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How Do Linux and Windows 2000 Compare?
fialar asks: "There seem to be plenty of older web articles comparing Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 with Linux, but there do not seem to be any out there that have fully explored Windows 2000 and do a feature by feature comparison or a chart. Does anyone know where one could find such a beast? John Kirsch's Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 versus UNIX is an excellent document, but it hasn't been updated in over a year. I know that Windows 2000 offers many new features over NT 4.0, but not having fully explored it, I don't know what Linux has that is comparable."
It was so bad that I had to boot the machine with shift held down, getting rid of all extensions and patches. Various attempts at moving stuff around (like removing CarbonLib) weren't effective and it eventually proved necessary to reinstall ALL the third party control panels having to do with the Apple Desktop Bus (ADB- wacom tablet, Gravis joystick). Upon doing this, the machine booted happily again with no other changes, but an attempt to run Macster returned the error that the (still present!) CarbonLib library wasn't available! At this point I ditched the new version of Macster _and_ the CarbonLib extension that had caused so much trouble.
'nevermind!' ;)
One question for you, please.
WHY should email be executable?
If you can't answer that you aren't even acknowledging the problem, and that's not good.
No, it doesn't. Under Linux C-A-del has no special meaning. While the kernel understands and traps the key sequence, there's no requirement that init do anything special with it. Most distros set it up to do orderly shutdown, but you could just as easily set it to run /bin/true instead. Not to mention the fact that X takes complete control of the keyboard and can trap out any key sequence you want, including that one. Plus, that only applies to console logins anyway - sure enough, the only type that a standard install of windoze supports, but not at all the only means that Unix supports. So while you could add this feature fairly easily, it isn't really very useful.
and the hibernate function.
Linux already supports power management (on peecees anyway) through APM and in 2.4 through ACPI. It works about as well as it does under the microsoft environments, which is to say it depends greatly on what specific hardware you have. Most power management schemes today don't seem to work very well, regardless of OS. And of course, Unix systems are meant to be left on 100% of the time. There just isn't a lot of use for power management in a non-laptop environment. I would suggest, though, that the Lookout! problem you note is most certainly an OS bug - applications should not be affected by power management. If the OS blows it, it should affect all processes, not just one.
Everything was tried. It just doesn't work. The only solution is to put in an smbpasswd file that contains all the users with empty passwords. Not very good but the only way to do it. Trust me on this one. We spent DAYS.
Unfortunately if you unify things in this way, you a) break every existing application, and more importantly b) apply a one-size-fits-all solution. Sorry, not the Unix way. What form do you pick for this? The obvious one is that each file is named for an attribute, and contains the attribute's value. But unfortunately not everything is best expressed as attribute=value.
The current system already has everything as a file - in a format and in locations that the application(s) using it understand. While I'd agree that having lots of different config file formats is annoying, forcing the solution into kernel space isn't the answer - nor is applying the one-size-fits-all solution, whatever it might be. We don't more more damn pseudo-filesystems; there are way too many already. We've got stuff like pipefs now that are really invisible for example. Try and explain to me how that's any less magical and obscure than the registry. It's not the right solution. Besides, how is it an operating system's responsibility to manage configuration of applications anyway? As far as the OS is concerned, an application consists of one or more completely opaque processes. It doesn't know or care what they do. If you start blurring the lines, you end up with an OS that looks like Microsoft's - and works about as well.
Firstly, I should point out that KDE and gnome are both giant leaps in the wrong direction, dead away from what has made Unix so durable. But that's not really the key issue here.
No one person actually supports 30k desktop systems. Only a small handful of the largest magacorporations even have that many computers. And they have huge teams, managing small chunks of those systems, usually in geographically diverse locations. So it's not like there's a giant warehouse somewhere filled bottom to top with desktop computers all run by one caffeine-filled sysadmin. Please. This job is challenging, but it's not that bad.
There's a difference between having a centralised method of maintaining systems and having a centralised place on each machine where every instance of every application wants to write each user's settings. If the gnome and/or kde people are doing that, then I'm genuinely shocked at their bad judgment and lack of common sense. Systems like kickstart, jumpstart, and roboinst make installation of systems easy. Systems like cron jobs, automated log filters, and global site-specific default configurations make managing systems scalable. But systems like the registry make scalability a pipe dream.
What I can't seem to explain to Linux users is that in Windows, you don't NEED any of those, so it makes not one bit of difference if they are not implemented in the same way as in linux.
../ego/src
In MS-Windows, you don't have them, you mean. I don't know how many times I've tried to do simple things in MS-Windows, and been stymied, and had to do it the tedious CTRL-click selection route.
I could very well come back and say: "But Linux sux because it doesn't have a visual file explorer tool!"
Really, I've not found any tool that comes with MS-Windows that doesn't have an equivelent graphical tool for Linux over this last year. KFM is a damned fine browser every bit as capable as MS-Explorer.
Of course, the answer is that it doesn't need it, the command line tools are sufficient. However, I still prefer to shift-select 100 files and drag them with the mouse to writing a ten mile long command to select those (and only those!) files I want copied.
What's so hard about
cp *ego*.c
In a directory of mixed names in which you only want to move certain types of files, the command line is 100000 times faster than a graphical tool.
Now, suppose you wish to move all your mp3s, which are scattered all through your various subdirectories, into a common directory. You could go hunting for them with a graphical find tool, and moving them one at a time, or you can just type:
find . -name \*.mp3 -exec mv {} ~/music \;
Granted, that requires a bit of knowledge of your tools. But I will pit myself at a command line (which MS-Windows does not even have to any great extent) to someone running a graphical browser, for any but the most trivial file manipulation tasks.
MS-Windows makes the job prettier. It doesn't make it easier. I know. I've used both extensively.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
With ext2fs (and nearly all other Unix filesystems I know about) even the smallest file consumes at least 512 bytes of storage, so using them to implement a registry is horrendously inefficient.
This is why ReiserFS is such a nice idea: it scales down to the smallest files smoothly, so lots of small files can be stored efficiently. I think if something like that gains widespread use, we may see big trees of small files for configuration and other tasks become much more common.
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Xenu loves you!
Okay, I was with you for about the first half of that, but then your advocacy started overshadowing your facts.
:)
:)
:)
First, I saw Windows 2000 Beta 3 crash on INSTALLATION, something that should never happen. The only time I've seen anything like that on Linux... well, the media was physically corrupted, and it still tried to install.
Linux and Windows can run each other's binaries perfectly; the problem is finding a program that completely emulates or virtualizes the x86. At the moment, I know that VMWare does a good job, and Bochs does too if you can live with how slow it is. Plex86 is in the works, and is showing promise, since it can run DOS now...
I agree about Netscape, it isn't terribly stable; however, most graphical browsers aren't, for one reason or another, *including* IE, in my experience. But Netscape has the potential to be downright horrible about it. However, X has been pretty good to me, and in my experience I've had much more trouble with gdm. (which is a reason to use xdm...)
BTW, Linux has great multimedia support. Okay, okay, let me explain. I have a Matrox G400, and the hardware acceleration is *sweet*. Also, my SB Live Value is just excellent, I love the hardware mixing, the multiple DSP's... I installed ALSA and now the MIDI patches ("soundfonts") work too, and they sound good.
It's all about picking supported hardware, though, which you still have to do for Win2K, as well. My DVD drive isn't supported, because I (a) couldn't find much information about that on the net, and (b) just bought it first, figuring I'd test it out later. I'll probably ask the developers about this, since it works under Windows. I've heard it can be made to work under VMWare too, so all I really need is some debugging info.
Plus support for multi-processing makes it even better. Now, I don't have more than one processor, but I might set up a dual-proc test box if I can ever find an old board for it. However, I've seen it done on Linux, and it is sweet. No paying extra for a different version that just consists of a stupid registry hack, either. It has decent multi-processing support out of the box. And I'd love to see a comparison to Win2K here, since that's one thing that's supposed to be better in 2.4.
How about that, eh, guys? Something based around Linux Kernel 2.4.0 with a bunch of stable stuff, vs. Win2KSP1, or whatever is current and patched by then. Test multi-processing, test well-supported hardware, RAID, whatever. Just test the hell out of it.
Being a real system administrator is based on experience. Now, I won't be one, because I'm going to graduate from college with a CSC major, and I'd rather be coding, but just because I *went* to college doesn't mean I've been idle, or don't know my stuff. Maybe not about Win2K, but I haven't really wanted to use it a whole lot.
And no, you don't have to do anything *wrong* for Win2K to crash on you. Sometimes you don't have to do anything. It's better, but it isn't perfect yet. And Microsoft has been that arrogant about it from Day 1; I don't know why they even pretend to have tech support. And how is realplayer crap? Is it just not Windows Media Player? Was it not written for Windows Internals, but instead cross-platform? As for Netscape, I'd rather run Mozilla; IE is not cross-platform, and it shouldn't be integrated into the OS file browser, and it annoys the hell out of me. I haven't tested rendering yet, but I'd want to test two equivalently dated versions. (IE 4, NS4; Current IE, Current Mozilla...)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
The only true way to get an unbiased view of things is to try both, and see for yourself.
Good point, but given history and the cost to try, a cartoon keeps running through my head:
Come on Charlie Brown, I won't pull it away this time. Really?! Bill, do you really promise?...
It makes perfect sense not to put X on a box that is going to be remotely administered. Remote administration continues to be one of windows weaknesses.
I disagree.
I've started installing some X apps on remote machines just to ease administration... I can call up the X app from within my session and it is as if the machine is my own.
Don't get me wrong, I love the CLI... but just as some things are easier with the CLI, some things are just easier from a GUI perspective.
What I'd like is a good repository of X securifying documentation.
I wouldn't say that is true at all. I along with those I work with are very harsh critics of Microsoft.
It's just that we see the real problems, not the FUD that is spread by the Linux zealots.
Just because we don't agree with the FUD doesn't mean we don't have issues.
Although to be honest, Windows 2000 has addressed nearly every major issue I had with NT 4.0, including some really annoying UI problems. Proof that Microsoft is listening.
Do you people even read documentation? Sheesh.
Most of your problems are discussed in great detail from a variety of locations. For BIND integration, check Microsoft. For Samba, check samba.org...
sheesh
Still trying to figure out why someone thought it was a bright idea to put SQL Server and PDC on the same machine.
Hmm, maybe because PCAnywhere isn't a simple app?
It does a lot of low level stuff to take over your machine.
It might seem backwards to have more than one server, but most corporations do just that. Whether it be routers, Unix, NT, whatever... we always test a configuration change before making it in production.
Because Win32 doesn't have fork(). :)
Actually, trusts in AD are transitive by default. It's the NT4-style one-way non-transitive trusts that would need to be implemented manually.
It's been done; NDS 8 can already use Linux as a server platform. I have no idea what Linux client support Novell offers or intends to offer.
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"Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"
I think you'll find that it is also required for backward-compatibility with all non-Windows 2000 Microsoft operating systems, too. I doubt that retaining compatibility with Samba (which runs on a hell of a lot more operating systems than Linux, remember) was a major consideration when Active Directory was designed. Please don't blame Samba for AD's design.
This was done purely for backward compatibility reasons. It is not an efficiency measure; they could easily have keys like "rmalda.sales" and "rmalda.geeks" to avoid collisions for users in the same domain but different containers. In fact, containers in AD are purely eye-candy. They're not security principals; only users and groups are.
An AD domain could only hold significantly fewer than 23 trillion users, even given unlimited memory, disk and network bandwidth. You can't take the largest number AD can use as an index and call that the maximum capacity.
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"Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"
It is not. What it is is Microsoft's preferred and best-documented interface to NT. Any Win32 API that deals with a kernel object uses native APIs (e.g. ones beginning with Nt, Ke, Ki, etc.) to do the actual dirty work.
The original poster implied no such thing.
CSRSS.EXE is currently required to be loaded and running to even use an app that does no GUI stuff at all. This is unnecessary overhead. The poster did not imply that one needs to use the windows system's messaging facilities to do IPC or networking.
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"Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"
> Calls to the windowing system for IPC? What
> about named pipes? Mailslots? or TCP/IP?
> Or shared memory?
All of those features are accessed using calls to the Win32 API (bar TCP/IP, which is accessed via the WinSock libraries). Therefore, the Win32 subsystem has to be running for those facilities to be available to the application programmer.
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"Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"
RealPlayer is an application, not a kernel-level driver. If an application locks your operating system hard, your operating system has a problem.
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"Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"
According to this book, Windows 2000 Server Architecture and Planning, "OUs are container objects than can be used to organize objects within a domain into logical groups".
I've been using the incorrect syntaxes. The two user objects I refer to would have the DNs CN=rmalda/OU=sales/DC=slashdot/DC=org and CN=rmalda/OU=geeks/DC=slashdot/DC=org; however, because of the flat nature of the domain database, they would both map to a UPN of rmalda@slashdot.org, which is where we get into trouble.
Now, I believe it is possible to have objects with the DNs I have given, but to set things up so that they have different UPNs, but that would cause headaches of its own.
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"Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"
Well, I don't want to start a flame-fest, but I think it's very clear that Windows 2000 is obviously superior. Here's a list of reasons why:
Well, there's lots more wonderful features in Windows 2000 that you won't find in Linux, but I think I've made my point.
I agree totally here.
It took me roughly a month to install Slackware back in 1995. I didn't have the internet to help me, and I had some pretty unusual hardware, but DOS and Windows didn't have any trouble at all.
Windows 3.1 was by far more memory efficient and faster. X was unusable on an unaccellerated 640x480 ISA VGA adapter... unlike Win3.1.
I did some Fortran programming under the environment, which I found useful... but it was easier to dial into the VAX. The fonts were terrible, printer support was almost nonexistant, so for me it was effectively a bloated programming environment.
I administered a small dial up ISP for a short period in 1997. They were running NT3.51, and were scrambling to try to put together a decent system for software development... I put the whole operation under Linux. No big deal. Everything was completely free and worked flawlessly.
Since 1995, I've tried many times to establish a reasonable user environment under Linux. I've tried Gnome and KDE, and they haven't done anything other than to promise me what I had on a 386 running Win3.1... that is to say a reasonable printing architecture, some decent fonts, some standard keystrokes and cut-and-paste. I've tried simplifying things... for some time I ran ICEWM (which I really do like) and then proceeded to try to set up an email client.
