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Unix: Which One to Choose?
I just found this story on Sm@rt Reseller which talks about which Unix (or Linux) they're suggesting to use for various uses (web, applications, etc..) - Its a very long article, and it talks also about the Windows 2000. Worth a read IMHO.
Ones that fly in the face of what we've been told.
A while ago, Unix==Big Iron hardware. Today, Unix can equal a 486/33. The only 'Big Iron' I'm gonna need is the hardware it'll take to make W2K fly.
I also smiled when he said 'Unix will have more software, enjoy it while it lasts.' All in response to the incompatibilities between MS'es own new OS and their own software.
On the flip side, Linux wasn't without growing pains. The lurch from libc5 to glibc wasn't too pretty a while back, but nothing was really stopping you from installing compatibility libraries. Even going 2.0 -> 2.2 was amazingly compatible. In Debian slink, I think there was about a half a dozen packages, out of thousands, that needed upgrading with the kernel.
It's amazing just how badly MS is handling the growth of Unix. You think they'd borrow a page from the Book of Good OS'es.. But instead they go on doing their thing. Scalability? Portability? Unheard of. POSIX seems to be the future of OS'es.. Who'da thunk it?
Not quite fair.
Note that they're comparing W2K to 2.2 kernels for greater than 3 processors. They're quite positive on 2.4 being likely to beat out W2K on SMP scaling, and they even make a point of not benchmarking because of how much 2.4 will change the numbers. In fact they largely damn W2K with faint praise as far as its SMP "advantage" goes. No insinuation that Linux can't do SMP, just a belief that it's temporarily behind W2K for >3-way SMP and a statement about that changing soon. No need to get defensive.
I've used a lot of UNIX flavors over the past 25 years, and I'd have to say that I recommend Microsoft's XENIX for any task. The NFS support really blazes, and it supports "ksh" or Korn shell. Give it a shot.
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People must be celbrating St. Pat's day early because I've been hearing that I don't say SMP is in Linux all day. Folks, read the graph, next to the end of the first page. See how it says 2.4 will have improved SMP. Got to have it in there in the first place to have it improved eh?
As for SMP in general, if I had to have heavy-duty SMP Right Now on Unix. I wouldn't use Linux or Intel. Solaris on SPARC and AIX on PowerPC is where you can really hit the gas with Unix and multiple processors. I haven't tested AIX recently, but Solaris eats NT's, and everyone elses, lunch.
Steven, Editor at Large, Sm@rt Reseller
You know the joke about how "I am firm, you are stubborn, and he's a flaming *******"?
Linux/Unix is the same thing. To most people, Linux and Unix are synonymous because they have the same architectural structure, same POSIX libraries, same POSIX tools, etc. Does it run X? Does it run vi? Do you have a command shell somewhere that takes lots of cryptic commands? Then it's Unix.
Even the vast majority of developers will not see a significant difference in the way they develop code for a Linux vs. "Unix" system. A few files are in a different place, a few commands have "odd" flags, but overall it's about as much difference as between Dallas and New York, vs.
New York and New Dehli. With the common use of GNU tools, there's much less perceived difference between Linux and *BSD than Solaris and HP/UX (or AIX!)
But in the same way that many French Canadians can't forgive the British Canadian majority for a defeat hundreds of years ago (going as far as putting "I Remember!" on their the car license plates) we have a few tormented souls who want to make sure that we never, ever, forget the fact that the Linux source tree can't list three pages of "begats" that lead back to King Davi... sorry, back to the original AT&T source.
Is there a real difference? Yes, but the number of people who actually have to worry about them will probably fit into a small room. For the rest of us, the only real difference is a group that's coming across as increasingly bitter that they have finally achieved the Holy Grail of "Unix" Integration only as they band together to fight the Linux intruder... and they *really* hate to be told that this constant "Linux isn't Unix, nah nah nah" harping is exactly the childish mindset that lead to Unix fragmentation in the first place. This is how they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory a decade ago, and many of us really don't want to see a repeat of it.
I know one of the defining characteristics of geeks is great precision in speech, but it's time for everyone to remember the big picture. We're in the game show of life and one side has the MS family (daddy W2K, Mom Win98, insane child WinCE) and the other side has the Unix family (daddy AT&T, brother *BSD and adopted brother Linux), and it only helps MS when the Unix family's first response to a question is to whip out a gun and commit fraticide.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I'm amazed this has got to be the first "battle of the OS's" type article I've read in a long time that not only presents the strengths and weakness's of the various OS's in a balanced and honest fashion but also presents a conclusion at the end of the article that makes logical sense based on the reviews given during the body of the article. I've gotten used to stories (usually involving NT or w2k) that slam a certain OS for performance, stability, and price at every turn but in the end give it their "Editors Choice" because it has prettier widgets than it's competitors. What I really liked best about this story is that not only did the conclusion mesh with the rest of the story but that the author didn't name one OS King of All Unix (on Intel) but gave a nice little chart with very logical recomendations. A nice use the right tool for the right job approach. To add yet another random and disconnected thought to this little ramble of a post, I noticed that the author seemed to put a very high weight on stability, on par with any *nix user I've met, which is nice because I personally value stability above all else for both my workstations and my servers. Ok I'm done with my little pre-coffee post ;->
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The question: What OS do you run.... FreeBSD of course.
:-)
FreeBSD is a OpenSource OS with a licence that promotes the software to be used ANYWHERE, is stable and robust, and has a strong UNIX(tm) tradition.
Oh, and it can run Linux binaries, SCO binaries, Xenix binaries, and I've gotten mine to run Solaris X86 and Rhapsody DR1 binaries, with some tweaking.
(And on a more humorous note: Linux script kiddies come knocking but don't get in. It takes a BSD script kiddie to get in
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