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[News] Several Independent Implementations Are a Strength, Not a Weakness

  • Subject: [News] Several Independent Implementations Are a Strength, Not a Weakness
  • From: Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2007 23:17:20 +0100
  • Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy
  • Organization: Netscape / schestowitz.com
  • User-agent: KNode/0.10.4
KHTML vs. Gecko vs. Trident vs. Presto: Behind the Browser

,----[ Quote ]
| "Why do we want more than one layout engine? It helps to spur innovation and 
| means that if a flaw occurs it won't necessarily be in every browser at once. 
| Having some different implementations of anything is a good thing," Gene 
| Spafford, computer science professor at Purdue University, told LinuxInsider.   
`----

http://www.linuxinsider.com/rsstory/59309.html

Another new case of point:

30 days with JFS

,----[ Quote ]
| The Journaled File System (JFS) is a little-known filesystem open sourced by 
| IBM in 1999 and available in the Linux kernel sources since 2002. It  
| originated inside IBM as the standard filesystem on the AIX line of Unix 
| servers, and was later ported to OS/2. Despite its pedigree, JFS has not 
| received the publicity or widespread usage of Linux filesystems like ext2/3 
| and ReiserFS. To learn more about JFS, I installed it as my root filesystem. 
| I found it to be a worthy alternative to the bigger names.     
| 
| [...]
| 
| The main design goal of JFS was to provide fast crash recovery for large 
| filesystems, avoiding the long filesystem check (fsck) times of older Unix 
| filesystems. That was also the primary goal of filesystems like ext3 and 
| ReiserFS. Unlike ext3, journaling was not an add-on to JFS, but baked into 
| the design from the start. For high-performance applications, the JFS 
| transaction log file can be created on an external volume if one is specified 
| when the filesystem is first created.      
`----

http://www.linux.com/feature/119025


Related:

Philosophy of Non-Competition

,----[ Quote ]
| People periodically ask me about competition in the open source
| community, especially competition between various languages.
| 
| One thing Microsoft seems to have figured out is that developers
| want multiple languages to choose from and will always want
| multiple languages to choose from. Diversity is an advantage,
| not a disadvantage. Ruby, for example, benefits from Perl, PHP,
| and Python's success, just like they benefit from Ruby's success.
| Java would likely never have been released as open source if it
| weren't for the success of the other languages. Having multiple
| successful open source languages each used by multiple successful
| projects makes it that much easier for companies to consider open
| source alternatives. The more the merrier.
`----

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/12/philosophy_of_n.html


A survey of Linux file managers

,----[ Quote ]
| Linux file manager ontogeny encapsulates the history of GNU/Linux.
| File managers began as command-line and generic graphical tools and
| progressed to desktop-specific ones, gaining sophistication along
| the way, with mouse controls, for example, replacing buttons.
| Today, the more than a dozen options highlighted here will suit
| users with widely varied interests.
`----

http://applications.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/12/13/1957208


Delve deep into drives

,----[ Quote ]
| Prabhakaran then goes on tracking bugs in all UNIX drivers, describing 
| inconsistencies and danger points, tracing the outline of a tougher file 
| system and then describing how to create an evolved file system that would 
| unite the advantages of most current file systems and overcome most of their 
| shortcomings. At the same time, he tries to describe how moving critical 
| logical pieces from the driver to the kernel (and therefore sharing this code 
| from one file system driver to the other) may make development easier and 
| faster while at the same time strengthening existing FS.       
`----

http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/blogs/delve_deep_into_drives


ZFS, XFS, EXT4 Filesystems Compared

,----[ Quote ]
| EXT4 is fast for metadata operations, tar, untar, cpio, and postmark. EXT4 is 
| much faster than the others under FFSB. EXT4 with hardware RAID and external 
| journal device is ludicrously fast. EXT4 seems to have a bad interaction with 
| software RAID, probably because mkfs fails to query the RAID layout when 
| setting the filesystem parameters.    
| 
| ZFS has excellent performance on metadata tests. ZFS has very bad sequential 
| transfer with hardware RAID and appalling sequential transfer with software 
| RAID. ZFS can copy the linux kernel source code in only 3 seconds! ZFS has 
| equal latency for read and write requests under mixed loads, which is good.   
| 
| XFS has good sequential transfer under Bonnie++. Oddly XFS has better 
| sequential reads when using an external journal, which makes little sense. Is  
| noatime broken on XFS? XFS is very slow on all the metadata tests. XFS takes 
| the RAID layout into consideration and it performs well on randomio with 
| hardware or software RAID.    
`----

http://tastic.brillig.org/%7Ejwb/zfs-xfs-ext4.html


OpenSolaris ZFS vs. Linux ext3 RAID5

,----[ Quote ]
| Few overarching conclusions can be drawn from the limited results of this
| study. Certainly, there are situations in which the Solaris/RAID-Z
| configuration appears to outperform the Ubuntu/RAID-5 configuration. Many
| questions remain regarding the large discrepancy in CPU usage for small-file
| operations. Likewise, the Ubuntu/RAID-5 configuration appears to perform
| slightly better in certain situations, though not overwhelmingly so. At best,
| under these default configurations, one can say that overall the Solaris
| configuration performs no worse, and indicates that it might perform better
| under live operating conditions. The latter, though, is largely speculation.
`----

http://www.prestonlee.com/archives/121


Why so many filesystems for Linux? What's the difference?

,----[ Quote ]
|     * EXT3       
| 
|         * Most popular Linux file system, limited scalability in size and 
|         number of files       
|         * Journaled       
|         * POSIX extended access control
| 
|     EXT3
|     file system is a journaled file system that has the greatest use in
|     Linux today. It is the "Linux" File system. It is quite robust and
|     quick, although it does not scale well to large volumes nor a great
|     number of files. Recently a scalability feature was added called
|     htrees, which significantly improved EXT3's scalability.
| 
| 
| [...]
| 
|     * FAT32       
| 
|         * Most limited file system, but most ubiquitous       
|         * Not Journaled       
|         * No access controls
| 
|     FAT32
|     is the crudest of the file systems listed. Its popularity is with its
|     widespread use and popularity in the Windows desktop world and that it
|     has made its way into being the file system in flash RAM devices
|     (digital cameras, USB memory sticks, etc.). It has no built in security
|     access control, so is small and works well in these portable and
|     embedded applications. It scales the least of the file systems listed.
|     Most systems have FAT32 compatibility support due to its ubiquity.
`----

http://kevin.hatfieldfamilysite.com/?p=104

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