There isn't anything but promises here too. Netscape appears to be the best choice... unless I go back to PINE. So I tried to configure Netscape... it crashes. I try some more, it crashes again... infact it crashes quite reliably under many different scenarios... none of which are preventable. So I give up. I tried Spruce, which though promising, was simply incomplete.
I then try to hear multiple audio streams simultaneously. After installing ALSA, reading many FAQs and getting it running, I learn that the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture doesn't support multiple simultaneous streams... like Win3.1 did. So I installed ESD, then I installed Real Player. After a week of applying various binary patches, reinstalling, reading reams of documentation describing how Real Inc. depended upon undocumented features and broke in V5, I finally got some alpha version of the player working and started listening to some Internet radio broadcasts.
So I began working on tracking down another email client. Inches from headed back to PINE, reading up on fetchmail and procmail, Real Player freezes.
Many other experiments revealed that it always would do this some 15 minutes into the broadcast.
On another forray into the Linux world, I installed Gnomehack... it worked fine for a while, and I reminisced about playing hack for long hours ... When I went to restore a game one day, X crashed.
It was remarkable. I launch the game, Gnomehack and X crashes, taking down all my other applications, loosing all my data, reliably, reproducably, and inexplicably. It obviously is a bug in my X server.
After many forrays, and certainly many more to come, I have come to the conclusion that the best server OS for a small company or even for a home user is Linux. It is stable, not price prohibative, will teach you a lot about how computers work, and has many other bennefits. The best GUI for that operating system is either Windows, MacOS, OS/2 or just about anything else you can think of. Linux handles itself so well in a networked environment that there is no reason to put a keyboard or monitor on the device.
I can use Pine just as well on my remote linux box as I can locally, and I'll even be able to fill the fonts crisply out to the edge of the screen, and even cut and paste from it.... while listening to radio broadcasts, and chatting on that whore of a program called ICQ... and I will spend less time reinstalling the operating system for the life of the hardware than I will configuring Linux to do the same.
To Linux's credit, Linux is closer to a good UI than Microsoft is to a robust multiuser operating system.
In many a third-world country, where a copy of a 5-client Win2000 cost almost the same as the annual salary of a general manager in a middle-size company - and we aren't counting the cost of all the apps.
So, in this context, if we have to do a comparison between Win2000 and open-source OS such as Linux, it'd surely be having a running title such as "To Be A Pirate, Or Not To Be ?"
And if _that's_ not enough, if you use Win2000 without any legal license - ie. to behave like a eye-patch wearing pirate - you run the risk of being prosecuted, and the fine would be at least TEN TIMES THE COST OF THE SOFTWARES you pirate.
That essentially means, in a third world country, if you run Win2000, you either look at forking a sum of money where you can pay a general manager for ONE WHOLE YEAR up front (to buy a legal copy), or, you run the risk of having your company computer confiscated (thus disrupting your company's day-to-day business activities), PLUS you'd be fined an amount that you could've hired TEN GENERAL MANAGERS FOR ONE WHOLE YEAR, at least.
Does _that_ count as a valid yardstick of comparing Win2000 vs. Linux ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
"Beware of anybody that claims to be balanced yet fails to admit that (1) Ken Cutler designed the NT kernel architecture and he's an OS god, and (2) Linux is a based on a very good, but very old operating system (UNIX). This does not automatically make NT good and Linux bad. However, most of the good things about NT and the bad things about Linux derive from those facts."
(1) Ken Cutler left MS in disgust after the 3.51 debacle (video drivers into the kernel to gain speed at the very obvious expense of stability).
(2) The NT kernel is based on the VMS kernel which dates from 1976. And VMS is still light-years in front of both Linux and NT/2000 in terms of scalability, manageability, flexibility, reliability and... *clustering*
If all the good stuff that the NT team COULD have pinched from VMS had actually found its way into the operating system then (a) NT would cost a lot more and (b) you wouldn't be comparing it wth Linux.
FWIW, most of the similarities between NT and VMS are at an architectural level, in the design of things like the process scheduler and the memory manager.
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Peter
The important question here is, how much RAM did each box have, and what speed? And how loaded was each box besides the test being run?
These are IMPORTANT points, but EASY to miss. RAM is extremely important for caching when you're manipulating large files.
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you're plainly admitting here that your management is just being obtuse, over-conservative, and that you *know* it would work. in other words, it's your management's problem. not linux's problem, and certainly not the problem of every other management on earth. and btw I can point you to more than a few production linux or bsd-based boxes that don't have a support contract from anyone. guess who's saving money and making smart decisions, and who isn't.
How could a PhD in computer science want to be an MCSE????
I think it was Miguel de Icaza who said it best - in *nix no one takes the blame for anything. He was talking about a user friendly / programer friendly desktop enviroment (kernel hackers: "not my problem / falt", X/MIT/xFree: "We do protocolols, not our problem", wm programers: "not my problem" etc, etc.
And we all accept this, more or less. If netscape crashes, its netscapes fault. If the Gimp crashes, its the Gimps fault. If a window manager crashes, its the wms fault. And if linux crashes, its the kernel hackers fault.
However, if anything crashes on Windows, we prehaps unfairly blame microsoft. Now, it may be true that application crashes are far more likely to down the OS in Windows land then in *nix, but, MS is getting better in this respect. We wouldnt shit on Redhat if a module in there kernel was flakey and crashed, would we?
I can remember back in the MS-DOS days, and mis behaving TSRs, and crappy apps would lock up the system compleatly - DOS itself never crashed, and I remember Windows 3.1, which itself crashed a lot, and bad apps downed it too. 95 was better, and 98 was better still, and from what Ive seen at my new job for a week, w2k is excelent in this respect. *nix is not the best here, and windows is not the worst - MVS/OS/390 is proably on top, and MacOS on the bottom (of OSs in use today), so everything is relative
Yes, I use win98 on the desktop at home, and will proably use w2k on the desktop at work, where there are w2k servers (primarly because ColdFusion wasent aviable for linux until recently, and because customers have Access db's). But primarly linux on the servers (and with fridays install of CF4linux, we may ditch w2k servers...) But at my last job (well mainly volunteer), it was solaris and linux on the servers, and linux on all but 1 desktop.
The windows/linux race is to catch up to each other in the opposits strong point, linux to get to the UI of Windows, and Windows to get to the stability of *nix.
I dont know: whats easier, adding stability to Windows, or adding hardware support and UI to linux?
Ok, here is my experience:
Open top of Compaq Proliant 6500 with HotPlug PCI slots. Insert DualNic, close PCI slot cover. 2000 Advanced server pops up the new driver window, installs just fine, and brings both ports online. Open Network properties, set IP's staticially, and go. No reboots at all.
Same process repeated in many other servers, with the only difference being the non HotPlug ones requiring a shutdown to install the card.
2000 shouldn't need a reboot ever when dealing with the network. If it does, you did something wrong.
AFAIK, the software volume management (RAID/ mirroring etc) in Win2K is a (cut down) version of Veritas Volume manager (vxvm). VxVM (via the GUI frontend vmsa) is equally easy under Unix systems, and also has a full command line interface. I'm not sure that the command line functions are there in Win2K.
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"I am not a nut-bag." Millroy the Magician
Win 2000 is used only in rabid Windows zealot shops yet. It has not been put to the test anywhere where the question of using UNIX actually stands.
And even most of rabid Windows zealot shops have not gone through a complete server deployment as quite a lot of things still do not work or outright break.
If used anywhere it is used for a client now. Especially for a laptop it is better than NT. It still does not even compare to Linux or BSD but some people are required to use M$ware due to company policy you know...
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
There are two things to point out about my 650 mhz Win2K Professional system:
;)
- Its mostly stable, good enough to be given the name as a decent OS.
- Its about as slow as my 300mhz Win98 machine at home.
I see it that we've sacrificed speed for stability. Of course I hardly boot to windows anyways, so none of this really matters to me
I've got 256MB ram on my work PC (Win2K, 650) and 128 on my home pc (Win98/RH, Dual 300).
As far as servers, at work we run 3x(dual 500 xeon 1GB RAM) one for pdc, bdc, and exchange
This is just the point: You have to have unique servers for anything in Windows. One server for IIS, one for MSQL, one for Exchange... Blah, blah...
Unix can handle all of these reliably on one box. And you don't reboot if you want to install a new component/modify a configuration. It just works!
The time this saves me alone makes it worthwhile. Add the cost of the hardware not required, and even my boss is convinced.
Well, let's add another perspective of this. At General Motors, we've used a traditionally Unix-based CAD/CAM/CAE system known as Unigraphics
:).
:)
Recently Unigraphics Solutions ported UG to Win32. Thus, there has been a recent move, both internally and externally to GM, to move to Windows NT and Windows 2000 as the CAD/CAM/CAE platform of choice.
Why? #1 reason is that it is supposed to be somehow "cheaper." Sure, an average Unix CAD workstation costs, what? $30-40K (U.S.)? Versus a Wintel CAD workstation of about $10-15K. Sounds good right?
Wrong. GM is learning the Total Cost of Ownership lesson the hard way. Sure, the workstation is cheaper. Is the software license cheaper? No. Is the cost of UG designer any cheaper? Of course not. Is the cost of system administration cheaper? Not at first...while NT sysadmins typically make less than their Unix counterparts, until the system is completely migrated over (which will take AT LEAST 3-5 years), GM and its suppliers have to have BOTH types of admins. And they have to support Unix-NT connectivity issues, such as the above mentioned Samba issues (they call it "CIFS" because they don't want nnyone to know they're violating their own systems administration policy by using "freeware"! )
First off, we're in the middle of porting GM's customizations to Unigraphics (known internally as the PDL or externally as the "GM Supplier Toolkit"). This has costed HUNDREDS, possibly THOUSANDS of man-hours. And now they're doing pilots. And in the pilots the designers are finding Windows 2000 to be far less stable than Unix (we're talking HP-UX 10.20 and Slowlaris 7 here), having to reboot the stupid things AT LEAST daily. If a guy decides he's going to save once and hour, and 59 minutes into the job he crashes, that's nearly an hour's worth of work he has lost! I've witnessed this phenomenon personally. Windows 2000 crashes more than HP-UX or Slowlaris. I can't REMEMBER the last time any of the Unix boxes were booted in my building (I could always issue an uptime command to find out, I suppose
(BTW--we didn't experience the printing problems with samba, because we are going with Unix servers, running Windows 2000 clients for our pilot...samba seems to work great if it is acting as the PDC).
Fortunately, there are rumours flying around about a Linux port of unigraphics. Maybe GM management will use the same logic (cheaper is better) and invest in Linux.
My journal has hot
Mate, you should be forced to print this out and shove it up your arse. Let's have a look at this, shall we?
Badly written software crashes Win2k? Badly written software should crash itself. If I fsck up on FreeBSD I get a core dump I can trawl through at the exact moment of the crash. Nothing else notices. NOTHING. I run through a secure terminal to a remote machine all the time. No problem. I write network software that runs in the background at ~40Mbit/s. No problem. An operating system's job is to protect all the other stuff from fsck ups.
With the possible exception of Win3.1
Badly written drivers? Yeah, there's not a lot you can do about this. The stock MS CD driver is what causes our win2k box to bin out.
All Netscape/Real products? HELLO?? Do you not, maybe, think that these people are competitors to Microsoft? Perhaps, perchance, this is a deliberate ploy... Do you really thing Microsoft got to be this much of a monopoly by playing fair?
And finally, "significant experience with Windows 2000". I saw it was a microsoft.com link and was expecting maybe an MVP? Perhaps one of the development team? At very least a marketroid pretending to be a sysadmin? No. A twat. Playing games. At 45FPS on a GeForce. Using 340 Meg.
Unfortuately ShootOnSight.com appears to be taken, or the world would be blessed with a new website.
Seriously. Post it again. The whole post. Put it in the root thread to see what happens.
Just don't go near any computer networks.
Dave
Hang on, is this a troll? Nah.
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
An Ultra-virtualized hell? WTF is one of those then?
:)
Hell is COM in MFC. Don't believe me? Try it.
Dave
Mind you, "code for X - envy the dead" still has a certain ring to it.
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
.doc -> StarOffice5.2. Surprisingly good (disclaim: only use windows version).
:)
Photoshop -> will gimp do it? Otherwise, fair enough.
VC++ -> Kdevelop rocks. Give it a go.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
The only serious thing I have used Win2k for was an MP3 player at work. Bitch to install. Completely failed to recognise an s3 videocard. 95% of ripping software wouldn't run (complaining about ATAPI or something). The network browser thing doesn't appear to browse the lan correctly. It has blue screened twice in a month and then shown some dire warning about how the drive may have shit it.
:)
Apart from that, yeah, I guess it's pretty.
For my stuff I use NT4 workstation and run the excellent finnish X server on it (http://www.labf.com/) that costs but is worth every penny. Then real work can take place on three FreeBSD4 boxen.
And this whole 'crap' software thing, by which I take it you mean stuff that doesn't come with a holographic label and draconian licencing agreement. For gods' sake. The entire mission statement for Win2k is to further leverage the microsoft monopoly into selling other products - office, IE, media player, IM, some shit we haven't though of yet... You're just falling for it, man.
Best tool for the job. Speech-free, beer-free or for pay, just get on with your work.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
Hrm.. And lets think where all these not-so-rocket-scientists have gotten us.. Wander around Attrition.org and check out the defacement mirrors. Then look at the stats. These stats are the product, not of an insecure OS, but of the bootcamp MCSE's and generally undereducated people running them.
Both BSD/*nix and NT get compromised. And it's almost always the administrators fault. Unless some new cracker group has discovered a sploit and you're the guinea pig, every sploit is documented. Every one has either a solution or a workaround. It's in the administrators hands.
And we see what happens when we try to say "Oh, we don't need to spend a lot on a sysadmin, we have an easy OS with low TCO." Well, lets take a look at where it got us.
I installed Windows 2000 Professional about 2 months ago, and it worked fine for awhile. It was as stable as NT4.0, but recently it's started crapping out on me, just like every other version of Windows. So nothing has changed. And nothing will change as long as they keep building more crap on top of an unstable base.
