Slashdot Mirror
A Strategic Comparison of Windows Vs. Unix
Ramsed writes "On LinuxWorld Paul Murphy wrote an article comparing Unix and Windows for a 500-student system and a 5,000-user manufacturing company. Summary: Most of the Windows versus Unix debate has been cast in terms of which is technically better or which is cheaper, but the real question is, 'Under what circumstances is it smarter to pick one technology rather than the other?'"
Umm... someone needs to check the spelling on the title.
You're new here, aren't you? ;-)
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
If that were the case, then technologies like 100VG or Token Ring would be around today. Beta would have beat VHS. The examples are plenty.
What IT and others make decisions on are "where is the limiting factor". Things like personnel and technical training availability. Things like comfort level and other "nontangible" items.
It all boils down to this. Sad but true.
The terse answer to this is simple: Windows is easy to learn and hard to use, while *nix is hard to learn but easy to use.
;)
Windows also suffers from this debilitating illness known as the 'Blue Screen of Death', which provides employees with instant five minute coffee breaks at the cost of whatever files the employee or student was working on. (At least when my power spikes, I know Emacs has an annoying tilde file with most of my data in it
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
Oh please, I'm starting my own company, and I am looking for any other proprietary software packages that I can waste my money and time on besides Windows and Office. Any suggestions????? I know *nix is clearly a zillion, nay, a gazillion times better in every way shape and form, but I really have money to burn.
;)
This really is just a conspiracy to get you *nix geeks employed as MIS managers, isn't it?
Wow, speculative argument, how interesting. Are there not case studies available? Am I supposed to implement one of these "toy problems" to provide such evidence.
Heh, nah. :) Seems really bad that it's in the title of the post though and it's pretty screwed up.
I Have Mirrored The Page To Be Safe in case of server overload --
http://erickrout.com/comparison.html
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
just FYI, for those who actally read the article; the comparison is between a combination of win2k/xp (work/home) and solaris/caldera (work/home). Interesting that they calculated prices based on an implementation of Solaris at work, as opposed to Linux.
For the large corporation ... and especially one that may continue to expand its network, etc .. There is one other business consideration.
UNIX admins are much fewer and further between than an NT admin.. They're more expensive and harder to replace.
When you use NT, chances are that if a sysadmin leaves its not a huge feat to bring in a replacement who can jump right into it.
Imran Ahmed, Linux Inthuziast
-----------
"I like to dissect women. Did you know I'm totally insane?"
If my schoold used Unix/Linux or even OS X we wouldn't be able to get full access rights as easily as in windows 9x, mainly because the windows 9x kernel rocks!!! .. oh wait
The deck is stacked against windows.
It's a large-scale Sun or the like server with "Smart Terminals" a.k.a. Dick..err.. diskless workstations a.k.a. X-terminals vs. a PC network.
I would like to see a comparison in there that also includes Linux workstations and either Unix or Linux servers.
Gentoo Sucks
Its a maxim I teach my web development students every day. I run a windows/linux/mac environment on my home network, and run Apache/Tomcat/PWS on one of my windows boxes and use my Linux/Apache/Samba server as a live web server while windows is for development. My Mac I use for design and Photoshop work. I love Linux and OSS, but I'll still choose the best tool for the job--which is why I look at all the tools I use with a critical eye. Having the source avaiable and free (in both senses of the word) makes a tool valuable to me, but if it still isn't best-in-breed for what I need, I'll spend money on it.
Dreamweaver UltraDev 4 w/ Homesite vs Frontpage 2000 -- there's no comparison.
For a server, Linux always. For a web programming environment, sometimes I'll choose Windows, sometimes Linux--depends on the client's needs. For design, it'll always be a Mac.
Best tool for the situation I say.
Beware the Whyte Wolf.
With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels...
The summary posted here promises more than the article delivers. Though making some vague gestures towards the end, the bulk of the article just focuses on money. For that, of course, Linux wins hands-down. Nice tables, though.
I think this article has some excellent points but i do question a couple of things about the figures - i disagree with the assertion that The windows support job is full time and the Unix is not - thats a wishfull thinking idea - If you are smar about this you run a Standard Environment on a RIS build for all the workstations and your support costs crash to the floor on windows - i would know that in a system of this type 4 staff will be busy but adequate.
I also agree that the UNIX servers will likely be more robust but i think its optomistic to state that the suport on desktops will be lower - the fact is theres not a lot of pre existing information to support this.
I think they are actually about the same in support costs and that works the costs out the same - having said that i can see a lot of advantages to the UNIX solution with open source giving access to a much wider range of tools at a lower cost - i would point out that MS dont force you to move up and i would also point out that on 500 machines the license costs and upgrade coss are lower as you would choose a volume licensing or select agreement basis (you would NEVER pay retail prices)
Good article but and well worth a read - i do have a slight question on bias - that is if a writer who supports open source working on an open source publicatiopn would ever make a reccomendation for closed source - i personally think that the Lonux desktop is closer than it was and almost there - and i also think everyone should have a choice in what they use-stuff like this can be a good start in helping people choose.
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
What we *really* need is a study of how many overpaid IT managers there are in existance, and study how much money you could save if you used people of logic and intelligence instead.
;) -- IT managers work with the budget guys to buy 1.5x more than they need. Why? Because they know that if they don't, managers will say the following year (when perhaps something new really IS needed) -- "Well, you didn't need that last year, so we won't put it in the budget."
;)
;-)
For example:
At a not-to-be-named newspaper in the northeast (where I may or may not work
The rest of the excise equipment is "borrowed" for months by employees. Titanium PowerBooks are the most frequent to go (though i can't blame anyone for that
Another IT example, this one bearing solely on the responsibility of the IT staff.
An IT manager at a sorta-major company grew up around Windows, and is very anti-Mac. So, when IT was given the power to decide what computers to buy this year, he went after Windows PCs.... for a graphics/web content company. The result? Employees who refuse to use the Windows systems, and instead use year-old Mac systems instead. When the employees wanted OS X installed, IT went ballistic because they'd "spent so much money" on new Windows and had planned to adopt XP early over a period of time.
You'd be surprised how easily and often this stuff happens. I'm not saying it's common, but I've heard so many stories -- of which those two I am personally related, unfortunately.
So, Windows or Unix?
How about whichever you want -- but do it efficiently and effectively. If Unix continues to receive support (esp. if Mac OS X continues to receive support -- and OS X Server), Windows and OS X will be very very similar feature-wise. And price-wise, too I'm sure (don't give the "Macs are 2x more expensive!"-routine. My $1299 iBook beats the heck out of a $1600 Dell laptop.. that is ugly, too).
Inevitably, it may very well to cleaning out some management and saving money that way. EFFICIENT Corporate America.
nahhhhh...
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
When's the last time you used a Windows system? I don't think I've had 2K crash - ever - in over a year of using it. Oh, but you're still comparing to 95, right?
Boy, you know this'll be objective.... In any case I run neither a 500 student system, or a 5,000 user manufacturing company, so neither scenario applies to me I suppose.
According to Microsoft's numbers our manufacturing company can expect 13 desktop failures each day and one significant server failure every 15 days. The more realistic Bugtoaster number equals about 161 desktop application crashes per day.
I don't know how you could even pause before making that decision, given numbers like that.
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
Obviously there are gross simplifications in the article but assuming that parents are going to buy BSD/Linux based PCs is ludicrous. Not to mention places like Dell have dropped installing Linux.
That means you would usually buy a complete PC with Windows then have to slick the drive and install Linux. And somehow I just don't see parents going with Linux. The *only* way this happens is if the school forces you to buy a prebuilt package(s) from them.
Sorry. That assumption is way too far gone to be overlooked.
Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
I Love this Quote: "The school choosing Windows is, in contrast, commiting itself to a far more complex environment in which systems failure is a daily reality and student access to the the Windows desktop opens everything to easy insider attack. As a result this choice will impose a continuous drain on management time and energy as they confront one crisis after another" This states that every day something is going to make the system crash and damage data, and waste time. If that were the case, I wouldn't look at the implementation as opposed to the Administrator. Not for choosing the "wrong" OS, but for not knowing enough about it to make it stable and a usable platform. This would apply to Unix also, as the wrong Administrator could kill the reliability inherent to thr *Nix boxes. And the second question would have to be how many students are going to have Solaris or even Linux on their HOME machine.....? Unless they have more than one (but all college students are poor right?) they are going to be using whatever OS came with their system.
You keep going until you die..."Me".
Reading through the article, is it just me or would the entire slashdot community be up in arms if something so unbacked up and speculative was posted saying Windows was better than Unix?
I loath Windows, but I also don't like reading un-convincing articles boasting how great unix is - I much prefer case studies, for instance, which show what as actually happened.
True, they can't necessarily be trusted any more than this, but at least there is the feeling there that they might be for real.
Well there's just one problem here: applications.
The author misses the simple fact that ie and MS Office don't run on Linux. This means that Linux users have to settle for "mostly good enough" document exchanges and a "mostly good enough" web experience. Like it or not, the OSS office solutions aren't fully interoperable with Microsoft's proprietary document formats. This can be immensely frustrating to the user. When you consider the growing unwillingness of major websites to support Netscape and simple fact that ie is more forgiving of poorly written html, you get very unhappy users.
So it comes down to a matter of priorities: do you want users who are satisfied with their experience but difficult to support or users who feel that their environment is unusable and who hate your guts.
My question is "if you aren't satisfying the users with your solution, why provide one at all?"
Any answers?
--Shoeboy
Where does this leave the newly birthed Mac OS X?
GPL Deconstructed
I suppose that issues such as the BIND root exploit (to name one), are "relative immunity to student attacks".
But putting the prejudice asside, the major issue in any computing purchasing decision are almost never detemined by the factors of the OS, but rather the applications that are required.
Example: I used to be the Windows admin for the student labs for a relatively large private university with a strong CS department, but also strong science/humanities. Issues such as what applications professors wanted to use were the primary motivation in determining future hardware/OS purchasing decisions. This is why when I started we had fewer than 20 NT workstations, but by the time I left we had more than 100, eating up over 50 former DECstation UNIX terminals, which (depsite the article's position to the contrary), managed to become obsolete in 4 short years.
Another large determiner is student/parent requests. If the majority of incoming students are not UNIX savvy, but are Windows experienced, the university will incure a large training cost every year to teach new students basic UNIX operations. (same for the business) There will always be a need for UNIX systems in a university setting for certain curriculums.
On the business side, the single most important determination in IT purchasing decisions is LOB applications (Line of Business). Most companies have one or more applications that they absolutely depend on; it runs their business. If this applications only runs on UNIX, they are a UNIX shop. If it only runs on Windows, they are a Windows shop. Nothing you can do will change that.
This article is FUD. Just because it didn't come out of Redmond doesn't mean it doesn't stink just as bad.
Somedays it's just not worth chewing through the restraints...
It really all depends on the system administrator.
At work we've got a system administrator for the Windows 2000 machines and he knows what he's doing. Result: the machines run as smoothly and stable as our UNIX boxes.
Heck, when the Linux team have a bad day, more smoothly and stable.
Technically, I completely dig UNIX. Idealogically, I completely distrust anything from Redmond. Strategically, sysadmin skills are all that matter.
Well, aside from the philosophical aspect of determinism, Windows is smarter because USERS are stupid.
All that matters is what? Users.
All that matters to an OS in a low-end business sense is what? Users.
The deciding factor isn't how "smart" an OS is, or how "good" it is -- soley for the sake of the OS itself, no... based on the learning curve, and only the learning curve, of the average corporate user, an OS should be able to perform like a nurse or a nanny, not a silent mastermind who has communication problems.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Windows is easy to learn and hard to use, while *nix is hard to learn but easy to use.
I keep hearing this, but I haven't heard any supporting arguements. Can you point me to comparitive time trials for Un*x vs. Windows at performing common tasks? By common tasks I mean directory traversal, document creation and editing, searching and the like.
Usability is a topic that interests me a great deal, so I'd love to see some hard figures here.
Thanks,
--Shoeboy
The use of think clients (or smart displays, or whatever), using Windows 2000 Terminal Server, is possibly a far better alternative to the thick-client perspective.
That said, I'd say the Linux alternative is far cheeper anyway, but hey - Windows still have better software for the end luser.
roy
Computers are like air conditioners.
- They stop working when you open Windows.
While I won't attempt to make the estimates myself, I will suggest a few things to take into consideration
- Learning curves. In the school and corporate environments, people don't want to waste time learning unix or linux. They don't work the same as Windows, which is the standard desktop practically everywhere. A normal situation would be that only some of the I.T. staff and power users know unix. If you can teach the blonde bimbo that blows your boss and makes memos in MS Powerpoint to send via Outlook the advantages of being able to compile your own kernel, I'll shut up about that, but it's not realistic to assume that people can easily learn a new OS. After all, most of them don't even understand how to use Windows correctly.
- Interaction with others outside your office. Since Windows is the standard in the corporate world, you have to be able to communicate effectively with Windows. Samba is not easy for the average user to use like network neighborhood is. OpenOffice isn't able to work with MS Office as well as people tell you. It can read some old versions of word documents, but it doesn't work with Office XP. Microsoft will most likely make a conversion tool for Windows users who are using Office 2k or older, but not for unix. Unfortunately, until you have everyone agree to use unix it will never be a good office tool for people that communicate with those outside your office.
- Support costs. Corporate support is a very important thing. Anyone that works with big companies to maintain their server hardware and software knows that if you have a critical problem and you're paying $200k a year in support, they will have a patch out for you by COB the next day. (Perhaps that was a slight exaggeration, but they are still very quick to solve problems.) The problem is that Windows support is generally cheaper than Unix support. I wouldn't even consider linux in an office environment though, because those that support it are not the same group that developers the software.
There are others that I could mention but those are the main three things that seemed to be left out. It's hard us normal people to quantify the amount of money those things cost but most corporations have a team of people dedicated to that sort of stuff. I think that for how greedy most corporations are, if they honestly thought they could save money by not using Windows, they would switch in a heartbeat. However, after careful and detailed evaluation, much better than the one in this article, they decide to stick with Windows or migrate their stuff to it. They have to be saving money with Microsoft somehow, and I think those three categories are some of the major ways they justify it.Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
Having working in a campus environment for a good part of the last 4 years I can say that not everyone wants to learn something new, let alone spend the time to familiarize themselves with software packages they are unfamiliar with. Only students of Comp. Sci/Comp. Eng. are for the most part willing to do this, and even some of them are not.
While the article states that there would be the need for only a single *nix support position, and four Windows support positions, we must think of this: How many additional postitions would have to be created to train students (even rudimentary training) for an infrastructure they are not accustomed to? I would guess at least 10, but depending on the size of said campus, it could grow to an exorbant amount, overshadowing the cost of the initial startup costs.
The campus I am at now is a great example (Northern Illinois) and especially the labs I work in (art/music). There are plenty of Mac's here for people to use, but unless they are die-hard Mac-heads or it is required to use them for a class, 99% of the students stay away from them for the sole reason that it is unfamiliar territory. This made the campus cut down to a single Mac support position for the entire campus (which has over 200 macs), solely because of peoples inability to accept things that are different.
Look at the makeup of the world's computer market, 90+% Windows. People fear change and are afraid to learn. Even in academia.
Later
Josh
Anyone have some rebuttals from the Microsoft people? It looks like this article tells us what we already knew: Use the right tool for the right job. Windows is NOT the right tool for most jobs.
D/\ Gooberguy
Karma: Meh (Mostly from meh.)
This article doesn't mention that it costs money to train people to use Unix. It doesn't have anything to do with how smart they are, they'll ay least need time to adjust. If you've ever read an ad in the newspaper looking for a secretary, you know that MS Office is pretty much the prerequisite. All of your employees know how to use Windows coming in, not so for Unix. Retraining people costs money.
:)
This article seeks to use "average" scenarios to make its point. I would say that Unix would be a lot more beneficial in specialized situations, where employees use a lot of custom or specialized software (e.g. POS stations, industrial settings). They're going to have to learn anyway, so why not have them learn it on a cheaper, more stable platform?
In the college scenario, the article takes no account that many colleges make these decisions based on what the students use. Usually, that's Windows. Sometimes Mac. Almost never *nix.
In the corporate scenario, no mention is made of the need to share files with other companies. This requires Windows. No corporation really cares about the evils of closed file formats until they get in the way. Besides, how are any pitches going to be made without PowerPoint?
To be realistic, both situations should have compared the cost of a Windows setup vs. a mixed Unix/Windows setup, since that's how it work in the real world.
Windows -- Grudgingly useful for desktop/secretarial environments, and you'll also find that most of the accounting packages out there, as well as many embedded systems packages, require it. Windows is also, like it or not, the OS of choice for hard-core gamers. Sucks, but true. Generally not a good choice for server environments due to cost and MS lockin (stability issues were all but eliminated with Win2K). Limited to x86 platforms; all other versions died of user apathy.
Unix -- Useful for light-to-medium duty single server environments (especially file-sharing and WWW), as well as clustering; Solaris, AIX, Irix, and occasionally even Linux pop up on high-end (i.e. mainframe or supercomputer class) systems. Also the system of choice for cluster computing (though MacOS Classic can make a credible case for being a viable cluster computation environment as well). Unix's traditional timesharing environment is a very small niche in the modern market, but still useful. Also a major scientific computing platform. The downside is that the proliferation of standards makes generalizing about anything above the command line difficult and/or pointless; Solaris != Linux != BSD, and it's going to stay that way. Runs on everything concievable, from a Commodore 64 all the way up to gigantic Cray supercomputers and Linux clusters.
MacOS -- Don't run a publishing house or recording studio without it; the Mac is the platform of choice for the creative industry. Also a good choice for education, but a weak gaming platform. MacOS X largely eliminates instability from legacy code. AppleScript as a scripting platform makes VBA and Unix Shell look horribly primitive (and MacPerl is available as well). Limited to PowerPC hardware.
That's my summation...
/Brian
Oh, sure, no one has a problem with THAT, but when it comes to Microsoft leasing their software, then everyone has such issues! I just see them both as services...
The one thing the reviewer fails to compare is performance. There is no way that one 2x750MHz system is going to compare with 500 900MHz celerons, even if it is a Sun 4800 w/ 12GB of ram.
I use solaris remotely from sunray terminals at school. The performance isn't terrible, but when there are more than 10 or so people on a server, I feel like I'm using a pentium 100. And that's when only a couple of them are doing CPU intensive stuff. I'll take a dedicated CPU and minor stability problems any day of the week. 2K is actually a pretty solid OS as long as it's running on good hardware.
I like it!!
There are many reasons to dislike Windows. Reliability, however, is not one of them. My desktop running Windows XP hasn't crashed yet due to software. Individual programs crash, sure, but the OS is rock solid. My laptop running Win2k has gone for up to a week without rebooting - that's going between multiple network environments, hardware configurations, and going in and out of suspend and hibernate.
Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of reasons to bash Windows such as lackluster security (although a patched system can be as secure as a patched GNU/Linux installation).
Working with end users, I find that Windows is both hard to learn AND hard to use. Nobody's figured out how to make a truly intuitive interface yet, including Linux and Windows. Users don't get or accept the concept that there are multiple ways of doing things - they get locked into the first technique they learn, such as going to the file menu and clicking exit rather than hitting the big x. They are STILL afraid of breaking things, which is unfortunately still a valid fear.
Um, this might be stretching it a bit... I dont think that very much besides real hardware can be written down without a significant scrutiny risk from the IRS. Even hardware has been nearly comparable to ordinary expense, in the last few heady years of upgrades and speed improvements. But things perhaps are changing in that regard, as we near theoretical limits in disk storage, etc.
In an case, the rate of change in Linux releases also implies occasional upgrades. (Although perhaps not at the rate of MS) OTOH, Linux is not licensed per-workstation, either, which could help to hold costs down. :-)
That site violates numerous AOL Time Warner copyrights and trademarks. They should sue that little shit.
....while an expert on Windows 95 networking would have first had to abandon NETBUIE for DECNET to cope with Windows/NT and now have to abandon that skill set to learn the basic Unix networking built into Windows/XP.
expert on win95 caused the same cerebral twinge normally reserved for "military intelligence" or "managerial decision".
While the mention of NETB...oh, god, I can't say it, much less type it without that "fingernails screeching down a chalk board" chill down my spine...(sniff..*SOB*, shudder...make it stop...MAKE IT STOP!!).
and that "Basic UNIX networking in XP"...oh, that explains why changing network settings no longer requires a reboot.
Learn something new every day.
Of course I love the quote--not from the article, mind you (might have been on arstechnica, I think)--- that Microsoft Windows 2000 is better and more stable that 30 year old UNIX technology, but, later claims that Windows 2000 is approaching the *stability* of said 30 year old UNIX technology...
