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Windows 7 Benchmarks Show Little Improvement On Vista 369

Posted by kdawson

Windows 7 Benchmarks Show Little Improvement On Vista

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  • by hcdejong (561314) <hobbes.xmsnet@nl> on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @05:30AM (#25718123)

    not only is it a dupe, but the original article is still on the front page. Way to go.

    • by Yvanhoe (564877) on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @05:38AM (#25718185) Journal
      You know, at first, I thought the "dupe" tag referred to Windows 7...
      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by Andr T. (1006215)
        No, that would be 'dope'
      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by wisty (1335733)
        Which will be released as "Windows Mojave"?
    • Re:Sheer genius (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Sockatume (732728) on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @05:56AM (#25718283) Homepage
      Ah, but the other article was about how Windows performed the same computationally while having a faster interface. That failed to needlessly bash Microsoft by extrapolating miles from the evidence, and therefore was insufficient.
    • by aliquis (678370)

      Thanks, I was wondering if it was the same or not since the headline looked the same but I didn't read the other article either so I couldn't tell. The description of the article seems more evil in this one :D

      Tagging don't work in Safari so I can't tag the article accordingly :/
      (Without switching to a browser which doesn't suck that is ..)

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by blowdart (31458)
      Yes but we're ignoring the fact that the slashdot released currently running is a debug, limited release, unfinished product. Maybe when it's done the results will be different, just like the Windows 7, not even beta, version the lazy journalists tested.
    • by Rogerborg (306625) on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @07:15AM (#25718747) Homepage

      Proof yet again that in addition to kdawson not "editing" Slashdot, he/she/it doesn't even read it.

      Honestly, how would you replace him/her/it with a shell script that performed that badly? You'd have to write it in FORTRAN, blindfolded, while tripping on mescaline.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It's an intentional dupe. Look:


  • I guess it was only a matter of time before the press got tired of hyping up Windows 7 and had to report some negative news to keep getting the page views.

    "zero measurable performance benefits"

    Yes, because things like improved startup time, increased battery life etc are not measurable right?

    "Windows 7 is a 'minor point-type of release, as opposed to a major update or rewrite"

    And when did Microsoft claim otherwise? The whole point of Windows 7 has been that its built on the Vista SP1 (Server 2008) c

    • If it is only minor improvements, then why is it not a service pack, or like 95 and 98 SE versions?

      Why do you feel these small chances are worth another full price release?

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Narpak (961733)
        Well I am sure Microsoft is eager to try and milk the product a bit more, as I understand it Vista didn't sell nearly as well as they had hoped. If they could get about the same number of sales on a repacking of the product (sold at max price) they'll get a few more dollars in the bank before they cease producing Operating Systems.

        Why a consumer would actually pay for it is another matter.
  • Perfect (Score:5, Funny)

    by DesScorp (410532) <DesScorp@[ ]il.com ['Gma' in gap]> on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @05:35AM (#25718167) Homepage Journal

    Windows 7 is just a rehash of a just released OS, and this article is a rehash of a just released article. There's so much synchronicity, Sting is singing in the background.

    • Re:Perfect (Score:5, Funny)

      by savuporo (658486) on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @05:45AM (#25718217)
      "32-bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16-bit patch to an 8-bit operating system originally coded for a 4-bit microprocessor, written by a 2-bit company that can't stand 1-bit of competition" Still stands strong. Now with a 64-bit patch on top.
  • by Manip (656104) on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @05:42AM (#25718199)

    What exactly is this article trying to prove?

    Microsoft themselves have said that Windows 7 will ship will the same underlying infrastructure as Windows Vista. They also said that Windows Vista was the biggest kernel rewrite since Windows 2000.

    The interesting thing about a lot of Vista's bloat is that it isn't kernel level. We know this since we can compare Windows 2003 and Vista. Windows 2003 has almost identical program startup times to Windows XP/2000.

    I do think that Windows 7 is going in a disappointing direction in general. They seem to be playing right into what I like to call the "Apple Trap." Instead of doing what Microsoft do best which is to produce a workhorse they instead try and play the designer, and want to make a work of art.

