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Microsoft Says Windows More Reliable Than Sun
Anonymous Coward pointed us to a microsoft.com page that claims, "Major customers, such as Quote.com, are switching from Sun to the
Microsoft® Windows® platform because it offers better reliability." That's not the only reason given here to switch to a Windows environment, and apparently there are more to come every day until Windows 2000 is launched. Another direct quote: "Want more facts? Return to this page tomorrow for your daily dose of reality."
quote.com who? I have looked at it (never seen or knew about it before), and it looks like duplicate of finance.yahoo.com with more ads.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The trouble is, this approach is based on seeing themselves as everyman's favorite success story, the plucky little company with everyone's best interests at heart. They need a _lot_ of goodwill to get away with a mudslinging contest with reputable names in the industry, much less with the justice system (many people would _like_ to believe the courts are fair- not kangaroo courts only out to beat up poor MS). Many MS people do believe that they have that goodwill, in the same way that many Nixon people believed he had the support of the country through Watergate. But that goodwill isn't there- it's been eroded through abuse, and the fatal arrogance of MS is not in making such bold challenges to industry leaders and the law, but in trusting that public opinion remains on their side through it all. It does not.
So, then, why don't you just go read zdnet or cnet, and spare us the pissing and moaning? Slashdot has always been a Linux/UNIX site...the people here have enough experience with Microsoft products to know that there is absolutely no reason to expect Windows 2000 to be any different than all the other substandard shit they ship every day.
Man...you'd think it was some sort of crime to hold an anti-MS opinion these days, with all they crying going on in these threads.
Oh, yeah...I'll try out Windows 2000...as soon as they ship it under GPL.
New XFMail home page
Excellent idea! I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner.
Man...that would save the world a *lot* of headaches.
New XFMail home page
I'm just curious. Because I see a lot of comments that are clearly based solely on experiences with NT 4. Not on the product currently under discussion, Windows 2000.
I've noticed that whenever a study comes out regarding the failings of Linux, people always cry out that "but we've fixed that" or "we have that, it's in the latest kernel". Like USB, or journaling file system, or support for large amounts of memory. You all want Linux to be evaluated based on the most current version of the code, not on the older, obsolete, more stable versions. But when you evaluate Windows, you only look at the older version, not the one that is being referred to. Does that seem a little hypocritical to anyone else? Maybe you should use the OS for a teensy little bit before you spit upon it.
Operating systems that were vulnerable enough to be used in the recent Distributed DOS attacks that cost companies millions of dollars: Solaris and Linux.
Operating systems that were secure enough to avoid being used in this way: Windows NT and 98.
Now you might not like what this says, but isn't this technically true? What's the chance that MS WON'T latch onto this little nugget?
Also, they offer cases for Myth #2 where Sun appears to be unrealible. The big problem here is that they don't compare to WinNT at all (the one case they do is a really poor choice). They need to be pointed out to hotmail flaws. (Isn't Ebay also Windows based?)
It's just more FUD. Surprising that they quote the Gardner group findings considering that Gardner is not recommending Win2000 for the time being.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
That said, the whole "I am just an end-user with no public Linux Credentials" thing is just silly, why shoudl a company of any size ignore anyone? That's not just bad business, it's stupid.
Chris DiBona
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
Pres, SVLUG
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
Try using your computer:
waterloo:~$ uptime12:57pm up 68 days, 2:47, 2 users, load average: 1.75, 0.98, 0.84
No, it's not running some idle-cycle program, it's processing mail, dynamic web, database and archiving a couple mailing lists. I'm not saying 68 days is a lot (this machine had 280+ days before the site generator took out the UPS), but at least it's doing something!
...hates people who try to advocate linux by claiming uptimes for computers that do nothing. Hell, NT can do that too!
--
It's also worth noteing that they are extremely careful to not make "unsubstantiated claims" or to say things that simply can't be proven.
I.e. They never mention why E-Bay didn't switch the back end database chores to NT. Everything is from the Gartner ( more opinions than a Gallop pole ) Grope. NEVER during the whole thing do they actually claim that an NT server is actually more reliable than a Solaris one or that clustering a couple of Solaris boxes on the back end wouldn't have killed all reliability problems.
Meanwhile, I am off getting my Solaris certification to be followed by Lutos Notes, Linux and Cisco ( in that order ). There just isn't that much demand for MCSE these days. ( at least around here )
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
2) Win2k is unstable
4) Win2k is bloated
I admire this prescient ability to review Win2k without even possessing a trial copy.
