FreeBSD will be the first non-Linux distribution available for use on our platform. … While similar to other open source unix-like operating systems, it’s unique in that the development of both its kernel and user space utilities are managed by the same core team, ensuring consistent development standards across the project.
I find assertions like this particularly irksome. The same thing could equally be said about OpenBSD or NetBSD, or the illumos-based distributions like SmartOS (which I work on) or OmniOS. These operating systems are all developed, as with FreeBSD, using some variation on the “core operating system as a cohesive unit, maintained together” model.
I understand that Digital Ocean is a died-in-the-wool Linux shop and may be broadly unaware of a world outside their borders, but as near as I can tell the Linux camp is the one that’s somewhat unique in being a piecemeal, distributed development ecosystem. The group that looks after the VFS interface may well have little to do with the group that looks after chmod(1).
The Linux world seems to have a certain degree of myopia, wherein the Linux way of doing things is the standard way (whether it’s actually the best or most common way at all) and everything else is something fringe. This is not to say that the core Linux contributors feel this way, or even that there’s a purposeful disdain for other operating systems, but just that the extreme ubiquity of Linux in so many areas (to the exclusion of BSDs and other non-Linux Unix systems) has left them forgetful of the world outside their door.
It is odd that they claim removing journaling makes writing to disks slower, especially linking to gjournal, which is not the same as soft updates + journaling. As far as I know, in conjunction with soft updates, journaling just makes fsck after a crash TONS faster. Did they actually turn off soft updates too?!
I find assertions like this particularly irksome. The same thing could equally be said about OpenBSD or NetBSD, or the illumos-based distributions like SmartOS (which I work on) or OmniOS. These operating systems are all developed, as with FreeBSD, using some variation on the “core operating system as a cohesive unit, maintained together” model.
I understand that Digital Ocean is a died-in-the-wool Linux shop and may be broadly unaware of a world outside their borders, but as near as I can tell the Linux camp is the one that’s somewhat unique in being a piecemeal, distributed development ecosystem. The group that looks after the VFS interface may well have little to do with the group that looks after
chmod(1).The Linux world seems to have a certain degree of myopia, wherein the Linux way of doing things is the standard way (whether it’s actually the best or most common way at all) and everything else is something fringe. This is not to say that the core Linux contributors feel this way, or even that there’s a purposeful disdain for other operating systems, but just that the extreme ubiquity of Linux in so many areas (to the exclusion of BSDs and other non-Linux Unix systems) has left them forgetful of the world outside their door.
Apparently they have disabled file system journaling by default: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8890383
It is odd that they claim removing journaling makes writing to disks slower, especially linking to gjournal, which is not the same as soft updates + journaling. As far as I know, in conjunction with soft updates, journaling just makes fsck after a crash TONS faster. Did they actually turn off soft updates too?!