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Linux Tuning Repository 113

Posted by CmdrTaco from the tips-and-tricks dept.
Owain Vaughan writes "Mindcraft's excuse for their results when comparing highly tuned NT versus vanilla Linux was that there was no central source of Linux Tuning information. Well there is now. Please submit all the Linux tuning articles you can get hold of to root@vaughan.com"
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Linux Tuning Repository More

Linux Tuning Repository

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  • Does it matter in Mindcraft's case? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'll agree that a performance tuning site is important for those seeking to squeeze the absolute best performance out of their machines.

    I'm left wondering, however, whether the existance of this site would have made any difference whatsoever in the Mindcraft testing. Face it, Mindcraft did a hatchet job on Linux, and no amount of available documentation anywhere would have made a difference. We've already seen blatant DE-TUNING of the machine. These things weren't done mistakenly!

  • Right! It's a good idea, lets help! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Ok, after seeing the site, I was a bit dissapointed. Layout is ok, but it looks like hell, and there is VERY little content on any of the listed daemons. HOWEVER, it's a great idea, and I'm sure if we all contribute our knowledge, it will become a great place for tuning info. I do feel, in the meantime, they need to put a !Mission Statement! on the sucker, so people will know it is still an effort, and not an established full-fledged site. If people go there thinking it's the sum of knowledge about linux tuning, we'll lose even more face. I believe they jumped into the war without their rifle.

    -H

  • Re:MS tuning tips (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    if you need tuning info, check out the m$ resource kits. tons of information in those about tuning their software. also, there are some excellent newsgroups and list-servs run by/for microsoft. if you're looking for web-based tuning, check out activeserverpages.com and 15seconds.com and take a look at their list-servs. s2n ain't so great on some, but other are wonderful (fastCode, c++ component building)

  • one of many (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There are several knowledge bases and other Info repositaries currently being developed.

    I am personally building an Enterprise (meta?) Howto ( here), and I'm working with some guys on a knowledge base and other documenation.

    It would be nice if someone could put together a page on documentation projects currently in progress/infancy - mail me at betty@area51.upsu.plym.ac.uk with any info on projects or if you want info on projects - if I don't hear anything I'll put together my own documentation/Knowledgebase in progress page at the above address.

    Laters.. Aaron (TheJackal/TJ)- where's my cookie gone?

  • Link to some tuning resources. (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 04, 1999 @11:48AM (#1904786)
    There are some OS tuning resources in the "Optimization and Tuning of the OS" section of Sys.Admin. page of Gary's Encyclopedia" [aa.net].

  • The original effort (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 04, 1999 @11:43AM (#1904787)
    Check out the community-based effort at:

    http://www.nl.linux.org/linuxperf/ [linux.org]


  • this is an awesome site for linux tips
    check it out
    http://portico.org [portico.org]
    -xyster
  • Well, in theory Microsoft themselves would be this repository. It's certainly a reasonable assumption, after all, they made the OS, right?

    Getting any information out of it is a whole other matter. I'm sure they give preference, though, if you're an "indepedant" testing firm that consistently proves every other product in the world is horrible compared to Microsoft products.
  • Maybe if I was a huge corporation I could get attention from them, but I'm not...

    Trust me, since no company is the size of MS, they don't care who you are (unless you're a competitor :)). A company I work at, very, very large, has been struggling with MS for about two years just to get a bit shaved off the price for Office 97 (many thousands of licenses needed), and a deal like having employees be able to install it at home as well as at work (Lotus was very accomidating here). MS just recently budged, saying they'd take off a few dollars (I forget, but like 20%, not much) when we buy a second license for them. And that's just for Office Standard (no Access), it's regular full price for Professional.

    And don't even get me started on tech support for anything Windows. We only have a 1-900 number to call, even then it's useless. Everybody has just become accustomed to frequent reloading of NT. A three year lease on the hardware would expect two to three reloads during that time. I just find it amazing they are so pro-MS through all this. And it amazes me how much money the throw into ways of more "efficiently" reloading the OS, since many problems are hopeless to try and resolve.
  • Posted by Uncle Humph:

    http://www.antarctic.penguincomputing.com/LinuxG uide/ for example.
  • I agree. If I were going to set up a new Linux site like this, I'd have done my own research and put up as much as I could find so that the site wasn't empty at first.