  • What? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by avxo (861854) on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @05:46AM (#25718229)
    I have no problems with benchmarking the O/S and commenting on performance and the like, but when the person that analyzes and presents these results says: "the process lists are similar" I'm forced to wonder what the guy is smoking. OK, so you have have smss.exe, csrss.exe, winlogon.exe, a bunch of svchost.exe processes. That really says nothing about the underlying architecture of the operating system and the amount of differences that are there. This guy might as well have said "I looked at Word '97 and Word 2007 and they're both named 'winword.exe' and let you edit text. I'm struck by those similarities!" Anyone expecting Windows 7 to be a radical departure from Windows Vista is delusional, all the more so if that expectation involved vastly different process lists. Also, this guy compares the video encoding performance of Vista and Windows 7 and says there's no performance improvements... That has got to the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Seriously. It might very well be that Windows 7 is as slow as Vista. Maybe it's even slower. But you will never know that by comparing how long video encoding takes on each of them. Video encoding is a CPU-bound process, so nothing Windows 7 does can improve the video encoding performance of any machine because it cannot just magically improve your CPUs clock speed. All other things being equal, any gains from encoding german scheisse porn on Windows 7 over doing so on Windows Vista are going to be negligible at best.
    • Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)

      by mobby_6kl (668092) on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @06:30AM (#25718499)

      I have to agree with you here, mostly. Most of the tests make very little sense, and expecting W7 to be a rewrite is just stupid. Watching some of the W7-related PDC 2008 videos, I never got the impression that improving performance was their major priority, except perhaps for some tweaks for netbooks. Instead, most of the focus appears to be on other areas such as improved usability and power consumption. Not to mention that the M3 is a pre-beta build.

      However, the OS can certainly have a significant impact on something like video encoding: differences in the scheduler or system calls/APIs can do that. Here's a somewhat outdated Vista vs XP [tomshardware.com] benchmark. The xvid and h.264 encoders are around 20% slower in Vista, and the impact is similar in some other cases, such as with WinRAR or UT2004. Differences of just a few percent can usually be ignored, but I find these significant. If somewhere between the release of Vista and W7 the maximum differences are lowered to around 5% compared to XP, whether with a service pack, new drivers or optimizations, I'd consider that good enough and possibly switch. After all, going from Win98 to XP also caused a drop in framerates, but was well worth it.

    • Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Zephiris (788562) on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @08:47AM (#25719487)

      Why are there so many of these pseudo-science-voodoo style reviews/benchmarks floating around? They're not touching on any real or user-meaningful metrics for performance, usability, compatibility, or anything else.

      Getting near-identical performance on a pre-beta OS is damn near a miracle, as most people who've been this befeore can attest.

      SPTD refuses to run on anything that's a beta, it's well known, nothing new, and isn't a compatibility issue. Why is someone expecting a ring-0 SCSI emulation driver to work on Windows 7 as soon as any developer builds are out the door, anyway?

      Inherent multi-core scalability, DWM/Aero, WDDM, Resource Monitor, Explorer, and the kernel have all received pretty major upgrades.

      Does anyone remember NT4 to Win2K differences? XP to Vista was like that. Win2K to XP differences were fairly minor, but incremental, and very useful, and everyone loves them now...called WinXP 'the worst OS ever', and 'another WinME', on day one (and before), too. Windows 7 more represents Win2K to XP, but isn't shying away from meaningful changes.

      Let's take ReadyBoost, for instance. It was introduced in Vista with a great deal of hype...which was mostly disappointing for limitations. In this release, they've enhanced it, enabled dedicating a USB flash drive to ReadyBoost specifically, allowing the use of -multiple- USB drives, allowed the use of ExFAT, allowed the use of slower drives (particularly with FAT16/ExFAT). A lot of the claimed "Windows 7 boots faster"...can already be experienced with a pair of sludge-cheap $5 2GB usb keys used in tandem with ReadyBoost. Everything seriously launches oodles faster, but Windows 7 tends to launch and boot significantly faster than Vista with a single 2GB ReadyBoost key.

      Windows 7's kernel received a few meaningful enhancements, like some heap error correction. DWM takes advantage of DirectX 10.1 class hardware, has little overhead or compatibility issues now. Sound drivers have sampling rate enforced more sanely to prevent needless resampling issues. Filesystem operations tend to scale far better with more than one CPU (finally).