And sure enough, there was a link to a "PR" page on windows 2000... yep, decode some of the marketing "twists and turns" and, yes-sirreee, the put UNIX down and say "We are almost as good" in black and white.
Heh.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
Of comparisions.....its not TCO, its not os superiority, its not even plain cost....its plain stupidity from management what does not let sysadmins to change to a better, more rouboust technology. I was hearing a radio conversation with the Mrketing director of Dell Computers and he said something very interesting: People are not fond of our technology, they are fond of our brand and means of comercialization.
No manager cares about unix/linux being better when microsoft has invested millions in KEEPING THEIR MONOPOLY. They are not stupid, they spend that in stuff we (or unix companies) will never be able to copy like their handwrite recognition thingie.They close standards....etc. you know the drag.
The only way managers are going to start changing brands is to push ours and make effective investment in the linux/oss/unix brands. Make them feel its better for what they need (not for what we think it is, and also note that it doesnt need to actually BE better, insofar as the client beleives so). And that, we are all doing very well. Every second you take in an install fest, every server you sell or even give away and implement well, every single switch to OSS is starting to build a brand for our stuff. This is an investment even the smallest linux enthusiasts do because it costs them to switch from windows.
At larger scale, IBM is investing in the Linux brand to push their own. Redhat is pushing Linux to push their own platform, and spending money in it.... in the end, the idea is that this guys understand that it will be an open world (or more of an open world) tomorrow and they want to have the largest slice of it possible.
I want my slice, get yours too...
happy happy JOY JOY JOY JOY happy happy happy KENNETH BRANAUGH IS A HOT SEXXXXX GOD happy happy joy joy joy JOY JOY JOY jump jump skip hop with glee because i'm happy HAPPY i've just smoked an ounce of weed and snorted ten lines of coke happy HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY DAMMIT DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL IM HAPPY happy happy JOY JOY JOY JOY happy happy happy KENNETH BRANAUGH IS A HOT SEXXXXX GOD happy happy joy joy joy JOY JOY JOY jump jump skip hop with glee because i'm happy HAPPY i've just smoked an ounce of weed and snorted ten lines of coke happy HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY DAMMIT DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL IM HAPPY happy happy JOY JOY JOY JOY happy happy happy KENNETH BRANAUGH IS A HOT SEXXXXX GOD happy happy joy joy joy JOY JOY JOY jump jump skip hop with glee because i'm happy HAPPY i've just smoked an ounce of weed and snorted ten lines of coke happy HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY DAMMIT DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL IM HAPPY happy happy JOY JOY JOY JOY happy happy happy KENNETH BRANAUGH IS A HOT SEXXXXX GOD happy happy joy joy joy JOY JOY JOY jump jump skip hop with glee because i'm happy HAPPY i've just smoked an ounce of weed and snorted ten lines of coke happy HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY DAMMIT DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL IM HAPPY happy happy JOY JOY JOY JOY happy happy happy KENNETH BRANAUGH IS A HOT SEXXXXX GOD happy happy joy joy joy JOY JOY JOY jump jump skip hop with glee because i'm happy HAPPY i've just smoked an ounce of weed and snorted ten lines of coke happy HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY DAMMIT DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL IM HAPPY happy happy JOY JOY JOY JOY happy happy happy KENNETH BRANAUGH IS A HOT SEXXXXX GOD happy happy joy joy joy JOY JOY JOY jump jump skip hop with glee because i'm happy HAPPY i've just smoked an ounce of weed and snorted ten lines of coke happy HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY DAMMIT DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL IM HAPPY happy happy JOY JOY JOY JOY happy happy happy KENNETH BRANAUGH IS A HOT SEXXXXX GOD happy happy joy joy joy JOY JOY JOY jump jump skip hop with glee because i'm happy HAPPY i've just smoked an ounce of weed and snorted ten lines of coke happy HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY DAMMIT DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL IM HAPPY happy happy JOY JOY JOY JOY happy happy happy KENNETH BRANAUGH IS A HOT SEXXXXX GOD happy happy joy joy joy JOY JOY JOY jump jump skip hop with glee because i'm happy HAPPY i've just smoked an ounce of weed and snorted ten lines of coke happy HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY DAMMIT DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL IM HAPPY happy happy JOY JOY JOY JOY happy happy happy KENNETH BRANAUGH IS A HOT SEXXXXX GOD happy happy joy joy joy JOY JOY JOY jump jump skip hop with glee because i'm happy HAPPY i've just smoked an ounce of weed and snorted ten lines of coke happy HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY DAMMIT DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL IM HAPPY happy happy JOY JOY JOY JOY happy happy happy KENNETH BRANAUGH IS A HOT SEXXXXX GOD happy happy joy joy joy JOY JOY JOY jump jump skip hop with glee because i'm happy HAPPY i've just smoked an ounce of weed and snorted ten lines of coke happy HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY DAMMIT DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL IM HAPPY happy happy JOY JOY JOY JOY happy happy happy KENNETH BRANAUGH IS A HOT SEXXXXX GOD happy happy joy joy joy JOY JOY JOY jump jump skip hop with glee because i'm happy HAPPY i've just smoked an ounce of weed and snorted ten lines of coke happy HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY DAMMIT DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL IM HAPPY happy happy JOY JOY JOY JOY happy happy happy KENNETH BRANAUGH IS A HOT SEXXXXX GOD happy happy joy joy joy JOY JOY JOY jump jump skip hop with glee because i'm happy HAPPY i've just smoked an ounce of weed and snorted ten lines of coke happy HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY DAMMIT DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL IM HAPPY happy happy JOY JOY JOY JOY happy happy happy KENNETH BRANAUGH IS A HOT SEXXXXX GOD happy happy joy joy joy JOY JOY JOY jump jump skip hop with glee because i'm happy HAPPY i've just smoked an ounce of weed and snorted ten lines of coke happy HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY DAMMIT DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL IM HAPPY happy happy JOY JOY JOY JOY happy happy happy KENNETH BRANAUGH IS A HOT SEXXXXX GOD happy happy joy joy joy JOY JOY JOY jump jump skip hop with glee because i'm happy HAPPY i've just smoked an ounce of weed and snorted ten lines of coke happy HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY DAMMIT DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL IM HAPPY happy happy JOY JOY JOY JOY happy happy happy KENNETH BRANAUGH IS A HOT SEXXXXX GOD happy happy joy joy joy JOY JOY JOY jump jump skip hop with glee because i'm happy HAPPY i've just smoked an ounce of weed and snorted ten lines of coke happy HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY DAMMIT DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL IM HAPPY happy happy JOY JOY JOY JOY happy happy happy KENNETH BRANAUGH IS A HOT SEXXXXX GOD happy happy joy joy joy JOY JOY JOY jump jump skip hop with glee because i'm happy HAPPY i've just smoked an ounce of weed and snorted ten lines of coke happy HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY DAMMIT DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL IM HAPPY happy happy JOY JOY JOY JOY happy happy happy KENNETH BRANAUGH IS A HOT SEXXXXX GOD happy happy joy joy joy JOY JOY JOY jump jump skip hop with glee because i'm happy HAPPY i've just smoked an ounce of weed and snorted ten lines of coke happy HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY DAMMIT DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL IM HAPPY happy happy JOY JOY JOY JOY happy happy happy KENNETH BRANAUGH IS A HOT SEXXXXX GOD happy happy joy joy joy JOY JOY JOY jump jump skip hop with glee because i'm happy HAPPY i've just smoked an ounce of weed and snorted ten lines of coke happy HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY DAMMIT DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL IM HAPPY happy happy JOY JOY JOY JOY happy happy happy KENNETH BRANAUGH IS A HOT SEXXXXX GOD happy happy joy joy joy JOY JOY JOY jump jump skip hop with glee because i'm happy HAPPY i've just smoked an ounce of weed and snorted ten lines of coke happy HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY DAMMIT DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL IM HAPPY happy happy JOY JOY JOY JOY happy happy happy KENNETH BRANAUGH IS A HOT SEXXXXX GOD happy happy joy joy joy JOY JOY JOY jump jump skip hop with glee because i'm happy HAPPY i've just smoked an ounce of weed and snorted ten lines of coke happy HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY DAMMIT DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL IM HAPPY happy happy JOY JOY JOY JOY happy happy happy
** ATTENTION TROLLS!!! **
FAGGOT CMDR RALPH TACO FUCKWAD MALDA AND HIS GAY COMRADE MICHAEL WANT TO RAPE YOU OF YOUR RIGHTS!!
WHAT WILL YOU DO TO DEFEND YOURSELVES?????
Slashdot requires you to wait 2 minutes between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 1 minute since you last successfully posted a comment
If you this error seems to be incorrect, please provide the following in your report to SourceForge:
Browser type
User ID/Nickname or AC
What steps caused this error
Whether or not you know your ISP to be using a proxy or some sort of service that gives you an IP that others are using simultaneously.
How many posts to this form you successfully submitted during the day
* Please choose 'formkeys' for the category!
Thank you.
--
$ chown -R us:us yourbase
Windows --> desktop
Those two can mix pretty well, you have the strenght of Unix servers as backend and ease of use of Windows for the desktop.
You then just have to choose applications that works well in that type of environment, and everyone will be happy. Just use some NT version of windows, win9x/ME would be a joke in a real work environment. (I'm not saying it isn't widely used already, just saying that using it is running afther trouble).
cheers
Firstly, while the *nix users will maintain that they have higher quality and more efficient OSes, I would say that this is only partly due to it being *nix (with all the efficiency and miscellaneous bonuses that entails). The other part is that those people who choose to use *nix will already have knowledge and interest in computers, and will thus be more likely to know what they are doing and less prone to mistakes. The OS can be less forgiving and expectant of mistakes and can get on with doing its job, because fewer people will be completely in over their heads.
You just compare how the average Mom would do on *nix compared to Windows. Hehe.
*nix and Windows clearly cater for different markets. Windows happens to satisfy the needs of the vast majority of computer users; it is simple, it will allow mistakes (and ask if you are 'sure' about things) and it has high compatibility. (All of this in theory, of course...) *nix, on the other hand, is for people who want to end the BSODs, the resource-munching and other general evils of Windows and sodding well do some work. Compatibility may be lower, but emulators exist if needs must. *nix is far more user-customisable; it works for you, whereas Windows can only ever work with you (and that only on the best of days).
I guarantee the if the majority of Windows users began using *nix, the number of poorly-written apps, drivers and etceterae would increase a thousandfold. Dumb questions would get asked, lack of customer support would be complained about, and many many people would have no idea what the hell they were doing. And as a I ramble along with my long-winded sentences, my eventual point is that *nix-Windows comparisons are apples-to-oranges not only because of the innate differences in the OSes but because of the differences in the users themselves (and their rewuirements in an OS. Most people need one that helps them out an awful lot.)
Endnote: I use Windows. I consider myself at least moderately computer-literate; why do I not switch to *nix? It isn't really worth my time. If Windows performance degrades more and *nix compatibility improves, I mit be tempted to give it a whirl.
Security through promiscuity is no better than security through obscurity.
...to guess what technology the LinuxWorld guy thought was smarter?
No, I think not. I shall look elsewhere for real comparisons.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
'cause most of them suck.
To be objective, the difference is experience. An NT admin might be a 'reboot monkey'. An NT admin might be someone who clicks OK after putting the CD in the drive. An NT admin might be someone who upgrades users applications one machine at a time.
I realize there are NT admins who are developers, write code, manage hundreds of systems via sms, etc. But, that's not your average NT admin.
Now a unix admin... anything more than a junior unix admin almost by definition requires scripting or programming experience.
You get what you pay for. I'll take one Senior unix sysadmin over 3 junior NT admins any day of the week. Do the math.
ller Server Hardware to Serve Articles : $7,000
Big Fat Bandwidth to Transmit Articles : $15,500
Dictionary, to Spell Check Articles : Priceless
There are some words Slashdot can spell. For all the rest, there's Merriam-Webster.
"Comparison"
ShoutingMan.com
The sad thing is that it's easy to see Startup cost difference. But once that money is invested in a M$ solution, you can't exactly get a refund for switching to a Solaris solution.
:)
However he does mention in a little box with little text...
"It is difficult to move a data center from a mixed or proprietary environment to Unix. That process is the subject of my book The Unix Guide to Defenestration and requires far more than technical change. The challenge is to change minds not just technology."
That's everything from secretaries and higher ups yelling "where's my Word, where's my Outlook and Contacts?" The people that usually don't get phased by this kind of change is developers, coders, or people that run only certain applications that would have to get ported.
He also mentions another good point...
" Using Unix enables but does not ensure success. "
Before I get modded down, I use Linux at home.
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
This first comparison would have been valueable if the author was comparing apples to apples.
In the windows solution students have access to a full pc but in the unix solution only access via thin client.
Indeed the unix system is much cheaper because a full pc on each desktop is not required. There has got to be a thin client solution for windows aswell! I bet atleast the Java Citrix client would run on those same SunRays. This comparison would have been more valid if the author chose the same design for each platform! Also i can't think of any school that could get away with thin clients for their students not to mention the lack of standard office apps like m$ word.
This school is definetly not teaching any programming courses with no physical access to a pc!
R
Did you even READ the article? According to it, the average uptime of over 1500 Windows 2000 boxes are only 200 hours. Win2k doesn't give the BSOD, it just locks up. I couldn't even get it to install on one of my computers.
One of my linux boxes had an uptime of 480 days until the uptime value overflowed and went back to 0.
D/\ Gooberguy
Karma: Meh (Mostly from meh.)
I've personally had 3 BOSD style crashes with W2k - as well as the system needing to be rebooted multiple times because it has become unusable.
It IS better the NT or 95/98/ME, but it still has nothing on UNIX/Linux
- The unexamined life is not worth leading -
If it just simple dollars and cents then why is the real world different?
Holy shit! 500 SunRay terminals on a single 4800. I must contact the author and find out how to keep the 4800 from exploding under that kind of load.
To properly set up that many SunRays, the load has to be distributed between a number of servers, because every client running *office, nutscrape^Wmozilla, and a few xterms with email clients will require about 50Mbytes per session. Thats 25 GigaBytes of RAM, not counting the slowaris overhead. Hit swap even slightly with that much real memory, and watch every session run at 20MHz 386 speeds.
No, this is a completely unrealistic mismatch. It would have been nice if the author had asked a few *nix and *doze experts for some real numbers and real world installations, then we could use an article like this for something useful. As it is, M$ doesn't even need to respond, its 100% grade-A FUD.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
That was divine enlightenment you misguided anal spasm
--
$ chown -R us:us yourbase
On LinuxWorld Paul Murphy wrote an article comparing Unix and Windows
I'd like to see some unbiased sources say something about how good one is over the other. There must be some out there, but I guarantee that "LinuxWorld" isn't one of them.
Last post!
Like your name you are full of shit. You think NT admins suck because you have already decided that the OS they work on is crap, so they must be crap also.
Any OS is only as good as the person administering it. Any OS.
Why would anyone compare a senior unix admin vs. junior NT admin? If you are going to make a point atleast compare oranges and oranges.
I'm not drunk, I just have a speech impediment. And a stomach virus. And an inner ear infection.
I was waiting for the training consideration. But then I thought about it and realized that most training would be in the area of job-specific applications anyway where people in the manufacturing area spend most of their time.
So training is less of an issue. Anyway, Windows is easier to use because most people are used to windows. So actually training people may not be that hard... Especially if they don't use their computers that much.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Where is the comparison of using Terminal Services? Why is he paying full retail prices for systems when he should know full well quantity licenses are significantly cheaper? Why the assertion that Suns are more stable when in my experience Windows is just as stable if you don't let the users screw with it. Where are the different server options for running PeopleSoft? Why Dell not Unisys?
In the end this is a piece of well researched FUD designed to come to the predetermined conclusion - Unix is better than Windows.
I beg to differ - most decision have to be made in the context of an existing architecture, business system and corporate momentum. It is always a case of choosing the best solution to fit the existing network for a minimum medium term cost.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
This is correct. I have never met a Windows admin that really knew how to diagnose problems and fix them. Even senior admins are scared to go into the Registry. Instead, it is (a) reboot and see of that fixes your problem, or (b) if the problem still exists, then reinstall the software. These are people with MS certifications.
OTOH, I've never met a UNIX sysadmin that I couldn't learn many things from or that I didn't admire (I've been using/programming for over 10 years).
Cost of Servers for 5,200 users: 850K
cost of Storage for said users: 8X 40K
The look on the Admins face when management standardizes on XP home
edition and s/he has to make 5,200 phone calls to activate them all:
Priceless.
(Laff now, you know it will happen to someone, eventually. With Microsoft's luck it will be a charity.)
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
Preface - I am fairly agnostic to what is on my desktop, although I do prefer Unix to Windows.
Reading this article, being a very informed technical user (one who has done both Uni unix sysadmining and Windows sysadmining because, well, what Windows machine hasn't needed it?), I found it very hard to buy any of Murphy basic assumptions or trade-offs.
First off, why does a Dell 2100 cost so much in the Windows solution? I went to www.dell.com to price the same thing and got US$1262.11 (40GB HDD, 256MB, 1.1Ghz Celeron, 17in head, net card, 2000/XP with Office academic). Mind you, I went in the Academic pricing door, because he is pricing for a school. The Office/2K software adds about $280 to the bill. Thus, the only thing he should have noted is that each computer buyer shells out $280 more for Windows. In other words, for the 900 computers (500 school, 400 home) in his first example, that's $252K - no chump change). That assumes no school licensing. If he isn't getting those basic numbers right, you know the rest of the article is bent...
The idea that "Smart Displays" would cut it in school is OK for some (terminal rooms, where many go to just read mail and surf), but forget it for heavy work. I've not heard of these being satisfactorily used in practice.
Also, I hate to say it, but I don't think this guy has ever seriously used Win2K. Many may not like to hear it - but I've only seen the BSOD once while using it. I've been actually pleasantly surprised myself at its reliability. I am now able to run these things for months without reboot (OK, so I had a solaris machine that went for a little over a year once until we upgraded the memory...). In any case, either system properly maintained is fairly reliable.
Point 2 - administration. At my old Uni, the CS systems (not the general machines) were maintained by 2 full time Unix sysadmins (we actually had very few Windows machines at the time) and a horde of cheap or free volunteers. The systems ran 24 hours, but only with help (because beginning CS programmers can do all sorts of weird things you don't anticipate). Either way, it's at least one full time person for Unix or Windows. I think the real cost will be in all the tech support needed for these students that grew up on Windows at home (at least 95% of them). That will need 4 full time people in and of itself.
I'll buy point 3, but everyone likes to upgrade.
I'm a little less able to gripe about his assumptions in the 5,000 manufacturing environment, but I'll add in some thoughts...
The last company I worked at had over 5000 all over the world. It was a mixed Unix and Windows (mostly Windows, since tech is always smaller than marketing and sales), and the whole organization didn't have but 50 tech support total. They worked hard, but they had a pretty efficient setup, and things went pretty smoothly. I'm going to assume he got his 30:1 Windows user:support ratio from some informed source, but he doesn't cite one, and I've never seen it that bad in practice.
Anyway, no need to beat the horse. There is one reason I do like the article. It is totally biased for Unix to win. However, there is so much crap that says the opposite (in Windows favor), that I guess you have to have the CIOs read both poles of crap to come to a decision in the middle.
Put a user in front of a Wintel box. Chances are, they could putz around, figure out how to use the mousey-pointy-thing, and get the idea of clicking around to do simple, uninteresting tasks. If they want to do something fancy, like find a file, they can't do it. They'll ask a person in tech support (like you, most likely) to tell them how to do that, and they'll come to you with issues of the utmost idiocy that you, as a *nixer, would be able to do in less than twenty keystrokes from a commmand line.
Isn't this what X and a Desktop Environment (like GNOME, KDE, UDE, CDE, etc. is for. Of course, I tried to "puts around" in CDE and gave up, but GNOME, KDE, etc. are pretty intuitive.
Let's face it-- Windows IS easier to use because most people ARE used to using it. It is not anything inherent in the UI!
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Written by someone who has, seemingly, no practicle experience in what they are writing about. Four admins (30:1 where the hell is that written?) and four servers are not are not required for 500 users. Windows 2000 has a 2000+ hour MTBF (see nstl) not really the 'daily reality of system failures' quoted in the article. Note : The bugtoaster numbers include crashes of applications running on the OS not just the OS.
/. hates windows shit.