    People are much more likely to send you information if they see that you've already done some work and that the site is going somewhere. Who wants to send info to a site that hasn't even bothered to do the first bit of research? It doesn't inspire confidence in the future of the site.

    But I guess it's easy to set up a blank site and advertise for people to fill it with content, which is why so many sites start up this way ...
  • I'm not sure I want to take seriously advice for tuning my system from a guy who receives his own mail as root.
  • I thought about that, and emailed the guy about it. I hope some sort of cooperation can come about, because it would be a waste of resources all around if a bunch of these sites sprung up, all not knowing where the other was going. I hope he emails me back with a positive response, as something like this can do a lot of good, IMO.

    and thanks for the compliment on my web design skills :-)

    jaraxle

  • >Running a bunch of processes...real insecure. Thats why you dont do everything as root, not becuase you aren't well versed enough to do so.

    Heh, the contradiction that he implies!
    "I know what I am doing well enough that I can run as root!"

    Except that if you did know what you were doing, you wouldn't run as root!

    Laugh him off.
  • Why put on sites with no content? both should be
    taken down. We are not M$ and do no engage in deception. Let a guy who has some KNOWLEDGE about
    tuning put up a site not just a guy who can put up a webpage.
  • That guy with the linux kernel at least had some code. There is no tuning information on those sites at all.
  • Performance tuning information is all over Microsoft's web site. Just go to http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver and then follow the links to the particular functionality you are looking at...

    as an example:
    http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/fileprint/tech /overview/FilePerf.asp

    There are similar articles available for web servers and other pieces.
  • Is there an M$ tuning repository? I was not aware of one...
  • but my experience is that their "knowledge workers" are as a whole unfriendly and unknowledgable.

    Maybe if I was a huge corporation I could get attention from them, but I'm not...

    Instead we've learned how to make win95/NT work (more-or-less) right on our own. We're pretty good at it, but this can be a problem for a "real" corporation that buys a "supported" OS and expects a corresponding decrease in tech support they must provide internally.
  • that the biggest corporation in the industry can't do any better than to let me search their website haphazardly. I search for "performance tuning" on www.microsoft.com. Yes, I found some articles. Some were good. Some were idiotic. They weren't particularly well organized.

    Does Linux have this problem? To some degree, for those uninitiates who don't know whom/how to ask. When I had a question about video hardware on Suns, I mailed Jim Mintha of UltraLinux. When I had a question about SMBfs support in the kernel, I mailed the maintainer. The documentation that is there is easily organized in howto's on common subjects. And there's a whole community of USENET junkies ready to answer questions as soon as you ask them.

    Repositories with papers on tuning specific packages, organized to show you exactly what's available, will help a lot.

  • How does this relate to linuxperf? (Score:5)

    by Mithrandir ( 3459 ) on Tuesday May 04, 1999 @11:03AM (#1904804) Homepage
    Rik van Riel has already started a linux tuning site over at nl.linux.org [linux.org]. Already there are some 50+ folks on the alias with documents starting to fly around the CVS system. Nobody has mentioned this site to us, so what's the deal?

  • Re:The original effort (Score:5)

    by Mithrandir ( 3459 ) on Tuesday May 04, 1999 @12:19PM (#1904805) Homepage
    We're writing as quickly as we can. There are actually a whole heap of documents there, but the guy that did the main page hasn't linked them in yet. You have to read the CVS update messages to know where to find things :) (I remember that at least there is a sendmail page there)

    Rik has just moved the list over to majordomo (message came through all of 5 mikes ago). You can join the list by sending mail to

    with the body

    • subscribe linuxperf

    and then come join the fun.