In case you're wondering, the only reason I have Win2k installed at all is for 3D Studio, Painter, etc.
--
How do you force non-ACPI on install? I really don't like 6 devices sharing the one interrupt, especially considering one of those devices is the MPG decoder card, and another is the SCSI drive hosting the DVD...
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
"From a user's stand point Linux is now no more difficult to get around in than windows" Oh please! You can't be serious. Talking about FUD. You should spend some time with real users, the type that does not even know how to handle a mouse.
...and if my employees are going to find any games to play on the install, I'd rather it be nethack than Solitaire.
From the implied strawman that linux users in business are just going to be handed a Slackware 7 CD and be told "go to it", sure. This isn't the case with windows in that market. All computers need initial set-up, and if your linux (or windows) sysadmin isn't smart enough to make a template user system and clone it at setup, then you hired the wrong guy.
I challenge anyone to provide evidence that Windows 2K is any more user friendly for what Joe End User needs, which is e-mail and web browsing, and in some cases perhaps one specific other application, than is a cluefully set up Gnome/KDE environment. (No, I don't think they're equivalent either, but I want to avoid making coals for people to walk on -ed)
-- -mrex
There are plenty of young Unix/Linux techies also. The six-digit income staff are managing larger facilities -- and if those larger facilities happen to be running Unix, maybe there's a reason for it. I'm also aware of large facilities using MS products, but they require much larger support staff than a Unix facility -- if nothing else, the MS staff are kept busy pointing, clicking, and reloading machines.
Less than once a day is almost never? *boggle*
IHBT? Oops.
That wasn't so hard. When people say things like "that's like comparing apples and oranges!" it makes me crazy.
They're rejecting a simple quality comparision, telling you the difference is instead in kind. Usually a response to an inappropriately simple "which is better?" question.
By saying "it's like apples and oranges", they express that the answer is largely subject to individual tastes and requirements, as one's preference for apples or oranges would be. It rejects direct and general value comparison, not qualitatively contrasting descriptions.
This has been a public service announcement from The Straight-Faced Pedant, long may he blather on.
--------
However, it is possible in the NT model to have apps "customize various aspects of [their] behavior" on a per-user basis. Under "winroot, Profiles, username, Application Data" progs can save settings that get merged into the registry (I think) when the user logs in. That being said, almost no windows apps take advantage, possibly for the sake of running on 95/8. As I check my system, only Microsoft, Rational, and MKS put anything there, and I have the whole world installed.
Try looking under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ for the user-specific section of the registry. User-specific data storage is a different (and much newer) mechanism, so it hasn't garnered much 3rd party support yet.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
how much easier it is to configure an NT system than, say, Linux
Please define "easier".
For _ME_ (and probably a whole lot of people here) "easier" means: simple configuration that works, and does consumes little time.
Now, today, I just spent 3 hours trying to configure a network card under Windows98. (Yes, I know this is not W2K, but the methodology is the same.)
It consisted of installing the drivers, removing the drivers, tweaking driver configuration options via a GUI, tweaking OS configuration options via a GUI, finding and downloading older versions of the driver (in case there is a problem with the newest rev.) and installing them, lather, rinse, repeat.
In the end, I gave up - it just couldn't be done.
Now, configuring this network card under linux consisted of typing the following command:
# modprobe tulip
# ifconfig eth0 192.168.30.4
Now, which was easier? Granted, there was no pretty GUI, but GUI != easy.
For the uninitiated, a GUI can be easier to navigate, but if the stuff doesn't work the first time, you're just screwed - a command line is EASIER.
I dont' recall saying he was a friend. :)
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Both win2k and Linux are operating systems. They provide services and run software. Which one is better depends entirely upon which services you want to provide and what software you want to run.
In general, if you're setting up a server, go with Linux or *BSD. If you're setting up a desktop/workstation, go with Win2k. Linux and the BSD's are excellent server OS's, win2k is an excellent desktop OS.
There are of course situations where you'd want a win2k server or a linux/BSD desktop. But you're going to have to know something about all these systems and know what you're trying to accomplish before you can evaluate which one would do the better job in that situation. In short, there are no simple answers except "It depends."
Someone mentioned not running Netscape on win2k. Netscape is all I run. Has it crashed? Of course. Has it crashed the OS, no. If it did that would be an indication of a problem in win2k, not netscape. Everyone knows that netscape crashes. Why it crashes is another question.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Bull. They may feel like that when they buy the license, but they quickly find that the phone support is useless and Microsoft is just as hard as everthing else. It may have a pretty GUI to point-n-click through, but a fat lot of good that does when clicking Okay causes "VBScript Error 10234: Expected CallScratchMyButtWithAStick and saw CallGagMeWithASpoon at line 143." I did a lot of work with these small companies once upon a time, and I might still be interested in doing it if they were running Linux and I could reach their boxes by modem or SSH in the event of most problems.
"Nothing was broken, and it's been fixed." -- Jon Carroll
And don't even get me started on sendmail: its configuration files look more cryptic than perl. Trying to get things to work properly, I ended up with a hack that accidentally caused cron to send its messages to the admin of my ISP rather than me.
If w2k has similar problems, that just goes to confirm the theory that All OSes Suck. I'm all for complaining about windows, but I wouldn't hold up linux as a beacon of non-suckiness.
s/useless/not usable/g
For the purposes of this discussion, they're exactly the same. Linux could probably serve most, if not all, of the functions of our SCO server, yeah. I know that, you guys know that, and our support guys probably know that too. But, as hard as it is for you to grasp, newsgroups and mailing lists just don't cut it for "support options" in the Real World, and maybe where you work it's different, but in most places, there is no such thing as a vital system without a support contract.
I can maintain it, yes. And any yahoo who's hacked together a linux box before could support anything I implement. Hell, if I documented it correctly and had all the right tools installed, my boss could do it. (And she's not even a techie, she's just the treasurer.)
As I said before, if I could get away with it, I'd have our firewall up and running on one of the spare 486's and an install of BSD in maybe a week. It just won't get past a single level of review without any real support.
You can sit and whine all day "You can too use linux!" like a 5-year-old who isn't getting things exactly the way he wants. That doesn't change the fact that there are situations where you just plain can't use it, even if -- technically speaking -- it is, indeed, a viable solution.
P.S. Yeah, I know I haven't really explained *why*. There is no why. If there was, I'd gladly write volumes about it. This is one of those things that you (and I and everyone else) just has to accept. You and I know that email and usenet support would be just fine, but management will never believe it. Management needs to pay for things to feel secure about it, and above all, they need to be able to point their fingers at something.
Disclaimer: My views are not necessarily the views of my employer. (In fact, it looks like they're the opposite here)
--
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
Linux is useless without a support contract. Examples: We're going to put a firewall in shortly to guard our main server from the rest of the WAN (specifically, the high school, but everywhere else too). I'd love to do this with a 486 running linux or BSD, as we can get both easily and/or freely. But if I can't get outside support for it, it'll be *really* hard for me to get that approved. Sure, maybe *I* can support it, but what if it's still there when I leave? Then what?
Or another example: We need to implement some central file storage in my building. There's only 50 or so users, so frankly, an old box running Win95 could do the job if it had a big enough hard drive. We've got plenty of space on the (SCO Unix) server, though, so I figure I'll use that. But will I be doing it with Samba? Nope. Much as I'd love to, I'm going with one of SCO's tools instead. Why? Well, we can get support for that. (Okay, so it makes my job easier too...but my original plan *was* Samba)
One thing's for sure, though. There will never be an NT box in my building as long as I'm here. I share duties with the town's other sysadmins sometimes, and they all run NT...I'm not gonna deal with their headaches. Whatever NT can do, my SCO box can do better =)
--
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
As for those production Linux/BSD boxes...mind giving me some company names? I'd be making a hell of a lot more working for them than I do now, and from the sounds of it, I'd like it better.
--
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
I use it because it's just good enough is the excuse people use to run Windows 95. Why bother with an OS that doesn't take full advantage of your hardware? Why pay $200 for a graphics card and be limited to the $170 that your OS uses? SDL isn't comparable to DirectX (I've used both, trust me)(SVGAlib isn't even in the same league given that it doesn't offer hardware acceleration) OpenGL is falling behind Direct3D, OpenAL isn't even ready yet, and nobody uses it yet. Overall, multimedia on Linux is pretty pathetic. I mean you can say, "ok, it's good enough for me," but I judge the quality of something benchmarked against the best product available in that catagory. Right now, NT is the best product available in the multimedia OS catagory. Sure you may be able to run MAME in Linux, but the point is that you'll be able to run it FASTER in NT.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
NT may take longer to boot (not appriably though) but it runs faster. DirectX blits faster than SDL, windows scroll smoother in NT than in KDE2 or GNOME, menus pop up faster, apps take less time to load (than in KDE2 and GNOME at least, regular X apps are pretty fast) and 3D runs faster.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Netscape's code is sh*t on every platform!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
TW, Linux has great multimedia support. Okay, okay, let me explain. I have a Matrox G400, and the hardware
:)
acceleration is *sweet*. Also, my SB Live Value is just excellent, I love the hardware mixing, the multiple DSP's... I
installed ALSA and now the MIDI patches ("soundfonts") work too, and they sound good.
>>>>>>
Wrong. Linux doesn't have DirectX, as such, it's multimedia support by definition cannot compare with that of Windows. Not a flame, think about it. Most consumer hardware is designed for DirectX. Aside from idiot companies (ATI!) most manufacturers expose all the hardware's features through DirectX. While alternative APIs can take advantage of these features, rarely-used, or difficult to implement things always get left behind. Right now, Windows still has the fastest 3D hardware acceleration, and on NVIDIA cards (the only ones that offer competitive Linux drivers) Windows is still a good bit faster than Windows. In the tests where Linux was close to Windows, Linux had an unfair advantage. Apparently, the cool new speed-ups in the Detonator3 drivers were already in the Linux/X4 drivers. Thus, Linux 3D is close, but on cigar. As for sound, Linux is a distant second to Windows. ALSA still doesn't offer as many features as DirectSound, and all transistors on your EMU10K1 chip used for 3D sound are totally wasted in Linux. So, Linux lacks great 3D acceleration, great audio acceleration, and lacks 3D sound and force-feedback all together. How can it possibly have "great multimedia support?"
It's all about picking supported hardware, though, which you still have to do for Win2K, as well. My DVD drive isn't supported, because I (a) couldn't find much information about that on the net, and (b) just bought it first, figuring I'd test it out later. I'll probably ask the developers about this, since it works under Windows. I've heard it can be made to work under VMWare too, so all I really need is some debugging info.
>>>>>>>>
You have to choose the correct HW on Windows as well, but you've got more to choose from. On Windows, if I want great 3D acceleration, I can pick any number of cards from ATI to Matrox to NVIDIA to 3DFX (ugh!) On Linux, I'm pretty much limited to Matrox and NVIDIA (not 3DFx with X4.0)
Plus support for multi-processing makes it even better. Now, I don't have more than one processor, but I might set up
a dual-proc test box if I can ever find an old board for it. However, I've seen it done on Linux, and it is sweet. No paying extra for a different version that just consists of a stupid registry hack, either. It has decent multi-processing support out of the box. And I'd love to see a comparison to Win2K here, since that's one thing that's supposed to be
better in 2.4.
>>>>>>>>>
Huh? Win2K Pro has SMP out of box. There IS no single proc limited version of Win2K.
How about that, eh, guys? Something based around Linux Kernel 2.4.0 with a bunch of stable stuff, vs. Win2KSP1, or whatever is current and patched by then. Test multi-processing, test well-supported hardware, RAID, whatever. Just test the hell out of it.
>>>>>>
Windows would win a lot of the tests. The benefits of Linux aren't so much in raw benchmarks but in overall quality. Sure Windows may win total TCP/IP throughput scores, but it will probably crash under high load. Sure the FS may be able to transfer more date through the system (though I don't think NTFS is faster than ext2) but will it do that consistantly, or in spurts? Also, anything that taps DirectX will totally blow Linux away, since a DirectX application can for the most part be considered seperate from the underlying OS. (Especially since Win2K allows DirectX direct hardware access.)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
First, one question: do you think BeOS has great multimedia support? Heck, it doesn't even play ;)
DVD's!
>>>>
I never said it did. I don't have a DVD drive, so what do I care? When I go trumpeting BeOS as the be-all end-all multimedia OS, then take me to task for it. However, In Be's defense, I have to say the MediaKit blows away anything I've ever seen in the multi-media arena.
Windows and Linux and MacOS all have SDL.
>>>>>
SDL is just a wrapper.
It supports DirectX on Windows, and DGA on X,
which is the equivalent.
>>>>
DGA on X is equivalent to DirectX? Where's the 3D Audio API in DGA? Or maybe you mean DGA is comparable to DirectDraw? (Which still isn't totally true, show me the DGA API that allows me to change the screen-res.) DirectDraw is just a small part of DirectX.
The tests I saw for 3D acceleration didn't differ by much; it's way fast for me, even for Q3A. My speakers can't even take advantage of 3D sound decently, and I think I saw patches for all that stuff, but I really don't care yet. However, Linux *does* have great 3D
acceleration, and the audio stuff is in hardware! Maybe our definitions of great differ, but the actual
performance I'm seeing is pretty impressive. And I'm not saddened that I don't have 'force-feedback' on my Gravis Gamepad, I don't know of any games that support it, and I thought it was a dumb idea on the Playstation!
>>>>
Your arguement boils down to "I see no need for it so It's not important."
Fact> Linux 3D is slower than WindowsNT 3D. The tests showed it close (but significantly slower at high res) but they were skewed due to driver differences (I'm talking about the NVIDIA drivers.)
Fact> My speakers, and many other people's DO support 3D sound well. For these people, Linux multi-media is sub-par. Fire up Half-Life with an A3D card. It totally kicks ass and the 3D sound adds a lot to the game.
Fact> Half the hardware on my sound card goes wasted when I'm in Linux.
Fact> If you're impressed with Linux audio, take a look at DirectSound. You'd faint.
Fact> Force feedback is a dumb idea. The mere fact that you're comparing it to PS (which is just a vibrator) shows you've never used it. For certain games (racing games) it's awesome. And a LOT of game support force-feedback.