Also massive single point of failure exists in the School Sun solution - if the server goes, then you have 500 paper weights! Add another Sun Server and you are close to the quoted Windows cost.
Using very similar client terminals, a Windows Terminal solution (Citirx and NCR) can be offered at less than the Sun solution using the same Four servers recommended.
More
Terrorist threat forwarded to John Ashcroft.
--
$ chown -R us:us yourbase
At our school every incoming firstyear is required to take the basic computer class. This is the easiest way for a university to deal with unfamiliar territory. (Also a great padding for us CS majors :-P)
Also the fact that a campus only needs one Mac Tech is a testiment to how well the mac operating system is to use. I'm the only one here for a campus of 2500 students :)
So you say: The average uptime of 1500 win2k boxes is 200 hours. Your 1 linux box has an uptime of 480 days.
.. well, neither are you! This is not a meaningful comparison.
I'm no statistician, but
My experience with computers in general is that the uptime in no way matches a normal distribution. You get a solid install, and it stays up forever without serious problems. You get some flakey driver, system dll, or kernel module and it crashes all the time.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
Why compare thin clients to desktop machines? This makes the article kinda biased. What about running Citrix Metaframe on top of Windows 2000 using thin clients? This is comparing apples to oranges...
A comparison between Windows and Unix.
Now if someone could just recommend a good visual mode text editor.
I'm sorry, I got to the first case study regarding the University and decided at that point the article was not worth reading any further.
I'm not certain at what point and time this article was researched. So I'm going to ignore the glaring price descrepancy for the hardware... specifically the Dell GX150 which they list at $1200, but I can get for $900 from Dell's website.
But the most glaring error in a case study about academic purchases is that the $479 is a retail price for Office XP Standard full edition.
A college would most certainly qualify for academic prices, which would put you at only $159/desktop for the software. That is a $320 discrepancy per desktop resulting in at least a $160,000 error in the bottom line.
Furthermore with more than 500 computers on campus, the college would qualify for the Academic Select licensing which will likely further reduce costs.
It's unclear if the author made further mistakes of this nature. I can only assume that he didn't factor in the fact that students can buy Office XP for home use for only $150 as well, and so forth.
I just barely glanced at the costs used for the corporate side and saw similar glaring errors.
I'm still trying to figure out why he decided to throw Microsoft Operations Manager into the mix. That seems like a convenient way to throw another $120k onto the price tag. I wonder if the author even knows what MOM does, or that it's actually a NetIQ product licensed by Microsoft.
We had Windows 3.1 workstations and all internet access was through a DEC Ultrix box using (gasp) Telnet and FTP... Our web-browser was Lynx (I am NOT kidding).
Who trained the students, you will ask? The same few people that taught them Windows apps-- underpaid students like myself working part time for the college. But people had remarkably little problem EVEN THOUGH this was a college with its share of technophobes. While the comp-sci students were playing with Solaris, Linux, and NT, the rest of the workstations had laminated tips for using the csh from telnet as well as ftp commands.
Funny, lots of technophobes used Lynx and Pine and few asked for help. OK it was back in '97 but still I maintain with a little bit of help, people will learn the basics of their jobs quickly.
If I were to design a network for a college today, I would probably use Unix for most of it and allow Windows workstations to participate (SAMBA is great)...
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Unix is better for everything.
Personally, I haven't found anything truely worthwhile that doesn't work on some UNIX. You dont have to filter through all the junky programs. Of course that will change when Unix gets the market share back, oh well...
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
The article doesn't mention the possibility of running Windows on the servers through thin clients. While I don't know how reliable this can be, I know that at my University, while there is a UNIX-based network, it is possible to connect to a Windows computer to use standard apps like Word, etc. through thin clients. 4 server computers are shared by anyone who needs to use them (a couple thousand students).
Does anyone know if this is possible on a larger scale? Does Microsoft even support this type of setup?
It would seem to me that if this would be possible, it would keep man of the pros of both Windows (everyone knows how to use, etc.) and UNIX (able to log in elsewhere after a crash and still work).
People thought of it a long time ago. A clean desktop with only icons for the programs you run.
some terminal based apps had some very intuitive interfaces.
Gui's seem to work well for folks who can quickly make connections between like things, but for the rest of them, well, I don't know if we can really help them aside from limiting their choices.
Get your Windows apps! PowerPoint, Word, Excel, Entourage, etc! Get your Unix apps and services!
It does everything *except* Windows!
GPL Deconstructed
Of course it's not *quite* ready yet. Office isn't out yet, for example.
Still, would the comparison change drastically when OS X is ready for primetime?
A Unix on the desktop that is stable and powerful and full featured *and* intuitive? With Windows connectivity, as well as Office apps, and Unix connectivity?
GPL Deconstructed
And I'd take one senior NT admin over three junior unix admins... Really, there isn't a hell of a lot of difference between managing unix and NT. Let's all pretend that there aren't a lot of idiots out there that lied on resumes and consider running linux at home a qualification for being an administrator (same with the NT side).
I assert that administering either a Unix or NT variant is essentially the same thing. I run a mixed environment, and frankly, have comparible uptimes between similar servers of different breeds.
You have to install, configure, and secure.
This requires more than putting in a CD and hitting until you have a GUI up no matter what the platform. The means securing it, ensuring that random daemons/services aren't running, setting up appropriate accounts and accounting. The root cause of the hue and cry of "advocates", who are sometimes blind, is that the Windows platform is a little TOO easy to use. This is almost always an issue when something tries to be all things to all people. You have to dumb down the interface for the masses. However, whether I am installing or maintaining Windows or FreeBSD (or whichever *nix I happen to be in front of) you can be certain that I am not using a GUI to do this. A good administrator is going to script out--what!? you say? A script under Wind0ze? Yes, of course-- just once a process and then have yet another tool to use later. A bad administrator is going to do it manually, and thus you get admins that are LAZY and let simple things like keeping keeping up patch levels make them look like idiots. Please note that the issues with CodeRed and Nimda weren't that Windows was insecure, but that are too many NT admins are LAZY insufferable punks!
Where people go wrong is when they think that they know what they are doing. The more you learn, the more you understand how little you know.
Frankly, I love removing PATH variables from "Unix admin Gods" and watching them squirm to figure out where utilities are. Of course, I also love driving over imbicile NT admins that point and click a solution, then do it 100 more times for each user.
OK, enough ranting... Let me just reiterate the point I initially wanted to make: Doesn't matter which platform you are using, if you don't understand it, it will suck. Some platforms may suck less under default situations, but when things are well configured, all platforms start to resemble each other. This is why experienced people earn more than the college grads. And yes, there are a lot more inexperienced NT Admins out there, but then might that not be due to the simple fact that there are more NT systems out there? AND add in that it takes more of a learning curve to work with large *nix installations. Damn crossovers from BA degrees that think they are real administrators!! Sorry, I am beginning to rant again.. accept my apologies and read something else.
This comment is guaranteed*
*not guaranteed
that doesn't mean anything.. employees turn their computers off for other reasons. A lot of people around here just turn off their computers on Friday before leaving. Some even turn it off at the end of each day! They don't do it because Windows has crashed, they just think of it as an appliance they won't be using for a day or so and decide to turn it off. They don't care about uptime.
Then you have people like me who try to keep their computer's uptime as high as possible. One time I managed to get my NT4 workstation's uptime to 134 days (windows started acting really weird around day 130 and I was forced to reboot). Anyway, averaging the uptime of a bunch of corporate boxes is going to come up with meaningless figures.
I believe Microsoft just released the product this past week. At least it's available for sale off their website.
Ok... in a perfect world I would love to see a Sun/Linux/BSD system, it would be beautiful. However thats never the case. I work at the student help desk of a small-middle sized college which uses Unix (Solaris) and Linux for it's servers and Windows for its labs and to be entirely honest we recommend windows pcs to students. Why? Because they already know how to use it and because its much easy to fix (although we have to do it more often). The servers are nearly flawless (although they provide their fair share of problems) and when a lab machine bombs we just reimage it. Its a lovely system. The students have no idea that their email, online classes, internet and discussion boards are controlled by Linux and Sun. All they know is that they point IE or Aol at webmail and they get their email. Currently we're having trouble deciding about XP and it seems that we're about ready to tell Microsoft to shove it. We've discussed moving everything to linux in the face of rising licensing cost but that will most likely be a huge headache. I've had enough trouble explaining to people how to use Microsoft Word which they own let alone switching them to Star Office. In an educated world, everyone would use *nix based software... but thats not and most likely will never be the case.
(IMHO of course)
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
I am sorry but any person who can only support 30 Windows users as their job is an idoit. I support 200, and I do it well. 90% of Microsofts flaws are sysadmins who are idiots. I have standard sw images that I developed that only go down when I see fit. And when they go down it is SMS doing it during the middle of the night to apply patches when I feel the need. I am not a Linux basher, as a matter of fact it is on the top of my study list right now (sharing time with CCNP). When Windows is administered well, it works well. But like I said, toooo many idiots. Take your time, develop an image, lock it down, use good corp antivirus software and uptime is easy to accomplish. Software is only as smart as the dumbest user commanding it. later Jason
Ever feel like you are driving the getaway car?
OK I run IIS 6, Win XP, IE 6 and numerous other applications on a P3 (600MHz, 256 MB RAM) and after a week of uptime with 20 open IE windows, the whole system needs a reboot. OK so this is a little excessive, but the memory fragmentation will cause some applications to be unable to operate and they will begin to consistantly crash. I can prolong the uptime for a short period of time by closing IE and then opening as necessary. But not for too long. It is still stable enough for a on-only-during-the-day OS...
Enter Linux. A P2 (333MHz, 160 MB Ram) is running 33 java executables for jsp development, etc. It is also running PostgreSQL and MySQL, but not X. It is also running Apache with countless modules (including mod_ssl and mod_php), tomcat, etc. It is also a fileserver (SAMBA) and running almost every other network daemon I can think of. Uptime currently 48 days (last down for a memory upgrade). Yes, it usually uses at least some swap space.
Problem is-- XP is still a workstation OS and cannot be left on continuously for extended periods of time without problems.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I don't give a crap if the article says that Linus is the second coming, I was responding to Linuxhead bemoaning the constant BSODs, which are not a part of any modern Windows. But hey, let me turn around and do a comparison between Windows 2000 and Red Hat 4.0....
Imagine a student interviewing for a job. The interviewer asks him or her:
"Do you have experience using Microsoft Word and Excel?"
Student:
"No, but I can use OpenOffice Writer and Sheet."
You think they will get the job?
What is often missing in these formulations is the investment in legacy software. This is why Microsoft won and Apple lost in the late 80's. Sure the Mac was better... but it didn't run all of the custom developed DOS software that Windows did. Then in the early 90's it was Windows NT vs OS/2. Although OS/2 had a compatibility layer, it wasn't "Windows". And thus, once again, all of those custom windows applications came to play.
.NET stuff. But how likely is that? Not. And so we go round and round the treadmill. As corporate lock-in grows deeper and deeper -- tough luck Linux.
Now we want companies like Ford to adopt linux? It isn't going to happen. They have, I am sure, billions of dollars invested in 16 bit and 32 bit windows software (Yes, there are still many VB 3.0 applications out there.). Until Linux provides proven, reliable, backwards compatibility here it's no dice. The lock-in cost is just too high.
Now. This may be possible in 10 years from now. As long as corporate developers use plain ole HTML plus well-supported Javascript and don't use ActiveX and, worse the new
I set up a RH box for my parents a year ago and that was the approach I took.
Wow, they started calling me a lot less for tech support and they were using their boxes more often!
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Consider this quote:
Seems to me that he is relying on actually beating feet to the desktop when a user has a problem instead of using the (considerable) remote management tools that are available in Windows. It still does not offer the manageability of 'nix systems, but there are tools and methods available that make supporting the systems bearable.
As far as training new users on Linux, only give them what they need and no more! Everything the typical user needs to do should be accomplished by clicking on a pretty icon, period. Do not assume that Linux in a corporate (or academic) environment is going to look anything like your Linux box.
Wanna get high?
oh yeah, no bias here...
I support windowsNT/2000/xp (32&64-bit), linux, hpux, solaris, tru64, AIX.
c alability
I personally prefer unix, but realize that lots of people at work just care about MS project, MS Office, MSIE, their bookmarks, their mp3's, their email. MSIE on Windows beats netscape on any platform with Konqueror being a distant second favorite.
I take issue with your 'any OS is only as good as the person administering it'. Compare the remote management/multiuser functionality ONLY of solaris versus windows and tell me with a straight face that Site-wide administration of Windows isn't either crippled or medieval given out of the box or freely available tools.
My point in comparing ONE SR UNIX SA to *THREE* JR Unix SA is that the previous post said it was harder to hire unix SA's -- It's not hard, you just have to pay them more.
A SR unix SA can take a buggy product, code some scripts and wrappers to make it do lots of great things. A whole team of JR NT SA's would be stuck reinstalling and waiting for patches. The whole thing is about what solution is best for what case. If the only thing going for a windows solution is that someone with less experience can set it up quickly, you're missing lots of important variables like 'abiity to customize', 'dependence on vendor', 'SA time required to manage and maintain', 'security', 'susceptibility to viruses and compromise', scalability, (in)ability to manage remotely.
I appreciate that windows is easier for users to learn. My mom and dad use windows. I run it on my laptop. But... it's got a long way to go to come close to UNIX's flexibility/multiuseredness/managability/uptime/s
BTW: Anyone else notice that Windows XP has crippled the terminal services so that you can't have multiple connections to an XP box? Talk about a step in the wrong direction!
- There is no need to upgrade the OS just because new versions are out. There are shops still using Windows 95 to do their work and that's like 3 Windows versions ago.
- Is it really true that a server that could handle 200 users a few years ago can handle 200 users using Mozilla, Open Office and X at the same time off of the same server without any upgrades?
I won't comment on the 5000-user manufacturing operation since I have little knowledge about setups like that. I do have an issue however with his usage of application crash data from BugToaster. Exactly what does how much an application (not OS) crashes on the OS have to do with it? Netscape and Pico (God, I hate pico) crash on me all the time, yet I never go around claiming that this has anything to do with Linux's stability.Since BugToaster doesn't give statistical breakdowns such as application versus OS crashes their data is practically meaningless. I'm pretty sure Mindcraft can come up with a survey that shows that people running Linux that use the 2 year old versions of Netscape have to deal with a lot of crashes and it would be shouted down for being teh FUD that it is, well this guy is guilty of doing the same thing.
Which leads to one of two conclusions:
(a) Most CIOs and boards are stupid (or at least very conservative). They adhere to the old 'Nobody Ever Got Fired for Buying IBM' mantra. Substitute 'Microsoft' for 'IBM'. (And I know, it's shocking that IBM ever actually used that as a marketing slogan.)
(b) Going for the Unix/Linux solution incurs costs that are not captured in the analysis.
And although I am by nature an open source guy, I do believe the author misses some costs associated with *nix.
In particular:
Training. The majority of users are already familiar with Office/Windows. Retraining people is not just the cost of a course, or support but the cost of their lost productivity while they get up to speed on how exactly the system works.
Staff. Like it or not, Windows systems admins are no problem to find, with easily checkable references and a qualification (MCSE) that is well understood.
Appeal. In the case of the school, the board of governors must decide what skills make their pupils most employable - becuase parents will use this when deciding where their children should study. In most cases this means the Windows/Office combination. Imagine two schools opposite each other: one promises skills that will be useful if their children want to become Unix gurus; the other offers experience in the same applications seen day-in/day-out in the workplace.
Of course, if (a variant of) *nix became the dominant operating system, these arguments would be turned round. But near term, they offer a significant reason to choose Microsoft over competitors.
Responses, please!
--- My dad's political betting
I've got a joke for you Trebek: A man walks into a bar, I can't remember the rest but your mom's a whore.
NT may be easier to learn the basic use of but a real pain to admin. If something goes wrong, it is far harder to track down the problem on NT because the system is more complicated.
So most NT admins are inferior to UNIX admins because the OS is end-user friendly and admin-hostile.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Office 2000 and later (maybe even 97, don't remember) by default always saves your current work to a temporary file (usually ~mywork.doc for mywork.doc) every few minutes in just such cases.
I think the article is biased against MS for various reasons (prices quoted, differences in topology, etc).
But my biggest concern would be, why not mix them?
500 Cheapish Windows Boxes (maybe some of the newer sealed desktops that many vendors sell) running Windows 2000 (or XP) with a good ssh client and a good x-server.
You could use the Sun server+Samba as the server, or have both an NT Server (not sure if having one is really important if you are just going to use it for file sharing/user profiles) and the Sun Box.
Students used to Windows would have everything they want (Outlook, IE, etc), and people wanting unix would have a good SSH client to use, and a local x-server to run GUI apps (Or a full desktop environment) with.
This does pretty much describe my development environment. Win2k desktop with Secure CRT SSH and X-WinPro. 90% of my work being done in the SSH clients and X apps ([x]emacs, PGAccess, Gimp) and the rest using various Win32 based software (IE, Photoshop, etc.).
It really does (for me at least) make a productive environment. I can run anything I want on one desktop and use the best tool for the job in all situations.
The cost of solaris-on-intel at work, compared to the cost of linux-on-intel at work, is essentially the same.
The cost of solaris-sparc at work is still zero for the OS itself.
There is a good reason for this. NT/2000 et al. have a standard registry for all programs which makes it difficult to change settings for one program unless you know the whole key location. Now with unix system you have a bunch of different files that hold the settings so if you need to modify one app all you have to do is load up its settings file. and if you dont know which file it is do a search for it. do the same on windows. do a search for registry settings for lets say "ezcd creator" and you might find it but you normally will just find information about for bug fixes.
If you look at the guy's web site a reprint of his book is coming out soon. This article is a free ad for his book. ...
I must admit the book does look interesting
Well, I like the premise of the article. I, as a POSIX person, fully understand this. In fact, I understand it so well that all I can say is "well DUH!" However, I think the author makes a very glaring assumption in the very beginning that a UNIX-like system is more stable than a Windows system. People who work with UNIX know this. People who work with Windows are of the mentality that it is stable enough. And I finally have caught the premise of the article that stable-enough really isn't. That the real thing is that the stability problems /do/ cost money. That the fact that your users don't trust their computers to work properly costs money.
What UNIX people don't realize is that most people don't understand this. And unfortunately this article sounded too much like pro-UNIX anti-Windows for any Windows person to read it. They would have stopped in the first few paragraphs saying how dare he say that Windows isn't stable. Hell, all computers make mistakes.
See, right now I am taking a full MCSE program from a local place where I live. Most of the people in my class think like this. The whole, well, computers have problems mentality. These people know nothing of UNIX. They know nothing of administration period.. with the exception of me and one other guy who also gets it w/ respect to how to be a good admin in general (he is/was a netware admin and his company is paying for him to do this). The only thing that all of these people know is how to get around a Windows 9x/Me system. Some of them were Gateway employees who did tech support or built systems.
Also, a lot of these people repeatedly utter the phrase, "Is this going to be on the test". In other words they see this as drop $10,000+ and get a full MCSE training and cert and go out and make lots of dough. Hell, it's advertised that way. What they don't realize is that you cannot be an effective administrator unless you know how the system works. And whats even more heart-sickening is that the MOC (MS Official Curriculum) actually does go into pretty decent detail about the how's and why's of Windows but these people don't give a fuck.
In general I feel that the MOC is a very good guide on administering Win2K systems. It's very practical and also explains the basic concepts. But again, these people only care about passing the exams. In fact, the instructors usual response is that "No, but you'll need to know it for work". Occaisonally it is "No, don't worry about it too much, just keep it in your head" because honestly, some of the stuff is a little too "Gee Wiz, look at what we've done, see how good our software is that we have this and this and this and this feature".
Anyway, the bottom line is that if everyone actually followed what the MS texts say that Win2K would not be horrible. And I think that the author of this article should note that. I understand that he does in a round-about way say that he is assuming a professional IS team for both Windows and UNIX, and that even with a good IS team for Windows you still have the basic problems that the software sucks in the first place.
Anyway, at some point soon here I will have all this Win2K knowledge and can actually give a straight honest-to-god answer that YES, I /HAVE/ done Windows.
One thing I have noted is that Win2K's strength lies in the fact that MS has basically designed your network for you. I know this sounds silly, but MS really has done a decent job of this. This is why Win2K is supposedly easier to administrate. You don't have to put much thought into design, you already have default groups like backup operators and so on. You can easily delegate authority to other members of the company. If you know what you are doing and understand the security implications it is easy to setup the system.. hell, the point that you by default allow nothing to happen and you grant people permissions to view/modify things is even stressed. This is good network philosophy. I actually applaud MS for this setup.