What amazing assumptions you make. The above three are all true, based on the Win2k version we have running in the office here. Yes, it's a beta, so you can excuse some bugs, but only so many. It's also slooooooow. My P166 running 95 is noticably faster than the PIII/550 we have running Win2k. It has some nice eye-candy (e.g., the fading menus), but I'd rather they'd spent more time making it run at a sensible speed.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
This is simply rediculous, to claim that a few migrant customers are the result of a reliability issue. Microsoft can't even migrate its Hotmail service from Sun machines to NT because NT isn't scalable and reliable enough, but yet they say others are ready and able to make this jump.
The fact is that mainframes are probably the most reliable systems in commercial use, but there are compelling reasons why people use Sun hardware and software. Reliability and scalability are the main reasons, and practically any seasoned admin will tell you that NT has neither.
Possibly the most annoying thing about the Microsoft propeganda is the mention of the Ebay issue. I have written an extensive analysis of this in the past. In short, their problems were due to a system administration error, which Ebay admitted to later. Shame on Microsoft for claiming that their systems can be more reliable, regardless of the monkey behind the keyboard.
-- Solaris Central - http://w
Why do you seem to believe that Slashdot people are so stupid that they would fail to find any sort of historical link between Windows and Win2k?
They don't need to try out Win2k personally to realize that when a new product is derived from an old, hopelessly buggy product, then the new product is highly likely to share those same traits.
It doesn't take a genius to understand that. Only a total newbie in the field of O/S's would believe that some sort of miracle happened during the development of Microsoft's latest gem. Sorry, no flying pigs, no miracles.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Yes, this forum is biased, but then, Microsoft propaganda is biased, don't you think?
Since the zero-cost base O/S means that Linux sales will never be able to support a marketing budget of any size, it's only right that other forums take over that role, like Slashdot does.
The difference though is that large numbers of sysadmins of large systems relate their horror stories here, so even the rabble Slashdot element gains a bias based on real life experience in large systems.
And that doesn't happen in pure propaganda forums. What you get here is bias, yes, but it's a clued-up bias.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Solaris uses a journaled filesystem so a fsck is not too much of an issue
You only get a full journaling filesystem if you buy the Veritas product on top. I think DiskSuite comes free so you don't need to pay extra for aggregating and mirroring disks (that works a treat), but I don't recall DiskSuite offering much in the way of competition for Veritas in its trans metadevices.
Maybe Sun should incorporate that recently released IBM JFS for Linux into its own base product.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Win2k is derived from previous versions of Windows, so it's totally reasonable for people to believe that Win2k will be as bad as the versions which they already know intimately. In fact, it's highly likely to be worse, at least in its initial releases, because it has many new bits which will not have the benefit of long-term testing in the field. As far as reliability goes, it's a case of the worst of the old plus the worst of the unknown. It's in the nature of the beast, and there is no reason to believe overwise at this time.
[My experience of Windows flakiness is based on NT, which is just plain appalling. Compared to our Sun boxes that just stay up forever, NT is just a toy, or worse. Children's toys that were that bad would be taken off the market as unsafe.]
So your argument is poor, little different to "Who says you'd die if you were run over by a train, you haven't tried it yet." Bleh.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
You missed a key word: "occasionally".
We run very large numbers of Sun boxes of all sizes, and occasionally Sun gets it wrong in a big way. The problem might indeed be in their QA division, as you suggest. However, once the problem is identified, they pull out all the stops in fixing it, at least for big customers like ourselves. That's in my experience.
Don't forget that QA is a statistical thing though. Good QA can't make up for lousy engineering, and I think it's fair to say that on the whole, Sun engineering is good. It's almost certainly better than PC engineering, but then you have to pay massively more than for PCs and it's difficult to justify that fact against the intangibles of better engineering. I think Sun are going to have a difficult time in the next few years because of that.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Nope, the typical stance of Slashdot posters is based on the horror stories with Windows which they are relating constantly. That then creates a bias, and a very understandable one.
Your own pro-Windows bias is probably based on the absence of pesonal horror stories, otherwise you wouldn't be foolish enough to stay with a flawed product. Good for you, you've been lucky. Unfortunately my organization hasn't, so the Slashdot stance rings a very strong bell here.
Your time will come. I hope for your sake that your own company survives the experience, because that's not a foregone conclusion.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Most notibly Sun's GBIC (interface between the box and an external disk array) is a total piece of crap. I've seen entire arrays get corrupted because of a GBIC failure,
Yes indeed! However, I seem to recall a Sun hardware engineer that came to replace ours saying that they were bought in from IBM. Either way, *crap* seems to be the right word for those particular components.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Well said.
Slashdot delivers news of course, but it's relatively poor at that. Slashdot's THREADS are what make Slashdot the site it is, nothing else.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
You're forgetting that all distro CDs may be freely copied.
