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Time To Re-Evaluate Microsoft's Linux Myths Page?
cluge asks: "MS still proudly presents their Linux Myths Page and recent Dell commercials show Linux as a 'lower end' solution. This seems even stranger coming from Dell when you look at all the the Linux solutions that they are offering. The comparison made in their print adds compare 2 machines with vastly different amounts of memory (or so has been reported here and elsewhere). With a new kernel coming out, should the Linux community tune a couple of machines and set up an open test? Test the following: static Web serving, file sharing (Samba or NTFS), and routing performance. Having Linux knowledgeable people run the test allows performance tuning for the application being tested. The testers comments and recommendation on performance tuning will be valuable to the entire Linux community and the tests will let the community know where it stands, win, lose or draw." So how much difference does a year make? Do any of the claims on that page still hold any merit today?
That's right - the stock exchange run their trading systems on NT. There's more to the computing world than web sites, y'know.
Work is under way to fix this.
Everything that uid 0 has traditionally been allowed to do has been factored into different capabilities (CAP_SYS_TIME allows you to set the time, CAP_DAC_READ_SEARCH allows you to read any file or see the contents of any directory, etc.).
Each process has three sets of capabilities: effective, permitted and inheritable.
Right now, the kernel automatically gives uid 0 process all capabilities and removes them when a process changes its uid. However, in the future it will be possible to associate capabilities with executables at the filesystem level (similar to the setuid and setgid bits now) and (along with access control lists) restrict the execution of the process to specific users. This allows the construction of systems where uid 0 isn't special and each user is specifically limited to certain privileged operations.
The goal is to eventually add Auditing, Mandatory Access Control and Information Labeling to Linux, allowing for a possible B2 (or whatever Common Criteria calls it...) certification for Linux. (Which is something Microsoft will never have.)
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The Hotmail addres is my decoy account. I read it approximately once per year.
That's all well and good, but I think it'd be interesting to see how the out-of-the-box setups compare, especially because Microsoft likes to point out how easy their systems are to administer for non-experts versus Linux (while simultaneously raking in the bucks for MCSE training and certification).
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Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Have we reached the point where we put a priority on responding to fud and propaganda?
What on earth do we have to prove to Mickeysoft? That Linux is better (or at least competitive) as a server? Anyone with a lick of sense already know this. Does the fact that Mickesoft says otherwise matter? Anyone who would accept M$'s viewpoint on one of its competitors without a huge grain of salt is a clueless moron. Do we have any reason to care about the opinions of the stupid?
The only way to respond to things like this is with code. Use M$'s pokes and jabs to evaluate Linux for possible weaknesses, and then go fix them. Concentrate on making Linux the best operating system we can. When we start playing the propaganda and PR game with M$, we're letting them distract us from what we should be doing, making better code.
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
How long is the /. community going to define itself through Microsoft?
Move on folks - there is a whole huge world of computing out there and as dominant as Microsoft is (or more accurately, was), the whole pie is going to grow by such a substantial amount in coming years that any notion of "us v. them" is illusory - the IT market, and hence the market for linux products, is expanding, mutating, and growing. TV, cellphones, home automation, handhelds, servers, etc.
Added to which, the whole linux v. Microsoft thing just gets really tired.
Its probably AOL you should be more concerned with at this point.
Because I have multiple years of experience working at a web site that get well over one hundred million hits every day, which gives me some insight into the issue others may not have.
Your website may be busy enough that it matters only during those performance spikes, and that's not a rare case at all if you consider basic statistical assumptions (normal distributions, poisson processes, etc.)
Drop it, you're applying statistical phrases to look smart, but they have almost no relevance to website performance spikes. Every site in the top 500 sites has had significant increases in page views in the last three years - these aren't spikes - you can be rest assured that for almost any popular mainstream site, there is a good chance its pageviews are doubling annually, and your server farm should be growing ahead of this. Hardware is almost always the limiting factor in growth. I have never heard anyone tell me that their site performance improved substantially due to webserver software (by going from Netscape to Apache, etc.), and I'm not talking about Slashdot, I'm talking about some of the busiest sites on the web.
Other people shouldn't test things both because they won't like the outcomes and because you already know the results, and the whole debate is silly?
No, if you actually go back and read the post you'll see that the poster was fishing for hints that enterprise DBs on linux are superior to NT. My response wasn't to tell him he shouldn't test, only that I already know the results (from having all of the db and platform vendors give their best shot to win a contract through a multiweek trial).
No, you're missing the point here - most of the reasons not to define yourself in terms of one competitor have everything to do with marketing, and almost nothing to do with technical issues.
Look at Apple - for years they flogged this whole Apple vs. MS thing, until they realized that it wasn't selling any more computers. Much of Apple's success of late is due to the fact that it no longer tries to go head to head with Microsoft, or define the Mac simply as "better than Windows".
The linux community won't be able to see AOL, Symbian, Palm, or other worthy competitors coming if it mindlessly pursues this David vs. Goliath thing (that nearly killed Apple).
For reasons probably better explained by phsycologists and sociologists, some people tend to develop emotional relationships to their computer/OS/Software/Newsgroup/ect..
Remember the Apple vs. MS thing? How about when AOL first opened up their service to the Net?
Since these people can't understand that a computer is simply a tool and nothing more, their opinions should be taken lightly at best.
Now it's Linux vs. MS.
The bright side? A backlash is coming and its coming fast and the sooner the better: People who define themselves by their OS of choice ultimatly end up hurting the cause their championing. They need to go.