However, at the same time, their software sucks. I could just as easily setup default groups and so on for kerberos with Red Hat and sell that as a product. It'd be a lot more stable too.
Already we are seeing peoples computers running Win2K Advanced Server have stupid things happen. We have already had to reinstall one dudes machine because it somehow got fucked up. No one knows, no one cares, in this case it was easier just to reinstall from the ghost image because there was nothing important on the machine.
Now, at the same time, it seems that most of the instructors there do have a clue. They may not know UNIX for lack of time, they may only have experience with it in some college courses. But at least they understand why people use it, and would learn it if they had the time. The bottom line is that they spend so much time fucking around with the Windows boxes that they don't have time to learn Linux :-(.
Anyway, that is just my 2 cents on this whole thing. BTW, there are also some people there who have bought into the whole UNIX is outdated and sucks and Windows is new and cool and is better. Only a few have deluded themselves that badly though. That is of the people working there. In the class no one really has experience with anything so they don't really care.
In operation, a Windows-based client-server system of this complexity will be staffed at a user:support ratio of about 30:1, and so needs about 165 full-time support people plus a base Information Systems (IS) staff of about 35 for single shift operation.
I work in the support side of a telecommunications company employing about 8000 staff. There are about 400+ support staff including the call support centre, the network management and the server management teams. By the way, we use Mac and NT desktops, and everything from AppleShare, NT, Solaris and Linux servers.The Unix setting, in contrast, needs two groups of 20 people in the data centers and a staff of perhaps five. This totals 45 IS staffers for 24 x 7 operation.
I wonder how this stacks up to other organisations.
Ok, if any body has been keeping up with my posts, I am a windows user, a linux/unix want-to-be, and a programmer in academia.
I tutor for CSC level1/level2... which is now taught in java on my campus.
Both on unix (sun) and on windows... on both OS's, students use Forte to program Java in an IDE enviroment.
Obviously, the IDE is the only common factor, and students 'get-it' in both enviroments.
And these are NOT necesarily tech-savvy people... I'm having a hard time getting a lot of them to register the first 'light bulb' realization that hints they are 'getting' programming.
But they get both OS's.
Just a comment.
This article is on a website named Linuxworld.com. hmmm I wonder what their conclusions will be?
...that makes Mandrake crash 5-10% of the time for me, and Win2K never does. 98SE doesn't even crash as often. Hmm. Oh yeah, that's with 3 different 2K boxes.
But of course, I know, I must be the ONLY person in the world who doesn't have Windows crash every fi
connery: "what's the difference between you and a mallard with a cold?"
trebek: "um.. what?"
connery: "One's a sick duck and I can't remember the rest, but it ends with 'You're mother's a whore'."
I use W2k every single day at work. 9 to 5. You know, I dont' think i've even seen a 2000 BSOD. I assume they are like 95, but that's just a guess.
You use only 20 koystrokes to do a grep on your entire system?
find / -type f -exec grep josh {} \;
123456789012345678901234567890123456
Don't sweat the petty things. But do pet the sweaty things.
In operation, a Windows-based client-server system of this complexity will be staffed at a user:support ratio of about 30:1, and so needs about 165 full-time support people plus a base Information Systems (IS) staff of about 35 for single shift operation.
I work in the support side of a telecommunications company employing about 8000 staff. There are about 400+ support staff including the call support centre, the network management and the server management teams. By the way, we use Mac and NT desktops, and everything from AppleShare, NT, Solaris and Linux servers.The Unix setting, in contrast, needs two groups of 20 people in the data centers and a staff of perhaps five. This totals 45 IS staffers for 24 x 7 operation.
I wonder how this stacks up to other organisations.
When someone asks to be moderated down it is your duty to comply. To do otherwise would simply be rude and incosiderate.
Thank you very much,
Error27
>>You just compare how the average Mom would do on *nix compared to Windows. Hehe
I actually was forced to do just that recently, and the results surprised me.
Picture this: a fifty-year-old mother, going back to university to pick up her doctorate who has managed to completely avoid all home computers until now. Now she has to use one, and she's a friend.
OK. Her school has standardized on Windows and has training available in Learning Labs there and all her friends use Windows, so she wants to use Windows. Brand new computer and peripherals bought and installed, MS Office loaded, internet connection up and running, selected good bookmarks loaded into the browser and preliminary instruction given.
After two weeks of total frustration at trying to learn Word or understand why Excel doesn't perform certain statistical functions properly (and she ony saw ONE GPF in all that time and couldn't suss out why such a shoddy product as Windows would be allowed to be sold!), I created a second partition and made the machine dual-boot into Linux with WordPerfect and some other apps to replace the ones in the Windows partition as best I could.
Within four days she was banging away on WordPerfect as if she'd known it since its SPC days. The sole app I couldn't replace was Outlook and that I covered by having her use the Outlook Web version.
No lockups, freezeups or problems with the apps since July, with the exception of one website which she couldn't access (because of IE-only features, I'm guessing...doesn't matter since she bought what she wanted from a website that did work for her).
Had you told me in June to list what OS this lady would be best running as a total newcomer, Linux would have been at the bottom of my list. But after seeing the useability and stability of it in a home environment, I'm having second thoughts.
The one downside to the Windows-to-Linux conversion for her? Having to purchase an external modem since I couldn't find any cobbled-together drivers for her internal Windows modem.
shut you whore. you copied my idea to bypass the [domain.com] shit. so fuck off wannabe.
And I hope you fall into a pile of goat shit.
Check my bio and you'll see my job description.
I just spent about four hours today screwing with our fastest processing computer (1ghz Athlon, 512mb DDR) because it decided to go down the toilet today, for no apparent reason.
After multiple chkdsk's and defrag's (many of which caused spontaneous reboots in the middle before finishing), I still don't have the problem figured out.
And yes, contrary to some other comments in this thread, I got the BSOD several times. Sometimes it was an invalid page fault, sometimes it was IRQL_yadda_yadda.
The machine has been working great since we got it about 6 months ago, including this morning. After lunch today, it just took a crap, who knows why. It started with application errors in AutoCAD, IE, Acrobat, you name it. It got to the point where it would only boot in safe mode.
And I'm going out of town for the next couple of days, so they'll have to do without it until I get back.
I had thought pretty highly of Win2K until now, but while it's certainly better than Win9x, it's not up to par with Linux, IMO. Linux has never done anything like this to me.
*sigh*
Are you kidding me? Unix may be good, the slashdot community I'm sure would love to say stuff like this, but unix is far from perfect. Complete immunity to student attacks? come on now...
The Unix administration job is really part-time although, in practice, it would be filled as a full-time position and the person hired will find additional ways to contribute to the college. The Windows-based solution, by contrast, will be under-supported with four full-time staff and lead to a serious loss of productivity among other professionals as they become part time PC support people.
I'll give them that UNIX administration is less costly, but what about the cost of the support for the students? If this is a normal college, then most kids have never used *nix before, and some may have never even heard of it. Let me make one point clear: Windows is easier to use than *nix. That is the one thing that windose does well. Most of this community seems to be in denial about this...monopolies and marketing can only get you so far. There are other reasons why personal computer users continue to choose windows -- usability is the first on that list.
geeks like linux, and people who don't know any better like windows. end of debate.
The most important aspect missed in this comparison is the value of Windows experience to the students who will ultimately be using these systems. Knowing how to use Microsoft Word proficiently will be a much better asset and skill than being proficient in OpenOffice. This unfortunately isn't going to change in the near future. Consider a college graduate applying for an accountant job. I guarantee you that not having much experience in Microsoft Excel would put an applicant at a disadvantage.
Well geez... my 2nd box at work (first box is a Mac G4) runs Win 2000, w/IE6 beta, Office XP, SQL Server 2000 among others and has been chugging along since June without need for a reboot.
as always, the *nix champion compares apples to oranges: the os stability [Windows] has nothing to do with the application's [Emacs] ability to conveniently store work in progress (btw - Word has the same capability [doh!])
What IT and others make decisions on are "where is the limiting factor". Things like personnel and technical training availability. Things like comfort level and other "nontangible" items
But don't all those things you mention affect whether or not it's smart to use a particular technology? Perhaps a given technology may be more effective than another, but if it costs too much to use what's the point?
I currently work for a rather large school district. We have choosen to impliment an almost entirely Microsoft based system (basicly win2k clients running Office2k and XP, off of 2k advanced servers). The decision was made because it was felt that we should be teaching whatever is most relevant to the current job market. Money was not really an issue (hey, isn't that nice for a change), and the school decided that it should be teaching tools that students were most likely to see when they leave. Thats not say that we don't use other software. We still have a full lab of Macs (some G3's and G4's), in addition to some fileservers and out mailserver running linux.
I dont play in my registries - to do so on a prodcution server is to put it frankly fucking insane - i build my servers properly and read all the release notes - dont be a moron - you have CLEARLY never been a server admin for mission critical stuff have you ?
MS certifications are like the paper the are printed on - worthless - i wont hire them - and if you use any piece of paper to grade someones worth your a bigger idiot that i thought
I started out as a UNIX admin and i met many i didnt learn off - and a few that were frankly more fucking dangerous than any so called NT admin - NT has checks and balances in place to stop someone low down the tree from doing too much damage - OTOH Unix lets you destroy the entire server with 1 fucking RM command.
My point was that, if a system is well set up, people, especially students, will use what you give them. You want to use software that the students can learn easily, but that does not mean you have to only use the software that they are used to...
I think that Unix/Linux with KDE or Gnome would work fine if someone paid attention to the initial desktop interface...
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
NOONE answered which OS is better for my porno!!
over 3 Volkswagen Beetles any day of the week.
I hate to be repetetive, but... did you even read the article? That data was from an independant voluntary bug-reporting app. Not from when people turn their stations off for the day. The point of uptime is stability, and if it will stay up _forever_ than that means it must be stable...if it has a critical crash every 233 hours as statistically reported than that must mean the OS isn't quite so stable. hence the comparison, and the point.
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
Okay, as a few people above have mentioned, the author fails to compare similar technologies. He is using a (unix: thin client/server) to a (windows desktop + server) situation. Whate he fails to take into consideration is that there is a windows thin client/server solution also.
With that being said, i dont advocate any company going a "one way only" solution. any company that fails to examine what there needs are before they invest money into a "solution" is a pretty bad situation.
Since i have experience in this field, i think i am qualified to give an example of how this should be approached.
In most companies, no more than 5% of the employees (including management) uses the full resources of their computer for more than 30% of their work day. The average user would spike the machine for short periods of time over short periods of times. There are few positions where this is not the normal situation, and you also have to account for this.
With average users on a dual PIII 800MHz with 512MB of ram, you can handle 20 users safely, the real bottleneck is memory and disk speed. If the server is upgraded to 4GB and switched to a 9GB fast scsi drive, the user count can be increased to 40 users. push those cpus over to dual athlons 1.X GHz and you can probably get 50 users per server. This box will not cost you that much. If your users are going to have a few users who will be doing heavy cpu intense activities, you can balance them over different servers so that no one server will have multiple heavy users at the same time. In a college situation this is perfect since you dont have everyone trying to use the resources at the same time of day (as opposed to a company where you get spikes at the same time.)
You can also use these servers to run X and reduce some of your cost on licenses, especialy if some of your employees only use web based tools and light office applications. For the few users who will need standalone pcs, you can let them have it. You can then use very thin client machines for the rest. These start from $200 without a monitor. With the use of some of citrixs products and some custom scripts/tools, you can run a pretty tight ship, and have the best of both worlds, while reducing cost and improving productivity.
Anyone who claims that you can't implement a terminal server solution that can be self maintaining and stable doesnt know as much as they claim. My belief is that if you have to have employees using windows, then you really want to get them on a terminal server solution. Some of the major reason, are:
- reduced end user interaction (the end user can call you, and you can either fix the problem remotly, or shadow their session and see what they are doing and try to resolve it)
- security (you can enforce policies in an easier manner)
- accountability (management can see what users are doing, and where productivity is being lost)
- upgrades are transparent to the end users
the few downsides to a terminal server solution are:
- you have to plan it out right, if you dont, it will blow up in your face and cost you way more than you intended to spend.
- you need to get competent, experienced admins who know what they are doing.
- there can be a larger cost software wise initialy, but the benifits over time are worth it.
- you need management that understand what the technology can and cant do, and know when to let the admins make the right decisions, as opposed to telling them what the decision is and then have them try to implement it.
thats about it.
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
Greetings,
Please remove the copy of the LinuxWorld story at
http://erickrout.com/comparison.html. This is beyond fair use, and is a
violation of LinuxWorld's copyright.
Thank you for your attention.
Mark Cappel
LinuxWorld
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
"Damn crossovers from BA degrees that think they are real administrators!! Sorry, I am beginning to rant again.. accept my apologies and read something else.
"
No I wont accept your apologies, you have nothing to apologise about. Even moreso I am sick and tired of the so called "consultancies" sending in teams of Arts degree monkeys and passing them off as consultant. Bloody EYCG, Accenture et all drive me mad. Pay them outrageous rates for you to train *them* on your live systems.
All they are, are bloody glorified salesmen. If anyone ever thinks about calling in any of these cowboys, dont. If you have to, then insist on CVs of all the team they send in and reject anyone with a BA degree and less than 12 months experience. All you get at the end is a bloody CD with a Powerpoint presentation on it.....
Grrrr grrrr!
See? Now you got me started on BAs. Shame on you.
Po.
First off whoever decided to get 4 servers for the 500 student lab is smokin crack or getting commission. There is no need for that, two would suffice. Remember that you picked out powerful pc's that will be running all the apps locally. They didnt say if they needed to run a proxy server or how/if they were connected to the net. Since they are using the PowerVault no server needs to be attached so there is storage. They forgot to count cost of Training!!!
An article for a Linux Site lets remember its biased
Company A takes the author's suggestion and puts in a Sun/Sunray system. Company B, next door, detects the slightest amount of bias in the article and goes with a Windows system.
Now both companies discover that Peoplesoft doesn't include a sales force automation system. The sales department needs some way to track leads, follow up on potential clients and their golf handicaps, finalize orders.
Each company sends out an RFP for an SFA system. Company B gets proposals from a dozen vendors and picks one that may not be perfect, but seems to fit the needs and culture of the company. Company A gets a single proposal for a half-assed piece of shit that was bought out from another company that went out of business 6 years ago. The system was never really completed and only has 3 other companies that use it currently, one in chapter 13. Source code is somewhere in a box of 9 track tapes in Brussels, Belgium.
Company B starts selling more widgets while company A is trying to find a consultant to add a cell phone field to their SFA system. Company B makes a lot more money, uses some of it to pay for the inordinate number of clueless MCSEs in the basement, and uses the rest of it to buy company B. Four long haired, bearded fat guys are on monster.com looking for Solaris admin jobs, the rest of Company A is retrained on Windows. Ob la di, ob la da, life goes on.
(for god's sake, the author can't even spell NetBEUI)
Basically no need for training since most people know how to use Windows. The means companies can pickup the phone call an employment agency and ask for anything from a receptionist who knows Word to a SA to help do a roll out or maintain some sysems. Training costs a lot of time and money and with the business world using MS Office as a unofficial standard those costs are almost nil. Same for administing NT there are lots of MCSEs begging for jobs and will work cheap. Some really small businesses just assign one of their office regular staff to do it. Now I know that we're not talking experts or best SA practices, but money talks. That is another point Windows employees don't cost as much.
Now with Unix it is much harder to get employees. This is either because there are less available already trained. Why because if you have real experience, you are probably working. That leaves companies many times having to train people to run the specific Unix app's or flavor of Unix to SA. Also Unix takes a techincally savy person, unlike the ex-burger flipper with his new MCSE.
Salary for Unix people are higher. A experienced Windows SA will cost $60-$70K, but a similar Unix SA double that. They know there are less of them, so they want and get more. Plus usually Unix is run on higher end equipment so most training has to be on the job, unlike Windows that most have at home already to learn on.
One more differene is the available books on Windows, there are thousands of them. Just about any info you need to get someone through a Windows task. Plus MS has boatloads of info on their web site. Unix espescially the SA side is still pretty much a black art handed down by master to student. Some books, but most are very general not very detailed.
These are all major factors in why business and schools use Windows versus Unix. They will put up with reboots and lack of security to save money.
Okay I hear it now, but Linix and open source is free. Not for experienced SAs to properly run IT shop. Again you're talking experienced Unix SAs. Most Linux SA's have little or no experience working in large IT shops and don't know the issues and problems. Then open source and the if it don't work fix it story. The salary for developers and QA staff good enough to study, debug and fix open source far exceeds the cost of a commericial package that has support contract.
Its all about money. For small shops it's about trying to save it, and for big shops spending it to insure the business is up and making it.
Shit encrusted? Cum guzzling?
I only know one loser who uses those same tired old lines over and over and over again..
Is that you, Spork Testicle?
97 does it too, but not to a temp file (although it does like to leave .tmp files all over the place too). Just as soon as you screw up what you're working on big-time, before you can hit Ctrl-Z or click Edit-Undo, it leaps into Auto-Save, which can't be overridden, and saves your mistake, erasing the good version that you wanted to save.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Shouldn't it be "comparison"?
It's a two-way street, dude. Sure, you have legacy DOS and Win16 crap, but what about the old VMS machines? Or "ancient" IBM mini's? Many financial institutions are running very old systems. Linux can be made to integrate with these WAY easier than any Microsoft product to hope for.
Windows also suffers from this debilitating illness known as the 'Blue Screen of Death', which provides employees with instant five minute coffee breaks
Don't leave Linux out of it, it too has a Blue Screen of Death that comes on when the user goes for a coffee break.
"It is difficult to move a data center from a mixed or proprietary environment to Unix. That process is the subject of my book The Unix Guide to Defenestration and requires far more than technical change. "
The guy makes money selling a book that tells people how to migrate to Unix (not to mention he's writing for a Linux website), and his comparison of Unix with Windows is somehow supposed to be objective? Give me a break.
I think there's a multitude of unfair comparisons in this article. There's no analysis of training users. Equating brand new Wintel setups with a 5-year old Sun setups isn't exactly fair either (if all you needed was basic productivity you wouldn't be upgrading your hardware nearly as much.)
Not only does this guy need a lesson in objectivity, but reading a couple articles on cost-benefit analysis might not hurt either. I don't think there's much doubt that a lot of *nix solutions have lower TCO, but one-sided articles like this is why the good ones are largely shrugged off by a majority of IT professionals.
Let's face it. For a UNIX admin, running UNIX on the desktop is a no-brainer. But if you expect the average user to run UNIX on their desktop, you're dreaming.
Believe it or not, our users are not stupid. Most of us couldn't (honestly) do their jobs anymore than they could do ours. This being said, asking them to suddenly use an OS and applications they have never seen because of some idea from an obviously biased article is crazy. Users will be most comfortable using an OS and apps they know, even given that the systems may sometime crash...
I know I will get flamed for this, but let's face it, Linux (and other UNIX-type OSes) can't win the desktop war. M$ has won already... You will never see the day when *nix is more pervasive on the desktop (at home or at work) than Windows. Unless you have a reason to spend months learning the intricacies of UNIX (and face it, our users don't), most people will go with what is easy. Most people (meaning non-admins) want PNP and point and click, not compilers and command lines...
I'd rather see all of the creative energy focused on trying to install *nix on the desktop be applied to making the back-end server functions rock solid. That's where UNIX has it's best potential.
And as for the reliability issue, my Windows Desktop has been up for weeks without a problem, and a 2 minute reboot fixes it when it does crash... Same with my W2k desktop at work... Of course I love knowing that my DNS, DHCP, and mail servers running on Solaris have been up for years at a time without a glitch too...
Now, as you said, it's a lot easier for CompSci/CompEng students to make the leap...
But my experience does identify what real changes it can take (I don't mean this would be true for any situation).
I'm taking a computer science class aimed at teaching students how to develop large programming projects (30,000 lines of code). The development environment is Linux/g++. Most of the students have zero experience with Linux, let alone the boring Linux command line compiler.
There were several scheduled student orientations to teach them how to use Linux and get them started with g++. Some well trained TAs can eliminate the need for any special training staff in many situations.
Inconceivable!
Go outside, get a life.. you're calling me a retard (a derogatory term I might add) over a COMPUTER ARGUMENT. Take a step back and look at how foolish you seem!
Locate is much faster and allows you to use grep to further refine the search. I use both environments regularly, and Linux has Windows beat for finding files.
