Hi!

All modern Operating Systems should be up to the task of running a Tor relay, if configured right. The question about which one will work best has probably no general answer, but will depend on the hardware (and software) configuration used, the quality of the drivers for your specific hardware, etc. and you'll have to try for yourself which one will give you the best performance.

But please keep in mind that diversity is also very important, since an overwhelming majority of relays runs on Linux. So even if(!) Debian would be a bit faster, it could very well be worth it to sacrifice a few percent performance to increase the OS diversity.

Hello,

I am thinking of setting up a new relay.

I know that the hardware in the server is going to be the bottleneck, not my Internet connection.

I have a problem deciding on which OS to use for the relay.

A few years ago when I had a similar relay going, I had it running on OpenBSD first.

Then I changed the OS to FreeBSD and the performance got about 20% better.

I have no idea if this would be the case today too.

So I think that maybe it's either FreeBSD or Debian that would be "best", but I have nothing concrete to base that decision on unless I try them both.

I am going to use a Via C7 board in this specific case. So I suspect that it's the maturity of the VIA drivers in the OS that is going to make the difference. Still I would like to know how to think in similar situations in the future even for other hardware.

Has anyone any concrete experience of the tor relay speeds on different operating systems?

I don't want to start a flame war of religious beliefs, but I suspect that OSes differ in how optimized they are for different tasks.

Thankful for any constructive input on this.

Regards,

Farid

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