In our office, one person buys the lastest disks (usually a different person each time, and this includes the BSDs) and everyone else gets a CD-R copy if they want one.
That's as near to zero-cost as makes any difference.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
That read that as "Microsoft Says Windows More Reliable Than The Sun" at first? I can just imagine them saying "While the sun often has chaotic events known as sunspots, which often interefere with electronics on Earth, causing them to malfunction, Windows 2000 has never caused malfunctions in electronics other than what it was running on in our labratory tests."
If 90% of everything isn't crap, your standards are too high.
>As a device driver developer, I have been using every weekly build of Win2k since before Beta2. I can tell you for a fact that
>Win2k is buggy and unstable. I was at the Microsoft Plugfest, where system vendors and device vendors get together and try
>running their stuff together under Win2k and WinMe (Windows Millenium). Build 2195, the build that went gold was cut after the
>first day of the plugfest, due to a major bug that had to be fixed. Lots of bugs were reported during the following days of testing.
>NONE of these low level, at the core of OS, in the kernel type of bugs were fixed for the gold release. We were told that they
>would go into SP1. In fact, the cut off date to get a fix into SP1 was the end of december. My group has already submitted Plug 'N
>Play issues that will not be fixed until SP2 at the earliest. This thing is not ready for prime time!
>At the plugfest, Microsoft's engineers were often stumped with problems that only a small hotel full of only three days or so of
>testing; imagine what millions of users in months of continuous running will find. Win2k's bug list is so large that you have to search
>for your problem at their site rather than all the known issues being made public through a definitive list. I for one would want to
>read that list before I bet my e-business site on it.
Those have to be the most damning two paragraphs ever written about a Microsoft product. People whose lives depend on MS products being ``acceptible" in terms of quality right now are in a deep funk over their career prospects, & the usual computer magazines are all full of employees trying to pass the obligatory positive spin review onto their co-workers.
I would not want to be a Microsoft employee right now. Not for any amount of money.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
Ok Sun is less reliable...
So why NT didn't live more than 2 weeks on a IBM NetFinity server? Why I had to reboot it a few times during the day? Why no SPs, bugfixes, hackings helped to make it more stable? Why with all IBM support I couldn't get it to work? Why launching an administrator tool, just launchng it, was enough to crash the whole thing?
Then why, in that same computer, Solaris 7 worked non-stop 3 monthes? Why I had to reboot it only because a power cut and now is working 1 month non-stop? Why I have to worry only with a few security patches and nothing more? Why it is serving directly 70 workstations and nearly 4000 users without major glitches, bugs and features? Why the filesystem didn't get corrupted after nearly an year of work?
Well Sun maybe less reliable... Because we can't talk about reliability on Windows at all...
As someone that's been trial testing and beta-reviewing Win2k for quite some time now, I can tell you that the following is true:
Win2k is bloated. Was there any doubt?
Win2k is not significantly more stable running SOLO on a small home LAN with nothing special on it than WinNT, and we all know how stable that is.
Win2k is buggy (as evidenced by it's lack of stability). I found the '65k+ bugs' article to be amusing, and likely dead on.
Win2k beta 2 shipped with the standard shrink-wrapped license...one of the most ridiculous pieces of legal fiction since OJ Simpson said "I'm Innocent".
All in all, the coverage of Win2k here is far from balanced or unbiased, but it's also not too distant from the truth. Would you expect anything less? There is a distinct Anti-MS flavor to this site, just as there is an obvious Pro-MS flavor to many other sites. Most of us learn to seperate the wheat from the chaff and make informed decisions on our own.
-Jer
um, sure, yeh. i'm certain the extreme logical power of your argument would make such a hack incredibly effective. i'm pretty certain that were you to do as you suggest, it would cause thousands upon thousands of people in management jobs across the country to realize that using windows NT in server applications is an extremely foolish choice, and would work to switch their networks over to some sort of UNIX after deeply searching the products available to see what fits their needs best.
Especially since NOBODY is going to be reading these "bits of reality" pages anyway, except slashdot readers. Anyone looking at the microsoft webpage, especially any part trying to convince you to use windows nt, and especially anyone who would believe what was on those pages, has already decided what they are going to use.
ph33r
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
But Microsoft Windows systems do run Linux better and cleaner than the alternatives. :-)
"Cause there's 40 different shades of black, so many fortresses and ways to attack, so why you complainin'?"
I agree with parts of the story. Over the past 12 months a DoD project, JSIMS, invested in a large number of SUN systems (Ultra 5s and an E450). Turns out the Ultra 5's were locking up on the desktop, requiring in some cases a hard power down (and resultant fsck), while the brand-new E450 had its motherboard replaced. We've also had problems with RAID controller cards on older SUNs in the lab. My solution (which was never implemented) was Compaq or Dell servers running Linux. In fact, my positive experience with Dell, Compaq, and HP server hardware will always lead me to recommend those vendors over SUN.