Well, duh. I'd take one Senior NT admin over 3 junior unix admins, too, if my goal was getting things done. (If I wanted to mentor them, and train them right, ok, maybe the three unix guys.) The bottom line is that good people are good people, and bad (technically, not morally ) people are bad people. The only difference between NT and unix is that you don't find paper-MCSE's floating around in the unix world-- yet. Then again, every school kid who ever installed Mandrake (which, btw, I like... but they do cater somewhat towards newbies) thinks he's a unix admin, and I've seen what some of them can screw up...
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
I don't care who is administering the systems but one person is not going to have 500 systems out of their boxes, let alone fully configured in under 4 months. Hardware failures alone are going to keep this guy pretty busy from then on.
The author clearly either has no experience of managing large numbers of machines or was completely unresponsive to his users if he did.
Any idiot can manage 500 machines if he does diddly squat.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
When I took programming classes at LSU back in the mid-80s, students were told to buy their computing texts, plus a handbook for VM/CMS (IBM big iron text-based UI). We learned how to use the system as we learned how to program. I have no idea if SNCC still has that system in use for programming labs, though...
Really, it is no big deal to train on a new system. KDE is remarkably similar (albeit far more powerful when you pop the hood) to the win95 desktop, so transitioning shouldn't be that terribly hard. There is even a friendly little "help" entry on the pull-down menu at the top of every GUI app if users get lost/brave.
Long ago (what? 10 years?), you went to work for a company, and you had to learn the system. Wang, other proprietary systems, even IBM if your company was large --- if you wanted the job, you learned the system, and that was that. I think that win9x has really dumbed down the computing user base (wasn't that the intention of M$ all along?). IMHO, getting away from win9x will liberate and empower users again, resulting in increased productivity.
Need a Linux consultant in New Orleans?
And will learn what you teach him. Tell this person to do something and he'll have to pull the notebook out a few times (Or every time, if it's not a frequent task) and read his notes on how to do it. They fumble along in whatever environment you put them in because that's their job. Believe it or not, this very same mentality of person did SGML tag markup back in the before-GUI days and they never complained about it being hard. It was just their job.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
in both GUIs. The differences are not significant given equivalent skill levels. It's when you need extended functionality that differences appear.
Folks--
Flame me if you will, but allow me to point out this simple real-world statistic:
I work at a datacenter that has two environments, Unix (primarily Solaris, but some HP's) and Windows (NT 4.0, though we're told we'll someday be rolling out 2k, but that date has been pushed back steadily for over a year). We have, at last count, just under 2000 Unix servers. OLTP DB servers, calc servers, web servers, jrun servers, sybase AND oracle, development servers running a mainly clearcase environment, as well as good old fashioned Unix desktop boxes. Our Unix staff is fifteen people, running a 24x6 shop.
We also have roughly 1000 Windows machines -- desktops, web servers, DB servers, Exchange servers, etc. The Windows staff is close to fifty people.
Now I'll be the first to admit that quality Unix engineers and admins are more expensive than quality Windows engineers and admins. However, you can't tell me with a straight face that a Unix admin to unit ratio of roughly 1:125 versus a Windows admin to unit ratio of roughly 1:20 doesn't point out something slightly profound. I often hear arguments that the achilles heel of Unix (in a business environment) is the high cost of skilled administrators. But fifteen admins at 80k a pop is certainly better than 100 admins at 40k a pop. (that's 1.2 million $ a year Unix v. 4 million $ a year Windows, for those of you who can't find your calculators)
* Learning curves. In the school and corporate environments, people don't want to waste time learning unix or linux. They don't work the same as Windows, which is the standard desktop practically everywhere. A normal situation would be that only some of the I.T. staff and power users know unix. If you can teach the blonde bimbo that blows your boss and makes memos in MS Powerpoint to send via Outlook the advantages of being able to compile your own kernel, I'll shut up about that, but it's not realistic to assume that people can easily learn a new OS. After all, most of them don't even understand how to use Windows correctly.
Kpresenter will work for presentations or several others. You can use Aethera or Evolution. Spend a few hours to train the user and they will be more productive than they ever were.
* Interaction with others outside your office. Since Windows is the standard in the corporate world, you have to be able to communicate effectively with Windows. Samba is not easy for the average user to use like network neighborhood is. OpenOffice isn't able to work with MS Office as well as people tell you. It can read some old versions of word documents, but it doesn't work with Office XP. Microsoft will most likely make a conversion tool for Windows users who are using Office 2k or older, but not for unix. Unfortunately, until you have everyone agree to use unix it will never be a good office tool for people that communicate with those outside your office.
Sending Documetns out are no problem. Receiving Documents is no problem. You simply say "This not readable. Please send in X format." I shouldn't need to say what formats will work.
* Support costs. Corporate support is a very important thing. Anyone that works with big companies to maintain their server hardware and software knows that if you have a critical problem and you're paying $200k a year in support, they will have a patch out for you by COB the next day. (Perhaps that was a slight exaggeration, but they are still very quick to solve problems.) The problem is that Windows support is generally cheaper than Unix support. I wouldn't even consider linux in an office environment though, because those that support it are not the same group that developers the software.
Red Hat, Mandrakesoft, SuSE, and even Caldera do not do developement? Then what are all those developers on staff for?
Your last argument is rather circular despite the hidden truth to it. Your actual argument is the truth that people see. The real reason is because of various shady backroom deals that get made. People are afraid of change. That and Microsoft has some flashy marketing.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Get a site license. ONE time activation for ALL 5200 clients.
Seriously, you think an admin with 300,000 desktops would hafta activate them all? MSFTs largest and most profitable customers are the uber-corps. And they do EVERYTHING with them in mind. Office isnt how it is because of home user requests, but that of massive corps.
Im 16, still in highschool, and through incredibly feats of my teacher's pet status, i have my own room full of linux (mandrake) boxes being used for testing. the school took a look at the bill for win2k upgrades schoolwide, then took a look at getting stadium lights for the football team and well.... our team can play at night now.
i piped up and told a teacher the way user/root works under unix stuff, and he instantly liked it. it beats the hell out of paying thousands from the budget for CleanSlate or DeepFreeze, which basicly do the same things as NOT giving root to joe sixpacks using public computers.
mandrake was easy to install, and once i proved that it could install without destroying windows, i got permission to test it out in ONE computer lab. im the only person in the school (to the best of my knowledge) that knows anything about linux, so for that one room i am the sysadmin (when something breaks they can still boot it into windows and use it normally though)
teaching kids to type using the home row on in KWord.... will wonders never cease?
and yes, i SERIOUSLY doubt any of these boxes are very secure, but they are not open to the outside, and im constantly learning. my first item on the list is recompiling the kernel to a newer version, and after that i will be looking into scripting for updates.
so give the highschool nerds a break, hey? we have to learn just like everyone else.
That fear is very important. It blocks growth quite effectively. When people ask me how I got to be so good at computers (I do volunteer work at local elementary schools fixing computers) I tell them that I learned by breaking them. My first 386 especially, but also my 166mhz. I would play with everything in them and 'break' the things horrably, messing up the autoexec and (more often) messing up programs called by autoexec, causing the computer to crash before I could input anything. I dealt with physically broken computers too, and I can amaze people with how fast I can isolate problems to hardware(a common problem being a loose ide cable).
:>
;>
While these things aren't rocket science, you dont learn how to deal with these problems unless you are willing to pull up your sleevs and jump in. I wasn't afraid to 'break' my system repeatedly because it was fun to mess with the thing and I learned alot from what broke various programs and what fixed those same problems. On the way I learned how to use features of the OS and apps that most people are afraid to mess with.
I look at my parrents fiddling with the computer and I watch my 6 year old mess with the computer. They both have the same proficiency, but with one big difference. My parrents are afraid. Because of this they aren't learning much. Heck, they have done word processing for years, but only know about as much as my 6 year old that I have only let use the computer for a few months(and she can't even read yet!)
I can sort of see why people are afraid. Computers are expensive things to be messing up.To learn them well is complicated, time consuming and difficult.
Well, hopefully things like the Gateway Goback will help lessen the fear. Being able to 'goback' to before a driver messed up or installation went bad is pretty darn nice; wish I had that back in the dos days
Heck, maybe WinXP with its over-simplified candy-coated interface will make computers seem less intimidating. That seems to have been its purpose. If it actually works that way then it may actually be worth the evil it will cause. I think that anything that brings more computer-savy females is ultimately a good thing.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
Windows 2000 was quite good when I installed it. Apart from the fact that it constantly popped up with memory errors, which I assumed was because I had pc100 running at 133 (Of course linux handled it fine). Then after 6 months it was crashing so much and running so slow I put winME on. That was the worst decision I ever made. So now I just use Linux.
90% chance -- hardware problem (memory/seating/etc.)
9.9% chance software (driver level) issue
.1% chance Windows 2000 issue
Why the F8ck can't I find a Job?!?!?!
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
The Sun Ray is almost a paradox... it can do far more than a generic xterminal, yet probably has even less internal hardware. The server keeps track of user states, such that if the Sun Ray loses power or just up and dies, the user can do a mid-session login on another Sun Ray and continue working.
For a really cool demo, login via a Sun Ray, start playing a movie with Real Player or a similar app. Unplug the Sun Ray. Login via another, different Sun Ray. Watch the movie continue playing where it left off. (Not to mention that the desktop will be exactly as you left it).
Note, however, it is possible to be logged in on more than on Sun Ray with independant sessions. The above example just demos the "terminal failover" feature.
I am a big Microsoft proponent, but I have to totally agree with you. My company's admins absolutely SUCK, and are paid quite well on top of it. They are AMAZED that I have the guts to go into the registry to fix a problem, and most of them do not know how to find the Event Log.
But I do believe most of this article was a bunch of crap. They do not go into how easily a solution may be coded on a Window based system compared to a UNIX based system. The tools on Windows are just light years ahead of the 20 year old UNIX tools. Furthermore, I believe the hardware quotes are incorrect. Of course, I am talking more about the non-university setting; universities SHOULD stick with UNIX. Now if we could just get qualified admins.
It seems a lot of people are curious about a 'real comparison'. It would seem that the
My operating system of choice is my mind, I haven't found an OS with higher uptime yet.
This is not true (re terminal services). On a Professional machine TS (Or Remote Desktop) can only accept one, however .NET Server and above all work as they did before.
There was never a TS on Professional so there has been no regression.
For design, it'll always be a Mac.
Best tool for the situation I say.
Our department his a small public usage lab of newer iMacs (700 MHz G3 w/ 512 MB PC100 ram). To make life a lot easier, we setup Apple's netboot software on an OS X server and configured the stock harddrives on the iMacs for use as a scratch/temp drive for user use. The setup has been wonderful... boot times are a bit longer than normal, but still not too bad. There is no such thing as software maintainance on any of the iMacs anymore as the internal drives are simply a free for all space (though we do find some FUNKY stuff on them every now and then). The users are happy and do everything from web surfing to DV firewire video editing on the machines. Though, I have to admit, 50% of the users in that lab simply burn CDs with the iMac's internal CDRW.
BBEdit.
What? You don't want to use a mac? I didn't think this was a religious war...
Back in the old days when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and I was a student at old NIU, there were a few PCs and Apples. Most of the computers in the dorms were Apple, Commodore or Amiga. To take a class in computers you worked on a dumb terminal hooked to a Amdahl in the lab. Some of the privledged people got to dial in on something called a Super Wylbur at 300 baud. Windows? Unheard of, but MS DOS was around. Word Perfect was on all the PCs in the Douglas lab.
I haven't been back lately, but I'll guess some things have changed. Unix was there back then. Where did it go? Your lack of dumb terminals and Unix are a sure sign that things DO change on campus as time marches on.
Stay away from those geese! Lincoln 4C Rules! 5C drools! Props to the Lords of Cobol!
Viv
Gmail invites for ip
And a web site called "linuxworld" is doing to answer that question for me? Somehow I don't think I need to read the article...
That really sounds like a hardware problem. Probably a heat issue, or RAM. You should try running a diagnostic program continuously.. stress the CPU, RAM, etc.
Blah blah blah.
What he doesn't mention is how many students work on docs at school and sneakernet them to finish at home
Blah blah blah.
UNIX file/web/mail servers are great; they are robust, reliable, stable and secure. However, they're also prone to bugs and crashing. Anyone remember the NDA's Sun had folks sign before they fixed a RAM glitch in their high-end servers? My old place of employment was hit. It knocked out our main server for *2 weeks* while Sun tech after Sun tech filed in to figure out what was wrong. Plus the time spent by the in-house Linux gurus. Plus the shouting matches with Sun. Thank god for the backup server.
Perhaps a W2K Terminal Services (maybe with Citrix, maybe not) vs. the Sun solution... Removing the hardware costs difference pretty much up front -- as a matter of fact standing it on it's head for the factory.
This will also mean your support staff is down to 1 user as well in the college environment and severely down-sized in the factory environment.
The real question of software costs will rear it's ugly head then. Here we need to look at two things -- actual costs vs. retail (i.e.: bulk purchasing programs are publicly priced and the pricing should be represented with that cost) and lost opportunity cost. Actual cost vs. retail will probably still win for the Sun solution -- but a much smaller win than it was before. The lost opportunity cost may be much higher here. In my field (medical insurance) Unix/Linux is NOT an option -- we run two or three enterprise applications that are Windows based.
Would we risk our enterprise on marginally supported systems that attempt to emulate windows? Would we risk our business on a model that may be effectively challenged -- i.e.: emulating the API? Would we take that risk for our business when we are the ones who would be sued?
These are our bread and butter applications. They are not Unix based. We do have Unix based applications and Windows does nicely acting as a client for them. No licensing issues either. The client is still Windows.
Frankly I think a strong argument exists that the Unix solution ranges from marginally cheaper to much more expensive. As a board member you must consider all of your costs. Here MS understands you as well -- and your unique needs. Over a round of golf your MS rep would be happy to show you the Microsoft story. Not only is MS persistent they actually know how to market.
This article's already been ripped to shreds, here at normally anti-Windows Slashdot no less, so there's not much else to say. Hell, seeing as the stupid git's never seems to have heard of a site license, I'm surprised he didn't increase the health insurance costs of the Windows company because the admins had to carry 5000 shrink-wrapped Office 2000 boxes back from the store.
Between this garbage and the complete lie of a story earlier saying that Microsoft is charging developers to create .NET apps, Slashdot/VA Linux must be feeling awfully scared about the impending release of Windows XP. FUD on, kiddies!
Better yet, write a .Net CLR (common language runtime) for linux. Go read about it and you'll find that .Net has nothing to do with Win32 beside the fact that the first runtime was written for Win32. It completely abstracts the underlying OS. There's already a runtime on the way for FreeBSD, so it's easy to see that it's only a matter of time before a linux one is available.
Morale of the story: .Net apps, like Java, will run on anything, so you're not "locked down" as you say writing code for it.
I agree.
This article is funny because it tries to come across as a balanced view, but very selectively and superficially compares lin vs win. Even the language used to describe the differences intimates at the not-so-hidden biases.
That is all aside from the obvious fact that there aren't too many places left that don't already have legacy systems to think about. Even a new company must take into account what its employees have at home, what they're used to etc.
Maybe I shouldn't expect a more balanced look from sites with linux in the url, but most all of these types of articles have their mind made up before the first sentance.
I am a sig.
Yep. It looks downright amateurish. Makes you wonder if the high school education is still in progress or if it was a complete waste of time.
How can we let this stand -- in the college situation the Sun solution doesn't wash -- after all how are the students going to play half life/quake/etc.?
In my experience, the actual knowledge most employees have of Windows is pretty shallow. Switching them to a good Linux-based office suite is no more costly or difficult than switching them to a new release of MS Office.
In the corporate scenario, no mention is made of the need to share files with other companies. This requires Windows. No corporation really cares about the evils of closed file formats until they get in the way.
Linux office suites import and export the parts of MS Office documents that you care about: content and formatting. If a vendor sends you documents containing executable code, you should return them unopened or say that they didn't make it through your virus filter.
To be realistic, both situations should have compared the cost of a Windows setup vs. a mixed Unix/Windows setup, since that's how it work in the real world.
I don't think that's necessarily realistic at all. A mixed Windows/Linux setup incurs a lot of unnecessary costs for the Windows support and the Windows software licenses. The fact that Microsoft will, one way or another, try to force a site license on you also makes that undesirable.
Unix would be a lot more beneficial in specialized situations, where employees use a lot of custom or specialized software
Scheduling, calendaring, data analysis, order fulfillment, business intelligence, and all that are "specialized situations". It is only the Windows mentality that has people dump a bunch of low-quality MS Office programs and macros on their highly-paid employees' desks and say "here, try to get your work done with this, and become a system administrator for your own machine".
Why don't the lower levels of education use Linux based systems? As a tax payer I shouldn't have to pay for software licenses if Linux gives equivalent functionality for free. How about someone doing a study on that?
The comparison is hardly objective. It sounds like it came from a marketing division. The article's analysis of what it would take to support the two scenarios is fanciful at best. Was it written by a manufacture of "smart terms"... -=Nick
I think a lot of people have some incorrect assumptions about any non-MS software, particularly *nix; simply because people with high computer skills use the software doesn't mean it's inaccessible to an ordinary user.
A few months ago I inspired myself with a "test" to see how far Linux had progressed and if it was going to catch up with Windows for ease-of-use any time soon. I download Linux-Mandrake 8 and installed modifying the defaults as little as possible.
To me it seems like a much more logical and easy-to-learn desktop than Windows. The KDE menu is much more intuitive than the Start Menu and takes fewer clicks (and less searching!) to find programs. The KDE Control Panel is much easier to use than the Windows one. Help files are everywhere. Most icons look logical and do what I'd expect. (i.e., I look at my panel and know which one opens E-mail, which is more than you can say for Outlook).
I think everybody, including (and maybe even especially) the *nix community, thinks it's hard to learn a new operating system and so goes overboard with helpfiles and coding for ease of use. The end result? A much easier operating system to use than Windows.
I regret that it's kind of impossible to test this any farther since everybody who uses computers at all is biased one way or another. There's no way around it. However, as someone who's used Windows all my life I found it incredibly easy to use Linux. It's much easier to set up and use than Windows.
I can't wait until GNOME 2.0. I'm going to try to migrate my home computer over permanently.
Jeez, Slashdot, at least try to find stories that aren't so clearly biased . . . or is it too difficult to find an unbiased source that supports your biased views?
Among the truly staggering costs left out of Paul's analysis are:
1. Training end-users in an entirely new interface.
2. Retraining staff and hiring experienced Unix sys admins.
3. Migrating user documents from full-featured products like Office to stripped-down freeware like StarOffice.
4. Recoding, from the ground up, many custom apps designed to run on NT using premium-cost Unix developers. Testing, debugging, documenting, and implementing all these apps, and...retraining users (again)!
I think a recalculation is in order.
Yea when I saw someone wrote that, I got a huge kick out of it. Think of all the other things Windows can do that can't be seen through his ignorance.
This whole article assumes that students are there to just write papers. (I won't even get into the fact that Office spanks anything in the linux world)
How is a student going to learn how to actually use MS office? If I get an education using StarOffice that's great, but when I get to the real world of business (that is what school is for afterall) I won't know word and it's gonna look bad when I can't even write up a report for the boss.
Can a parent even buy a computer from lets say Dell with Linux pre-installed? If a student is going to school to learn about computers, they aren't going to be able to handle linux right off the bat.
How is a student going to learn visual basic? Or Visual C? Or Visual J? I hate to break it to you, but a programmer loses a lot of value if he doesn't know how to write code for windows machines. It sucks, but that's what a whole lot of campanies still need. How many places don't run windows on it's average employee machine?
How many companies are going to re-train thier entire staff on how to use Linux/BSD producs when they already know how to use windows?
At my school, we run almost totally windows 2000 machines. There aren't very many software problems and stuff doesn't break (hardware does once in a while) Support staff does not have to fix software problems, we work on helping students ***USE*** the software so they can do what they need to. There are about 500 student machines in the 4 separate labs and there's another 100 machines in various offices and science/math wings of the school.
There's more to getting things done than simply making sure the software doesn't break. There's no point in teaching students how to use Linux if it doesn't prepare them for the real world.
get your priorities strait. cost isn't everything, providing a good education that creates valuble employees is.
sopwath
Again,
the slashdot moderation system working
it's wonders.
First, to your first point, ever heard of shared memory?
Second, these are not your average spec'ed little
x86 servers.
Here are the simple specs, since it's obvious
you have no idea what this machine is capable
of...
Up to 12 cpu's, 96GB of ram, Dynamic Hardware Domains, 33.6GB agreegate back plane....
And most components are hot swapable...
So yes, it CAN DEFENITELY handle that many active terminals
It Amazes me how many people in slashdot speak
out of their ass with no knowledge on the topic.
HEH....