      Aside from the pre-beta "unfinished UI" issues, I'd be happy to use the PDC build every day to replace Vista completely in a heartbeat for full-time everyday use.

      I'm tired of the bloody nit-picking. We're at least 7 months away from Windows 7 RTM, can't the so-called bloggers find something more useful to do than claim imaginary faults with an OS not even close to being out yet and stir up yet more drama and controversy?

      I'm just as tired of people doing it with various aspects/versions of Linux/BSD/Solaris/wine.

      Slashdot, frankly, should know a bit better. A article like that isn't news, it's a troll.

      I think the bottom line is that the majority of the focus on Windows 7 has been usability, with a fair amount on performance/functionality, with a very small subset focusing on 'eye candy'.

      SuperBar isn't flashy. It focuses almost exclusively on UI functionality, doesn't look any different really than regular taskbar. There are a few new 'user visible' Aero features (like the 'Shake' thing?), but the real bulk of changes have been under the hood, with a surprising number of applications and utilities getting improved.

      The article's kind of fear mongering is simply assinine.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by karstux (681641)


        Seriously? Do you have any sources to back that up? A quick google came up with nothing. I'm genuinely interested, as I'd love faster boot-up times.

        I didn't follow the state of ReadyBoost after the initial disappointing benchmarks, but if it has indeed matured into a usable system with real benefits, I'm willing to try it out...

  • by itamihn (1213328) on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @05:49AM (#25718237) Homepage

    *cofff* Ubuntu 8.10 *cofff*

  • by RenHoek (101570) on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @05:49AM (#25718245) Homepage

    So we're skipping this one as well?

  • by Sockatume (732728) on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @05:51AM (#25718255) Homepage
    One of the biggest PR failures of Vista was serious compatability issues with old software and hardware. (I'm going to blame the soft/hardware makers for this. Everyone had 5 years to collect an arsenal of XP gear so I don't think they cried themselves to sleep that we had to buy new Vista Compatible printers just because they couldn't be bothered fixing the drivers.) MS have decided to base Win7 almost entirely around the existing Vista kernel to avoid this, hence the identical performance. "[I]ntroducing new and potentially crippling compatibility issues" would be more likely if MS had decided to chase performance improvements in Win7, unless they based Win7 around the old XP kernel (which ain't happening in their new one-kernel-to-rule-them-all approach).
  • by bazorg (911295) on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @05:57AM (#25718287)
    I thought that Vista was a major re-write because of the new secutiry model. If that is the case, would it be reasonable to do another "major re-write" just a couple of years later? People might want to look into TinyXP project to see how much improvement can be made to a standard installation before demanding major re-writes.
  • by n3tcat (664243)
    I don't even think the slashdot staff read the frontpage anymore. There's story dupes constantly now! I mean is it too much to ask that they take 10 minutes to skim the stories on the front two or three pages since they last posted a story?
  • by Toreo asesino (951231) on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @06:14AM (#25718397) Journal

    Some facts:
    - Vista is barely slower than XP on hardware bought within the last 2 years. It was fairly slower on RTM for many reasons, but vastly improved drivers & some colossal patches have put that to bed now.
    - Vista in fact speeds up some operations over XP by pre-caching commonly used stuff. This uses more memory, and is often confused for being "bloated" by actually using the memory that you blessed your computer with being able to use, for what in fact it was designed for - speed increase.
    - Windows 7 is taking Vista and putting it on a diet while not fundamentally changing the architecture. If it works on Vista it'll work on W7. That's a stated design goal.

    Thus, for performance: Expect Windows 7 to be more responsive to user-input, work on lower-ended machines, start up quicker, etc. Don't expect: CPU intensive apps (games for example) to suddenly speed up 50%; memory intensive apps to use any less memory. They won't - Windows 7 is an operating system, not an overclockers kit.

    • by HangingChad (677530) on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @06:56AM (#25718639) Homepage

      If it works on Vista it'll work on W7.

      So, in essence, Windows 7 represents a significant name change from Vista.

    • by Mascot (120795) on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @07:01AM (#25718671)


      When did this event occur? Last I tested Vista performance on this machine was with Crysis. That would be close to a year after Vista release. I got half the FPS compared to in XP. Half.