    Note that we are taking a completely different approach to tunelinux. We're breaking it down into functional areas rather than specific applications. For example, to tune a, oh.. let's say samba server, you need to tune SAMBA, the kernel and a number of other things to get the best from your box. If you take the tunelinux approach, you'll only end up with a 50% solution because you'll just tune SAMBA, and not the kernel. The Mindcraft report is a classic for that. Yes, tune samba, but hey, the kernel still only uses 960MB of RAM. The "tuning samba" doc approach wouldn't cover that sort of information all in the one spot. Effectively you end up with the same problem as we have now - lots of documentation but so fragmented that you can't do anything useful with it.

  • resolves to.. (Score:4)

    by zempf ( 4454 ) <zempf AT bigfoot DOT com> on Tuesday May 04, 1999 @10:57AM (#1904806) Homepage
    For those of you who can't resolve the domain name yet or something, www.tunelinux.com is 193.243.238.236 [193.243.238.236].

    -mike kania

  • Re:Empty (Score:1)

    by luge ( 4808 )
    linuxperf is empty at the moment, but instead of just soliciting links (which is easy and will likely yield pretty useless results) they actually have a development model and have people working on creating docs specifically for them. It's true, very few of them are up yet, but with vastly different methods, they are going to take a little more time to get results. I think it'll be worth it.
    ~luge

  • sunsite? (Score:1)

    by luge ( 4808 )
    Are you looking for the LDP? It's still there (along with the rest of sunsite) at http://metalab.unc.edu [unc.edu]. Has never left, AFAIK :)
    ~luge
    (A frustrated Blue Devil who is constantly embittered that something as cool as metalab is at a place as lame as UNC-Chapel Hell :)
  • Yeah. I hate to shoot this guy down, but there are some very serious folks doing some very serious work at this URL. It was mentioned a couple of days ago at linuxtoday. I'll try to find the URL for the actual announcemnt there. Anyway, the gist of is that they are not just doing a repository (which is what this appears to be.) Rather, they are trying to coordinate (through CVS) the writing of actual documentation, not just a collection of tips. This is sorely needed- if you have serious time and writing skills, go help them out. I know I will as soon as exams are over...
  • bad troll, be nice.
    Running a bunch of processes as root is kinda insecure. Okay real insecure. Thats why you dont do everything as root, not becuase you aren't well versed enough to do so.

    I think I should change my threshold to 1 now. . .

    -doobman
  • The alpha architecture seems to be conspicuous by it's absence!
    Too bad, because tuning stuff (compiler flags etc) gets you lots of gains on these machines, and it's really picky about the types of memory accesses etc.

  • ... on the topic of this thread is that it's really not a big deal to recieve email at root (as long as you don't actually log in as root to read it.) Any sensible person will .forward all of root's mail to a user account. Even better, mailer daemons like sendmail and exim will take care of this automatically.

    Berating this guy for using a root@ email address is silly and showing a snotty attitude.

  • I have always wondered what the big deal about logging in as root was about. Why is it so forbidden and dangerous? Are you afraid you will accidently delete something or fubar it?

    Well, yes, that is the first and foremost danger, probably. I've experienced this myself, once accidentally deleting my main .netscape folder when I thought I was in a different directory (or something, it was late at night.)

    Besides this, if you are using root for your day-to-day work, you might run a binary or script that would be a big no-no to run as root. Like some malicious trojan horse code. While there is always a slight danger installing any software that you haven't thoroughly reviewed, this danger is lessened when the software is only run with the priveleges of a normal user.

    If you are running a strictly single-user system and are not connected to a network, you could probably "get away with" logging in as root all the time. But there is no real reason to do this, just create a damn user! Unix security will protect you from your own late-night ineptitude!

  • Why yes it should be as slow as technet. See, we'll have to organize it in a central searchable hierarchical repository, put in a good fast system, then throw in a buncha sleep() calls as the finishing touch to make it just as slow as technet.