This IS slashdot.... hehe ;)
You might like to know that Emacs also has an annoying #filename# file that very likely has ALL your data. The tilde file is only the original as it was when you opened the file. Emacs saves all changes every 30 seconds or so to the # file.
You really meant to say "pound file", right?
r00000llzz joo o o0 0 0
I don't know about you, but I really don't require five nines of reliability for my personal machine.. I'm OK with rebooting every once in a while.
Sure. Most people definitely don't require five nines. But your point was that Windows XP is stable because your machine hasn't crashed or needed a reboot in a long time. This guy is making exactly the same argument about his Linux box and you're ragging on him for doing so.
Where's your consistency?
That is the crappies, least scientific analysis I have ever read before in my life. They make assumtions and never tell you where they got the data to backup those assumtions. Sheesh..it is FUD like this that really make me upset.
Silly Rabbit...Sig's are for kids.
Thats because your college is full of morons.
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
The computer lab in the main library at my school has a group of 10 Mac's in the back of the room. About 6 months ago, something broke on the network and the Mac's stopped printing. There is still a sign tacked on the wall that says that people who use the Mac's can't print. This shows that apathy that the lab admins have toward the Mac systems.
... it just means that I never have to wait; I never have to print anyway (I submit all the work for my Comp. Eng. classes online).
About half the time, there is a line of people who would rather wait 20 minutes to get on a PC rather than walk to the back of the room and get on one of the unused Mac systems (it was like this before the printing broke too). This is evidence of the fear that the students have toward the Mac systems. Hey, I don't mind
An unjust law is no law at all. - St. Augustine
I've never really seen this as a huge deal. I work for a small business of about 35 employees that uses a custom built interface on OpenStep(!!!) and most people are running it well in a day of using it.
The author does not take into consideration the differences in the networks necessary to build a thin client/thick client system. The bandwidth required for the thin client set up would drive costs up quite a bit. You'd most probably need gig connections to the servers, as well as between departmental switches, while with the thick clients you could get away with inexensive 100 meg connections and backends, because your not transfering the entire session and screen everytime someone logs in.
I think everyone should use Windows because it gives Americans jobs. The article says that the Unix solution would only create 1 part-time job (extended to full-time). The Windows solution on the other hand, creates 4 full-time jobs! Four times as many positions to fill. That's 3 more sys admins who can feed their families while the Unix solution could starve 3 unlucky admins.
I think the choice is clear. We want to keep Americans working. Choose Windows.
Why bother.
Antipathy , not apathy
Writers imply. Readers infer.
*more stable* ;-)
seriously though, we're bashing MICROS~1 here damit - join the fun....
Just something I think a lot of people are missing. Future cost of ownership. We all know that Microsoft is increasingly moving to virtually forced upgrades (unless you want to lose the ability to buy upgrades at bulk discounts). That and maintaining a subscription service. The cost of a one year subscription is one third the cost of a normal payment. Herein lies the problem. Microsoft is also increasingly moving to integrate their products to make it difficult for you to seperate the bundle. Say you set up a 500 student network using Windows. Under MS's new licensing agreements in the future you must buy every upgrade or lose your ability to obtain upgrades at bulk discounts (which is very important). Or if you go on subscription. What happens if you have a bad year with very little funding for computers (happens at schools quite a bit I imagine). You can't afford the subscription so your entire computer system will shut down. So a Linux/Unix or even a Mac setup allows you more control for exceptional financial circumstances. The second is a lot of the new stuff in future MS products is geared towards multimedia. Whilst this is good for home users, school and business settings find these things annoying at best. But essentially you are paying for stuff you do not want or need. Schools and businesses want their users to do work, learn how to program etc. not burn CDs, play music or rip CDs or organise fancy picture collections. Heck, my institute buys computers w/o sound cards or fancy video cards if possible. And in fact with Windows XP for example admins may need to spend extra time clamping down on the use of Mediaplayer, Messenger etc. Another thing is security and legal control over your computer. If for example one looks at the EULA of Mediaplayer one can see that it allows MS to force you to upgrade w/o your consent (for security reasons etc.) Whilst this is limited to MP for now, we all know that EULAs can be changed anytime for other things as well. Finally downtime with viruses and other things. I acknowledge that Win2k and WinXP are more stable than Win9x but the point is most viruses are targetted at Microsoft platforms. And businesses and institutes tend to be hit very hard with these things. One must also factor downtime in the costs.
I would say use an MS system for the secretary who has written a lot of macros and really knows the system - but ask the person first. A lot of highly skilled office staff would be using Wordperfect for DOS if office policy would let them - so let them if it gets the job done and the printers can handle it. Someone that just types and uses the GUI for formatting could be given any WSIWYG system with minimal (or no) retraining since they don't use the complex bits of the system.
I personally disagree with decisions to replace things like library terminals with PCs that run software that makes them look and act like a terminal. Also, on one campus I saw a room with dozens of PCs that run nothing but Netscape. In those cases it can only come down a "professional" not doing their job, or bribery.
The attitude to use the correct tool for the job and not a gold-plated swiss army knife should be used more in IT.
That's the world personal computer market. There's probably a computer in your car and it doesn't run windows. The computers that control the systems in the factory where the car was built don't run windows. The automatic teller at the bank doesn't either - and pray that it isn't just connected to a PC running windows at the bank end, or you have a very dodgy bank.You are a total moron... You say that unix is better because you have to go through all those steps in option B whereas in option Windows I could have just asked my friend, or done a search in Start->help. So their. Sometimes these Linux morons just don't know what their'e talking about. Bill Gates is my hero, because I want to drop out of college just like him and since I did that I must get rich because Windows is so great and college is so dropped. Have fun.... P.S. So I'm not a very good troll. I'm a hard-core Linux CLI user, and a strong advocate. User name is n1tr0g3n. I'm not very good at misspelling words either, i.e. they're->their->theyr'e.
The article proposed a 2 CPU configuration... Try load sharing that between 500 GUI sessions. With context switches and everything else pretty much noone would get served.
Oh, and by the way, I work on much larger Sun boxen all day... They're great machines but they don't work miracles.
REPEAT AFTER ME
Uptime is like penis size - irrelevant and a sign of inferiority.
In the desktop usage marketplace uptime means absolutely 100% fucking nothing and the ONLY people who compare it are morons who play with dicks all day
A webserver needs uptime, a file server needs to be up most of the time - there is a very very very large difference that you 12 year old weenies cannot seem to understand.
I swear the next motherfucking linux evangelist who mentions the uptime of his wonder fucking box to me is getting one in the mouth - i dont care - in the real world we have enterprisre applications and distributed domains - we dont measure our uptime we are too busy working for a living
Now fuck off and stop pulling your cock
MS will be shipping CLR with a very limited class library for FreeBSD because they need two implementations for the standards body.
Speaking of the library:
ADO.NET -- Yea, I'm sure that ADO has been 'completely abstracted' there...
Windows Forms -- Sounds pretty platform independant to me
GDI+ -- Again, absolutely nothing to do with GDI, I'm sure.
I only feel safe to make two comments.
First one regarding the technical, the other the social/financial aspects of the problem.
Point #1:
Stability and reliability of a system is as good as how much time and effor you put into setting it up and maintaining it.
Also it depends on what kind of a system you are setting up (hardware AND software).
It's not about Windows sucks and linux 0wns generalities but the fact is that IF you spend your time carefully configuring your system(s), let's say with Windows 2000 on a good quality hardware box, you will be able to have a very reliable machine. Just as you would put your time and efforts to set RedHat on appropriate supported hardware.
But if you go with a default config and jsut drown your system with useless software or don't even take your time to configure it... even the best linux distro will have a high risk of being unreliable, just like a Windows box.
Just because you work with linux 24/7 and one day/year with windows, doesnt mean that windows sucks. It probably will if you will try to set it up.
For someone who spends 24/7 working with Win and 1 day/year with linux, going with linux is the same way... doesnt mean that its horrible. if such person would try to set it up, it might be horrible.
It all depends on time and where you are standing or who you are trying to convince.
Althought, in the technical aspect, UNIX has better chances of winning over Windows.
Point #2:
Beside the technical problems, there are social aspects.
Setting up a netowork of Windows machines may cost around a million dollars. But why should you go with the top-of the line XP and such? Tone it down to Win2k or NT, as well as the machines, and you might end up with only a 100-200k dollar difference over UNIX boxes.
THEN, charge people admission (10 bucks per student? 1 buck per hour?) or a general fee, and hell, you will get that 100-200k back, if not more!
Now, with UNIX... even though youll spend 600k on it, you might end up with not a whole lot of revenue, since most people will just avoid the UNIX workstations (because either they dont know how to use it/are afraid/have Win at home/so on).
So in this aspect of the case, Windows has a stronger foothold.
Being realistic does NOT mean anti-unix. If we can't critique linux for being not as user-friendly as Windows (or whatever it is that is not exactly as liekable as Win), why do we even dare to bash MS?
I have been involved with both Windows & Unix (HP-UX) for 10 years and agree that Unix is easier to manage than Windows. Unfortunately the article should have gone further.
If you want to do a proper comparison, get a Windows guru to prepare a solution and put it up against a Sun and/or Linux guru(s) solution.
Issues I have with the article.
The Windows solution totally ignored Terminal Server.
On the 5000 system example, it stated a 30:1 support ratio required 165 support personnel for each shift. Excuse me but is it 5000 over 3 shifts or 5000 per shift?
Blue screen of death. Sorry haven't seen a ten year old Windows system in production lately (if they are following the 24 month cycle then they are running Windows 2000 right?). So find a new slogan.
Statements about a single server being more reliable. Excuse me, ever heard of single point failures and putting all your eggs in a single basket? One single compromise and their goes your system
Applications! Most outfits are running specialty software (accounting, inventory, MRP, databases, etc). Where are the costs?
20" monitors with NCD terminals!? When was the last time you were in a factory? Ever heard of dumb terminals.
Linux for students at home. Sorry most students play games and will take the OS that ships with the box. Box will survive until they graduate. Next.
Like it or not M$ is dumping $$$$$$$$$ into reliability and drivers. I haven't had a Production Windows Server go down any more often that our production UNIX servers.
WIndows / Unix hybrid systems. Not even mentioned. We have Unix apps and Windows apps. We have Windows workstations & servers, we have Unix workstations & servers, we have X-Terminals and Windows boxes running X-Window emulators. We have VB apps accessing Unix databases. Ever heard of legacy apps and systems?
Training. What does it cost to train 5000 people on OpenOffice vs OfficeXP?
Want to be taken seriously. Try peer review.
Oh well, the author have not done his research. You cannot run Solaris 8 on IPX, cuz it is a sun4c architecture machine. You need at least a sun4m to run Solaris 8. In similiar form factor as IPX, the tiny Sparc Classic will run Solaris 8. I wonder how much does the author knows about Sun gears???
[students accustomed to windows]
;-)).
Times are changing - in my last job I had a 20 year old comp.sci student from france as an intern. I gave him a windows box, and he was obviously incapable of doing anything useful with it, because he had virtually no experience with windows (fortunately SOME features were similar to KDE
Next day he installed Mandrake and did fine... obviously not everyone is accustomed to windows better than linux, at least not the younger people and not in europe.
I personally use linux at home, but I can get along with the windows boxes at work, as long as xemacs is installed.
Spending the last six months on 2K I've senn the BSOD ony a couple of time, but sometime (three times a week) my machine simply reboot without giving any feedback ... I think that moving some stuff (e.g. graphic drivers) in the kernel has not made 2K better than NT4.
95 was $**7 that's a fact not an opinion
- For the college-based situation, Microsoft provides educational liscences and discounts, thereby drastically reducing the Total cost of initial implementation.
- The author simply makes bold assertions and provides little or no evidence eg:
- A 200 station, 500 user unix system only takes one person to manage (no mention of training and provides no factual basis for such a figure or the mythical "4 person" windows one).
- student access to the the Windows desktop opens everything to easy insider attack (He seems unfamiliar with the fact that Windows 2000 localizes profiles, and allows even more fine-grained access policies that *nix does. This might be a problem with Windows 9x, but he uses Widnows 2000 liscensinc for his "study")
- User base would be just as happy with *Nix office applications as with MS Office and such. In fact, few non-geeks would be willing to take the time required to learn a new office system.
- The cost of the computers and computer software is the only variable here. Take for instance 5000 employees (as he does) and say they are 5% more effective per year with windows. At an average salary of 50,000 per year, this has saved the company 12.5 MILLION dollars a year, which far outweighs the cost of the computer system, or supposed additional support personel as well as the cost of a massive ammout of new office software training. Sure if you have 5000 UNIX software developers, this is more efficient, but more often, developers occupy a small part of a workforce.
This article is flawed. It's tough for some people to accept that Windows is better -- gasp! for some things than Unix, just as for others, Unix is a more logical choice.The author fails also to fully understand the operating system he was writing about making claims about Windows 2000 that simply were not true. It, in fact, was not uncommon for my work to have desktop uptimes of more than 2 months using Win2k.
I cant't help but wonder why LinuxWorld released this article at all. In my opinion this totally destroys my attitude towards LinuxWorld as a serious contender.
I mean - 500 users on a 12 GB server - It's been a while since I did my diploma in mathematics, but I'd place my bet that this is just 24 MB per user - including the OS overhead we may come down to 22 MB.
OK - lets think. As a user I'd really like to browse the internet
What conclusion will the article have? "Windows XP is THE os everyone should install" ? haha...
Having Linuxworld reporting about what the strong points of Windows are against Linux is like having Microsoft publishing a non-flawed article about how good Novell Netware is compared to Windows2000 Server.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
I totally agree. Also public libraries around here run a windows net. How much is that costing me in licences that could have gone to other public services?
otherwise, why the fuck would i keep wasting my time ... i dont know. lots of wintel people is a scum sucking leech on humanity, but many more would never ever be so blatantly dishonest and outright disgustingly self righteous, disingenuous, and totally oblivious to the rights of the person he is trying to unload his crap on.
on this godddamn pile of trash? that was the most
pathetic and lame excuse for an analysis i have
ever seen in my life. jesus fucking christ
it was somewhere between a vacuum salesman
and
you have a motherfucking responsibility
to your fucking readers and your fucking customers
to pay the fucking attention to all aspects
of the problem and the solutions, and not
jury rig some pathetic ass 'study' and try
to shove it up their ass to fulfil your own
fucking demented paranoia goals or ideology.
and you, slashdot, as a 'news' site, should
fucking stop being a fucking w.r. hearst
type yellow shit rag and fucking try to
have some self fucking respect and stop
this trash. the fucking 'weekly world news'
has more integrity than you, at least they
check their stories to make sure they havent
accidentally mentioned anyone real, and
are not trying to ruin peoples lives
for some brainwashed half assed ideology.
fuck you for running this story.
fuck the people who made the story for
being complete and utter slime.and fuck anyone who doesnt understand
what im talking about. fucking become
a human being you fucking nerd assholes.
The scenario is this: Most universities, you buy what they tell you to; or beg, borrow steal someone elses.
Most businesses, you use what they tell you to. You don't know the software/hardware? No job for you. Unless they are willing to train (not likely).
The decision to use a particular solution, I imagine goes like this:
Suit: We need to save money in IT. Any ideas?
Unix SA: Excuse me, but I could implement this really stable--
Suit: Will our staff have to learn anything new?
Unix SA: Well, yes but-
Suit: Get me the MS rep.
MS rep: We can save you money. Let me get the bill for dinner.
Suit: We are upgrading to Windows 2000/XP/NET
1 year later....
Suit: Productivity is down. Revenues are down. We need to save money in IT. How much is that UNIX guy costing us? WHAT?!? He's fired.
MSCE: Dude! I just got a job making $40K!!!
Also add the fact that if you lose your *nix admin due to suicide, murder, anthrax, fraud, or goatporn, you are going to have a hell of a time replacing them. Not so with a cookie cutter MSCE.
All in all, Unix is in the backroom , windows is on the desktop, users need consistency, and all is good and right with IT. But you're still a drain on revenue
As far as using a gui to manage a linux box? I love linuxconf. Use it on every computer I have.
/bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin, or in /usr/local/bin...
/usr/bin/locate filename, and there it is.
The utilities are in either
If you want to find a file on a unix box type,
Or do you delete the locate database as well as deleting their paths?
You also probably enjoy tormenting small mammals... And how funny is it to kick old peoples walkers out from under them as they try to go up stairs! Such a hoot!
out there. I'm sure glad to get rid of that crappy dos legacy stuff all the way up to WinME - but we'll let YOU sell everyone on YAUG (yet another upgrade), especially those who bought into the WinME marketing ;)
I'll never forget the chore it was getting people to switch from Win31 to 95 - our head of acctng never could give up fileman.exe.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Whilst the article is seriously flawed, why does everyone assume that you go to school / university / whatever to learn how to use software package x.
You're more likely to be going to school to learn how to learn. Learning is a lifelong process. You learn the fundamentals, and you should be able to apply them anywhere.
And what the hell has the CLR got to do with the class library, dumbass?
I bet you think that the Java VM is the same as the Java class library.
I think what the analysis misses most are the following points:
1. Unix is more stable than Windows 95/98, but not more stable than 2000/XP. So, stability is not an issue. In fact, use a myriad of Apps and it's quickly apparent that Windows 2000/XP is generally more stable than Unix when running Apps.
2. Windows will require moore support because you can simply do more with it and the more people do, the more support they'll need.
3. Special support contracts are required for Unix boxes to fix those "never happens" problems which happen quite regularly in real usage. This costs money.
4. Give students Linux machines and they generally won't use them if there's a Windows alternative available. I've actually seen this.
You mean like this? darrellsilver@mail.com [mailto]
Is that correct? I'm rather new at this so-called "address demunging". I've also taken the liberty of posting your e-mail address on a popular e-commerce mailing list. Apparently the people there are quite good at address demunging and are happy to help you test your address.
Well there's one person who will hate Linux for life and probably convince several others to hate it as well. Good job!
The tourist info screen at my local buss station runs Win95.
:-)
How do I know that. Every now ant then it DSOD's
Wouldn't it be nice if schools got all the money they wanted and the army had to hold jumble sales for guns
Comment removed based on user account deletion
My Wife was absolutely terrified of wiping out something important when using Windows 95® click something in the wrong combination and the whole thing crashes corrupted files and all of that sort of thing. In Linux after telling her, that she was insultated from my stuff and important system files she actualy got brave enough to use the system.
It didn't take long for her to learn her way around enough to use it as well as most windows users ever learn to use Windows. You should see her reaction now when she has to wait for checkfile in windows after a crash, knowing that in Linux she can just punch the power button and ReiserFS just mounts next time like nothing strange happened.
Also I've noticed that I have less trouble installing new hardware and getting it working in Linux than I do in Windows 95.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I can't believe someone credible really wrote this. It is simply PATHETIC!
End of line.
When was the last time you actually worked on Windows?
I use Windows 2000 as my desktop at (and before that NT) and I can't remember the last BSOD I had.
Microsoft Word also saves a partially written document in the event of a crash/power spike. It's an application design feature of Emacs and Word - nothing to do with the relative benefits of Linux and Windows.
Windows is easy to learn and hard to use, while *nix is hard to learn but easy to use
Unix is a server OS and a programmer's OS. Linux even more so. The things that are easy to do on Unix and hard on Windows are usually the kinds of things programmers want to do.
For a non-technical user who wants to write documents, spreadsheets, email etc. Windows is much easier to learn and to use.
The real world, before MS achieved their monopoly was very different from today's.Word Processors like Wordstar, WordPerfect, and even Microsoft Word would run all day without a crash.The operating system would *never* crash...be it DOS or CP/M or Unix.
Today, users consider themselves lucky if they only have one failure that causes them to re-boot a day. Software frequently fails, and more often than not crashes the OS. And it *still* runs on DOS, and I bet most faults are in all the layers above DOS.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Changing this under NT changing would have been easy: Control Panel/Network. Under 2000 it took me a while to figure out that I had to go to "My network connections", right click on "Lan connection 2" (Hey, second network card == second LAN...logical!) and change the stuff for the TCP/IP protocol.
You find that easy? I don't! The Network applet in the control panels was the logical place to look, but behold: it doens't exist anymore. :-(
I had already tons of surprises of this kind in W2K. *sigh*
Well, I ended up loading regedit and killing all references to 3Com: W2K forgot "both" network cards and I could start from stratch installing the drivers. Because it wanted the Windows 2000 CD, I had to reapply SP2 and then all the hotfixes...<SARCASM> but that's a small price to pay for putting a network card in another PCI slot.</SARCASM> Note that my Linux partition (on the same machine) didn't even complain. Honestly, I loved NT: it did everything I needed. The lack of support for USB made me switch....seems I pay the price now.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
NCD, the company that makes the thin clients in question, also makes Windows terminal server clients as well.