Yeah, Windows has more hardware support; that's because Microsoft doesn't have to write *ALL*
the drivers. This situation is changing of course, and I like being able to poke around with the
source code, but it'll take a while for this one to change--the corporate culture can be pretty
entrenched about these things.
>>>>>
Corporate culture aside, MS still does have more hardware support. Excuses are excuses, and drivers are actual stuff that you can base an arguement on.
There are many different limited versions of Win2K. I don't care if it supports 2 processors out of
the box, or what the configuration-of-the-week is; the bottom line is, Microsoft will always sell you
the same product for much more by just making a minor registry tweak so you get the "new
features", and I'm fundamentally opposed to that, because it's stupid; just as stupid as CPUs and
overclocking, nowadays.
>>>>>>>>>>.
Overlocking is not stupid if the consumer is the one doing it. Getting 100MHz for free by doing a little jumper manipulation? Adjusting voltages to get that perfect stability plateu? Hacking at it's finest!
Well, I'd like to see the results of the tests before I draw my conclusions; you may be right. But if I
did the tests, and one platform consistently crashed under certain conditions, I'd note that and put
it in my review; that's NOT a feature.
>>>>>>>>>
Windows is unstable compared to Linux. True. However, WindowsNT easily has a week or two of uptime, and for most gamers or multimedia people that's enough. They reboot their machines every night (Unless they're doing a rendering or something, and WindowsNT can usually handle that.) They don't install wierd software. (Hell RealPlayer flaky on BeOS and Linux too, it's not a Windows-specific problem.) For the average gamer, crashing is not an issue. A game being playable at one res setting higher on one OS (generally, you can play Quake on Windows at one res higher than you can in Linux) IS an issue.
Another benefit of Linux is the multitude of configuration options. Given the time and resources,
I'd love to just benchmark Linux against itself! That is to say, configure one box with a standard
kernel, OSS, ext2, XFree86 3.3.6, and a couple of IDE drives, and then configure another box with
an optimized kernel, ALSA, reiserfs, XFree86 4.0.1, software RAID... well, in any case benchmark
all the components against each other, and find out what the fastest, most stable Linux
configuration is for a given hardware configuration. That isn't as straightforward in NT, because
there aren't that many configuration options, and many of them aren't obvious or readily available.
>>>>>
Huh?
A) DGA is nothing compared to DirectDraw.
B) Given good driver writers (and Matrox ain't one of them) a Windows driver is rock solid. My system has a NVIDIA card and NT 4. I started out with the Detonator drivers months ago and it has yet to crash. In fact, my life in Windows-land has been pretty happy. If your Windows system is all buggy and crashy, get some NVIDIA and Creative-Labs hardware, an Intel, Asus, or Abit mobo, and a K7 or Intel chip and everything should be peachy. The idea is to be quality hardware from quality manufacturers. If you do, you enjoy not only good stability, but the increased performance of drivers that are "closer to the metal."
---
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Maybe because the only decent OS for 3D is Windows? Maybe because he does Windows development. Maybe he is a DTP guy and needs Photoshop and Quark XPress. (though you'd probably use a Mac in that case.) Maybe he likes having a stable web-browser. Maybe he is an AOL user? Being smart does mean hating Windows. If you're smart, you use what suits you best, not what you need to feel elite. Linux is good, but there are many tasks for which Windows is just better suited, and to think otherwise is just deluding yourself.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
My experience: install Realplayer.
That takes down Win2k server 75% of the times I run it. I don't know what Win2k pro makes of it.
The fact that it is even possible to take down an OS that is meant to be a serious server OS is beyond me.
If anyone is looking for a really perplexing challenge, try to set up a really useful 2000 server for routing and remote access. I don't honestly think it could be any more of a nonsensical process. If you would like to use it for NAT, I hope you are prepared to rip every last hair out of your head. On the other hand, you could probably accomplish the same task with a floppy disk install of linux in about five minutes. My point? Just as you probably should use a crow bar instead of a big flat head screwdriver to pull boards from a floor, you should probably use the right tools for the job at hand. Basically, what MS has done with 2000 server routing and remote access is tried to make it simple enough that anyone could set it up... Yet they have tried to put so many features into a GUI that is just obscenely complex and proves to be an extreme task to make it work right. (My opinion) You should probably know what you are doing anyhow before you attempt to set up a router. Or at least be willing to learn. Windows 2000 server DNS is about the same, although I did actually manage to get that one working... Once again, a Unix DNS would have been simpler. This is my contribution to a comprehensive comparison...
Russian Russian Russian RussianDollSig DollSig DollSig DollSig
The only MS telnetd ever provided was a beta one in a 4.0 resource kit, that they clearly said to use at your own risk and never provided support for. If you can affirm you story with usage of the 2k telnet daemon, I'd be interested, but otherwise, those of us who have 4.0 in *production* environments really won't find it relevant
matt
Actually we can't format it, MS won't let us.. It was part of the agreement.. =] We agreed upon, for a free version of Win2kAS, we'd run it on one of our machines, and put 2 MS logo's on our main webpage. It's amusing, our Linux/PHP machine says the site was created by and maintained in Front Page.. =]
We do use FP for our BSD box we have at an APT complex, and that is good to us. The setup was much easier and the administration was part of the setup, so I don't mind. I also don't have to fight with file permissions that Win2k seems to mysteriously change on us. That causes problems with people 1.) Trying to connect to the FP web, and 2.) people trying to overwrite files when they update them. Give me Unix file permissions anyday...
Just a few comments, I'd like to make on your good points:
I didn't mean to come off as saying FP needs to be installed use to FP Extensions. I just don't understand why I can't administer the FP extensions right inside IIS with a FP-enabled web. That's the main reason I think the FP admin tool included with 2000 is silly. No real other reason.. =]
As for AD, you are correct, but lucky I can say I didn't origionally setup the box, I just had to make it work.. =] AD isn't setup by default, and many people won't need it, as it's a bit of overkill for internet server applications.
I'm actually not inexperienced with 2000, I've been running it for over 6 months now (Okay, so that's not *really* a long time =]) and I've used and abused Professional, Server, and Advanced Server. I'd also be interested in knowing about your drive config. We have a RAID/Mirror setup, on some old old SCSI drives which aren't the fastest things in the world.
I tried to make my post unbiased, and I see that I have failed, but I didn't mean to come off sounding like Win2k is crap. It's far from being crap, but it's not my cup of tea. And that's my opinion, which I don't believe I gave until my physical analysis was complete.
While it's true that there are a lot of paper MCSEs out there, not all MCSEs are idiots, and it's not fair to say that they are. I HATE windows - if I use windows, I start getting this deep frustration... yet I will soon be an MCSE. Computers are more than a hobby to me, I'd like to make it my profession. Does MCSE certification invalidate a PhD in computer science? Stop being so silly - Windows is popular with business, and if you're going to work in the technology industry, although not all jobs require it, it helps to know what you're working with, even if you hate it.
I realize that the original poster made only a slight anti-mcse comment, but already there are responces reinforcing it. It's counter productive.
I wrote an Opinion piece on the great Windows 2000 versus Linux debate a couple of months ago. Basically, for those who don't want to follow the link, I said that Microsoft has for the first time in its existence actually released an operating system. Everything that preceded W2K (with the possible exception of SCO Xenix, to which Microsoft made a significant contribution) has been a hack upon a bogosity upon a program loader--albeit, one that captured the market needs, and which has been wildly successful. As someone who has worked professionally with computer operating systems since 1978, I have seen that there are certain fundamental requirements within data center operations for stability, security, reliability, manageability flexibility and maintainability. In fact, the key word here is "ability"-- and without those abilities, IT professionals are prevented from delivering a high standard of service to end-users. For the first time, Microsoft has really come out with a product that meets those needs, and for that I applaud them. Fore more, follow the link.
--
Paul Gillingwater
Paul Gillingwater
MBA, CISSP, CISM
If you go in to buy a car, and the salesman adds an extra $1000 to the price, and proceeds to spout "it's nothing compared to yada yada yada" . . ask him to give it up. Point out that if he/she really thinks the price differance is "nothing" then he/she won't mind removing it from the purchase price.
It will force said person to conceed that it IS real money when it's coming out of HIS pocket, and he/she will be forced to conceed that it's just a s real when it's coming out of MINE.
If an MS rep. who is trying to tell you his ms solution is better and starts spouting "but that price differance is nothing compared to TCO" ask him to put his money where his argument is. Point out that THE BUYER is the one making the larger investment in paying skilled people to deploy and maintain the system, and if THE BUYER is making the sizable investment, and that the purchase price is really nothing, then he won't mind waiving it.
If he is willing to put his money where his argument is, continue to listen to the argument. If not, thank him for his time, and move on to another solution.
from this shop.ms site: .and it's an Upgrade? They want me to buy and older version that THEN pay them another 10 grand for *this???
Microsoft® SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition English Competitive Version Product Upgrade North America CD 1 Processor License CD-ROM $9,999.00 .
Zero dollars.
0.
Null set.
Not even one Franc.
Zilch.
Not one thin dime.
Bupkiss.
Not one Dinar.
Zippo.
No charge.
Not even one Kuna.
Like sex, it's better when it's free.
No cost.
Not one Krone.
Just take it.
Not one Punt.
Deploy it on an many boxes as you want.
No jack.
Bukoo nada.
Not one Rupiah.
I said, you can just take it.
Not one Shilling.
Not one Kroner.
Sure, there are users who are totally clueless. But we're not talking about those users, we're talking about people who are competent enough to get hired as a sysadmin. And in this context, Linux isn't really much more difficult to admin than NT. Easier in my opinion, but that depends on how you look at it.
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
It's not about the new features of W2K (those are client programs that can be add to any OS), it is about OS architecture, and that hasn't change much since NT 4.0 NT has evolved from a WINDOWING ENVIRONMENT for CLIENT devices. Even the latest and greatest NT "server" uses calls to the windowing system for inter-process communication. This is why it is often lagging in the area of scalability. The windowing system is an embedded part of NT. It gets in the way of server-oriented processes, as would be found with HNM.
That's not the case. It's like a config file on Unix: if you have the discipline to sort out what needs to be in /etc and what needs to be in ~/.appconfig it all works fine.
KEY_CURRENT_USER is equivalent to ~, in the virtual file system analogy.
There was a case where a compiler vendor got it wrong, and the result was you had to be in the Local Administrators group to change the compiler options.
They refused to accept a bug report on this: "why would anyone other than an administrator need a compiler anyway?"
>or TCP/IP?
Are you sure? I just wrote a win32 TCP/IP app on Win2000 and had to use window handles and recieve messages.
I'm not sure it is a reason for bad performance (if indeed the performance is bad), but the windows and message queue model definitely permeates all of Win32 programming.
"I dont know: whats easier, adding stability to Windows, or adding hardware support and UI to linux?"
I'll counter this with a Pearl Of Wisdom (tm) I heard about optimisations.
"It's easier to make a correct program run quick, than it is to make a quick program run correctly"
Ditto the story about the shop with the in-house misson-critical app that would crash on occasion. Despite having the source, they couldn't fix it & hired an external consultant to help. He was given the original code, went through it and rewrote it from scratch over the weekend. When showing it to the other developers who were unable to get the original version to work, the head developer said "But your program takes a second per transaction, while mine only takes one one hundredth of a second." To which the consultant replied "Yes, but my program works. If it doesn't have to work, I can get it to run in zero time and take up zero resources"
Two points being:
1) I think GNU/Linux (plus the other free OSs) have the easier task.
2) I think they did the right thing from the beginning anyway. I'd rather have something that does a few things well that something else that does a lot of things poorly.
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
Beautiful! Use the negative eperiences of bogus upgrades and feature adds of Microsoft to scare people. It's so bogus. Linux will be, if it is not already, easier to administer. From a user's stand point Linux is now no more difficult to get around in than windows. The only thing you've got right is the pain that's been inflicted on MS users and administrators.
Sorry bud, the days of shrink wraped software are numbered. People are tired of getting burnt by the whole MS set up where IT really can't fix the problem because they don't have the source. Open Source software prommises to be more stable, easier to fix and honest. The model of real consultants selling their time and knowledge to solve real problems is just better.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The software is targeted at businesses and vs. Oracle 8i and IBM's DB2, Microsoft SQL Server not only is much cheaper but according to the Transaction Processing Performance Council tests performs comparably.
This software is targeted at businesses that routinely pay tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars for software. Not college kids who want a DB to host their guestbook application.
What was the purpose of your post besides displaying your ignorance?
(-1 Troll)
Does a company who cares so very little about security belong in your server room?
And I thought Linux fanatics were beyond FUD.
Stop blaming Microsoft for your virus woes. If ILoveYou came into your computer and trashed it - too bad, that's not M$'s fault.
And billions were not lost to ILoveYou or any other program like it.
The only reason this hasn't yet happened with Linux desktops is, well, there aren't nearly as many Linux desktops because there's no standardized desktop distro (see prior post) and no common e-mail software for any desktop environment. OK, Netscape 4.7 maybe. But the guys at DigiCrime could show you how to do these things to Netscape and maybe write a Javascript trojan, and even circumvent the "sandbox".
Use Evolution instead of Outlook? Bewa
Linux already supports power management. I have it working on both of my IBM thinkpad laptops. I haven't bothered to get it working on my desktop, because it is running Linux...so why would I turn it off...but I do have it shut down the video and hard disks to save power.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
What about if you're a small startup, and should be spending money on other things than a big pile of servers? Or a nonprofit organization, which REALLY has better ways to spend their money?
Conversely, I could argue that I can buy 2 machines, one a little overpowered for the job, one a little underpowered (in the interests of budgetary concerns). I set up mon, fake, etc., and run all my services on the better machine...the smaller machine automatically takes over for it if it goes down, and sends me an email.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
#2 -- Use a journaling filesystem. I think that NT has one of those, while Linux does not use one by default (yet!). There are, however, no less than 4 available.
#3 -- When I install an application, I want to type "apt-get install foo", and have it check for dependencies, automatically fetch everything, and install it (as long as I OK any extra stuff that it finds it needs). I do not want to have to find the app, download it, unzip it, install it, reboot, remove the icons that it placed uninvited all over my menus and desktop...
