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."

Comments

Re:Windows 2000 is good, Linux is good

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

W2k in a multiuser environment

[The Man]

If you want to make a reasonable comparison you need to look at the fundamentals not just the IT-mangler-friendly checkmark sheets. I'm not going to make any direct comparisons with Linux in particular, but rather with Unix in general for the situation interesting to me. Specifically, an academic environment with about 80 workstations, a handful of servers, and about 1500 users.

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.

Re:Whats the difference between Venus and Mars

[waldoj]

Not really.

Venus is the second planet from the Sun and the sixth largest. It orbits at .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.

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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Re:$798.99 for a 5c OS *before* all the apps

[afc]

All this talk of support costs making the TCO (argh! I hate having to resort to marketing jargon) of a Linux solution being higher than that of a similar Windows one is ingenious, but patently false and bogus.

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.
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Somewhat OT

[Restil]

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

Windows 2000 is good, Linux is good

[rabababoa]

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 :)

The goodness of W2K

[Fervent]

This was posted by an AC under one of my posts, and I thought it deserved more of a spotlight, so here it is again:

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.