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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."
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
Look, I run linux at home. Nothing is easy on this OS from getting the fucking printer to work to getting the fucking wheel on my mouse to function properly, everything requires browsing tons of badly written HOWTO's.
Windows can be a bitch too, but at least some of it works out of the box.
"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.
"Sorry bud, the days of shrink wraped software are numbered."
Guess what, linux is being shrink wrapped as we speak. It's not done yet, it will probably take another few years. Or do you really think joe average will be compiling his kernel soon?
Jilles
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
-------------------
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.