The comparison in costs would be almost identical because of software licensing costs anyway though.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Only fucking gamers use AMD. Don't use AMD stuff at work or for production systems.
In your original post, you wrote this:
I want to stress the point though, that if you want to know how reliable something is, you can't judge from one computer, or two, or ten. You need a couple thousand people, and you need them using it for different things.
This was a pretty good point to be made. Now, did you notice what CaptainSuperBoy heard and responded to? The only thing he/she noticed and cared to respond to was the fact that you were acting llike the world's biggest asshole. The signal-to-noise ratio of your posts is very, very close to zero.
If you were trying to make a point, then you totally failed. If you weren't trying to make a point, and, in fact, just wanted to be an asshole, then why did you write, "I want to stress the point though"?
You may have a million good points to be made, but none of them will be heard or believed as long as you continue to accompany your points with senseless invective.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
I guess I should have known better than to expect a subjective analysis from an article on a site named "linuxworld", but even considering that, I would expect a more realistic portrail of the network environment in an industrial setting.
While I beleive that the linux/unix choice might make sense in the university (in particular, for Comp Sci students), can you imagine mom, pop and jr trying to troubleshoot a dial up issue on linux so that jr can upload his homework?
My favorite is this quote:
The school using Unix can reasonably expect to achieve nearly perfect system reliability while maintaining a relative immunity to student attacks.
How can anything based on open source consider itself immune? Doesn't the author understand that it's easier to hack a system when you can know EVERYTHING about how it works?
This is what I think is frustrating about the unix/linux community and why I think that it will never be accepted uniformally in commercial environments. This unabashed bravado that boasts such wonderful reliability and security.
I agree that it is possible for unix to be so reliable and such, with proper administration, but in reality administrators like this are few and far between. The same argument can be made for Windows environments (I have three web servers and a database cluster running on Win2k and I have had one unscheduled outage, which was caused by a HVAC failure). The better argument is that Windows administrators are weaker as a group than unix administrators, which I would agree, but to say that there is some magical attribute to the unix operating system that makes it hack-and-crash-proof is innacurate.
second society
You are lying through your teeth.
I run W2K SP2 at work programming with VFP 6.0 and have learned the hard way to reboot every morning by doing a complete power down. W2K is especially prone to crashes after being up all weekend doing batch jobs. Sometimes it crashes and the batch jobs don't get done.
W2K will crash just setting there and doing nothing else. The longer you let it run the more likely it will crash. Gates hasn't made the WinXX kernel more stable, he has just added software to do a phantom reboot when it looses integrity. W2K keeps reserve copies of system software around ready to replace those files residing in the system directories. If W2K didn't crash those files and that 'restore' facility, along with the fs utility wouldn't be necessary.
When you close IE5 and get a "Can't find at location " and the two hexaddr are the same, you are on your way to a BSOD! First, your box will slow down. Then icons will start disappearing from your desktop, followed by the toolbar-system tray. Then, only your task manager remains active, allowing you to reboot. If the hexaddrs are not the same the crash will take longer to occur.
You remind me of those Win95 drones who claimed that they had uptimes of close to a year for their Win95 setups. Then the notorious clock bug the crashes Win95 every 49.7 days was revealed, showing those drones to be the liars they are.
I know what 4800s are capable of. But the sunray server doesn't use shared memory, it keeps a separate image for each sunray. The article gave the price for a 2 CPU machine with only 4GB of RAM, not nearly enough for more than 8 sunrays before luser complaints start piling up.
In a school situation where the students will likely be using complex software, such as matlab, oracle, compilers, as well as mozilla, the CPUs will be hosed if more than 100 to 200 students are logged on. Then during finals week, all hell would break loose.
I've also ranted about the networking traffic required by sunrays. The 4800 would require a minimum of 25 GigEthernet cards, plus a network switch for every 25 sunrays.
The 4800 is not the machine to put in a school (although it should have one for the compSci folx) I'd rather see a dozen or more E450s, and some percentage of the sunrays should really be various flavours of workstations.
Don't forget all the students who will want to run napster/gnutella/kazaa, and will try to install all kinds of nasty client software on the server. Better to give them their own CPUs.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
I was hoping to read an article that discussed the options for various scenarios, and actually supported the assessments based upon real experiences. Granted, the sample would have been so small as to be considered to be nothing more than demonstrative.
However, the article contained purely speculative figures, supported by hand-waving arguments like:
"The school using Unix can reasonably expect to achieve nearly perfect system reliability while maintaining a relative immunity to student attacks."
"The Windows-based solution, by contrast, will be under-supported with four full-time staff..."
" In contrast, someone who bought a Windows networking system for 200 users in 1996 would have been forced to upgrade both his servers..."
Where do these statements/numbers originate? Since he does not cite any studies, cases, etc., I can only assume that they are produced via the rectal fabrication method, or perhaps they are the byproduct of a recent colonoscopy.
In short: The article carries about as much weight as a Windows XP commercial on your television.
we are able to run windows 2000 advanced servers with reliability like lasting for months without reboots. (of course our reboots only come from patches and power failes due to the recent transfer of power substation in our area.)
we are able to integrate authentication and policy. this prevents students from messing up the workstations (windows 2000 pro.) because of this, our windows 2000 workstations are almost maintenance free, running for the entire semester without a need to reinstall. students are not even able to see the harddrives and can only run certain programs. they cannot download files and run them. the best of all, they cannot delete files of other people.
i will honestly say that windows now is stable than before. of course, we are very diligent in applying patches, service packs, etc...
with regards to the price (i do not live in the US), that same amount can give us the following benefits:
500 workstations w/ windows 2000 and office 2000. around 14 servers running us 2 quad xeon (700MHz w/ 1MB L2 and 4GB RAM) for sql 2000, 12 dual tualatin (like 1.26GHz with 2GB RAM @) for exchange, iis, etc. of course everything has a licensed software for that number of computers. by the way, all our servers are paired for redundancy.
we are also able to include 2.4TB worth of storage with a tape library (ultrium.) everything is running in a SAN environment.
that includes symmetra 16KVA ups and gigabit switches.
all of that for a recent quotation and we are finalizing our purchase plan. i think it is even much cheaper compared to the article.
in my belief, there are ups and downs for using windows 2000 and *nix systems. i am not saying that *nix sucks or anything but we are able to accomplish things what *nix does. it just needs the proper knowhow to manage windows 2000 without experiencing crashes. i sometimes joke that windows 2000 sys admins are much better since they have to keep up with weak security settings, nonstop security patches, software bugs, etc. unlike for *nix, it is by default secure, and you can leave it in the corner of the room and forget about it. but of course i still praise *nix people. my inspiration in running microsoft products come from you guys who constantly criticize microsoft.
and lastly, we use microsoft systems because of support options, software are easier to develop and deploy, and the price is much cheaper than using competitive softwares other than linux.
my last part is rather out of topic but i would like to ask if there is any initiative in the *nix world to do .net. integrate all php, perl, python, cgi, etc... into one system and have a very scalable database?
is there any policy capable *nix systems to create a domain of computers with homogeneous security permissions, settings, preferences?
i was surprised, i thought /. people are too biased against microsoft.
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
Seriously between the extra cost of the xwindows client which is around $300, why not spend it on better hardware which is hmm cheaper to support, based on Unix, easier to use than anything, has native Xwindows support for, hmm Free. Seriously good underpinnings easy of use and lower TCO make these good machines for general purpose use. While having a few dual boot windows linux machines around for certain things and people, and maybe some supercheap(slow!) sunblade 100's. All connected to a big freebsd server bank.
I do have one problem with the article, though. The neglected to take into consideration what was best for the students (typical of a college). In the current state of things, a large number of college graduates that go on to work will be using a Microsoft operating system. If students from College A have no experience with Windows, they will be at a disadvantage from those who graduated from College B, who had Windows AND *nix. I think an institution of learning should let their students have a choice, not saddle them with one or the other.
"Da ist ein Technölüst in mein Unterpanten!"
"[Employee name]: Here is the new system. Here is the documentation and a week's training. Learn it or find another job." It's just as easy as that. If an employee is not willing or able to learn a different system because it's 'different than my home system' or is something 'I've never used before', then said employee can very happily seek employment elsewhere.
As far as students are concerned, fuck 'em. They're in *college* for Jebus' sake. Doesn't that imply that they possess at least a modicum of intelligence? Oh, wait. I forgot. It's not PC to refuse admittance to people who can't pass 050-level mathematics, english and history courses.
-- Count Spatula: The Culinary Vampire "...because my cooking sucks."
I have spoken about this subject before in regards to what Linux needs to accomplish before gaining desktop marketshare, but it is also relevant to this discussion.
As the top guy for my company's IT operation I have a responsibility to my users to provide a system that is simple for them to use and reliable to provide nearly uninterrupted use. On the desktop I typically deploy Windows 2000 now. I plan to avoid XP as long as I can. I am not a Microsoft fan by any means but I will freely admit that I think they got it pretty damn close to right on Win2k.
But for servers I run run run from Microsoft. My servers are one of AIX, Netware, or Linux. What does this give me? Great uptimes with minimal system maintenance on my part.
At this juncture in time I think a mixed environment is simply the best for usability and minimal management. As one of the other posters mentioned, Win2k can be locked down with policies to prevent users from mucking with things. Win2k on good hardware (A and T series Thinkpads for us) is very reliable. Our servers are obviouslby IBM for AIX, Compaq for Netware, and commodity hardware for Linux. For centralized authentication we are using NDS to serve out LDAP and radius to the proper devices.
I think this ends up giving the best of both worlds. Windows interface on the desktop with Unix/Netware on the backend for server reliability.
First, I'm a *Nix fan (No, not Nicks, but they're alright too).
However, I thought the article was a little skewed. There were no technologies that are often employed with M$ products to reduce cost while they did mention some options from the Unix side. Also, they didn't objectify the results with anything but cost, but did approach the subject of support and upgrades without facts.
Take for example Citrix Metaframe. With Metaframe you can run apps hosted on a NT Terminal Server to any number of platforms (Linux, Unix, Mac,Windows, WinTerms, etc). If the university only had say, 250 users at any one time running Office, instead of purchasing 500 licenses, they could purchase 250. From Citrix Metaframe they could then simply limit the number of connections to the Office App to 250 to comply with licensing.
Linux clients could also connect to Metaframe and run office remotely as well.
I'm sure there are other options available as well. I think the articles like these try to find a "quick bullet" for comparison and miss many solutions that are provided by independent companies. Also, I think most Universities would consider a deployment of both Unix and Windows. On the backend, I would think a Unix/Linux solution would be a very solid solution, but on the front end they might want to offer a variety of platforms to their students.
I know in my 2 colleges attended I was locked into Macs the first time around (Not a bad thing, but when Windows came into the workplace I was behind) and the second was all Sun. (By then I was pretty much able to use any OS).
I'm still waiting to see a good report where all the factors are taken into the cost analysis, independent solutions are considered, and then I would actually like to see the estimated costs and then the final costs of the deployment.
Never going to happen, but would be nice.
ML.
My experience in college and in the workplace is that I wouldn't be able to get everything done on a Linux desktop.
One of the biggest issues is file format compatibility. Even if one's own office uses Unix or Linux exclusively, one still receives documents from the outside world, and they're often going to be in MS Office formats. StarOffice is cool, but it's not 100% ready to fill that need.
Another big issue is hardware compatibility. Nearly every new consumer device that comes out provides Windows drivers (except for those aimed specifically at the Mac market). Linux/BSD drivers are still hit-or-miss. A lot of college students inherit printers and other peripherals when they go off to school, and an operating system that doesn't have enough hardware support is going to cause major headaches. This is less of an issue in an office environment because all the new hardware is bought by the business, not by individuals.
On the other hand, a good argument for Linux on campus is that the network is much less likely to get bogged down by students playing big multiplayer games online.
spelling fassict
I used that "emacs" thing 12 years ago and it didn't handle cursor keys... kept putting sequences like [[^K or so forth into my text...
S/390, or if you're slumming it AS/400s.
Learn the wonders of a punched card based character set (EBCDIC)...
Yeah, the BSOD's are a friggin annoying thing.
I've had a full 5 of them, and that's only during the last 6 years. Not to mention I only run 10 servers with fairly high load 24/7.
And, mind you, I've had to spend almost half an employee to run all those servers, so yeah, winblows sucks! UNIX RUL3Z!!!
BTW: What does 'System Idle Process: CPU Time 9230:14:21' mean?
Based on projects I've worked on with SunRays, I'd be happy with that configuration for supporting up to 500 SunRays in a uni situation, expecting approx 100 to be being used at any one time. Some extra memory wouldn't go amiss, but memories cheap when you're runnning 500 SunRays of it!
Ideally you'd add a second machine for failover and to share the load, allowing for peak use.
You wouldn't need 25 Gb interfaces! You'd have 48 port switches with Gb uplinks and 2+ Gb interfaces on the servers.
I don't see the issue with having a dedicated network? So what? Also, newer versions of SunRay server software support vlans.
You wouldn't let users install their own software, that's the entire point of a controlled Uni environment. Giving them their own cpus and memory costs money and extra admin. If a student really needs a dedicated workstation, give them one - there's nothing wrong with a mixed environment.
There are tradeoff to be made in a SunRay environment, but I think they're a good solution.
This article is full of FUD of the worst sort.
No corporation is going to use ONE box for 5000 users. It's stupid. Single points of failure for so many users are unbelievably expensive.
Simple equation:
Avg Cost per employee per hour (college/industry): $25/40
Downtime, cost per hour: $125,000 / $200,000
In a previous job, we had a server with 1100 people on it (a NT 4.0 box running File and Print and Exchange!), with 99.96% uptime. It was pretty busy, but how did I justify getting it a friend? Easy. The downtime cost PER HOUR was 3x the purchase price of the bloody expensive server we had. I managed to get another two servers fairly quickly, and divided the load.
Companies do not care about capex cost for the most part. They care about getting the job done in a reasonable amount of time, ease of getting staff at reasonable rates, and finally about stability of the environment.
Windows unreliability was a thing of Win3.1 days. Windows 2000 is rock solid. WinXP (which I have been using for more than a year now) is even more stable. You cannot criticize Windows for reliaiblity or manageability now. Check out application center 2000 - that baby has no competitors in the market today. Microsoft MOM is coming, and I dare you to find a competitive product in the Unix market place. Backup Exec already is the best backup solution - it's far superior to Legato. I've never used the IBM HSM jobbie, so I won't comment on it, but I doubt it's as good as BE.
There are areas where MS can improve:
* security
* privacy
* trust of end users (activation, et al)
* marketing practices
But scalability (both vertically and horizontally), reliability, servicability, and manageability are no longer Window's bug bears. This article might have been true in 1995, but not today.
Just ignore it.
Andrew van der Stock
This reminds me of when I (or just about anyone else i know) see upcoming traffic: I'd take the longer route, because even though it may take longer, at least Im moving and not sitting around waiting.
Basically, what it comes down to is that when using a mouse, it feels like you have to do alot of nothing to click a button, whereas at a CLI, you can just start typing and get it done.
I think it is a given that all the Unix variants are more stable to use, but we come back to the age old arguement. It is given that people learn how to use Windows in companies and school because it is so commonly used. Linux, or any *nix OS, is only better if used correctly. I am just learning how to manuever Linux and I crash mine more often than I crash my Win2k computer. I have learned quite a bit about Windows I am the NT/2000 expert at my job, but I am not entirely a Windows advocate. Hence the reason I am trying to learn Linux.
Crashin "There is no great genius without some touch of madness. " Seneca, Moral Essays
First of all, in the given example (`tail myfile'), the CLI is simply faster. Compare:
- Type `tail myfile'
- Wait ~1-2 seconds (depending on file size) for output
Don't you dare try to tell me that you could time those with a stopwatch and find the GUI to be faster. Even doing it without the keyboard, it's still going to involve- Double-click an icon on the desktop to open a folder
- Wait ~1 second for Explorer window to open and display folder contents.
- Scroll through folder contents to locate file
- Double-click file
- Wait ~1 second for Notepad to open
- Scroll to end of file with mouse
The command-line will still be faster, if you have any kind of decent typing ability.But I take offense at the generalizations in this thread...apparently people think you either have to say the command line is more efficient in all possible situations, or that the GUI is more efficient in all possible situations, and both statements are wrong. The command line handles certain types of tasks extremely well (manipulation of multiple files in a single operation, for example). The GUI is good for other things (interfacing to a program which has many possibly conflicting options, for one). That's why there's an X Windows System and dozens of window managers and desktop environments in addition to traditional command-line shells, and the reason why we have XTerm (or, for true power users, Eterm) windows. Each excels at certain types of tasks, and, true to UNIX philosophy, you should always use the right tool for the job at hand.
In regards to the win v. unix comparison at ...
t co.html
... you missed somethings in your incredible bias.
http://www.linuxworld.com/site-stories/2001/1018.
-An IPX can _not_ run solaris 7 or 8, due to limitations of the boot prom.
I believe it is technicially possible to get a new boot prom, but it's as
practical as a screen door on a submarine - not gonna happen.
-for your school, did you happen to think of the faculty?!?
-for the school, the students will be better programmers, with little
market to go to. The could learn java, but not the all important MFC and
other M$ bs. A part of a school's mission is vocational, and most of the
jobs out there involve microsoft. What this does mean is the school will
have to sell it self to a niche market, which translates to increased
advertising and marketing expenses - to attract both students and faculty.
-school: initial increases in costs due to reorienting everyone who knows
mac and windows to the unix way of life
-school: one part time admin!!!!?!! WTF! are you nuts!! You expect one
admin to retrain an entire school to unix, while building out the unix
network, while maintaining it, fixing it, backing it up, testing, chasing
security, etc. !!??! No damn way! At *least* three. I would also add
that I've worked for a major univeristy computer department with about 500
unix workstations and even more windoze stations. I know the difference.
It takes about the same staff. The difference is that you can find
anyone, at almost any salary that you can train to be a windoze monkey, as
long as you have one smart one who's paid well to work nice and never
leave that mess. The unix people cost WAY more. However, they aren't
stressed out running from one problem to the next. The are proactive,
adding features to the network. When a true emergency happenes, they are
calm and prepared. They tend to be very mature, document the network, and
are orderly. This may at first seem counterintuative (if you know unix types),
but when two types of experienced admins stand side by side, you
can see the difference.
-school: don't forget the cost of teaching materials. While sql server
may cost a gabillion dollars and have the uptime of a fruit fly in a
blender, it has at least a gajillion books out there covering it. There
are millions of crappy books and a few good ones covering M$ topics.
Unix, very very few. Sure there's the hundreds of oracle books (which,
btw, oracle doesn't always give schools cheap licenses; another HUGE
expense if you decide to use it). Theres the wonderfully written orielly
books, and some of the other unix classics. But then, that's it. For
every readable text (online doesn't count - school doesn't make residual
money on that) on KDE programming, I can find you ten on M$ programming.
Schools may have the instructor develop the materials, and that's great,
but it's yet another expense.
-In summary, you school comparison is far to broken too be considered a
good comparison. This won't even work as propaganda (published on linux
world - what do you expect). You conviently overlooked other systems
(there is more than sun you know). You neglected the savings, reliability
and performance differeneces in the storage area (unix would win). You
neglected all of the special deals that can be pitched for academic
pricing. M$/Dell (and others) gives can give great academic pricing if
you show you like them. Sun has acedemic pricing, per se, but I never
considered it a real discount. They do, however, give you a they option
to trade in your old gear on new stuff, and the discount is much better
than you'd get from selling it. IBM is much more generous academically
than Sun, but that seemed to something you were willing to overlook, which
is ironic considering big blues linux offerings.
Democrats and Republicans only disagree about how to enslave you
In my experience, Windows NT 4.0 is very stable, almost as stable as Linux can be. I've been using Windows NT 4.0 ~8 hours a day for the past 5 years.
I began to see frequent (about once a month) BSOD's on one computer that was really being pushed to its limits. It was a 200MHz PII w/ 96MB RAM. It was already swapping after I would log in, before running any major apps. Now I'm using a newer computer (well, about 2 years old now), with 128MB RAM. It could definately use more RAM, especially these days with it so cheap, but after 2 years of use I have NEVER seen a BSOD.
So most of this depends on hardware stability, and what software you use. I use Windows very lightly, primarily using exceed and connecting to OSF1, Linux, AIX, IRIX, etc. Even so, I do use several other windows apps frequently such as web browsers (Mozilla these days, Netscape previously), MS Office, Corel Draw, music players, and such.