#4 -- Yuck. Sorry, but I prefer E to everything else...more below...
#5 -- My roomates and I have rather large MP3 collections (yes, legal!), and we export them via NFS (behind a firewall!), so that we don't have to have any duplicates, and can play anything from anywhere in the house, any time. The machines need to be up for that...not to mention the web/mail servers we run.
#7 -- I grew up on Windows...I was excited when '98 was announced, and, umm, "aquired" Beta3 and sung it's praises to all my friends. But after using Linux for a while, there's no contest in my mind any more. I simply find that I can have the environment set up much more to my liking, and get things done more quickly and easily.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Windows 2000 ... delivers the same level of DirectX support.
Windows 2000 simply does not yet have the quality of video drivers that Windows 98 has. Its video drivers run in kernelspace (rather than rootspace/userspace as on *N?X) and can bring down the system, and many display adapters are not yet supported at all higher than 16 colors.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
Well, wait a minute. I said it had a "real" directory service, not a "good" one.
... what? Yp? NIS?
There are severe limitations with AD, which I guess I should have pointed out. But the bottom line is that it 1) uses DNS as its naming scheme, and 2) does away with the crazy transitive trust issues that plagued NT 4 (yes, you can still implement transitive trusts with AD if you are a masochist, but they are not required in most normal situations... unlike NT 4, which more or less mandated them for 3+ domains).
The flat namespace is a backwards compatibility thing, and ugly. But I would still rather manage 60,000 users on 500 servers using Win2K + AD than Linux +
(not that I'd want to manage that scale of a W2K implementation, anyway, for other reasons... but at least it's not unthinkable, like NT4 was, due to lack of directory services).
NDS is still better. Heck, Banyan is better. But in the context of the original question, W2K is better than Linux here (today! No fair posting "But someone will port NDS...". This is a real-time question, not an ideal-world question).
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
My main gripe with M$ isn't overall stability of their OS, or their tendency to gouge (both of which are gripes, just not the main one..), but rather their apps' tendency to dictate style and content of what I try to do with them.
.. ;-)
..
I am forced to use an NT workstation at my day job, and every once in a while I have to try and type something up in Word. What I end up with is a constant battle with Word over how I should spell words (excuse me, Microsoft, but my *brain* has a larger dictionary than your spell checker does, and it's context sensitive and more fun to use..) or whether or not I want list items auto-numbered, or whether I can change margins, or a number of other little stylistic things. I know M$ likes to make their apps 'smart', but sometimes I think 'smart-assed' is more appropriate.
I think this is the real reason for a lot of the animosity towards Microsoft. There may be people out there clueless enough to need that much help, but I haven't met any yet. I'm sure I'm not the only person who really doesn't appreciate M$ apps nagging us about not conforming to their idea of the look and feel of a business letter, especially when we're typing up something other than a business letter. In some ways it even makes me miss vi
Seriously, though, stop telling the people who *know* how to use a computer how to use their computer, and don't force us to conform to your assumptions about what we're doing. Look around and you'll find Linux (and Mac OS, for that matter) are way ahead of you there
73 de N5VB (ex-KD5BIV) AR SK
I find it interesting how Windows keeps looking more and more like UNIX. What I mean by this is that Windows 2000 Server comes with a telnet server (does workstation? I haven't used it) a new telnet client that is much more like the telnet found on UNIX boxes. Other things like being able to mount partitions to directories rather than c:, d:, etc. too me just seem like they are trying to mimic UNIX functionality while still keeping the awkward administration interface. Maybe this is just their way to slowly change over to MicrosoftBSD? (I would have said Linux, but then they'd have to give away the source!)
I agree that Windows 2000 is vastly improved over it's predecessor, but it still should always boil down to what is the right tool for the job! If UNIX is what is right, use it. If Windows does a better job for something then use it.
I just set up software mirroring with Win2K server. Just click to make the disk dynamic, and then click again to add a mirror. I'd still never use Win2K as a real server though. I like to know everything that's running on a system, Windows has too much backdoor and hidden crap in it.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
I'd love to use Windows to administrate a large array of unix servers. Similarly to having checkpoint running on a freebsd box, with a windows administration tool, but wouldn't it be great to have a nice clean gui (no X-windows crap), which can add users, set file permissions, administrate webservers, etc. When I deploy my unix servers, X-windows isn't even installed on the boxes, for efficiency, security, and reliability. Now if we could get Windows and unix to work hand in hand... Ok, ok, I know it'll never happen.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
Sorry. I'll go now.
not_cub.
q='echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"';s=\';b=\\;echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"
Even in the very first section about cost, he point to "NT Lies: Lie #6 " to suggest that NT is overpriced. The NT article simply (and honestly) takes issue with the fact that NT server and workstation are virtually identical. There is no cost/benefit analysis.
His next sentence suggests NT is lacking because is doesn't provide features common in unix systems, but they're not the things Microsoft's customers have been missing.
Then he points to a cost analysis by BSDI, hardly an objective source. You won't find him pointing to similar (yet somehow opposite) viewpoints on Microsoft's web server, like this page, and certainly not their imfamous linux myths page.
At least he points to an independent opinion of Maggie Biggs in his next sentence, but upon reading her article, it's obvious that she's comparing a (then unreleased redhat 5.0) to an unspecified NT system, for a fictional installation. Nothing more than guesswork, reporting that Redhat's new product might be. Maggie's opinion is shear speculation, and she doesn't hide that, but it's credible information when linked from John's paper?
I could go on and on, but one paragraph is plenty.
Well, I've been pretty critical of John Kirch's paper, even though I agree more or less with what it says. I like Linux and I've been using it regularily since 1994, shortly before the 1.0 kernel release, and I've used BSD, Sunos, and HPUX for years before that. I'm certainly biased towards unix/linux, and if I can get the impression the John's writing is heavily biased towards unix, it's gotta be pretty obvious!
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
I dont know: whats easier, adding stability to Windows, or adding hardware support and UI to linux?
Good question. The UI is something built into the system at a much higher level. This means that, programming-wise, a UI is far easier. However, hackers tend to have problems doing the part of the UI you actualy see, at least as far as your average users is concerned. This is why corperate funding thourgh the Gnome Foundation is very important to the future of Linux on the desktop: It gets rid of that achillies heal.
On the other hand, stability is something you have to deal with at a very low level; right down to places where you're using ASM in your kernel and libraries. This is a place where hackers rule. Microsoft started with a base system (DOS) that was OK for simple, single-user, single-tasking jobs at a command line. Then they started adding a GUI on top . . .
WinNT/Win2000 got rid of the DOS core. There was still some DOS functionality as of NT 4.0, but I beleive it was mostly removed for Win2000. In any case, it was put in more for backwards-compatibilty then anything else.
NT is also a microkernel, which means it naturaly has some extra overhead in it that Linux's monolithic kernel does not. The still-mostly-vapor GNU HURD is also a microkernel. If done properly, the extra overhead isn't that much. The question is, did Microsoft do it properly? I don't really know.
In any case, its much easier for hackers to create a stable and speedy core system, while difficult for them to make a good UI. On the other hand, its far easier for a corperate project to make a reasonably good UI, but diffcult to make a stable and speedy core system.
The good news for Linux is that we're not limited to using the hacker-meathod. Alredy the Gnome Foundation has been formed to make a great UI with lots of corperate funding. Also, don't forget Eazel, with some of the orginal MacOS UI guys working on a Gnome project. Whatever else you say about MacOS, it has a great UI.
This is very bad news for Microsoft, which is fine by me. Without turning entirely in the other direction, Microsoft has no way of harnessing the power of hackers to create a good core system, while the hackers have a way of harnessing the corperate-backed projects to create a good UI.
------
Not a typewriter
Before I even get into replying to this post of yours... Love the Sig! :)
Moving on to the subject at hand, let's get into the notion of what a Linux distro is. I'd hardly think of it as a set of standardized or even default tools. Heck, even the command line is a 3rd party add on (prefer Bash myself). Linux as an OS is a collection of these tools brought together to form a sum greater than it's parts. I'm not arguing if this is a good or bad thing, just attempting to describe what it is.
The point I was trying to get at is that all to often folks look at a default, straight off the CD installation as a criteria for comparison when talking about NT or Windows in general. In truth, you can no more do this with Windows then you can with Linux.
Administering a UNIX system, and doing complex things with it that the designers never explicitly planned for is a viable option out of the box. I don't think the same could be said for Windows.
This line starts into opening the door to a debate over which is more effecient: a monolithic or micorkernel approach to OS design. Even still, keeping this within the realms of this conversation I believe that Windows has done quite well in supporting all kinds of solutions that may very well not have been part of the MS master plan. For example, going back to Win 3.1 we can see all kinds of 3rd party support for providing Internet access to these boxes long before MS ever even got around to thinking TCP/IP. In all fairness, perhaps the weakest aspect to MS products in this regard is the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) for NT which didn't provide much growth room as we've seen.
The shareware and freeware community supporting the Windows platform is massive, and they are providing tons of really outstanding tools both for the desktops and the servers. Writing them off as trojan filled apps that you'd be insane to run is missing a far larger picture.
In comparison, the Unix community has a larger set of quality server side tools coming out of there. On the other hand, the desktop apps coming out of the shareware folks for Windows have been of much higher quality than what I've seen to date for the Unix boxes. Certainly the efforts going into KDE and Gnome development are looking to turn that tide. When or if that happens, I'll gladly change my views on this to fit what is going on, or at least my perception of it.
In the mean time, I'll continue to argue for fair and honest comparisons of OS merit. UI, kernel, networking, drivers, applications and tools should all be taken into account. If not, how else is Linux going to make a serious run at the desktop market?
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
Try renaming 1000 files of the sort a001.blah to b001.blah,...
...or converting 1000 GIFs to JPEGs, using point-and-click
Oooo, fun stuff. I've got on my NT system now a wonderful little shareware app called ReNameIt that handles just the kind of thing you're talking about. All GUI start to finish.
Once again to the shareware bin, right off the net and still warm PicaView from the folks that make ACDSee. PicaView is a really cool little add-on extension to File Explorer that provides a quick thumbnail of an image when right clicked on. In addition, it also has some cool features like image conversion.
To get this to play I start out in Explorer (the file one, not in ANY freaking way "enhanced" to be a freaking web browser) and select the parent dir of interest. Right click on it and do a find all in that dir and subs with a *.gif extension. Never taking my hand off the mouse, I select Edit-Select All which goes and hi-lites all the results. At this point I can review which files are to be affected, no matter how long the list. Once satisfied with my selections I right click again to bring up PicaView and tweak it's GUI settings. Click OK and it be off and running.
This is fun, can we play some more how-to's?
The thing that seems to get lost on folks heavily focused on the Unix world is that there is a wonderful set of tools out there for Windows in the free and shareware lands. Folks blast Windows and the larger companies that support it as "bloatware" because they're easy visible targets. What gets missed is all the very specific tools that are also out there to deal with specialized problems, just like with Linux.
To compare and contrast, take a tour of the NT and 98 regions of some of the major shareware sites out there as opposed to a site like Freshmeat. How many 0.1 versions of stuff do you suppose you'll find in one or the other? I've lost count of the times I got interested in a description of a Unix app, only to find that the feature points haven't been implemented past making an empty window for version 0.0.3 over a year ago. You just don't see that kinda stuff when out and about looking for Windows tools.
Take this as a troll if you wish, but from an end users perspective the shareware tools out there are some powerful stuff that should not be discounted simply because MS doesn't directly provide them.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
In unix land, anything equivalent to that 'license key invalid' dialog would be trackable back to a particular line in an rc file
r rentVersion\Run
u rrentVersion\Run
So what you're saying here is that you'd go and look in the various locations for where programs start up on boot. Fair enough. Why not do the same with that Windows install?
Places to look:
Legacy from DOS...
autoexec.bat
config.sys
Legacy from Win 3.1
win.ini
system.ini
Might be in the start menu
Programs-Startup
How about in the registry
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Cu
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\C
If this is NT, it might have gone in as a service, which is maintained from the Control Panel. On Win2k you get to it from the MMC.
Yes, I realize this doesn't help you any longer, but I wanted to get the point across here that things really can be tracked down under Windows. No, not all of these items are especially obvious without a healthy bit of prior knowledge. You could say the same for them rc scripts as well.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
I'd like to get USB and Direct X for NT... but I suspect Win2K is my only real choice.
And with that single sentence you have illustrated a point that I've been making to friends in the off-line world. The point being that Win2k is the best damn thing that could have happened to Linux. As someone who truely believes that MS really did a fine job with NT 4.0 for the desktop I didn't want Win2k, I freaking wanted NT 5.0. I wanted an upgraded HAL to support the new hardware out there, and wanted to see some work done to the network stack.
What MS decided to provide to folks like me instead was an 800meg minimum install that actually slowed down my existing apps, requires me to upgrade my hardware, and all for what? There isn't anything out for USB I need THAT badly. That, and the games that talk to OpenGL or Glide run noticeably faster than under DirectX.
Rant outta the way, let's swing this back around to some kinda point here. I'm just willing to bet there's a healthy market of folks out there not horribly unlike myself in how they feel about NT and Win2k. NT 4.0 may have another year or two worth of life left in it before hardware support is going to leave it entirely. MS has provided this wonderful gap in the market that Linux is nicely poised to fill in.
Mark my words, the death bell for Microsoft will not be rung by the Justice Department. When folks like Adobe and Macromedia starting porting their front line apps over to Linux you can just bet that the fat lady will be in the wings warming up.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
I run a dual celeron box... and I've managed to crash both windows2000 pro and debian
Important Hardware Tip:
When the processor starts to glow you may want to add a wee bit more cooling.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
Geesh, I thought the Slashcode automatically filtered subject lines like that. :) Since the moderators haven't gotten to ya yet... +2 Informative.
I do have one prob with one of your facts though.
people were running OS/2 as a server if that tells you the benchmark they had to beat
As I recall from that time frame, OS/2 was a non-entity. Novell were the folks to beat at the LAN and server markets. In addition, it's my understanding that NT and OS/2 came out of that joint project between MS and IBM that fell apart. Am I off on my facts?
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
What are you doing with the system?
Do you have any applications that you can only get on NT?
Do you have the staff to support the os of your choose?
