[Bloat] [Cerowrt-devel] wireguard almost takes a bullet

Tue Mar 30 22:18:05 EDT 2021

On 3/30/21 3:28 AM, David P. Reed wrote:
>
> Dave -
>
> I've spent a fair amount of time orbiting the FreeBSD community over 
> the past few years. It's not as sad as you might think.
>
> However, the networking portion of FreeBSD community is quite 
> differently organized than it is in Linux.
>
so... Ive spent 20+ years with freebsd, ive worked with and for core 
team members, in both commercial and open source projects, ive been paid 
most of my adult life to develop on the freebsd platform.

> What tends to shape Linux and FreeBSD, etc. are the money sources that 
> flow into the communities. Of course Linux is quite independently 
> wealthy now. The senior executives of the Linux Foundation are paid 
> nearly a million dollars a year, each.  Which just indicates that 
> major corporations are seriously interested in controlling the 
> evolution of Linux (not the Gnu part, the part that has Linus Torvalds 
> at its center).
>
> FreeBSD, in contrast, is a loose alliance of what you might call 
> "embedded hardware vendors" like NetApp as an example. They value an 
> open, portable, efficient operating environment, but not for servers, 
> laptops or smartphones.
>
FreeBSD is not "driven" by this so called alliance of "embedded hardware 
vendors", while its true there are many large commercial vendors in both 
the storage and networking, and streaming work that use and contribute 
to FreeBSD as it is the basis for their commercial product lines, they 
do not consist of the core driver in development. FreeBSD really is a 
server grade operating system, however it does also run on embedded 
platforms. and plenty of it. It does also run on laptops quite well, 
though it is true application support if not as global as it is in 
linux. So to this point, FreeBSD is built for servers/networking/storage 
and the like, and in no way is limited to "embedded hardware" it runs on 
all the big iron out there, and is used daily by NetApp, Netflix, 
Juniper, Extreme, even Dlink, and it is a primary OS for many commercial 
storage providers.

> They overlap at the intersection of network routing and storage 
> platforms, where Linux doesn't seem to fit well, except in the case of 
> "home routers".
>
> At least that's my view. The major controllers of architectural 
> elements are not terribly interested in FreeBSD's positive qualities. 
> FreeBSD is not very visible at Intel and ARM at all, interms of their 
> product planning. IBM has no "Power" FreeBSD.
>
This is also not true.
>
> Take for example, bufferbloat as an issue that routing and switching 
> hardware ought to address. This is a serious weakness in the FreeBSD 
> community (where it should matter!) There's not been much demand by 
> the major corporate spenders on FreeBSD in fixing bufferbloat. But 
> then again, there's not been much visibility regarding bufferbloat in 
> the IETF, either. I'm not sure Torvalds has ever even heard of it (and 
> I suspect he would try to argue it isn't a problem at all, given his 
> tendency to not think clearly about systems scale issues, so what's 
> caused Linux to even bother is the fringes in OpenWRT land and mesh 
> networking land, plus Jim Gettys).
>
So your not aware of any bufferbloat remedies for sqm, cake and pie in 
the FreeBSD tcp/ip stack or work thats been done ?
>
> Anyway, FreeBSD and FreeRTOS and a few other very strong but small 
> communities have solutions that are far better for their actual needs 
> than the behemoth mess that Linux has become. And for those 
> communities, they work very well. They are disentangled from Gnu, 
> which is both a good and a bad thing depending on your perspective.
>
> I just spent 9 months trying to get a very tiny fix to the Linux 
> kernel into the mainline kernel. I actually gave up, because it seemed 
> utterly pointless, even though it was clearly a design error that I 
> was fixing, and I was trying to meet all the constraints on patches. 
> No one was fighting me, no one said it was wrong. I found the problem 
> in a personal research project where it was a blocking bug, so I had 
> to maintain it as an add-on private patch (and I still do) that I 
> needed to verify every release of the Linux kernel. Why is this? Well, 
> it shows how Linux excludes ideas by the very bureaucracy of its 
> management structure. (and I'd suggest that the mess that "init" has 
> turned into in the OS, which the kernel actually requires in order to 
> be useful, called "systemd", is an example of how not to modularize a 
> portable OS kernel).
>
> So FreeBSD, compared to Linux, in some ways, is far more pleasant to 
> deal with. The community doesn't have rude and clueless and entitled 
> members like Torvalds and Alan Cox have been. It isn't being driven by 
> a consortium of F100 companies in a near-cartel.
>
it is also far easier to deploy and manage a FreeBSD system, I also find 
it more stable
>
> So there are pluses and minuses. I suspect this is why many, many 
> Linux developers actually use macOS as their personal computer for 
> development. A paradox, given that macOS is completely proprietary.
>
and of course we all know the heritage of MacOS... OpenStep, Rhapsody, 
Darwin and FreeBSD <--- Yes... core components to this day originated 
from FreeBSD.


> On Sunday, March 28, 2021 11:56am, "Dave Taht" <dave.taht at gmail.com> said:
>
> > I am sad about the state of freebsd today, and of companies
> > contracting outside the authors of the code to get crappy things
> > committed without review and testing.
> >
> > https://lwn.net/Articles/850757/
> >
> > (long rant of mine in the comments).
> >
> > My hat is off to jason for sinking a frantic week into vastly
> > improving that wireguard implementation, and I hope he and his team
> > gets caught up on sleep now.
> >
> > --
> > "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public
> > relations, for Mother Nature cannot be fooled" - Richard Feynman
> >
> > dave at taht.net <Dave Täht> CTO, TekLibre, LLC Tel: 1-831-435-0729
> > _______________________________________________
> > Cerowrt-devel mailing list
> > Cerowrt-devel at lists.bufferbloat.net
> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/cerowrt-devel
> >
>
>
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