Netscape and Mozilla crash a lot, and some of the most damaging crashes are when I'm writing mail in Mozilla, have to look something up on the web, and the browser crashes -- bringing down my email composer along with it. I'm getting in the habit now of launching IE just to browse while writing long email messages, so that a browser crash won't kill my unsent message. I also use IE to browse Microsoft's web pages and ibuyer.
Exceed crashes often too, but even when exceed crashes, it's very unlikely for me to loose more than a half-hour of work because everything is either on disk or edited in emacs. I would rather just run Linux on my machine, but that's not my choice to make.
I have to think that those of you who see so many BSOD's running Windows are either pushing old and flaky hardware to its limits, or are running tons of buggy software.
On the other side of the spectrum, the old Mac OS's were horrifically unstable, and seemed to crash once every 2-3 hours no matter what hardware or software you were using. And these days Windows 95 and 98 give me about a crash a week at best, sometimes more.
Keep in mind in what follows that I am a staunch UNIX advocate and currently run a installation of around 500 student lab machines.
I think this article features some fairly arbitrary hardware configs, in some cases, just plain wrong. For one thing, a single two processor Sun Server is by no means sufficient to run 500 SunRays. Anyone who had glanced at the documentation would know this. We run ~20 of these on a Sun 220R without much headroom. Obviously, the dual UltrasparcIII model he specs is a fair bit faster, but not 25x faster. He's equally arbitrary with storage: 1TB for the Windows solution, 2TB for the UNIX. And it is a bit of a stretch to consider using a SunRay to be the same quality of experience as a dedicated 900mhz CPU. He's also totally neglected the cost of networking, which for the required private interconnect with Sun Ray's, is quite substantial in a multi site facility. Also, trying to use one SunRay server, no matter how powerful, across a campus environement of multiple labs, will not work to any sort of satisfaction.
This may seem like nitpicking, but it effects all his later conclusions. To turn this into a workable configuration would require at least several more servers, as well as a bunch of dedicated and idiosyncratic networks. Also, SunRays are quirky, high-maintenance machines, with a history of high hardware failure. Suddenly, we're not talking about a prt time single administrator (never really possible in a educational lab environment anyway), but a fair sized support staff. And a constant string of complaints about available software until the end of the labs' lives.
Also, is he serious about a SPARCstation 10 as an administration workstation?
The questions is, if the author cannot get the hardware plans right, can we trust his analysis in other issues? Considering that he presents most of his information without references, I would say probably not. With naive assertions such as UNIX users will suffer no downtime or server failures, I would say almost certainly not.
My parents were equally fearfull of screwing things up on their Apple IIc before they purchased the IBM Aptiva replacement. They were fearfull of screwing things up when they made the move from Win 3.11 to Win 95. They were fearfull when they bought their most recent PC with 98 on it. It was this technophobia that got me interested in computers to begin with...I was forced to do all the grunt work with the PCs in my house. It goes without saying they refuse to sit back and take a calmer look at things while they cling to the "OH MY GOD IT'S A COMPUTER AND I HAVE NO WAY TO UNDERSTAND IT!!" mentality.
But I think your point that your grandmother was afraid is moot because the jump from the previous OS to 95 was a big one for most people. I consider myself a borderline geek, yet I have no *nix experience and if you dropped me in front of a CLI with a handful of those cryptic commands, it would take me quite a while to get the hang of it. It's about transferring your knowledge from one system to another.
"All mankind is at the mercy of a handful of neurotics". - Norman Douglas
My dept. is school just switched from Solaris/Linux to Win 2k. Believe me, most of students and professors are fairly sophisticated users. Main reasons (I think) are because of administration and cost. For one sun spark, we can get 3 or 4 pcs. Our dept. didn't have system admistrator as such (we have relatively small compuer lab). So the graduate assistants end up being lab technicians.Most of these lab techs get intimidated by unix env and end up having misconfiguring and there by having security holes. We then had to wait for University unix people for fixing the mess. So, our lab director decided to switch from solaris/linux to win2k (with roaming profiles). Last time, I heard, students are feeling ok. Oh our dept. is some what related to computer science (actually it is Artificial Intelligence :) ).
You're right, this article claims at first to present a meaningful comparison, but it completely misses any and all meaningful comparitive points. The article is entirely based on three unsupported assumptions. Here's how I read it:
1) Linux is cheaper than Windows and Windows + comercial apps cost roughly 20% of the hardware.
- The first point is fact, but the 20%-ish part is made up. Probably right anyway, but I don't know.
2) *nix is easier to administer by a factor of 8
- I don't believe this. Those sys. admins I know who deal with both like Windows better. However, they do spend more time administering Windows, but that's only because they've put it on everyone's desk. My best guess is that the two OSes are equally time-consuming to administer by a competent person.
3) Windows crashes on a daily basis, while *nix systems never crash.
- This is crazy. In my experience, Windows NT is slightly more prone to crashes than Linux, but running on good hardware it's rare to see a BSOD more than once a year. The stability of these operating systems is a non-problem, compared with stability of application software and even hardware. Netscape/Mozilla in Linux is no more stable than Netscape/Mozilla in Windows. Emacs might be more stable than MS Word, but generally speaking it's the software stability that causes the most problems.
So, where's the evidence to support these statements? There are a lot of hypothetical numbers given, but they are just consequences from the underlying bogus assumptions.
Where's the interesting information? Are cost and reliability really the major concerns? How about usability, popularity, productivity, educational value, etc? For a school, you might want students exposed to a variety of systems in order to better prepare them. Learning MS Word version 200x is not nearly as useful as learning Word, StarOffice, and maybe LaTeX. Variety gives you more basis for abstraction and allows you to learn new software much more quickly. Unless you're a technical college, you should be more focused on building strong learning frameworks than teaching specific skills for now-current technology.
For a business you're more concerned about productivity, so do the applications offered on a particular platform suit your needs? I'm sure that secretaries prefer to use Word than, say, Abiword. So give them Windows. Excel is probably better than gnumeric. But I like Perl+gnuplot better than Excel for most middle-weight data anlsysis tasks.
Okay I'm obviously just rambling here, but to me these are the really interesting issues. Cost is kind of important, both licensing and administration costs. But I don't think it's the biggest issue, really. And certainly stability is not much of a concern except for servers. If you're a major banking institution and you want totally secure, stable servers, then don't use Linux, Solaris, *or* Windows. Try something like VMS!
Anyway, this was a truly vaporous article, not worth posting.
A few points:
Windows isn't going away, and won't be supplanted by a Unix variant, Linux or otherwise, anytime soon.
Very few large companies have just one platform, and most have established applications on multiple platforms. Switching is cost prohibitive.
*nix is not revolutionary, it's just as much a legacy as mainframes.
The idea of everything related to system and software configuration being stored in slow to parse text, in multiple formats is Unix. Having a single registry, stored without wasting space, is revolutionary.
Further, Windows problems can usually be fixed by commonly available utilities, requiring little skill. Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot that I should be a kernel expert to maintain a *nix system.
*nix programs are poorly named, either cute or short, causing much confusion. Task Scheduler vs crond or anacronda. Of course we all know about the thousands of text readers/displayers, etc, such as nroff, xv, latex (I know the case is wrong).
Support and software availability is better on the Windows platform. OK, yeah I can get StarOffice or OpenOffice for Linux. But I can also get that on Windows, plus MS Office which is better than anything on Unix systems, plus WordPerfect (built for Windows and emulated on *nix systems), and Lotus SmartSuite.
All of the above is a different story of course, if you're comparing the two platforms for purely server use. In that case you would probably pick *nix, but not necessarily.
My apologies. I'm barely 20 myself, and also got my first admin job in high school (well, jr. high, but close enough). Nonetheless... looking back on the fact that I was in charge... not as an assistant, not helping, but actually making decisions... the only reason we weren't r00ted over and over was the fact that we were only online for a few hours a day, and we probably got lucky by having a DCHP assigned IP addr from the dial-up pool.
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
The real issue, and I think I'm somewhat unbiased on both sides because as a Project Manager I'll go with what fits the situation, is that Windows is easy to use, or easier to use than most. Sure, Linux/Unix maybe the OS equivalent of a hummer, and the MS OS maybe a pinto. But darn it, if I wanna grab some taco bell that Pinto fits better in the drive thru, don't ya htink? For all the negatives people yell about Windows -- and in most / some cases I couldn't agree more -- it's still an easy decision which to deploy in most cases. Take for instance a group of data-entry folks (which is a common group in business) -- their computer skills are null. Thus, they need a simple, workable solution. Windows is the correct answer.
... and cheap.
... I for one think Linux ought to come out with a Linux:Home version so that the computer illiterate in the world could run it as well. Remember, for every person who knows and understands computers there are 9 people who have a) never touched a computer or b) don't know the click from the clack.
... I thought the ideas were lucid, but it's seems that all Microsoft's White Papers say Microsoft is the best and all the Linux White Papers say Linux is the best. It would have been interesting to have this guy argue the other side and see if he could make it work.
The other side note to all this is a little theme that I see nowadays running the corporate America: a lot of die hard Sun guys are discovering they can by an Intel 2Ghz, slap Linux on it and -- Damn! it's fast
Anyway, to make this a novel
Anyway good article
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
I find that sometimes running winfile is the only way to really fix file type associations. You know the routine: RealPlayer/WMP/whatever hijacks 30 different file types, and you have to reset them. File->Associate...
:-)
Actually, QuickTime went as far as to claim posession of files it couldn't even read. That's some software brain damage if I ever saw it.
Oh, and don't forget progman.exe!
One of the reasons that I became a lawyer was to avoid ever having to hire one. -SPYvSPY
You have a good point. If I did have 'goback' back in the DOS days I wouldn't have learned as much as I did. I could press a button and fix most problems. It certainly helps with convenience and the 'fear factor,' but will also reduce learning experiences.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
The real reason for the success of MS over MacOS is that the Mac hardware was proprietary and expensive, and the PC hardware was open and cheap. The irony is that such a closed OS as MS got popular because of an open archetecture such as the PC. People didn't pick their OS first and then pick the hardware. They picked the hardware and then took whatever OS it came with.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Blue screen of death doesn't really happen with XP or windows 2000. You can't really compare old version with windows with new versions of *nix
Nobody ever takes into consideration the fact that the SECOND TIME you do something with the keyboard, it is MUCH faster than using the GUI again:
No complex gesture. Two keypresses. Done.
Show me the WIMP equivalent of that for "tail myfile" and then we'll talk.
I hate it when I forget that 'HTML Formatted' means 'Bring Your Own Paragraph Tags'
The idea of everything related to system and software configuration being stored in slow to parse text, in multiple formats is Unix. Having a single registry, stored without wasting space, is revolutionary.
It's pretty obvious you aren't a programmer; text takes just as much time to parse as a so-called binary file; why? Because they're *both* binary files; the only difference is that the "binary" file is formatted differently.
As for the oh-so-wonderful registry being a revolution, it was around in the days of VMS and VAXen; AIX keeps its logs in a binary, non-human-readable format, and most admins consider it to be a major pain-in-the-arse to deal with. The fact that /all/ system information is stored in /one/ file just means that the system can be annhilated by corrupting that file, and repairing a corrupted configuration file that isn't human-readable is literally next-to-impossible.
I can't count the times that I have been grateful that Unix conf files are human-readable when I do something stupid as an admin (which /all/ sysadmins do from time-to-time), and I can fix it from single-user mode with nothing more than /bin/cat and /bin/ed. Try removing the hardware information from the Windows registry, I'll delete /etc/conf.modules and /etc/modules/* on my Debian machine, and we'll see who is up faster.
Further, Windows problems can usually be fixed by commonly available utilities, requiring little skill. Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot that I should be a kernel expert to maintain a *nix system.
Right. Ask any experienced IT support person what they thing of those easy-to-use utilities, like First Aid and System Doctor, and I'll bet the response involves the rectal insertion of large boxy objects; something isn't effective just because it's easy to use. Furthermore, one need be a "kernel expert" only to write device drivers -- all you need to maintain a Unix machine is to have some understanding of how the system is structured (e.g., information about the peculairities of the local site), some basic administration commands, and a functioning brain. I was doing this at sixteen; are you telling me that an MCSE is dumber than a sixteen-year-old?
*nix programs are poorly named, either cute or short, causing much confusion. Task Scheduler vs crond or anacronda. Of course we all know about the thousands of text readers/displayers, etc, such as nroff, xv, latex (I know the case is wrong).
Your lack of understanding again shines brightly through your prose; the reason most Unix commands have short names is because they are easier to type. It's not that hard to remember that "cron" is used to schedule regular events, and that "ls" is used to LiSt a directory, and there is nothing wrong with having the reverse of the 'cat' command called 'tac'. How would you feel having to type 'task-scheduler -l joe' every time you wanted to look at Joe's task-schedulertab?
Cute names? You mean like Bob, Clippy, "XL", Visual Studio, and Hotmail?
Support and software availability is better on the Windows platform. OK, yeah I can get StarOffice or OpenOffice for Linux. But I can also get that on Windows, plus MS Office which is better than anything on Unix systems, plus WordPerfect (built for Windows and emulated on *nix systems), and Lotus SmartSuite.
I'd say that $0 for StarOffice with free downloads and cross-platform ability makes it much more available than an almost $500 copy of Microsoft Office that runs on one platform. I use StarOffice at my job, and although SO doesn't have every bell-and-whistle that Office XP does, SO does do a good job of importing Word documents and Excel spreadsheets, SO is faster, and SO does quite nicely for writing documents.
Try writing a fifty-page paper with Word, cross-references, graphics, and all; and then try using LaTeX and LyX.
All of the above is a different story of course, if you're comparing the two platforms for purely server use. In that case you would probably pick *nix, but not necessarily.
That's because you know as much about Unix as Senator Strom Thurmand knows about gay sex.
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
OK, so I agree with the basic premise that the overall cost of a Linux installation is much lower and SOME of the reasoning is right - but show this to any REAL IS department worth anything and you've lost any chance of ever getting linux installed. Look at the numbers of machines and screens in the comparisons - 5200 in the windows install and 5000 in the Linux. Sure its not enough to make the cost difference but its sure enought to blow credibility. Plus for the whole question of 'smart screens' versus PC's - has no one here ever heard of Windows Terminal Services. Bugger, there went the other 80% of the article. So now the real points it brought up just got lost and you've presented yourself as an illiterate fool interms of enterprise installations. THANKS ;-)
I want ways to introduce Linux into my org - but dont give me **** like this to do it with!!
--*--*-- The Eagle sneers at the Peacock
You are quite right for naming the most common directories, kudos to you. Were you trying to say that all unix admins know that, or were you just trying to say that *you* knew that? I think you missed my point, which is that simply being able to install a machine to a GUI doesn't make someone an experienced admin.
As for your comments regarding malicious torture which forced you to take the role of AC (why, I don't know), I refuse to respond as I haven't knocked over grandma in WEEKS.
This comment is guaranteed*
*not guaranteed
That's actually a good point. I remember that Countrywide Home Loans uses Lotus Notes strictly because the CEO loves it. He apparently doesn't like doing much of anything outside of it. Most of the VPs and CEOs like what they like and want the rest of the company to bend to them (not the good VPs and CEOs, though).
However, I think it's not that difficult to have Linux/Unix creep in to the office. In any job that either has technical competence or a limited number of tasks, it should be easy to create a *nix platform that would allow the wage slave to do their work in security and ease. As long as you're setting up a new system, it should be fine.
Then again, if your company writes Windows applications, this whole point is moot. I've never like cross platform developement; and (from my experience) it should only be done when there's no real alternative.
-RB"One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place."
- Mick Travis, "If..."
How many additional postitions would have to be created to train students (even rudimentary training) for an infrastructure they are not accustomed to?
:)) for a few things. Well, every year, we (the students) put together a newbie's guide to how things work, and have the administration give us some time to teach the freshmen the basics. They get to discover the specifics when working on the stations over the course of the year. It works fairly well that way. But then, it may also be because there's a strong do-it-yourself culture attached to that school, granted. YMMV. :)
Excellent question.
From my experience of how things work at my school, the answer is: None.
Our environment is mostly Linux desktops (with Win NT on a multiboot for some, since some tools -- mostly those used for management courses -- don't have *nix versions), with OSF/1 boxes as servers plus an ooooold VAX VMS (that is to be replaced Real Soon Now, as it has been for the last few years
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
"...I supoprt Windows and i would not say it is perfect But under 2000 we have a lot lot less crashes than NT..."
I'm sorry, but in my opinion, ANY crashes are unacceptable from an operating system. My Pentium 200 server, which uses a dying Quantum Bigfoot drive that occasionally forgets how to seek has a longer uptime than the Windows installation on my (dual boot capable) 1.2GHz Athlon, and I _never_ have resource issues on the server. I do occasionally have to change my FS to read only, fsck it, and remount it rw, but at least I _can_ do that. My workstation constantly runs out of system resources, and on a computer with 512MB RAM that's just unacceptable.
In comparing applications, I'm still trying to figure out why Microsoft apps are such bloat. I consider Mozilla/Netscape 6 to be very bloated, but compared to IE, it's downright slim. Office is another example, for it's a huge mess of a thing, and many people don't use it any more in depth than they use MS. Word 2.0. Things like the "advanced" macro capabilities might not be in the Linux/X based editors, but most people don't use them anyway.
I guess that my argument is that I'd rather have a platform that won't disappear out from under me when I am working, for I can still get more done working with less features but no reboots versus having tons of features, but losing some of my work twice daily.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
I've had Windows 2000 up for almost a year and had to reboot due as a result of the IIS patch. The installation I have is a P133 with 128M of RAM.
- W2K SP2 + MS01-044 (Security rollup)
- DNS
- IIS (with 4 host header based web sites)
- Active Directory
- Certificate Services (I was experimenting)
- FTP Server
- SMTP
- NAT
Sorry, but although I like Linux (and BSDI), I haven't found W2K to be as bad as many make out.
This file is too large to be opened by notepad, would you like to use wordpad to open it?
:)
What I find the most useful is tail -f and other variations (follow by name etc).
For once, I'd like to see a non-biased comparison that _actually_ _means_ _something_. All of these "usability" comparisons are based on _opinions_ of users! There is no way I will ever convince anyone that `find`, `grep`, or `locate` are better than `Start->Find->Find Files or Folders`...._ever_. It's all based on _personal_ opinion. To me, Linux lacks much of the corporate desktop ease-of-use features that Windows has made available since Win98. Now, with the release of WinXP, Windows has taken another giant stride away from Linux. It seems to me that we're still playing catchup, after ten years! What happened to the revolution?!?
Another point I'de like to bring up is the installation of Linux and Windows. Granted, many people may not agree with the practice, but Microsoft bundles many usable features into the base OS. Some Linux distributions do this today, but the system integrator must choose between a select few that all seem to lack that "extra bit". Recently, I downloaded Star Office 6.0Beta, as I use Linux as my primary and _only_ desktop environment. I will say this, Star Office has come a long way, and yet barely changed. The package still looks roughly the same, and only a few semi-major changes have been introduces since the early days. Meanwhile, Office XP has drastically increased speed and usability, bringing commonly used functions and features closer to a user.
The fact of the matter is, in the end, it costs more to roll out an all Linux solution. I would still use Linux in the back end for things like DHCP, Firewalling, and DNS, but I don't think I'd integrate it too tightly with the Windows side.
Oh, one final thought. If schools are suposed to be educating students on skills they can put to use, why are they forcing them to use Linux?!?! It's a proven fact that Windows is on 70-something percent of desktops, so this leaves these students dawdling and dabbling in the other 30 or so percent (which has to be split up further into MAC, Solaris, OS/400, etc.). It just doesn't sound like they'll be paying off any student loans in the near future.
-Tom Cameron
-tom@patcameron.ne.mediaone.net
Your the one who confused the CLR and .NET, not I, fuckwit. Go back and read you post, esp. the boldface parts, to check.
As I mentioned, sometimes a nice delete-orgy within the registry solves a lot of problems. I still prefer the manual configuration (setting IRQ's I/O myself, yessir!) over the PnP crap Windows 2000 forces you to use. As soon as you get a bit out of standard hardware it just freaks (heck, a network card is standard hardware) Besides, weird thing that I noticed is that W2K seems to share IRQ's like mad. I don't know why, and I don't know how to change it.
I don't hate windows either,...using MS products since the DOS 3.xx ages, but since over a year I'm using Linux with WindowMaker on my old laptop (P120/32Meg) and I actually love it. Such a small machine an good enough to do my basic surfing/mailing needs: it just speaks for Linux :-)
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)