On Fri, May 24, 2002 at 02:42:32PM -0700, Lionel Dyck wrote: > Seems that the linuxworld author of the mainframe articles is none too > happy with those on this listserv. > http://www.linuxworld.com/site-stories/2002/0522.mainframelinux.sidebar2.html
I haven't been reading this guy's articles...and after reading the sidebar, it's clear I haven't missed anything. He simply Doesn't Get It. "Linux excels at the kinds of tasks that don't fir the mainframer's idea of data processing. I argue Linux mainframe performance must be evaluated in the context set by other uses of Linux, not other uses of zOS[sic]. Mainframe advocates excuse the poor performance of Linux in their environment by denigrating the kind of interactive computing Linux does best." He clearly misses the point: it's a server, dammit, not a single-user desktop. It's not *going* to do well on computation benchmarks. That's not what it was designed for, or optimized for. He should be looking at things like Apache and Samba and PostgreSQL, not KDE and SETI@Home. I think it's revealing as hell that Moshe Bar got comparable performance out of Linux/390 on a 2-way 1 GHz PIII under Hercules - which, I'm guessing, will turn about 10 MIPS with a reasonable I/O load - to what he did out of a PII-450. I daresay that the PII is turning more than 10 MIPS (any guesses? How many clocks per instruction does a PII use, under average workloads?), and that's even though the Linux/390 was having to put up with software emulation of I/O! I suggest we not waste time on someone who 1) appears to have a real axe to grind and 2) is so determined to resist any clue offered to him.