The problem with SUN is its hardware and its high cost relative to other solutions on the market. So I can see Compaq getting into Quote.com and selling not only a better hardware solution, but the Windows operating system along with the hardware. But what drove the switch to Windows was not the OS, but the poor quality of the SUN hardware platform.
SUN has a serious QA hardware problem that will kill them if they don't get it cleaned up. At this point of the game, I have even less use for SUN than I do for Microsoft, and that's pretty damn low to begin with.
Windows is more reliable than Solaris...
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IF you try using the S3 Virge accelerated GLX driver under it!
Then again, at this point I believe that goes for Linux as well.
Running Win2K vs. Solaris vs. Linux without any experimental features... don't ask me, I haven't used Win2K.
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
Microsoft's engineers were often stumped with problems that only a small hotel full of only three days or so of testing; imagine what millions of users in months of continuous running will find. Win2k's bug list is so large that you have to search for your problem at their site rather than all the known issues being made public through a definitive list. I for one would want to read that list before I bet my e-business site on it.
Try running a check build of Win2k and ready the output from WinDbg. Note all of the errors flying by, filling WinDbg's 30,000 line buffer size. </i>
I used to work at Microsoft as a test developer for NT5 (before it was renamed Windows 2000). I can attest that Soldack's complaints are all true! Windows 2000 is a fragile house of cards. Only about 50% of reports bugs are be fixed. About 25% of reported bugs are closed as "uh-dont-know, works-for-me-you-sniveling-tester". This is why I left Microsoft. Microsoft software is crappier than you think. Of course, all software is pretty crappy, if you think about it.. At least Linux lets you do something about it.
cpeterso
Microsoft's engineers were often stumped with problems that only a small hotel full of only three days or so of testing; imagine what millions of users in months of continuous running will find. Win2k's bug list is so large that you have to search for your problem at their site rather than all the known issues being made public through a definitive list. I for one would want to read that list before I bet my e-business site on it.
r -so-lets-pretend-the-bug-doesnt-exist". This is why I left Microsoft. I later worked at a company that licensed the source code for Microsoft Visual C++ IDE. This code was the WORST code I have ever read (and fixed bugs in). Microsoft software is crappier than you think. Of course, all software is pretty crappy, but at least Linux lets you do something about it.
Try running a check build of Win2k and ready the output from WinDbg. Note all of the errors flying by, filling WinDbg's 30,000 line buffer size. </i>
I used to work at Microsoft as a test developer for NT5 (before it was renamed Windows 2000). I can attest that Soldack's complaints are all true! Windows 2000 is a fragile house of cards. Only about 50% of reports bugs are be fixed. About 25% of reported bugs are closed as "uh-dont-know-it-works-for-me-you-sniveling-teste
cpeterso
Excellent analysis of Microsoft's FUD. I might also add a few things:
In one day alone, Dec. 7, 1999, a leading auction site suffered a system outage of more than three hours when both Sun E10000 servers running the site?s back-end auction system failed.
If I remember correctly, EBay's system admins screwed up and crashed their Sun E10000 database server. They also had their hot spare *offline* for some stupid reason. I somehow doubt MS Win2K can survive operator error of that magnitude, either.
Multiple vendors offer availability guarantees for Windows platforms, including IBM, HP, Unisys, and Compaq.
As you noted, these are hardware guarantees. They have nothing to do with the OS. So this is meaningless with regards to Windoze.
Furthermore, Sun offers similar guarantees for some of their platforms. Not multiple vendors, of course, since Sun is the single source for SPARC hardware.
So Microsoft is saying that a single-vendor solution is only offered by a single-vendor. Well.... duh!
Windows runs 25 percent of Web sites worldwide; Sun runs 19 percent.
And Linux runs close to 45% or more, IIRC.
Electrolux, Accounting.com, Pro2Net and thousands of other companies have switched their web sites from Sun platforms to Windows.
And Microsoft has tried several times to switch from Sun to Windows NT on their Hotmail service. In every case, they were unable to do so.
Nice try, Microsoft, but no cigar.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Overheard at a Microsoft marketing meeting:
.."
.. perfect..yes...that's just the stuff I'm looking for... anything else?"
<Dept Mgr> "Okay, the new version of Windows is due for release soon, we need to crank up the marketing machine...any good ideas?"
