Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Mon, 24 Jun 1996 23:35:17 -0700 | From | Steve VanDevender <> | Subject | real kernel bloat |
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I recently got a DEC AlphaStation at my new job. It's running Digital UNIX, since that's what the other machines I am charged with maintaining run.
As far as I can tell Digital UNIX (formerly Digital OSF/1) is a fat bloated pig. At boot the kernel allocates over 8 megabytes of memory to itself on a 32 meg machine. Once I load up X and my assortment of desktop doodads the machine runs acceptably, as long as only one thing is running. If, however, I try to compile something and then do something else the machine swaps like mad, and simple window system operations like raising or moving windows have 5-10 second delays between pressing the buttons and seeing something happen.
I compare this with my home Linux system, with 486-DX2/66 instead of a 233 MHz Alpha, but also with 32M of memory. Even though I've got enough going to have pushed this machine a little ways into swap, it never feels as loaded as the Digital UNIX box. And the kernel takes no more than 1.5M of memory once loaded. Despite the AlphaStation having a processor that's at least 5 times faster and having PCI instead of ISA for its peripherals, Digital UNIX manages to make it suck for interactive performance.
So those of you complaining about Linux's kernel bloat haven't seen anything if you haven't seen Digital UNIX. Linux has a long, long way to go before it could aspire to be that bloated.
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