    I didn't say "exactly like technet down to the pixel level" did I?
  • This should be part of a TUNING-HOWTO and put in the LDP. The LDP could also do with some organization too. Something like microsoft technet or support.apple.com would be nice.
  • Why not just contribute tuning info to the LDP?
  • If only slashdot would be *selective* about what they post. Merely getting posted as a main article on slashdot will cause something to be hyped , and slashdot should make sure that they aren't unfairly hyping vapourware over a project that is more mature , productive and deserving of publicity.
  • I don't understand why everyone else is so uppity about his email being root. Have they considered that
    1. Mail to root is almost always forwarded
    2. The host may forward all mail to one guy regardless of the supplied username. Perhaps it has more than one hostname and handles incoming messages according to the hostname attached to the message.
    3. The superuser may not be named "root"
  • I got custard.org .

    Guess that's the bad thing about name-based virtual hosts. :-(

    D

    ----
  • ``Will it contain info for individual users as well as sysadmins?''

    IMHO... If you're an individual who's getting into kernel tuning you already are the sysadmin.

  • ``Now, if only I had some tuning tip for them...''

    Here's one:

    Black text on a blue background is freaking hard to read. Choose a color scheme that's readable.

    Otherwise, I'm glad someone's doing this to shut off the criticisms from those who are too lazy to visit more than one site for this information. Q: Why should the Apache group need to submit their documentation to someone else for dissemination? Do we bitch about Seagate's drive specs being on a different web site from Western Digitals's???

  • Re:Question (Score:5)

    by peterb ( 13831 ) on Tuesday May 04, 1999 @11:01AM (#1904823) Homepage Journal
    TCP Tuning information for many operating systems (including Linux, BSD, and Microsoft's offerings) may be found at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center [psc.edu] and NLANR Engineering Services [nlanr.net]
  • You know, I have to wonder just how qualified someone who uses the sysadmin account as an incoming email address is to run any kind of technical Linux site, let alone a tuning site...
  • I'm not worried about the security implications of telling people about the root account. I'm well aware of the fact that virtually every Unix box has one. What worries me most is the impression it gives to the world to tell people to email you at root instead of a regular account. In my experience, everybody who knows anything at all about system administration tries to minimize their use of the root account. Conversely, the people who use "root" as their primary account instead of creating a non-privledged account are almost by definition inexperienced and/or lazy.

    I think it's a great idea for the Linux community to have a resource for tuning information. However, if you want that resource to be taken seriously the people running it at least need to look like they know what they are doing.

    I don't buy the alias theory. Someone who has managed to get root's mail aliased to some other account also knows that it takes abount 10 seconds to create an arbitrary alias to use for situations like this. Of course, this is all a mooot point since the web page now gives a nice clean alias to use for submitting tips. ;-)>

  • Re:Using root e-mail? (Score:4)

    by BeBoxer ( 14448 ) on Tuesday May 04, 1999 @11:06AM (#1904826)
    Seems like a bad idea to me too. Aside from the numerous security risks that come from using root as a regular account, it implies that the person running this machine is too lazy to even bother creating a non-super account. Or too ignorant to know any better. Either way, it presents a really bad image.
  • heh - have you been to linuxwarez [linuxware.com]??

    they have purple links (grey once you visit them) on a black background. That's even harder to read.

    I guess ppl don't think about these things when they create pages. I guess they don't look at them either.
  • Actually - if you go to the site, the email link is tunelinux@vaughan.com

    Perhaps this is a typo in the article?


  • Aren't we spreading ourselves a little too thin by having all these "helper" sites pop up?

    What are we really accomplishing
  • I realize it's still there, I just don't think it's as current and up-to-date as it needs to be
  • Thank you so much for pointing out that I am not a great speller and make grammatical errors.

    That really has a lot to do w/ this post.

  • spreading ourselves thin (part 2) (Score:4)

    by Jae ( 14657 ) on Tuesday May 04, 1999 @02:53PM (#1904832)
    (lets try this again since I can't type today and keep smacking the wrong keys)

    Note : I use "we" as a general pronoun here

    What are we really accomplishing by having all these "helper" sites come online - especially when they have little or no content to them?

    Wouldn't it make more sense (and maybe this is being done, but it needs to be publicized (sp) a bit better) to have all these ppl who are creating these sites pool their efforts and work on one big site?

    Their intentions are definately good - but it's not acheiving the desired goal.