      Apart from DX10 there is nothing in Vista that interests me that can't already be gotten for XP via third party applications. So far there aren't exactly a huge amount of DX10-only games, and unless the performance issue mentioned above has indeed been sorted it would be a moot point either way.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Are you comparing Vista to XP, DX9 to DX10, or your graphics card's Vista drivers to its XP drivers?

        (hint: it's a mix of all 3, but the last will make by far the most difference in a graphically-bound game)

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Toreo asesino (951231)

        This might interest you then - http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/03/vista-service-p.html [wired.com]

      • by poetmatt (793785)

        The humor is that the only reason DX11 is coming is because wine is working on compatibility for DX10.

        Once wine starts working on DX11, MS is going to shove out DX12....and so forth and so forth. Very soon, developers are going to be pissed with the changes, which as I hear in DX11 are about as big as from DX9 to DX10 (aka almost nothing).

    • Not 100% correct (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Viol8 (599362) on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @07:14AM (#25718739)

      "Don't expect: CPU intensive apps (games for example) to suddenly speed up 50%;"

      Indeed , 50% is absurd. But they might speed up 5% or so depending on whether the process schedular and memory management have had a rewrite. For a machine with a lot of processes running and an app using a lot of memory those page and cache miss percentage can make a noticable difference as well as how intellgently the OS swaps in and out processes of varying priorities.

      • That's fair, and in fact Vista did have scheduler optimisations go into it (the link for which I can't find). So performance will vary, one hopes for the better.

    • This and the previous /. article link to reports from people who have tested the pre-beta. The results seem pretty clear:
      1) The GUI feels more responsive.
      2) The memory consumption is pretty much the same.
      3) Benchmark tests show little to no difference.
      So Windows 7 will probably be more fun to work with, but based on 2) and 3) you should not expect it to work on lower-ended machines compared to Vista. Overall, it looks like some GUI improvements and not much else.

      • Re:Performance (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Ilgaz (86384) on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @07:29AM (#25718839) Homepage

        What happens if you install thousands of software titles, remove them, install tens of drivers/updates, remove them, install huge suites like MS Office, update them...

        If I saw "Snow Leopard is 2x faster than Leopard", I wouldn't buy it too. The beta (pre beta) lacks something. Actual, real life usage. Nobody is mad enough to use a pre-beta OS as their main OS. I got MS Virtual PC 7 here with bare bones XP SP3 installed. Trust me, that junk boots faster than your core Duo/Quad real PC because it is very heavily maintained, almost nothing installed, nothing in registry etc.

        What matters is, does it care about how many apps installed, removed, running or not? In Apple's sense, there are some real big, explainable architectural reasons why a Adobe Suite CS4 installed Mac is not different from a cleanly installed Mac. MS just says "we optimised this, we optimised that" without huge underlying changes which will really cost them for a while. Like moving from a single user OS to a Unix OS which runs Mach kernel with a real weird filesystem.

    • by makomk (752139)


      There are two issues with this. Firstly, it's far too aggressive, so people have had issues with it kicking data out of memory that is actually needed at the time. Secondly, it uses hard disk bandwidth and seeks that (unlike memory) aren't exactly cheap, and this doesn't help performance.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by Lumpy (12016)

      Are you on drugs?

      "Some facts:

      I reproduce this over and over and over with customers. They have a 2 year old laptop that came with XP and the "upgrade to vista" we upgrade it and the COMPUTER IS IN FACT SLOWER. Why do you think the boards out there were flooded with these reports over the past couple of

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by MtViewGuy (197597)

      Besides, they're testing a version of Windows 7 that is not even a beta drop. As such, it has yet to get its full code optimization, and by the time Windows 7 finally ships at the retail level expect substantial performance increases.

    • by Teckla (630646) on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @08:10AM (#25719101)

      I recently tried Vista (for the second time) because so many monkeys like you keep telling us Vista is much, much better now.

      What a bunch of hooey. Vista still makes my (pretty nice) laptop run like a dog. From slow video, to audio stuttering, to far too much hard drive thrashing, to disappointing program startup times...hell, sometimes I can't even track my mouse across the screen without it pausing half way while Vista does God knows what.

      And yes, my laptop is "Vista compatible", and yes, I had all the correct drivers installed for my hardware.

      I went back to XP (again) and the performance is so much improved, it's like getting a new computer.