As a webmaster who handles both the graphics and programming of the sites I work on I run a mixed NT and FreeBSD environment for development. These are on two PC's, not dual booting. Additionally, the FreeBSD box is not serving live to the Internet. Here's the breakdown.
NT: (only listing my web critical stuff)
HomeSite
DreamWeaver
PhotoShop
ImageReady
Illustrator
FTP Voyager
WinAmp (yes it's critical damn it!)
FreeBSD:
Apache
Samba
MySQL
PHP
Each and every app on the platform they perfom best on. Not a one of them is improved in any way shape or form by Win2k. No upgrades planned here, and still waiting for NT 5.0.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
And as a sysadmin you routinely download and run binaries from internet servers?
.*n.x you can do those, and more, with the standard command-line utilities.
Eeeyup.
Can you say 'trojan'
Can you say "trusted sources"? Yeah, if I was trying to pull warez down from binary newsgroups, than yeah I'd be in for some nasties. As it is, I'm sure you'll be able to provide many examples of trojaned software found at Tucows, CW Stroud, Winfiles, or any of the other established shareware sites.
Point being, with
Care to explain to me just what exactly those "standard" command line utilities are for Unix? Standard, as in gif-jpg conversion? Isn't the very concept behind Unix to bring together a variety tools by 3rd party tools together under one roof?
For the record, in all the software I have ever downloaded for Windows (which I might add has been a LOT of stuff over the years) I have only ever encountered one piece of software that messed up my system. Of course, now that I know to NEVER let Internet Explorer freaking optimize a desktop even that app is finally under control. Eeeck!
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
I have fairly regularly used Realproducer and Realplayer since version 5. Never had any particualrly serious crashes from them.
I can easily get 3 or 4 days uptime from my Win2k system which is permanantly connected to the net, handling email, icq, my own custom written webcam software, quite often realproducer streaming audio and video (which it's also capturing).
I've got two usb webcams, usb scanner, usb printer, bt848 based videocapture, a celeron clocked to within an inch of it's life. My memory is running at over 100mhz which is it's max rating.
I'm running software raid, I burn cds, *constantly* decode mp3s (usually from network volumes or shoutcast servers), surf the web, develop websites, program in delphi, design stuff in flash.
I change my hardware round regularly - adding or upgrading peripherals at least monthly if not weekly.
I've never had a workstation as stable as mine is now doing as much as mine does now, and if any one out there can suggest a better platform for me then go for it!!!
(i run solaris at work and linux at home too though - i'm just not keen on them as workstation os's)
Given that there is all this typical argument for and against operating systems I just thought i'd shed a little light on my first perceptions of operating systems.
:)
:) I know linux is fast at a lot of things... but when it comes to graphics it generally sucks. Try scrolling down a web page with a couple of java applets and maybe some dhtml animation... it's slow on linux - then try it in IE5.5 and you really will feel the difference.
I first came into contact with MacOS in 1986 (aged 6) and found it a dream to use and everything fell easily into place. Certainly it was missing multitasking (and still to some extent is) but for me it set my definition of what easy to use should be.
I came into contact with dos about 2 years later and despite having to learn a few simple commands on the whole it was pretty damn easy.
Until Win95 came along I largely avoided windows (mainly cos of the hefty boot up times). I did use Win31 to do some programming in Delphi but that was about it.
Win95 however really did impress me. It felt fast, responsive, crashed less than 3.1 did and had an impeccable user interface. Against all my expectations it did detect all my hardware (except for my EEProm burner but that was no surprise).
Then in early 1996 I encountered linux. Slackware. It was nothing short of appaling.
The installation process was difficult and obscure, the hardware support was miserable. The documentation was crap.
I gave up.
It was another 3 years before I got linux functioning to any real extend and only now do I feel comfortable configuring it.
My experience with it is that it is pretty damn easy to break. When it comes to installing new hardware in Win2k I plug it in, turn on, and in most cases it's there and working on the first boot. With linux I seem to have to mess about recompiling the kernel (especially if it's for anything strange like sound, videocapture or usb support). And linux seems to be a lot less forgiving than windows of crap drivers.
Incidentally I have never seen any software that can take down win2k. One or two programs do appear to have memory and resource holes that drain the systems power away slowly but if you restart those apps then it springs back.
Equally to be fair to linux it very rarely crashes. When we stepped back down to a single cpu our uptimes went from about 2 hours -> 2 months which is pretty impressive. However Win2k supports dual cpu arrangements out of the box... no problems there (unless u have an aureal vortex
Curiously as testament to Windows 95 I have a laptop here running winroute (didn't have time to set linux up on it) and that has only crashed once in 17 weeks now. That's running a stock Win95 Original Release, Netgear FA410 Drivers and Webgear Aviator 2.4 drivers (along with the usual graphics ones), and Winroute as well... and it is stable as a rock.
Perhaps this really does give credit to the fact that Win95 itself is pretty stable and that applications and drivers drag it down.
And why doesn't windows execute things with the same level of protection that linux does.... because most users would rather the speed of windows to the stability of linux.
Put the flamethrowers down tho
And i'm not running win2k on any dream machine - just a celeron 300 cranked to 464mhz, 128 mb ram, 40gb disk and a v5500.
And running linux on a pii450, 192mb ram, 90gb disk and a tnt.
Seems like a pretty fair test to me.
This page at about.com lists all sorts of comparisons between Linux, 2000 and NT.
My experiences with Win2K - its been very stable. W2k won't let rogue applications install. It has much less backward compatibility than any other version of Windows I've used, but the stability has definitely increased. There is definitely an overhead premium - I wouldn't consider running any version with less than a 300 MHz processor with 128 MB of RAM. As a comparison, Linux generally uses much less resources to perform the same tasks.
Using Windows 2000 carries risks of being incompatible with the rest of your network. If you want to authenticate with kerberos, and you have both Linux and Win2k boxen, you'll most likely have to have a Win2K server. Other "improvements" to standard TCP/IP programs, like their dynamic DNS may create compatibility issues as well. Samba still works well with Linux servers and Windows clients for basic file and print services.
The only compelling reason I can think of to go with Windows is speed of application development, both on web and desktop based applications. ASP with SQL Server on IIS allows you to knock out web applications very rapidly. And of course if you sell Windows applications you will need to have Windows somewhere. But other than that I can't think of much reason to go with Win2K on a server level. I used to use Windows for everything - now I'm using Linux for file and print services, Apache, planning to move to qmail eventually, and I have an OpenBSD firewall. So far, there is nothing available on Win2k that would make me want to switch back.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
I have been messing with 2000 for about four months now and I must say it is one hell of an operating system. There are a total of four versions if no one knew...
Professional, Server, Advanced Server and Data Base
It has some really good features like Dynamic Hardrives, Server Wizards, Windows Media Encoder, an integrated task manager, encrypted file system and much much more.
I wouldn't hold your breath though... I crashed it 7 times already. Four crashes in result to Explorer giving up but later recovering. (Which still requires a system reboot to make everything run just right) The other three crashes were due to my Nvidia TNT2 Ultra card. There isnt' one driver that works for it with out having a kernel dump and an eventual system reboot. It really sucked so I am forced to use my VooDoo 3 3000. This crash is due to any reason... one time it was when I clicked on the screensaver tab... another when I opened a webpage. Didn't take much for the driver to go nuts.
By the way I have a copy of all these OS's except Database. I even have the 25 client version of Advanced Server! He he he!
~BHM
"Join me on the nail side of the thumb!"
You need better friends; or at least smarter ones.
They compare the different aspects like Multimedia, Network and Home PC, and depending on what they find important come to different conclusions...
maol
--
Du Deutsch -> Du gehe Symlink
The whole point of the previous post is that small and medium sized business cannot afford to run Linux in production, not big businesses.
A small factory or farm or retail shot or whatever cannot afford to have a $35+k/year sysadmin or mcse wannabe on staff. With windows, however, a resonably knowledgeable non-computer person can fix most problems with tech support.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Personally, I like Windows 2000. I think it's a very capable system. But getting an honest answer here is like going to a Microsoft convention and saying "What do you think of Linux?"
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
No, I'm running Windows 2000 as my main machine for games and software. I skipped the millienium upgrade... it offered nothing for me. I have not encountered a game I own yet that does not run in Windows 2000.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Yes. I made a copy for a friend a couple of days ago. Grab a serial off the web and you're all set.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
I say if you're used to Linux stability, but still want to run Windows 98 software and games, jump up to Windows 2000. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
(And if you hear any naysayers out there, chances are they've never tried it and are only working off a Linux box.)
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
I don't agree with this one.
As a Linux addict, I have believed this for a long time but I recently discovered how a few but complex NT commands will basically do most of the remote job for you, especially if you batch them, like packagers:
--
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Databases are not magical - a large database takes longer to search than a small one. Granted, a well designed database is faster than a linear search - but they do slow down as they increase in size. A full install of Visual basic 6.0 pro added one megabyte to the registry on my NT 4.0 box.
Considering how often a MS OS does registry operations even a small increase in search time can be a significant overhead. In any case Microsoft has admitted that registry bloat does slow down system operation. Sorry, I don't have the URL.
Registry bloat slowdown problems are not due to bad coding - they are an inevitable result of the basic DESIGN of the system.
UNIX style systems only access the files in /etc when a process requests the access. If program A has large file in /etc it doesn't affect the speed of the rest of the system.
The Microsoft philosophy toward application installation is to allow the new ap to modify core operating system files: The registry. On a UNIX style OS each program can have its own file which it gets modify - but they don't get to modify a core OS file.
This means that installing a program on a MS OS is like performing minor surgery on the system. While installing a program in a UNIX style system is more like buying a new suit of clothes.
This means that program installation under a MS OS is a riskier proposition than it is under a UNIX style OS. Mostly minor surgery goes well - but occasionally complications occur.
In essence, under the Microsoft philosophy, each program becomes an integrated part of the operating system, under the UNIX philosophy there is a much greater distinction between the OS and the application.
Because of the integration that the registry creates under a Microsoft OS, a Microsoft system tends to slow down and lose stability over time as more and more applications are installed. (The MS way of doing things means that the registry soon becomes both the largest and the most changed files on the system. The largest and the most changed files on the system are naturally the most likely ones to become corrupted.)
The only effect on system speed that adding applications has on UNIX style systems is that they cause directories to grow in size - meaning that they take longer to scan looking for a file. (This also happens under Microsoft style operating systems.)
Under the Microsoft philosophy, installing a new program will slow down every other program on the system (sometimes dramatically) - even if the new program is never run. This is because adding a new program increases the size of the registry. Because so many operations on a Microsoft OS require a registry operation - and a larger registry means a slower registry scan time the Microsoft philosophy results in a system which slows down with each addition to the system.
If both systems start out with the same speed and reliability, the UNIX philosophy will result in a system which is faster and more stable after extensive use.
The example from my work is compiling and simulation. If I have to perform some task that is too big for my workstation to efficiently handle, I can use a server that has much more memory. I don't need to walk over to the server room (I don't even know where it is, and I don't care), I don't need to have 2 or more computers crammed in my office. I just have to ssh to the server and it acts just like I'm there. I can use dozens of servers at once without having to get up from my chair. Since this is a CLI, I can even automate the whole thing. I'm sure that windows has a way to do something similar if you bought the right 3rd party software package, but I'm sure it would be less powerful than what comes with UNIX as default.
The other way this feature is handy is when I'm working on something with another person and I need them to access something for me. Let's say that a file of theirs isn't group readable and we need to use it. I don't have to logout, I don't have to wait while they run back and fix it, they just type su and fix the problem.
I can ssh from home to work and have an identical environment to the one that I have at work.
The last reason is kind of a UNIX thing, so it really doesn't apply to NT, but I bet NT would benefit from this if it's graphics weren't in the kernel. 90% of the time, if a UNIX system is frozen it is X and not the OS that is locked. Fixing this problem is possible with a telnet to the frozen machine. On NT you would just give up.
Windows NT security may be fine-grained, but it's CPU resource allocation is not. It basically gives the user in front of it the whole thing, whether they need it or not. NT's ability to switch between users seems to be more a limitation of it's GUI and registry rather than the kernel itself. I've used Terminal Server. I was impressed and disappointed at the same time. It is a step in the right direction, but it is hampered by the need to retain compatibility with poor decisions from the past.
You can get Linux for free...
I've also done some crash-testing on Windows 2000
and NT 4.0, and they are remarkably easy to break, even moreso when they are 'crippled' by being the student copies available to Comp. Sci. students. (Seems they don't want us to have full access for _some_ reason.)
Whereas, I've never been able to crash Linux at all. Mind you, I've tried a few things that did crash NT, but Linux seemed to have no problems with spawning multiple copies of the same app, running 12 different graphics apps, etc. (Yes, I was using the University resources... I don't have that much computer of my own...)
All in all, Linux is preferable simply for uptime between crashes, which unless you do something evil to Linux, can be years between crashes. NT lasts, what, a couple of days before the GPFs hit?
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
If you want to play DirectX games, you need a M$ OS. Windows 2000 Pro is far more stable than 95/98, and delivers the same level of DirectX support. But then again, there is the monetary cost involved, right?
As a desktop OS, I'd say Windows 2000 delivers, but then again, Linux does everything else you can ask it to (and more), and at a much lower price tag. Plus, you can get all the services, development software, and applications you need at no additional cost. I don't even want to try adding up the cost of Windows 2000 Advanced Server + Developer Studio + Office 2000 + whatever else you need to get the equivalent of everthing you would from get with most flavors of Linux.
Looking at it from a student's point of view who wants to learn about C++, SQL and whatnot, Linux is a far better choice. Looking at it from a student's point of view who likes to play Half-life and Diablo II without rebooting every 20 minutes, Windows 2000 does the job. :)
I realize I didn't compare the two as production server OSes. I'm sure there's plenty of people willing to debate on that.
A clever sig would prove nothing.
Is this a fault of the Third pary App or more a fault of the "Almighty ones" Failings in releasing the full API details???
This space intentionally blank
For me, nothing beats the Linux community's best support model: free E-Mail lists. Have a problem? Ask a question on the right list, and odds are you'll get several good responses in just a few moments that start out
"No problem. I just worked through this problem last week...here's what I did..."