    I know if I was a newbie user, I'd want to be able to look one place for all the hints, docs, etc that I needed, rather then having to visit numerous sites to find out one thing.

    That's why sunsite was so great - b/c you could find a lot of what you were looking for in one place. But - it's not like that any more (at least I think)

    We're trying to pursuade people to move over to linux as their OS of choice - but how easy are we making it for them with these "helper" sites that come on-line, but have no "help" in them.

    I think that if everyone invested their time into one unified project, we'd have one helluva documentation/hints site on our hands.

    Find a group of people to administer it, find a group to write the scripts (I'd help w/ that part myself), find people for "formalize" all the hints and documents that are submitted, and then put them online.

    We're moving forward w/ providing documentation, but we're moving backwards as well.

    Note : Again - remember that I use "we" as a general pronoun, and it doesn't necessarily refer to people who read this site - it's more of a linux population as a whole
  • I HOPE I'm not the only one who knows that "optimization" is not a word, and "optimisation" is DEFINATELY not a word.

    The following is quoted from the Merriam Webster Online Dictionary [m-w.com]

    Main Entry: optimization

    Pronunciation: "äp-t&-m&-'zA-sh&n
    Function: noun
    Date: 1857
    : an act, process, or methodology of making something (as a design, system, or decision) as fully perfect, functional, or effective as possible; specifically : the mathematical procedures (as finding the maximum of a function) involved in this
    By the way: I think you mean, "definitely." Not "definately."

    :)

  • I'd never heard of linux perf either tho... if the only effect of this site is to bring all the tuning repositries into the light then thats not a bad thing[tm] Tom

  • It seems a bit sparse on content (Score:5)

    by Agnomen ( 15271 ) on Tuesday May 04, 1999 @11:14AM (#1904835) Homepage
    tunelinux [tunelinux.com] seems a bit sparse on content. It seems more like a template for a new site, than a ready to launch site. The links I followed all seemed to point to simple descriptions of the various daemons and architectures. They could have seeded it with at least the Apache Performance notes [apache.org] or the more specific OS [apache.org] performance notes already published on the main Apache [apache.org] site. Not to mention the fact that they could have perused the contents of the many howtos [linuxberg.com] listed at Linuxberg [linuxberg.com] among many other places. It looks like a good starting point though, and I'm sure it will become a useful resource once more content is provided. It is a nice design, but "Content is King."
  • That effort also appears to be a bit vaporous. Links to subjects, all with a "To be filled" notation.

    Not a big deal. We just need to send some content to these sites.
  • The hope is that someone putting up a site
    about tuning Linux will have a clue. The criticism is that most people who do normal things as root are clueless. I.E. you su to root when you need to. You don't do everything as root. It is just a good habit. If you aren't in the habit, perhaps you haven't been hacking long enough to realize it's smart.

    If you don't know how to play guitar, it's hard to tell the difference between a good one and an average one. Similarly, when you get a clue, you start to recognize the clueless.
  • Just seems like a bad idea to me.
  • If you are aliasing root e-mail to another account in order to receive editorial submissions then I think you are better off picking another name, like editor, or something.

    Unless, of course, you think it looks cool to use root, in which case you should consider that it might look really lame to others.

    In any case, I think it is great that someone took the initiative to get this going.
  • That guy with the linux kernel at least had some code

    Right, and that guy with the web site at least had a web site. What can you offer? Can you do a better job? Have you put up the $$$ for a domain dedicated to tuning? Have you paid to have a tuning site hosted? At the very least, can you point the rest of us in the direction of a project that is doing a better job than this one? If not, then kwitcherwhinin. If so, share the info.

    I agree that it would be better if this project were finished, and it seems a little silly to put up a site devoid of useless information. Give it a week or three. If it hasn't incorporated some of the suggestions from the discussion on slashdot, then feel free to dismiss it for the time being. In the meantime, give it a chance to try to grow up.

  • Technet, or
    Microsoft's Knowledge Base, or
    www.microsoft.com...