<random talking>
<voice from back> "Lets say that Win2000 is an innovation in innovating. "
<numerous giggles from the crowd>
<Dept. Mgr> "Hehe.. I think we need to shift gears from the innovating thing, any other ideas"
<voice from back> "Lets say that...uh...Win2000 is the most reliable product that Microsoft has ever released" <more random giggles from the crowd> "No wait, I've got it... lets say the Win2000 is more reliable than Linux" <giggles start to turn to laughter> "Or wait..yeah yeah..better yet.. lets say it's more reliable than Sun
<snickers and laughter becoming louder>
<Dept Mgr almost shouting to be heard above the laughter> "Bwahahaha..yes
<voice yells from the back> "Lets say that Jesus came back to earth and said that Win2000 is the only OS they use in heaven because it never needs rebooted...and that God just loves the way it scales and that Moses said it's uptime is amazing then we can..."
<screaming laughter drowns out the voice...>
Overall this is an incredibly feeble attempt at spreading FUD. I'd like to challenge Microsoft to make their FUD a little more believable.
Their "proof" that Windows offers higher reliability is:
Sun servers fave failed.
Um... ok. Sun never claimed their servers never fail, just that they're more reliable than Windows machines.
Some analysts recommend against Sun in environments that require high availability.
Well yeah, mainframes are often more appropriate than Unix servers. How often do objective analysts recommend Windows systems over Sun systems?
EBay's back-end Sun servers both failed once, but it's windows front-end didn't.
This is equivalent to saying "my brother crashed his Ford truck one day, but his wife's Honda didn't have an accident that day, so Hondas are more reliable."
Vendors offer windows availability guarantees.
This is only meaningful if nobody is willing to offer availability guarantees for Sun platforms. I have trouble believing that is the case.
The second claim is actually a decent FUD job. If Sun is actually claiming that they're the leading provider of Internet technology (a very obscure claim) obviously there are areas where they don't dominate.
I expect more from the people who brought us the Mindcraft fiasco! I mean, c'mon, that one involved specially picking specific areas where Linux was lacking, fine tuning Windows and not Linux, etc. This is pathetic compared to that work of art. This one is about as sophisticated as a knock-knock joke. C'mon Microsoft, you can do better, I know it!
(Oh, and if you can't live up to your own hype, at least live up to your promise to update the site. It says "come back tomorrow" but the last update was 3 days ago. Don't make me wait for my daily dose of FUD!)
sorry, konstant, but I know at least three of those are the truth (3, 4 & 6). And two are debateable and won't be established for another year (1 & 2) As a Microsoft employee do you feel you are keeping your biases and self-interest in check?
/. group think in action). How many times does one need to be bitten before they become shy?
I'm looking forward to W2K, every OS needs to evolve, but I seriously doubt I'll get the truth of the situation from M$, that web page offended me. And I know they've got another billion $ or so to push it, advertising doesn't make a great product and the feedback between the promises and the reality is what you are hearing (and the
+&x
The first MS product I used was the Basic on my C-64. Since then I have used everything from DOS on an XT to Windows NT on a Pentium II. After this history I am in no hurry to shell out hundreds of US$ for Win2000, Or even $60 to be a Beta tester. I have made posts here and elsewhere to the effect that due to MS's history of releasing Buggy OSes I see no reason to beleave Win2000 will be any different. If you want to change my mind, then send me a copy. I'll try it out. If it is as good as MS claims I'll post how good it is here. If its as bad as your other OSes I'll flame the hell out of it AFTER I try it out.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
Then replace the system administrator.
Yep! Down with God!
(Hey, I've burned myself not reading posts carefully enough before replying, so don't feel bad.)
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I have not worked on W2K drivers for about about 14 months. The last time I worked on one I was disgusted with Microsoft. Every build had new bugs, which, of course, they blamed on our driver. It sounds like the debugger hasn't improved any. I was lucky if I could keep windbg running more than 5 minutes without having to kill and restart the remote debugger. What made our driver difficult were all of the new features Microsoft required for certification, even though most of the features were worthless for our target market. Not only that, but Microsoft rendered our most important feature impossible. We had multi-port network adapters and provided failover and port aggregation (both proprietary and Fast EtherChannel). Microsoft's new requirements and APIs eliminated any way of configuring these features.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
This is what you have to expect. Microsoft wants customers to not abandon them, so they're going to spend every marketing dollar that they can saying "we're the best!" They see Sun as their biggest competition in the Web space (this is arguable, but certainly for the trendy e-commerce/.com sites the trend is to assume that Sun is *the* "enterprise OS", whatever that means). As such, they need to make customers percieve that other customers are leaving Sun for Microsoft.
What I want to see is Sun's advertizing campaign in 2 months that shows all of the people who were in this add campaign and are now switching back to Sun after comparing uptime #s.
