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From: asami@cs.berkeley.edu (Satoshi ASAMI)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.bugs
Subject: Re: Why is XFREE SOOOOOO slow on Free BSD?
Date: 15 Feb 94 03:29:18
Organization: CS Div. - EECS, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720
Lines: 33
Message-ID: <ASAMI.94Feb15032918@forgery.cs.berkeley.edu>
References: <scottf.761296536@connected.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: forgery.cs.berkeley.edu
In-reply-to: scottf@goshen.connected.com's message of 14 Feb 1994 23:22:58 PST

In article <scottf.761296536@connected.com>
        scottf@goshen.connected.com (Scott Farrand) writes:

 * I have two machines that I'm working with (in a computer lab...).
 * One machine is running slackware 1.1.2 (Linux), and the other
 * is running FreeBSD 1.0.2.  Hardware wise the machines are "identical"
 * both are 486/33's with 8mb ram, 1mb VLB video card, and VLB IDE controller
 * connected to a conner CP30254.
 * 
 * The Program I've noticed the speed difference with is xlock (screen saver)
 * running swarm...  on Linux its REALLY fast, and it kinda "Chuggs" on Free
 * BSD...   the only thing I can think might be a problem is that the binaries
 * on FreeBSD are MUCH bigger than on Linux...  (EG XF86_SVGA is 300+K larger
 * on FreeBSD's version... etc)

XF86_SVGA was *very* slow on my machine before I got an accelerated
video card (Orchid 1280+ VLB).  Like, if I do "ls -l", it was giving
me headaches.  Now, it's very fast, I don't think it's a bottleneck
for any program (mine is 486/66, XF86_S3, FreeBSD-1.0.2).

Is it only swarm that is slow, or is the server slow in general?  I
can't really tell since I don't know what video card you have (and
probaly won't be able to tell even if I know ;), but it might be that
you are using accelerated mode in Linux and non-accelerated mode in
FreeBSD.

---
                                                   o o   Satoshi Asami
  Form follows Function.                            ^
                                               (asami@CS.Berkeley.EDU)
  Tel: (510)547-0336 (home)       Computer Science Div., Dept. of EECS
       (510)642-1845 (office)     University of California at Berkeley