    I find it laughable that a bunch of geeks can't find technical information for the most widely disseminated OS in the world. The answers aren't easy to find, but they are centrally located, and everything there is (theoretically) authoritative. And if you can't find the answer from Microsoft, you won't find an answer. Every answer I've ever gotten from a non-Microsoft source has turned out to be either a dumbed down version of Microsoft's info or plain wrong.

    P.S. I don't claim to be a fan of MS, but I did support their products for about three years.
  • Let a guy who has some KNOWLEDGE about tuning put up a site not just a guy who can put up a webpage

    I would suggest that if someone is going to design a free unix kernel, it should be someone with a a master's in comp sci and at least ten years' experience programming operating systems in C with a major American corporation. It should certainly NOT be a Finnish student whose main experience with Unix was using it or writing programs for it.


    This is not a corporation where you can assign jobs to people, ordemand that someone with qualifications X, Y, and Z be found to do the job. Instead, the work gets done by whoever chooses to do the job. I don't see any experts coming forward to maintain a repository of all Linux tuning information, or even a clearinghouse of where it can be found. The people who can do a better job are probably not that interested in being librarians, as they are busy being programmers.

    I've always had a rule that I think is applicable here: feel free to criticize someone else's work if you can demonstrate the ability to do a better job.
  • I think Eric Raymond made a point in at least one of those two papers (Cathedral and Bazaar and Homesteading the Noosphere) that open source projects don't tend to succeed unless they start from a functional project. (Mozilla is a good example of this; it has required a lot more effort to get off the ground because there was not a functional product to start with) So I don't think "misunderstanding" is not the problem, more like "ignoring" - like, this part sounds cool, but this part sounds like work, so forget about it.

    On the other hand, what do you consider a working product for a web site? The site in question has doubtless gleaned some useful information from this discussion, and if he has half a brain will spend the next day or so tracking info down and updating his page.

    On the other hand, unless he's really dedicated, it's liable to peter out after a month or so. This kind of project requires hard work for a long time to be successful.

    On the other hand - by now I'm a quadruped - thats all I wanted to say :)

  • Re:Slight problem, however. (Score:3)

    by dillon_rinker ( 17944 ) on Tuesday May 04, 1999 @12:58PM (#1904845) Homepage
    I am dissapointed that this site is Live and yet doesn't contain any useful information what so ever.
    By publicizing this site in this way, the author is accumulating quite a few pointers to useful information. The author demonstrates some level of commitment and credibility by investing time and $$$ to create this site (though admittedly not a WHOLE lot).

    How is this going to co-ordinate itself with the kernel-doc effort being placed by riel@humbolt.nl.linux.org?
    Ask the site maintainer - how is anyone else supposed to know the answer to this question? Oh wait - you didn't mean to be helpful, did you? You just wanted to criticize.

    Mindcraft/Microsoft will be laughing at this site. And it will fuel their FUD that everything under Linux is Alpha/Beta software in the public domain.
    What this author is proposing will not spring into view fully formed. It will take a lot of work and effort by a lot of people because no one has all the answers. The author clearly felt that the best way to grow his site was to go public as soon as he could. With a lot of work and a little luck, it will grow up.

    I think it should be taken off until the author knows at least some links to Kernel tuning sites - the author could at least put up some "Under Construction" signs...
    Once again, you demonstrate your desire not to help but to criticize. What are those links? Do you know where such information is? Why aren't you sharing it? The site's author is trying to be helpful; I see no evidence of that from you.

    I, too, was disappointed at the lack of information on this site, but I could see that it was a work in progress. It takes a real jackass to say that because something isn't finished it isn't worth spending time on.
  • IMHO... If you're an individual who's getting into kernel tuning you already are the sysadmin.

    I see your point, but I was really speaking more on telling the individual what daemons can be disabled and how to do it, etc. Things which will optimize Linux for a single user with an Internet account, rather than a LAN user.

  • Well, it is about time. I get a lot of information from the Linux How-Tos, but we do need to get more central repositories for Linux knowledge. Looks like the site may have been /.ed, but it may be the proxy server here. Will it contain info for individual users as well as sysadmins?
  • Actually what I was saying is that he's started off on his marathon, looking like he's only going to run 100metres.
  • I am dissapointed that this site is Live and yet doesn't contain any useful information what so ever.