I have to say, though that the recent security fix latency time numbers were quite embarasing for Sun, and customer service has always been their weak point. This needs to change if Sun is to keep its market share out of the hands of Linux, which for all of its failings is actually better supported than Solaris. The high-end SMP is still getting there, but the majority of the market is on 1-4 processors. I'd actually be interested in seeing hard numbers on how many Sun customers use more than that. I suspect that it's a very small number.
Heh. A while back I had a (heated) discussion with an MCSE guy. I couldn't get it into his head that Windows indeed *does* run on top of DOS. Yeah, it was fun.
Thimo
--
Avoid the Gates of Hell. Use Linux!
I happened to be at a colocation service last week too, and the key wrangler said that he was always seeing people in fixing the NT servers, but very rarely were there any problems with the Unix servers.
They are pretty heavy-duty cases - none of those $18 ATX jobs... Not exactly 2" plate steel, either 8^)
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
I bet Scott McNealy is wondering when the security system for Bill Gates' mansion reboots daily.
----
----
Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
On the Netcraft claim that Windows runs 25 percent of Web sites worldwide: I suspect that their estimate is low. How can Windows get credit for running a web site when the system is down during the survey? Because of this widespread reporting anomaly, Unix/Linux and Apache systems are vastly overrepresented in these non-scientific surveys at the expense of Windows. Their numbers are inflated due to the (irrelevant) fact that they are more likely to be up during the scan.
A responsible survey would correct for this obvious disparity.
;)
Geeky modern art T-shirts
...Roblimo has saved all of us by supplying us with pre-shrink-wrapped opinions which require no critical thought on our part. Truly, this is news for nerds and stuff that matters.
;)
*giggle*
We're just a bunch of ditto-heads here, eh?
Meanwhile, I'm glad to see that at least you can maintain your composure and objectivity!
Geeky modern art T-shirts
If you visit quote.com you will see a nice animated chart featured prominently on the front page, well I suspected GD when I saw this as the fonts are quite distintive, not only that but if you view the gif code in a text editor you discover it has been produced by whirlgif 2.01, a unix gif animation product... This part of the site is a live dynamic feature and its running UNIX. As for the MS page, its the usual "out of context" FUD. No news there.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I have been using every weekly build since before Beta2. I have been judging Win2k on the latest code available. I know for a fact that there were pretty big bugs in the kernel that were discovered at the Windows Plugfest that did not go into the gold release. The gold release is build 2195, cut after the first night of the plugfest. All the other bugs discovered at the plugfest will not make it in until SP1. All bugs discovered after the end of december will nto be fixed until SP2 at the earliest. There is a very long delay from when a bug is discovered until it is fixed. Meanwhile, Linux bugs are often fixed in days or sometimes, hours. New builds, the equivalent of Windows SPs, come out many times a month. Linux users have the right to demand that testing be done with latest release; MS wouldn't settle for not using the latest SP.
-- soldack
I am working on a FibreChannel card now but before I worked on a dual-port fast ethernet card. I asked MS engineers about supporting multi-port cards and they had no ideas about how. The old system (under NT4) let us install multiple NICs in NT's mind while our driver knew that it was one card with two ports. Uder the new model, Win2k tells the driver where the devices are and this model didn't imagine two ports, each with it's own IP on one card. Whoops. To hack around that was quite painfull.
-- soldack
One very real but very ugly truth that all the smurfs out there really don't want to see...
Promising that the next release will be better won't get me to come back. I have something you don't - software that works. Why should I consider changing that?
Best rebuttal so far to all the smurfs out there...
Even ZDNet benchmarks indicate that you need 256meg (I kid you not)before Win00 beats NT or 98 in desktop benchmarks. The one thing for sure is that Microsoft has moved bloat to a whole new level...
Windows runs 25 percent of Web sites worldwide; Sun runs 19 percent. (Source: Netcraft 12/99)
45 percent of secure Web sites run on Windows; Sun runs 11 percent. (Source: Netcraft 12/99)
That's an apples-to-oranges comparison. A better comparison than "Windows to Sun" is "Windows to *N*X".
Notice that Windows is significantly under 50%? How much of that >50% non-Windows is *N*X? B-)
52 of the top 100 Internet shopping sites run on Windows. (Source: Media Metrix; Netcraft)
One word: Legacy. Windows was out there for a long time before Linux began to be accepted by business. And Windows has always been popular in the executive suite, regardless of the input from the poor workers who have to use and administer it.
Another: Volume. What fraction of the transactions are handled by Microsoft, what fraction by *N*X?
57 percent of top business-to-business marketplaces run on Windows. (Source: Goldman Sachs; Netcraft)
Care to define "top business-to-business marketplace"?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
... So, finish the story: email Gates, then start your stopwatch. ;-)
"C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do it blows your whole leg off."