Beats paid, per-incident-charge phone-support monkeys hands down every time.
Windows 2000's Active Directory is a candy-coated shell over a reworking of the old NT4-style domain system.
An example:
Suppose you create an AD domain called "slashdot.org". You then create two OUs, so you have sales.slashdot.org and geeks.slashdot.org. Being a hardcore geek, Rob Malda will of course be rmalda in the OU geeks.slashdot.org. His username in the underlying domain datanase will also be rmalda.
When Richard Malda join sales, of course you will want to add a user rmalda to sales.slashnet.org. But you can't. Why? Because even if you have objects in separate OUs, their names must still be uniqiue in the domain, because the underlying domain database has a flat namespace.
--
"Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"
I would have to admit that 2000 is an improvement over NT 4. The answer is still it depends.
What are you doing with the system?
Do you have any applications that you can only get on NT?
Do you have the staff to support the os of your choose?
Add your question here.
NT, Linux, BSD, Solaris, MacOS these are only tools. Rememeber it not a war of OS here it is about getting the job done the best way possible.
Besides that, I have run Windows 2000 and Linux side-by-side for a few months. Windows 2000 is a bit more stable than Windows NT 4.0, has more up-to-date Win32 APIs, runs better on laptops, and the UI is a bit more consistent. The server edition comes with more software. Other than that, I think most users won't see a lot of difference.
The biggest thing about Windows 2000 from my point of view is the Active Directory stuff, and that's an unmitigated disaster: not only does it play havoc with mixed UNIX/Windows installations, I think its directory model is poorly suited to non-hierarchical management structures.
Don't underestimate the marketing value of Windows, though: on the surface, it looks like a coherent solution of integrated technologies that address most of a business's needs. It's only after a company has committed to it that they discover that actually deploying and maintaining it probably requires a bigger hodgepodge of local hacks and third party tools than Linux would, and at a much higher cost. Let's hope that there will be more Linux and BSD distributions that target the Microsoft client and server market more directly. In particular, on the server side, something like RedHat isn't streamlined enough yet to have the same appeal as Windows 2000 to non-technical business folks.
DirectX - Love it or hate it, it does the job. While some areas (like DirectInput and DirectMusic) are still queezy at best, you can't beat DirectDraw's flexibility.
UI - The 2D GUI is pretty hot. Font smoothing and color management. Solid control designs and IMEs. Try and write a multilingual application and see how far you get. Ever try and copy and paste multibyte characters in X? Oops.
COM - I've tried working with CORBA, and so far it can't cut it. COM is an incredible piece of engineering, and it shows. If I had one wish for Unix, it would be a COM implementation that could rival Windows. COM+ looks good too. Too bad it uses the registry - most of the time. We shall see what happens with SOAP.
MS Office - Sorry, but it's got to be said. Nothing beats Office - yet. Why does office work so well? COM. It will take many a manhours to raise Koffice/Openparts to that level. Well, if we had COM for Unix, and a lightweight VM, then maybe we could 'borrow' some of the more interesting pieces...
Yeah, the rest of Windows is crap, but you get what you pay for - DirectX, the UI, COM and Office. Everthing else is just one of those four things. Oh yeah, and IE thrown in just for fun.
According to the latest Netcraft report, Hotmail.com now runs Windows 2000:
" Hotmail Windows 2000 migration completes without incident The migration of the www.hotmail.com front end from FreeBSD to Windows 2000 seems to be complete with all recent requests from the site served from Windows 2000 machines and no evidence of any FreeBSD/Apache machines remaining in the load balancing pool. Microsoft will be pleased with this as the migration was completed inless than a month, without any reports of service disruption, and the site has previously been a beacon for open source evangelism."
All you are going to hear here is hype, and bible
thumping. The only true way to get an unbiased
view of things is to try both, and see for yourself.
-Master Switch, one more element in the machine
And lets not forget that it's peanuts compared to the money you lose on support staff. Better spend some extra money on software rather than 100K$/year on a good system administrator.
Companies don't care to spend 30K or so on a good server. Especially if it comes with userfriendly software and good support. Linux is free but useless without a good support contract. Of course such support is available, at roughly the same price as for commercial software. The impact of license fees can be neglected when you bring in support cost and staff cost.
Especially for small businesses, it is not affordable to have a knowledgable sysadmin around. They have to put up with the less educated sysadmins and therefore have to make investments in usable software instead.
Windows 2000 is ideal for this kind of companies. You don't need a rocket scientist to operate it, it supports a lot of stuff out of the box, most of which is easy to configure. If you have educated staff though, linux/unix is the best way to go.
Jilles
Of course, trying it yourself is always the best way to learn about anything. Ignore the millions of hours of collective experience out there, if you spend a few hours with the products, you'll learn much more about subtle incompatabilities and transient, but catastrophic, bugs.
It's also much more economical for you to duplicate all your services, train all your personnel in both systems, and see for yourself, rather than asking some questions and hearing what other people have to say about it.
And, of course, it's totally worth buying as many copies of W2K, and the applications you intend to run on it, as you need to test them.
Therefore, I obviously also must heartily recommend that you go out and try both yourself. It's not like you can save lots of time, effort, and money just by asking people who already know.
--------
You're missing several points in your oversimplification of OSs to include only Windows and UNIX.
There was still some DOS functionality as of NT 4.0, but I beleive it was mostly removed for Win2000.
>>>>>>
There is no DOS functionality in NT. All DOS programs are run in a virtual machine. That virtual machine is more or less unchanged in Win2K.
NT is also a microkernel, which means it naturaly has some extra overhead in it that Linux's monolithic
kernel does not. The still-mostly-vapor GNU HURD is also a microkernel. If done properly, the extra
overhead isn't that much. The question is, did Microsoft do it properly? I don't really know.
>>>>>
Yes MS did it properly. The things holding back NT don't tend to be core system related at all. It's all the stuff MS added on top that sucks. NT4 for example is a good bit faster than Linux for most desktop-type operations. However, when you look at Windows2000 with all the crap they added (active desktop and all) you notice it's much slower. NT doesn't suffer so much from core-system bloat and bugs, but stuff-added-on-top bloat and bugs.
In any case, its much easier for hackers to create a stable and speedy core system, while difficult for them to make a good UI.
>>>>>>>
Just plain wrong. BeOS: Fast stable, good UI. QNX: Fast, stable, decent UI. There are a whole bunch of systems out there that are fast and stable, and have good UIs to boot. Even Quartz seems to be pretty fast (in so far as a DPDF system can be.)
On the other hand, its far easier for a corperate project to make a reasonably good UI, but
diffcult to make a stable and speedy core system.
>>>>>
Again, not true. QNX is probably more stable than Linux and a more stable to boot (at least according to those who've used it.) Again, BeOS is managed by a corporation, and stability and speed aren't exactly high on Be users' lists of complaints.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Okay...fair enough. It doesn't seem at all unreasonable that an 8-way Intel box can beat a Sun or HP box for speed on a CPU-intensive task. I just don't see what the OS has to do with it, really. Beyond handling SMP, the OS's job, in this case, is really just to get the hell out of the way. More relevant considerations might be: is it stable? Does it play well with others? Can I administer it remotely? Sure, W2K comes with a telnet server built in. But Windows isn't and has never been command-line oriented. When I can add a new vhost to IIS via the command line, I'll be impressed.
It's well written, but will it change any I/T manager's mind? A lot of the reason why people choose NT as their server is because they're used to windows as their desktop, so they understand "how to drive it". People who aren't familiar with Unix will find setting up a Linux box with apache to be more intimidating than simply clicking a few buttons using NT. And, of course, these folks also don't know what they're missing in terms of reliability. We can try to tell them all this, of course --- and we should continue the efforts to do so. But ultimately, they need to experience Linux/Unix's reliability before they really get it. This is why efforts to retake the desktop are so important, in the long run. We need to make sure that it's not only just the elite technologists who can set up a web server or a print server. We need to be able to make it easy even for a MSCE to do it.....
Well, the question is..how do we say which tastes better? This apple or this orange? Or _this_ apple or _this_ orange?
An apple has white flesh with less juice. That's nice. Is extra juice good? How much is too much? Which is better - white flesh that's slightly chalky and uniform, or a thick orange flesh divided into sections?
THAT'S why we say "that's like comparing apples to oranges." You can compare apples to apples, saying "this one isn't as chalky, and chalkiness is bad" or "this one is juicier, and juice is good in an apple." You can't say "this apple is chalkier than this orange, and chalkiness is always bad, so the orange is a superior fruit."
Apples and oranges are both fruit; Linux and Windows 2000 are both operating systems. We can compare feature sets, but we absolutely cannot conclude that one is superior to the other because they _are_ as different as apples and oranges on the inside and outside.
you're dead wrong, and the guy you replied to was right on. Linux is useless without a support contract.
.
No. Your evidence does not support your argument.
Your first point is that your PHB won't approve use of Linux without a support contract. That goes to show that your boss is an idiot, but it says nothing about the utility of Linux
Your other point is (or at least appears to be) that the system won't work if the only Linux-knowledgeable employee leaves. That also doesn't show that Linux is "useless without a support contract". A boss less idiotic than yours would insist that the system is documented and handed over properly in the event that you depart.
I sympathize with anyone who works for a PHB, but "Linux is useless without a support contract" remains complete BS that shouldn't be seen outside the M$ FUD file whence it came.
Does a company who cares so very little about security belong in your server room?
Anyone admining a server ought to have enough skills to handle a command line or they need a new job.
Couldn't agree with you more. In fact recently in one of my networking classes, one smart-ass tried to 'out-wit' the instucter going over command line info. (This was a Novell Server class)
To the best of my recollection this is what he said. "Why are we even learning about these archaic(spelling?) DOS like commands? Isn't DOS like dead? Why would anybody want to learn DOS commands when we can do everything in a GUI? This is pointless?" To that comment, I let out an audible chuckle. The instructer quickly countered by asking him to write a Novell login script, or a batch file for the server.
The really scary part was that roughly 3/4ths of the class agreed with the nut-case. I mean I'm going to have to work with these people who have this point-and-click-can-do-everything mentality.
Yikes
YZ
In Linux, to add an ethernet card, and assign it an IP address, you have to either recompile the kernel or modules, then:
- insmod
- ifconfig eth0 ip.address up
Because Linux doesn't care about PnP-esque things, you can then move that NIC anywhere in the system and it will still work.If you install a NIC in Win2000 (Professional),
But, since WinX tracks PCI devices, if you MOVE that NIC, it suddenly gets ugly. You have to re-add the driver and re-configure the card, with the appropriate reboots. Then you get a message like "The IP address you assigned conflicts with the IP address assigned to another card. If that card is ever reinserted, a conflict will occur. Do you want to continue?" So Win2000 has some sort of configuration memory, and its waiting for the NIC to "come back" into the old PCI slot, at which point it will "remember" the old configuration."
This is all a pain, IMO. I prefer Linux because the OS is almost completely decoupled from the daemons (services) you're running, so that if you need to upgrade your SMB and NMB servers or their configurations, you simply restart them. IANAWin2000 Server guy, but I can't imagine that you can simply change your workgroup name, WINS server info, or heck, the actual SMB server code, without a reboot. The same goes for Apache/IIS.
Under WinX, all the system services are too integrated with the system itself. No wonder that my Win2000 Professional system is using 60MB at startup, without any apps running. Linux provides more of a "base platform" to run stuff ON, while Win2000 seems to assimilate your environment and daemons into one sort of ueber-OS.
That all being said, its a wonderful improvement over NT Workstation - USB support, IRQ sharing, multiple monitors, FAT32 support, while still retaining the NT-style security and full 32bitness.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I have win2k on my laptop, an IBM thinkpad 600, runs very nice. As far as servers, at work we run 3x(dual 500 xeon 1GB RAM) one for pdc, bdc, and exchange. all running NT 4 with SP 5. It is amazing that they run. no crashes. But i am scared as hell to touch them. I was going to upgrade to SP6, but then I said NO. good think I didn't. hell know if it would survive? One think I don't like about NT4 is all the silly permition crap. you have a permition for every damn thing. and to get something to work you have to play with it for an entire day just to get your ftp or www server up with authentication. Thanks why I don't like NT. Yes - I am an MCSE.....
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
I'm sure there are other differences, but that one sort of jumps out at ya...
I've used 2k pro since about mid-jan 00. I've also used (in the last year or so) rh 6.1. suse 6.3, caldera "e-desktop" (is this a *real* linux distro?) and turbolinux 6.0. Here are my observations and conclusions.
1:) 2K seems to crash more often than any of the nix distros i have installed, though it doesnt take out the whole OS, which is a refreshing change in a m$ environment. This may well have a lot do do with all the crap i install though.
2:) If my house experiences a power cut, and my UPS fails, 2K can be rebooted without any heartache. IME, Linux (any distro) tends to fall on its arse. This will be disputed I am sure, but as I said, its all IME.
3:) When I download a file, I want to click it, and it installs. I don't want to have to type "gcc etc" or "tar -xvf etc", then make etc. Especially when I come home from the pub.
4:) As a server 0S, yes, I see the advantage of a nix distro. It is efficient and stable, and will run on most "old" hardware, without too much trouble. However, as a workstation environment, I prefer 2K tbh. It "feels" softer, more malliable. I *know* it isn't in real terms, but no matter how much I tweak Gnome or KDE, the "feel" isn't quite there.
5:) It's nice when my box stays up for months at a time. But as a workstation environment, it's not critical to be honest. 2K on this box stays up for weeks at a time without hassle, and that satisfies my needs. I guess if I was running a leet 0-day juarez ftp, I would want the box to be up for years on end, but i'm not.
6:)Quake 3 Arena runs better under 2K (with the latest voodoo drivers) than it does on my nix distros. Perhaps it's me being lame, but thats what i have observed.
7:) Having grown up to use the paradigm of the win(32) environment, 2K feels natural and familiar to use. This, I should imagine, is part of the reason many sysadmins choose the win* route over *nix. It's comfortable, point-and-click computing.
I suppose a direct comparison between the two OS's is a bit ambiguous; it depends on what you use it for (or what your users demand) in a real-life situation. Also, are we comparing 2k adv serv as a web server against nix/apache?; 2k pro against say redhat 6.2 as a dtop OS? Both are scaleable, to a degree, and both depend on how *you* set them up, with regards to stability and security.