      Sorry, buddy, but Vista still sucks, despite your claims otherwise. And if Windows 7 is more of the same, I'm going to have to tell Microsoft, "Thanks, but no thanks."

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ethicalBob (1023525)
      Wow... Mr. Gates will put your $5 check in the mail right away...

      I just recently bought a new quad-core box w/ 4GB of RAM, high end video, the works, pre-installed with Vista.

      I'm a photographer and work in photoshop with large images on a daily basis. I was noticing very little speed difference in my 4yr old machine with lesser specs running XP and the brand new, more powerful machine running Vista.

      At first I thought it was Photoshop, so I completely uninstalled, and reinstalled. No change. A
  • MinKern anyone? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Amiralul (1164423)
    I read rumors about a minimal kernel to be used in the next Windows version. Will 7 skip it?
  • by Loibisch (964797) on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @06:33AM (#25718533)

    Please just stop following every step of "Windows 7" which will probably not be out for years, despite anything Microsoft says.

    The only thing those reports generate is the hype Microsofts wants around their unreleased OS to keep up hope in people dissatisfied by Vista. Yeah, this time it's all going to be better...sure.

    Windows 7 is not special and it's not worth reporting every tidbit unless there's actually a product or a set-in-stone feature list.

    • by Ilgaz (86384)

      If I trusted MS not to be opportunistic and actually do deep level changes which will make those archaic SDK using idiots mad, I would seriously watch MS Windows 7 development.

      Even today, they started to make changes which will be in favour of their big software friends on unreleased OS. The "It will run whatever Vista can run" gives a big clue.

      In Apple terms, they don't say to developers "Switch from Carbon to Cocoa or your app won't run and there is nothing you can do to change it." That is what Apple say

    • by olman (127310)


      It will most likely end up on 97% of new home computers bought 2010 and later. I'd call that sort of "special". Given what a big hit vista has been on business desktop I'd give it a fair shake that we won't see any major rollout of W7 in offices either. Just why bother? W2k would work fine except quite a few new apps are not tested against it => fail on wrong wrongness in so

      • by Loibisch (964797)

        Like I said, wake me when there's a product or a complete and final feature list.

        Vista was reported on for years, and in the end most of the brand new spectacular features were missing from the release. So please, please just stop unless there actually is a product worth reporting on.

  • What are we benchmarking, exactly?  And how can I verify it?

    I view all these pre-release type benchmarks as so much aerial masturbation.  It's just nothing.
  • by Stan Vassilev (939229) on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @06:56AM (#25718637)

    The current release isn't a release candidate. It's not a beta. It's a PRE-beta. Microsoft have about at least 10 more months until they call Windows 7 done.

    Steven Sinofsky specifically said in his PDC 2008 keynote: "please don't consider this build suitable for benchmarks", but does anyone listen? Nah, let's run the benchmarks! :)

  • by kklein (900361) on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @07:01AM (#25718667)

    Okay, this has bothered me for over a decade.

    What makes anyone think that the next release of an OS is going to be faster? It's not going to be. I don't care who developed it, either, whether it be the giant of Redmond, the hipster of Cupertino, or a bunch of unwashed shut-ins writing lines of code in their moms' basements. Every iteration of an OS is actually going to be slower, and that is just a consequence of it doing more.

    The only real question, then, is if the balance between the added functionality and the slowdown is coming down enough on the functionality side to stop people from getting pissed off. For XP, the balance was nice. For Vista, it's not. For Tiger, it was. For Leopard, I guess it's not for some people (but it is for me). Linux doesn't do anything regardless of distro or update, so it's kind of hard to talk about.

    The point of the story is this: I don't actually care if something doesn't run that fast, because I'll probably replace my hardware before that OS runs its course, and it'll work great on the next kit. All I really care about is if it runs well enough to enjoy the added benefits of that extra code.

    • by chord.wav (599850)

      While I agree, it usually happens that the first version of the code for a particular task just works, while the following versions are more polished, improve speed, reliability, etc.
      They are fond of the "make it work, (then) make it fast, (and then) make it nice" motto.

      BTW, I'm glad that after 10 years you could finally get it out of your chest!

    • by Woy (606550)

      You sir do not understand computers. The availability of extra features should have no performance impact on the use of old features. Furthermore, refinement of old features should make them run faster. And if it is not so, then you have an architectural problem.