    How is this going to co-ordinate itself with the kernel-doc effort being placed by riel@humbolt.nl.linux.org ?

    Mindcraft/Microsoft will be laughing at this site. And it will fuel their FUD that everything under Linux is Alpha/Beta software in the public domain.

    I think it should be taken off until the author knows at least some links to Kernel tuning sites - the author could at least put up some "Under Construction" signs...

  • Re:No Vaporware for Linux please (Score:4)

    by GC ( 19160 ) on Tuesday May 04, 1999 @11:55AM (#1904851)
    At least the www.nl.linux.org/linuxperf site states that it is still under construction.

    After 5 seconds consideration I'm come to the conclusion that www.linuxtuning.com is slow and unprofessional.

    www.nl.linux.org/linuxperf has to my knowledge 50 volunteers and has been properly consulted through the Linux mailing lists - which seems the right way to get people who know what they are talking about involved.

    There has been a delay with linuxperf because they didn't expect to get so many volunteers and what seemed to be a small project at first looks as if it will require more management than earlier envisaged. Thankfully, however, this will probably make for a higher quality and more complete documentation project over the long term.

    Thanks for listening. :)
  • Assuming this site gets useful content soon - has anyone told the people at Mindcraft about it? Seeing as how it is in response to their 'complaints' more or less.
    -cpd
  • Hmmmm...
    This one is just as blank as www.linuxtune.com...

    Bummers!
  • isn't this just showing at least one of the ways that the free software community works - no one owns it so there tends not to be centralisation
    of control or even resources. Instead we get a flush of people doing similar things and the best of them survive. Often several reasonable projects fold together to make a really good one. Don't knock it - it works, even if in someways its about as efficient as plain standard evolution it has the same result in that the best adapted survive.

    I think that all of these efforts should probably have a comments button for each page so that each vistor can add to the knowlege base - only solution would be to have a faq-o-matic style site which just grows and self edits by rating peoples comments - in fact /. could be that site!
  • e-mail aliasses. one of the wonderful top-tunes you can use on linux.
  • Right, ESR did make that point in C&B. It's an easy point to overlook, and a lot of people do. It doesn't take much imagination to picture someone saying, "Ooh, I'll open the source up and this program will be perfect in about 3 weeks!" (this has happened already, it would seem) before hr read the whole document.

    It's pretty easy to tell when some code is worthy of being released ("Ok, it does a reasonable subset of what it should ultimately do."), and I think it's also pretty easy to tell when a site is ready to go "live", although maybe it's less easy to give a concrete definition. I'd say it's somewhere beyond the point of having a few stubs and pointers to external sites.

  • Re:It seems a bit sparse on content (Score:3)

    by maw ( 25860 ) on Tuesday May 04, 1999 @12:43PM (#1904857) Journal
    But I guess it's easy to set up a blank site and advertise for people to fill it with content, which is why so many sites start up this way ...

    I've been thinking about this (fairly common) phenomenon lately. It's a small part of something larger; lately, we've seen a lot of people making big announcements about open source projects, registering a domain, setting up a flashy web page and a mailing list, etc., but it turns out that practically nothing has been coded: main()'s defined and stdio.h #included.

    It sounds like good ol' vaporware, but I think it's something more than just that.

    I've come to the tentative conclusion that this is some of the negative backlash from The Cathedral and the Bazaar. People end up with a poor understanding of the document (Slashdot is probably guilty causing a lot of this :/); often they never read the whole paper.

    I am not sure which is worse: having read but poorly understood Cathedral and the Bazaar or not having read it at all. I'm wondering if it might be the former.

    Think twice before you make an announcement like this.

  • Or understands sendmail well enough to redirect mail to root --- which isn't really all that hard.
  • someone gave out an ip of
    http://193.243.238.236
    but this resolves to custard.org

    Funny how some can get this but not others. Tought it was my proxy but must be some nameserver issue somewhere.
  • Well yes, I agree that it probably wouldn't affect the outcome at all. But, one of the FUD-elements coming out of that paper was that there was no centralized place to go for tuning support, which lends credence to the MS line that Linux is not-supported by any one entitiy, and you will be left high and dry when things go wrong.

