Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1756772AbZC2VMx (ORCPT ); Sun, 29 Mar 2009 17:12:53 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1754982AbZC2VMn (ORCPT ); Sun, 29 Mar 2009 17:12:43 -0400 Received: from smtp1.linux-foundation.org ([140.211.169.13]:54585 "EHLO smtp1.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753711AbZC2VMm (ORCPT ); Sun, 29 Mar 2009 17:12:42 -0400 Date: Sun, 29 Mar 2009 14:07:54 -0700 (PDT) From: Linus Torvalds X-X-Sender: torvalds@localhost.localdomain To: Alan Cox cc: Xavier Bestel , Matthew Garrett , Theodore Tso , Andrew Morton , David Rees , Jesper Krogh , Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: Linux 2.6.29 In-Reply-To: <20090329211655.630b8e1e@the-village.bc.nu> Message-ID: References: <20090327051338.GP6239@mit.edu> <20090327055750.GA18065@srcf.ucam.org> <20090327062114.GA18290@srcf.ucam.org> <20090327112438.GQ6239@mit.edu> <20090327145156.GB24819@srcf.ucam.org> <20090327150811.09b313f5@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> <20090327152221.GA25234@srcf.ucam.org> <20090327161553.31436545@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> <20090327162841.GA26860@srcf.ucam.org> <20090327165150.7e69d9e1@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> <20090327170208.GA27646@srcf.ucam.org> <20090327183214.2e73b6a3@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> <20090327190056.3b699e89@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> <1238318146.11869.1.camel@badjo> <20090329211655.630b8e1e@the-village.bc.nu> User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (LFD 1167 2008-08-23) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1064 Lines: 26 On Sun, 29 Mar 2009, Alan Cox wrote: > > Yep and twenty years on software hasn´t improved I really think you're gilding the edges of those old memories. The software 20 years ago wasn't that great. I'd say it was on the whole a whole lot crappier than it is today. It's just that we have much higher expectations, and our problem sizes have grown a _lot_ faster than rotating disk latencies have improved. People didn't worry about having a hundred megs of dirty data and doing an 'fsync' twenty years ago. Even on big hardware (if you _had_ a hundred megs of dirty data you didn't worry about latencies of a few seconds), never mind in the Linux world. This particular problem really largely boils down to "average memory capacity has expanded a _lot_ more than harddisk speeds have gone up". Linus -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/