I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
I'd just like to see on the page:
"Sun also makes Java, which is a poor language. Studies show that when IE trys to load certan java applets, it crashes. Obviously Sun is doing something wrong."
True? I don't know... probably.
But if you adjust these numbers so that they actually MEAN something, by dividing by the companies yearly income, or net worth, you would see that Sun having 19% is far more impressive than MS having 25%.
Ignore Alien Orders
In fact the author of this zdnet article gets kind of harsh on Microsoft.
-- Never make a general statement.
You all have to admit that Microsoft products provide a quality unmatched by any other company. That is why I am switching to 100% pure shredded Microsoft certificates of authenticity in my Hamster's cage.
When doing fake news reports, can you make them -different- from the ones Microsoft churns out? :)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Damn; MS is good, but I didn't think they were this good. They've manipulated the facts to make Solaris look less reliable than Windows. But look at the "facts" again:
Despite Sun's claim that their high-end servers are highly reliable and built with redundant components, customers report that failures in service processors, controllers, processor cards, and other components have caused entire production systems to fail.
Those are hardware problems, not OS problems. I don't see many Wintel boxes built with these components either, yet these exact things can and do happen to Wintel boxes. Or, just get Solaris/Intel if the situation is really that bad; that product nullifies any claims M$ makes right there.
Analyst reports have repeatedly raised the issue of reliability problems with Sun platforms, and have gone so far as to recommend that customers not use Sun servers in environments that require high availability.
And they've done the same for Windows. Much more often, in fact.
In one day alone, Dec. 7, 1999, a leading auction site suffered a system outage of more than three hours when both Sun E10000 servers running the site's back-end auction system failed. Meanwhile, the company's Web site front-end, running on a Windows NT®-based server farm, has provided continuous availability with no single point of failure.
One: both servers going down at once? That's basically a freak chance, and certainly can't be attributed to Sun.
Two: Two servers versus a whole farm? Gee, I wonder how stacked the deck was. I also notice they they only say the farm's has no single point of failure, implying that multiples could well have existed.
Multiple vendors offer availability guarantees for Windows platforms, including IBM, HP, Unisys, and Compaq.
Four vendors out of God only knows how many. Is that something to be proud of? Besides which, they're guaranteeing the hardware, not the software.
And now, on to the "Hype #1"...
Windows runs 25 percent of Web sites worldwide; Sun runs 19 percent.
45 percent of secure Web sites run on Windows; Sun runs 11 percent.
52 of the top 100 Internet shopping sites run on Windows.
57 percent of top business-to-business marketplaces run on Windows.
You can't rely on these numbers. I can find Webserver statistics out there that say anything you want them to say. I can find statistics saying that Linux leads the way in these. Hell, I've found Webserver stats saying Linux is first, Mac OS is second, all other Unices are third, and the Windows systems are dead last.
Dell, the largest e-business on the Internet, runs on Windows.
Easy enough to find out that one business runs on Windows. But on which scale are they measuring, such that Dell is the "largest"? I know of sites which do much more business than Dell; what do they run? M$ doesn't say. No doubt Dell is the largest E-business site that runs Windows. But is it the largest E-business site out there? I'd like to see some numbers asserting that claim, please.
Other major sites include Barnes & Noble, InfoSpace, Data Return, buy.com, monster.com, reel.com, bigcharts.com, Hotbot.com, Nordstrom's, realtor.com, eHome, MarthaStewart.com, cooking.com, and Compaq, to name a few.
Simple bandwagon advertising. The usual "everybody's doing it" idea. So what? Everybody once believed the Sun orbited the Earth, too.
Electrolux, Accounting.com, Pro2Net and thousands of other companies have switched their web sites from Sun platforms to Windows.
And thousands more have switched from Windows to Sun, Linux, and others. Hell; several major sites have even switched from Windows to MacOS. What's your point?
Linux's marketers are great. Even I was taken in by this load of bull for a moment before I stopped to think about their data. Problem is, most people don't stop to think, and that's why M$ has retained its popularity over the years.