      The problem may be more or less tricky, but the situation is really that simple.

  • by erroneus (253617) on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @07:18AM (#25718769) Homepage

    Microsoft's obsession with backward compatibility is killing it.

    For home and gaming, they need to keep XP and disable it from being used in a business network... let that horse run as far as it can.

    For business and other work, they need to write a brand new kernel and everything and start over learning from all previous mistakes and discarding backward compatibility... natively. Then build a VM compatibility layer with the intent that people will use it in the process of weaning themselves from Win32 and all that backward compatibility and supporting broken applications nonsense.

    Been saying this for a long time and will keep saying it. I said this before Mac OS X was announced. Apple, it would seem, had the same idea and it is working VERY well for them. The compatibility VM sucked bad which actually prompted people to upgrade their apps even faster. And no one stopped using Apple over it. And no one stopped developing software for Apple computers over it. It was a burden on users and developers to make that change, but in the end it was the best move.

    Microsoft is another story. When you are in control of everything, that is precisely what you stand to lose. But ultimately, I see things are coming to a head and Apple sees it too. No matter what Microsoft does, they will lose. They need to make plans to limit their loses and plan for the future -- not just two years of profit forecasting.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by TheRaven64 (641858)

      Lots of people didn't switch from MacOS Classic to OS X because it didn't run their old apps well. Many of these people ended up on Windows, and a few on other platforms. OS X did well, because it was a minority OS and so osmotic pressure in the userbase meant there was a large potential market for people switching from other operating systems. A lot more people who use OS X now never used classic MacOS than did (just compare the before and after market share figures).

      Microsoft does not have this opti

  • by Ilgaz (86384) on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @07:21AM (#25718785) Homepage

    The very interesting thing about OS X 10.5 (Leopard) boot process is: It does nothing in order. It is parallel booting, firing all OS startup stuff at once and expects to do their jobs. That happens thanks to launchd architecture which I have no clue why not adopted by Linux or *BSD.

    Here is its presentation by the inventor of launchd
    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1781045834610400422 [google.com]
    (in 8:00")

    That is one of underrated features/changes of Leopard. Now the term "photocopy" comes from this: They do something like launchd without using the underlying Unix logic and architecture. So, there is a huge chance that it won't be scaled. I have really lost count of how many kernel extensions, startup items, daemons running on my Leopard but it boots exactly same speed as it was cleanly installed for first time. Just like I really don't care about 1000+ .plist (pref) files on my user directory.

    They named it "parallel booting" or something, some story about it on http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9119230&intsrc=hm_list [computerworld.com]

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by TheRaven64 (641858)
      Launchd was ported to FreeBSD as a Summer of Code project a few years ago [freebsd.org]. The license was changed to the ASL 2.0 in order to encourage its adoption. Last I checked, Launchd could not replace init as PID 1, but it could do all of the post-launch stuff. The main reasons why it hasn't been integrated into the FreeBSD base system are that it doesn't provide much compelling over RCng as an init replacement (although it replaces a lot more than just init) and it would mean rewriting the RC scripts for a huge
  • by nmg196 (184961) on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @08:30AM (#25719297)

    Who cares if it's a few percent slower?

    Computers are getting faster MUCH MUCH more quickly than operating systems are getting slower. I did a degree in computer science 10 years ago using a computer which had less RAM and Mhz than my *phone* does now! I was running Windows 98, which is much slower than Vista, but guess what - my Vista machine is still about 16 times faster than my old Windows 98 machine and it has 32 times more memory. I'm certainly not complaining.

    I don't really see why it's a problem if any given operating system is 3 or 4% slower than the previous version. Do you really want to go back to using Windows 3.1 just because it's slightly faster? I sure as hell don't.

  • by akoltz (1379875) on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @10:40AM (#25720989)
    Slashdot on an unfinished construction project: "One year after beginning the project, the construction company THREATENS to deliver a building that is unbearably cold and has CRIPPLING compatibility problems with my electronics." Slashdot on Obama: "Weeks after being elected the next President, Obama, the successor to the LEAST POPULAR PRESIDENT IN HISTORY, has failed to end the war in Iraq and fix the economy. He promised a new direction for the country but SO FAR things are EERILY similar to the Bush administration."