I have no loyalties to either camp. If it's not broken, don't break it, i reckon, which is why I will stick to 2K as a workstation environment. cheers :::: /////NOMEX flame retardant posting pants \\\\\ = ON
Super Awesome Broadband
I have been using Linux since '96 and love it. Just recently I bought Win2k, with some extra cash, for my wife to have something to use at home that she can understand (She hates Linux. But she loves ;O) fetchmail). Well I got it home and started the install. It was brainless. No problems. So far so good. (Oh, I guess you wonder about my home system. Dual Celeron 366 (OC>450) 160MB;8.4GBhd;Voodoo 3 3000;BP6 Motherboard) After the install I was suprised to find that a stripped down version of IIS comes with it. (FTP,SMTP,e.t.c) I then configured it for my home network (PMFirewall/MASQ/PORTFW/e.t.c running on RH6.2 and various other Linux workstations). I got it to work with Samba, at this point I am hating myself for having pleasant feelings for M$. I grab some games I run on my work laptop (WIN98) and installed them thinking that this would BSOD it, worked just fine? I have had the system running for the past 5 days know problems, yet. Wife has been check her e-mail (manually ;O)), surfing internet, and various other tasks just fine. I took my Linux Q3A and used the hack from Loki's website and got it to run on WIN2K just fine. The graphics were ten times better than in Linux on the same machine (Linux needs better drivers). I hate to say it guys I am very impressed, so far.
Bottomline: WIN2K kinda OK. Hate the price.
Still love Linux and all of it's beautiful free complexities. Linux is still a better tool by a million miles.
--mayneMC
Here's the setup:
RedHat 6.0 on a Sparc 10 (That's a single 50mhz(?) processor) with 64 megs of RAM.
Win2k Adv Server on a Compaq dual P-Pro 166 with 128 megs of RAM.
On the Win2k machine, we *only* do web. Therefor there are no sharing, F&P is removed. Active Directory is removed, and 99% of the sites have Front Page installed. We also have PHP installed for one website, and perl available to all. There is a total of about 50 sites, all being very small, 2 - 3 pages, 1 to 5 pics.
On the Linux machine, we do web, mail, shells, and other management stuff. There are about a hundred personal websites, and about 75 more commercial sites. None of the sites on here are small, per say. For example, we host the official Camaro SS website, some government websites, and many normal business sites. Most sites are 20+ pages, with over 30 pics to play with. To me, that's decient size, maybe not to everyone. PHP and perl are, of course, available and widly used.
On to performance:
How about initial connect time. The Win2k box literally takes up to 3 seconds to start sending you data, while the linux box takes 1 - 2 seconds (Mail beats up this little machine =])
Response time, post initial connection: Win2k box and linux box are pretty quick, usually being next to instant, though the Win box seems to take a slight more time.
Stability: Not bad at all. We had inital problems with the Win2k box, but that was from Active Directory and that 50+ IP bug. We removed AD and have the latest patches/updates and now the box is firm. The linux box is the same, all the latest RH updates, and it never goes down, nor have real problems.
Annoyances in Win2k: Not having a decient way to admin FP-enabled webs without the Front Page program installed, or using the silly CLI util. MMC likes to quit responding, and lock. Easy to fix, but really annoying.
Annoyances in Linux: Er..Uhm..*thinks*..I kinda like Linux, no complaints.. =] Then again, it'd be *really* annoying if you didn't like the CLI.
Conclusion: If we didn't get Win2kAS for free, I wouldn't of considered running it. After using it and learning about it, I still wouldn't consider running it if I had to buy it. I like the low-overhead Linux can offer, and I feel it offers better bang for the lack-of-a-buck. I can't comment on how Win2k would be on a nice fast, expensive machine, but ISPs aren't the best place to go for the latest and greatest machines. I'll stick with my linux machines, thank you. Win2k was interesting to play with though, but so is everything new. =]
Linux is free but useless without a good support contract
Excuse me, but this statement is absolute BS. (and I won't even get started on how nonsense like this gets moderated as "informative").
I've never paid a penny on Linux support, much less "100K$/year" to hire a sysadmin. The few problems I had that couldn't be solved by RTFM'ing and checking HOWTOs were quickly fixed by asking questions of Linux users, whether in person, on newsgroups or in IRC.
"Total cost of ownership" for a small network providing basic (and a few other) services over the net and a LAN: ZERO.
Cost if I'd had to pay M$ prices, plus hire some M$CE to figure it our for me: several thousand dollars more.
...Linux is simpler and cleaner, and does what it does better and with fewer bugs and generally less weirdness.
...W2K is bigger, has a ton more features, and suffers from the usual microsoft "better to have a feature with bugs than to not have the feature at all" philosophy.
In particular, W2K finally has real directory services (which Linux lacks), better management instrumentation from WMI, better hot-plug PCI and disk support.
As usual, the real answer to these comparitive questions is "they have different strengths; it depends what you want to do." My rule of thumb: if it can be done easily and "normally" (ie no kernal hacking) on Linux, do it that way. If you have to use something else, use something else.
But remember, these are operating systems. Nobody in their right mind buys/installs operating systems; in the real world, people need applications, and operating systems are just there to support applications.
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
i hope we can manage some sensible discussion on this, dont be surprised if the posts contain a Linux bias (but you would not have posted on Slashdot if you did not expect as much).
I can only say i have crashed windows 2000 serveral times but Microsoft have implemented "the not my fault system" so prevelant in Linux.
W2k still has lots of program crashes (netscape for example) just they dont take the whole operation system with them and so its not windows fault. You get to blame the specific program, much the way you hear Linux users complain about X or Netscape but rarely do they blame the OS.
Win2k adds all the annoying advertising and stupid frilly waste of space animations and effects of win98 and office 2000 (thankfully they can be turned off, but i cant seem to change the defaults).
RealPlayer however has repeatedly caused my Win2k to totally lock up, never to recover. I geuss what MS always said about 3rd party drivers being at fault actaully has an element of truth.
have not checked out the game support yet.
And to people saying Windows 2000 crashes for them, your either doing something wrong, or your installing "crap"
Why would anyone want to use an OS where you shouldn't install software because of fear of crashing the OS?
The single biggest headache regarding w2k is that its multiuser capabilities have not advanced one iota since DOS 1.0. While Terminal Server is included, and provides the necessary core functionality to allow multiple users on a single server, thus earning the check mark, the actual implementation is a nightmare. Why? Simple - the evil all-consuming Registry. Everything wants to touch it, but if you allow it then you lose 100% of whatever security you may have had. Security vs functionality is a traditional tradeoff, but this is insane. You can have a little of either, but none of the other. The simple fact is that Microsoft has no concept of how to design a multiuser system. Instead of allowing each user to customize various aspects of application behaviour with small text files in their home directory, much system behaviour is controlled instead by a single central repository. Fundamentally flawed design, plain and simple.
The 40 systems in our lab that don't run Unix converted from using NT server to w2k server over the summer break. It's been nothing short of a nightmare. Half the applications used are either broken or spew errors. Our beautiful unified dos/unix print quota system broke because w2k refuses to authenticate for samba (as usual, another release from Microsoft containing enough changes to intentionally break competitors' products). Active Directory trashes our DNS zone files, making them unmaintainable and routinely breaking mail and NFS. The list of problems goes on and on...
Microsoft has conclusively demonstrated that the only sane upgrade from NT4 is Unix. Don't buy the hype. w2k may crash less than its predecessors, but the headaches involved with it are no less numerous or severe. If you don't like Linux, use one of the BSD flavours. Microsoft is just not an option.
Not really.
.72AU, and is 12,100km in diameter. It has a mass of 4.9^24kg. It has a day that lasts 243 Earth days. The average tempature is about 740K. Venus' surface looks a lot like the American midwest. Most of the planet is covered in lava flows. Venus has no satellites.
Venus is the second planet from the Sun and the sixth largest. It orbits at
Mars is the fourth planet from the sun and the seventh largest. It orbits at 1.5AU, and is 6,800km in diameter. It has a mass of 6.4^23kg. The average temperature is -55C, but it gets as high as 27C (80F!) during summer. Its surface area is approximately the same as the land area on Earth. Short of our planet, Mars has the most interesting terrain of any of our planets. There is excellent evidence that there was, at one point, water on Mars. It has ice caps on either end of the planet, made of carbon dioxide. It has two satellites, Deimos and Phobos.
That wasn't so hard. When people say things like "that's like comparing apples and oranges!" it makes me crazy. Apples are red, and about 90% of the size of an orange. They're covered with a thin red (or green or yellow) skin, and have white flesh. Oranges have thick flesh, orange in color, with orange flesh that's divided into sections. It generally contains more juice than an apple.
See? That worked out, too. Now, let's see if we can get a decent comparison of Linux and Win2K.
-Waldo
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Believe it or not, but Windows 2000 also needs skilled administrators. Believe or not, but Linux (or Un*x in general) sysadmins are not rocket scientists. Believe it or not, both the Windows and the Linux sysadmin earn more or less the same amount of money (close enough as to be irrelevant for a large company).
So, in the end what's left is marketing perception, or that warm, fuzzy feeling inside that some IT managers get from having all their IT solutions coming from a single vendor (be it Microsoft, Sun, IBM or Unisys). It's not economical, but rather psychological. And it is this perception that Linux companies have to tackle in order to gain marketshare. And believe it, that's what they're doing, albeit with very small strides.
--
Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
This may be a bit off topic, but it does fall into the windows vs. linux debate as far as ease of use is considered.
An aquantaince of mine is starting an online e-commerce site and decided to use win2k over linux since "its a naturally graphical envionment and therefore he can use it, whereas he simply CAN'T use anything with a text interface". Of course, linux has GUI capabilities, but lets assume for a moment that it didn't.
For an entire month, he spent every spare waking moment trying to get several e-commerce packages working on win2k, spending many hundreds of dollars in the process and spending many hours on phone with tech support. He even got so desparate he came to my house and banged on my door at 3 am screaming for help because he couldn't get it working (I couldn't either for that matter, but I wasnt' foolish enough to spend a month trying).
What I find somewhat depressing in this regard is he had also obtained a linux based e-commerce package, managed to install redhat all by himself and install the software and get it working without ANY problems, but chose instead to run win2k because he didn't know enough about linux and didn't want to spend the time learning it.
I find it quite humorous that he could have learned quite a lot in those 30 days. I really think this is the mentality that pervades many people in a position to choose between the two.
Pity.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
I have worked with both VERY extensively, from playing with every gadget Win2k server offers, to making my own linux distrobution for a standalone product (to be revieled in the future).
:)
Windows is meant to be pretty. It accomplishes it. And its meant to use **the right software**. I run windows 2000 professional on my home machine, have been so since the early beta days, and it HAS NOT CRASHED. You have to treat it properly. I.E. Not installing shit software. When you take the NT kernel and play the game the way it likes, you will be successful.
I guess its possible to say roughly the same thing for linux, except that things are more clearcut. Linux/BSD (dont forget about bsd) can do everything that win2k can do, with the exception of running windows binaries perfectly (by perfectly i mean executing the code as it was meant by the developer).
Personally, my servers are linux and bsd, and my workstations are win2k. Its all about the sysadmin creating a solution to mold the two, which i have found to be extrordinarily easy and fruitful. Why not Linux/X on the workstations? Why the hell is that a good idea? X Crashes, netscape crashes. In win2k using it over a year, my explorer has NOT crashes, and IE has NOT crashed. Ive used both extensively, and its much better to pay for win2k (150 for oem client). Its chumpchange compared to how much you will save in support costs.
BTW, Windows 2000 has great multimedia support. Plus support for dual processors makes it even better.
in recap, I am basically saying that when you have a REAL system administrator (NOT MCSE, NOT CERTIFIED, HELL NO COLLEGE), someone that knows things in and out, and can get things done, either solution works. Its all about the needs, and what OS 3rd party applications are made to run on.
And to people saying Windows 2000 crashes for them, your either doing something wrong, or your installing "crap" (i.e. netscape, realplayer, etc.). Yes, theres no point in netscape when IE Renders better, renders faster, is built for the OS, and does NOT crash in Win2k. The only reason to run netscape is to show your support for it, and its too bad nobody cares anymore
I agree - I am nothing but impressed with W2K Advanced Server. I have extensive experience with Solaris/HP/AIX in a production environment, and we have been playing with W2K recently.
I decided to port some production solaris code to W32 to do some 'real world' tests. These apps take large (12+ GB) files from a mainframe and process them for a datawarehouse. They are C++ programs that do file processing --- file in (read) --- manipulate the data (process) --- and file out (write) (the port was simple - no code changes). They are very processor intensive (not so much disk).
We have an 8 way P800 (for W2K AS) and a 24x E10000 and several K class HP's. I moved the data files to the W2K box and ran the fileproc app 8 times at low priority each working on a different file at the same time. This used 100% of the box. Because it was running at low priority, all other box functions worked beautifully. You could not tell they were running from a system perspective. So far just like HPUX or Solaris from a scheduling perspective. A single file test on NT4 Server has same result - the scheduling piece is not new...
The good news is that the W2K box ran all 8 programs in 2 hr 47 minutes. The same result took 5 hr 56 min on the E10000 (6 mths old - 100% of 8 procs) and 14 hr 45 min on HP UX 11 on a 6 way K. Couldn't test AIX box :( I am predicting the results would be similar to the K
Pretty telling - we are now in the process of moving all our mainframe file manipulation software and reporting to W32. The current plan is to sell the 10000 and buy another 8 way or possibly Datacenter. The money saved on hardware is incredible.
BTW - for fun I tried this on Linux box (RH6.1), but the SMP and filesystem (can't handle file's that big) problems prevented any sort of real tests to work. Did work on a 2 way box, but the results were uninspiring (1 program took 4:23) on a cut 2 gb file. Same code - all optimized for the platform and processor.
And for those that haven't used Winders since 3.1 (most of slashdot) - I can have a terminal from anywhere in the world to do remote admin. All the arguments are gone guys - I seriously believe the days of UNIX are numbered. Please check your own facts - ours are strong enough to phase unix out of our shops in the next 12 months.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.