Oh, well, I suppose since you've already made up your minds there's really no point in actually shipping Windows2000 after all. Slashdot's fact-hungry editors have already proven to us beyond a shadow of a doubt that:
1) Win2k is buggy
2) Win2k is unstable
3) Win2k is outrageously licensed
4) Win2k is bloated
5) Win2k is anti-Linux vaporware
6) Win2k can't live in a heterogeneous lan
I admire this prescient ability to review Win2k without even possessing a trial copy. What a lot of money Roblimo has saved all of us by supplying us with pre-shrink-wrapped opinions which require no critical thought on our part. Truly, this is news for nerds and stuff that matters.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
Microsoft says: The Reality: Microsoft Windows platforms drive the Business Internet. For example, 6 of the top 10 shopping sites run Windows and Microsoft SQL ServerTM. (Source: PC Data 12/99)
Media Metrix (http://www.mediametrix.com/ TopRankings/TopRankings.html) ranks the following as the top 10 shopping sites:
1 Bluemountainarts.com
2 Amazon.com
3 AOL shopping
4 eBay.com
5 Barnesandnoble.com
6 eToys.com
7 Buy.com
8 CDnow.com
9 Mypoints.com
10 Toysrus.com
And Netcraft (http://www.netcraft.com/whats/) provides the following info for each of these sites:
bluemountainarts.com is running Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) on FreeBSD
amazon.com is running Stronghold/2.4.2 Apache/1.3.6 C2NetEU/2412 (Unix) on DIGITAL UNIX
shop.aol.com is running NaviServer/2.0 AOLserver/2.3.3 on Solaris
ebay.com is running Apache/1.3.6 (Unix) on Solaris
barnesandnoble.com is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4 or Windows 98
etoys.com is running Etoys Web server 1.2 on Linux
buy.com is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4 or Windows 98
cdnow.com is running Apache/1.3b5 on Solaris
mypoints.com is running Netscape-Enterprise/3.5.1G on Solaris
toysrus.com is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4 or Windows 98
Which to me, only looks like 3 of the top 10 shopping sites use Windows. Where did PC data get their stats?
on companies' sites, why don't you take a look at this page: http://www.valinux.com/systems/
"Unlike other Linux systems you might get elsewhere, ours are true Linux systems. They run Linux faster, cleaner, and better. They're high-powered, bullet-proof and scalable Intel architecture systems..."
And no facts to back those statements up. If I were a VA Linux competitor, this kind of crap would piss me off. Talk about FUD? What the hell does it mean when they say it runs Linux "cleaner"? Or "true Linux systems"? If you saw that kind of crap on a Microsoft site, you'd freak!!!
REDMOND(AP): According to Microsoft, Windows has been proven to be the most reliable and cost-effective operating system for servers, clients, embedded systems and every other task.
Extensive independent testing at Microsoft's product testing labs has shown Windows to be not only more reliable than Sun, but also more reliable than the Sun itself.
A spokesperson for Microsoft Product Labs was quoted as saying "this report contains incontrovertible proof that Windows is not only the most reliable operating system ever released, but also the most reliable operating system that could exist in all possible worlds."
The report also demonstrates that Sun, Netscape and AOL are tools of Satan and establishes a causal link between usage of Linux and brain cancer.
As a device driver developer, I have been using every weekly build of Win2k since before Beta2. I can tell you for a fact that Win2k is buggy and unstable. I was at the Microsoft Plugfest, where system vendors and device vendors get together and try running their stuff together under Win2k and WinMe (Windows Millenium). Build 2195, the build that went gold was cut after the first day of the plugfest, due to a major bug that had to be fixed. Lots of bugs were reported during the following days of testing. NONE of these low level, at the core of OS, in the kernel type of bugs were fixed for the gold release. We were told that they would go into SP1. In fact, the cut off date to get a fix into SP1 was the end of december. My group has already submitted Plug 'N Play issues that will not be fixed until SP2 at the earliest. This thing is not ready for prime time! /. FUD; it is the result of years of low level study.
At the plugfest, Microsoft's engineers were often stumped with problems that only a small hotel full of only three days or so of testing; imagine what millions of users in months of continuous running will find. Win2k's bug list is so large that you have to search for your problem at their site rather than all the known issues being made public through a definitive list. I for one would want to read that list before I bet my e-business site on it.
Try running a check build of Win2k and ready the output from WinDbg. Note all of the errors flying by, filling WinDbg's 30,000 line buffer size. Try running WinDbg, the main graphical kernel debugging tool Microsoft ships. It is perhaps the worst piece of software ever made. Every version fixes one bug but creates another. MS's own pplugfest engineers would not use it. If it is buggy than what kind of drivers will it lead to? How about Visual C++, which all of Windows is build with? How can an OS be stable when the development environment that created it needed three service packs?!
As for living in a heterogeneous lan, Win2k's Active Directory uses Dynamic DNS, which most other systems, including NT4, do not support. Although, you can get DDNS for Unix/Linux systems, it requires you changing all your other machines to work with Win2k.
Win2k is very bloated! Look at the size of all the running modules in a base Win2k Pro installation; it is massive! Check out the minimum requirements; they are unbelievable!
This isn't anti-microsoft, brainwashed by
-- soldack