Interesting post, it made me wonder. At one time FreeBSD swap usage/logic was far better than what Linux did. Is that still the case ?

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man8alexd 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

FreeBSD didn’t have memory overcommit and instead used strict swap reservation - each allocated anonymous memory page was supposed to have a corresponding swap page. This required 2x RAM swap space, otherwise you would get “out of swap” when forking a large process. FreeBSD implemented memory overcommit around 2000.

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jandrese 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Oh, so that's where that old nugget of wisdom came from! I've heard the rule about making your swap at least 2x your RAM for ages and thought it was just some old rule of thumb from the 80s. I didn't know there used to be a legitimate reason for it.

	▲	man8alexd 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		See this retrocomputing.SE question https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/32492/ori...

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0x457 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes, It's just not every tool is aware of ZFS ARC. Which is what this post is about. Author just describes in an odd way.

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shevy-java 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I remember how NetBSD promoted itself as running on many more toasters than Linux once.

Then some NetBSD dev wrote on their mailing list that this is no longer true. Linux runs on more toasters now. (And also top 500 supercomputers, but toasters are the real metal to the petal test.)

These fights always remind me of:

https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html

It's an interesting piece of history too. I kind of evaluate it a bit differently, e. g. my summary is "momentum beats academic perfection". Which is not completely what it is about, but it is my own imperfect TL;DR summary.

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bee_rider 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This basically fits my stereotype of BSD being a little bit more hardcore while Linux is a little more accessible… when the question was “can you install an OS on a toaster,” BSD had an advantage. Now that normal engineers have to make IOT toasters (for some reason) Linux should have the advantage, right?

	▲	sublinear 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Normal engineers don't do that either.

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Levitating 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

why did that url point me to a scrotum in an egg cup

	▲	UnlockedSecrets 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Seems like at a glance that website if it sees a referral from ycombinator, it redirects to that image.... In a private window it loads the 'intended' page.....
	▲	m0llusk 31 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		HN has disappointed JWZ