Messages in this thread | | | From | Bill Metzenthen <> | Subject | Linux hostile to poverty | Date | Sat, 18 Jul 1998 18:50:16 +1000 (EST) |
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Linux Becomes Hostile to Poverty ----- ------- ------- -- -------
I hope that got your attention!
Unlike earlier kernels, recent Linux kernels have become less usable on what has now become low-end (obsolete!) hardware:
(1) The memory rusts (see below). 2.1.109 appears to be worse than any kernel since 2.1.98.
(2) 2.1.108 introduced a "feature" whereby the underline bit is turned on for any character written to screen on a monochrome adapter. It's not a pretty sight! 2.1.109 hasn't fixed this.
My apologies for not attempting to fix these things myself, but other things are keeping me busy.
Bill Metzenthen
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Rusting Effect Update. ------- ------ -------
[For those new to the effect, somewhere in the 2.1.xx kernel series my low memory machine (8Mbyte) began to get sluggish after being used for some time due to lots of swapping. This is reliably triggered by doing a 'find' on a directory which has lots of files (a few tens of thousands) in sub-directories, etc. My test consists of compiling one of the kernel files before and after doing such a find (fresh after re-booting.]
The results so far: kernel approx rusting effect 2.0.33 38 --> 30 (improves!) 2.1.96 37 --> 263 2.1.98 43 --> 284 2.1.99 36 --> 100 2.1.100 38 --> 121 2.1.101 47 --> 152 2.1.102 48 --> 150 2.1.103 53 --> 168 2.1.106 57 --> 209 2.1.108 54 --> 200 2.1.109 51 --> 273 2.0.33 42 --> 34
Don't read too much into the precise figures. These results were obtained over a period of months, during which various things have changed (such as libraries, probably the compiler, etc). The first 2.0.33 result was obtained on 25 April, the last on 18th July.
All of the later kernels show some recovery over time. For example, with 2.1.109 a result of 173 seconds is obtained after a two minute wait.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Metzenthen | See http://www.suburbia.net/~billm/ for information billm@melbpc.org.au | on an 80x87 FPU emulator, using floating point billm@suburbia.net | (particularly on Linux), and code for manipulating Melbourne, Australia | the floating point environment on 80x86 Linux. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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