD, FreeBSD and OpenBSD. And when someone says that BSD is better than X,
you should always ask which version they are using. Kinda like when folks rever
to linux but are thinking of the 2.2 kernel rather than the 2.4 kernel. Anyway,
FreeBSD and NetBSD have had a long record of having exceptional performance
with respect to network related activities such as serving as an FTPserver, NFS
server, email server, etc. And I seem to recall that a NetBSD box holds the
record for most bandwidth served in one day (the ftp.cdrom.com machine served
over a terabyte of data one day or soemthing in that range). And it is
uniformly accepted that NetBSD will give you better performance than a Linux
system using pretty much the same hardware.

Now, the tricky part: the difference in performance is going to be based on
several factors and may not big enough to make it really that relevant. If you
are just serving user files to a half dozen windows machines over samba then I
think you really won't notice the difference. If you are tryign to run a high
bandwidth webserver than you are going to really notice the difference.
Maintenacne of a BSD machines requires a bit more knowledge of unix systems
than a linux distro using a package management system. Also, familiarity with a
system will usually override any perceived gain in performance. 

hope this helps

Vernard
-- 
Vernard Martin (vernard at cc.gatech.edu) http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~vernard/     
        "Anything worth fighting over is worth fighting dirty over"
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