The bad side? A tarnished Linux. Why? Because smart and curious people are wary of evangelists of any stripe.
At the bottom of the page, Mr. Gates et. al. kindly point out that the page was last updated on November 1, 1999. Also, it's a comparison between Windows NT Server 4.0, not Windows 2000 Professional (or whatever they call it these days).
What does this mean? Nothing really, not anymore. It's stale data.
Maybe it's time for both Microsoft and the Linux community to update the page. As for Dell, it's not that hard to believe they would have said what they said about Linux - last year, before the recent Linux boom and the Microsoft verdict.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
That page wasn't accurate *then*; I'm sure you can look up several refutations of it.
:)
However, I'd be interested in seeing another round of benchmarks, especially between Linux 2.4.0 (preferably whenever it's officially released) and Windows 2000. Also, a comparison between the many actual journaling filesystems that run under Linux and the one (not really) journaling filesystem that runs on NT/2000 would be interesting; heck, include BeOS in that one, too!
Ground rules: use identical hardware, use stable, recent software, tune it all as much as possible, and test with multiple hardware configurations, (i.e. not just 4 Processors and 4 NIC cards; that's not terribly realistic in the first place) to figure out what is the best overall solution.
Also, when determining web server performance, make sure there are some tasks that are CPU-bound or IO-bound as well as simply network-bound; you want to test everything.
That all having been said, I'm pretty sure that a lot of the Mindcraft-specific differences have been fixed in 2.4, and therefore Linux should perform significantly better on those sorts of tests than it did in the past, as well. I'd rather see some more well-rounded tests constructed to go along with that, though.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
When are people going to grow up and realize that all architectures deliver or can be made to deliver basically the same sort of general performance and that any OS is going to shine in some particular area at some particular point in time?
IT managers really get my goat.. Lessay the entire development staff has a UNIX background and wants to develop a web application on PHP and Oracle. IT decides that NT is "better" than linux because ASP can serve pages a little faster than Apache can dish out PHP3 so then what do they have? Ground zero. Development staff that can't work with the tools. Same thing on the flip side... Try to make flashheads/Adobe GoLive! style designers work with Linux webservers. Give it up. Buy NT.
NT4 and Linux 2.2 kernels offered basically the same thing packaged two different ways. Windows 2000 rocks. Linux 2.4 rocks. Why is it a fight? I like 2000 on my desktop; Linux on my servers.
Why doesnt someone start a Linux Marketing Fund to buy advertising and pay PR people to dish out the same shit for Linux that everyone else is dishing out for their junk? Why does Linux always have to remain on the devensive? It could have the hell marketed out of it if someone wants to fund it.
Where are your priorities anwyay?
~GoRK
Non-geeks don't know anything other than what the numbers and PR tells them.
I talk to people who wonder about the "LINUXGRUVEN" sticker on my laptop, and I oft come up with "Windows is easy to learn and hard to use, while Linux is hard to learn and easy to use."
User-friendly, ergonomic, simple interfaces are for Gee Q. Public. There is an overwhelming majority that use computers for e-mail and IM and basic web work and word-proc-ing. They want a simple interface and a simple system. At least in the first part, MS did it.
But.. if you offer to teach people on how to use Linux, we can make an inroads. I've offered my cousin, a 13 yo who likes computers and hates AOL (praise Jeebus!), to teach him how to use Linux and let him use some of my sacred pile of O'Reilly books. I offer classmates that are interested the same option, to liberate themselves from Microsoft tyranny (and save big bucks in software).
No takers, but the offer is open.
The way to increase Linux use by GQP is to make it less imposing. Teach it to your friends.
Yes, this approach may sound familiar. It's how most religions got started, by a faithful few spreading the word to the World At Large.
YES. I am a collar-wearing linux evangelist. I intend to join the GeekCorps.
Amen. Thus ends the lesson.
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
I see a few problems with the suggested tests.
Static web content. This is almost a non-issue for dynamic eCommerce sites that generate most pages from database content and/or personalised content. In the coming age of Internet transactions there will be little requirement for purely static serving at large volume. Servers need to be tested for performance talking to Oracle/DB2/SQL Server databases, and also server to server XML. These are soon to be the more prominent roles of the web server in the business world rather than just serving up static pages.
And routing performance against NT? Why bother? How many people do you know that buy NT boxes for routers? If you're going to spend the money you might as well buy a hardware solution. If you don't want to spend the money, then everyone knows Linux already makes a decent router regardless of the 2.4 kernel.
When it comes to a purchasing decision, it will end up coming down to more than just this sort of testing.
That might sound like marketing-speak, but for better or worse, its true. NT is there in the server farms of America, and it is staying up and performing in spite of itself. Get used to seeing Win2k more and more in the server farms you visit in coming years.
There are no OEMs that provide uptime guarantees for Linux
Once again, the grain of truth here is that none of the linux distro vendors can really be taken seriously at this point, and most have thrived purely on the goodwill of the community. I can't think of one commercial distro that is truly enterprise worthy outside of Debian (which I consider noncommercial).
After the RH 7 debacle, do you really expect them to offer uptime guarantees? Sometimes I wish someone like IBM would issue a distro, just so there would be a real player with a serious service commitment behind the product.
Linux is getting there, and for most of its users its presents an incredible value. You have to look past these customers at some point and consider how you are going to satisfy customers who do not have budget constraints, but do have significant demands of the software and support they pay for.