    Granted, tunelinux may or may not be the right answer for an end-all, be-all tuning resource, but had it existed (and yes, been chock-full of organized, meaningful, detailed information) there might have been one less FUD point to come out of the Mind-less-craft BS. (but maybe not :-)

  • Wrong-o! This guy isn't trying to be deceptive, he's trying to provide a single place were all the tuning tips can be collected. He doesn't have to be a tuning geek -- in fact, I'd rather that he'd be a Web and information architecture geek so that the site has a good structure and good facilitates for information searching and retrieval.

    Don't bust the guy's chops because he hasn't set a world record in the 100 m when he's running a marathon.
  • Technet and all of Microsoft.com is so slow it gives me reason to call them Microsloth. It takes forever to load anything on a regular modem line. Too many "see what I can do with Java/HTML" graphics. And the slowest download times on patches/updates.
  • Seems like a bad idea to me too. Aside from the numerous security risks that come from using root as a regular account, it implies that the person running this machine is too lazy to even bother creating a non-super account. Or too ignorant to know any better. Either way, it presents a really bad image.

    It's just addressed to root. It doesn't mean it's not aliased/forwarded to somewhere else, possibly even to a completely different box. A little sloppy yes, but I think it's a little knee jerk to start worrying about security issues of posting the root email address. Almost every box has it.
  • I think we're all missing an important point. Exactly how much did they pay for the microsoft software, and how much did they pay for the people who "tuned" it? Combine those two figures, and offer to pay someone %20 of that to "tune" the linux system (not %20 per hour, %20 per job. should be quicker on the linux system, plus you have the extra buffer of the M$ software cost). -Then- see what kind of results you get. They weren't comparing NT to Linux, they were comparing how well an NT person could set up Linux to how well he could set up NT. They could have found someone to do the job he/she/they did for $6 an hour...I mean geeze, red hat installs itself, people. Don't need brains or ability for that. They were expecting free tech support for Linux, but they willing to pay for M$ support. True, we may have free software, but we do have bills...our -time- isn't free. Setting up a linux system is by far cheaper than setting up an NT system. Not only that, but we all know Linux runs faster, and is far more stable. Linux also keeps people from having to take their system down, so it is invaluable for people who -cannot- have down-time.
  • Main Entry: optimisation, optimise
    British variant of OPTIMIZATION, OPTIMIZE

    according to Merriam-Webster [m-w.com], but what do they know?
  • >Does Linux have this problem? To some degree, for >those uninitiates who don't know whom/how to ask. >When I had a question about video hardware on >Suns, I mailed Jim Mintha of UltraLinux. When I >had a question about SMBfs support in the kernel, >I mailed the maintainer.

    Unfortunately, this model does not scale very well. I work in a support organisation, and having one or two subject experts doesn't work very well when every man and his dog is after them for answers or they decide to get sick or go on vacation.
  • looking up www.tunelinux.com
    Official name: www.tunelinux.com
    IP address: 193.243.238.236

    It seems to resolve now, but it didn't the first time I tried it


  • - an Anonymous Coward said,
    "Don't assume that someone else must be stupid just because you don't understand what they're doing."

    Well said!

    C'mon folks, give the guy(s) a break. They are trying.... You're only whining. Do something good and help them out.
  • Maybe he's really using NT and has an account called root!!!!
  • Now no 'suit would be able to whine about not finding tuning tips for Linux!
    Of course, it needs to be filled with all kinds of tips, and the search engine needs to work, but hey! It's a good idea! :-)
    Kudos to them.

    Now, if only I had some tuning tip for them...
  • Well, yes it's being spread a little thin, but remember that Mindcraft said that they had no place to get tuning information. If there was one easy-to-remember site, even it is made up mostly of links to other tuning pages, it would help more than one obscure page with everything you need. Just a thought... you know how people like documentation to be easy to find =)

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