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USA Today says "Linux waddles from obscurity"
JCallery writes "The Money section of Monday's USA Today carried a feature article entitled "Linux waddles from obscurity to the big time Momentum builds as upstart operating system proves it can compute". It carries a discussion of time and monetary savings in business, basic Sun and Microsoft arguments against Linux, growing popularity with Wall Street, Hollywood, and government organizations, and the credibility of Linux due to alliances with other industry companies."
And here I thought it was stumbling towards bankruptcy.
That just shows how little I know about finance.
I worked for the company in question during the 'replacement' period as a cleaner so I have quite an insight into this. The hardware on the machines were quite similar and you are quite correct in saying that the OS didn't have much to do with the performance increase.
The main reason for the performance increase was because we decided to rewrite our software which was originally written in java. Don't get me wrong java is a _great_ language, but when it comes to processes that require a lot of speed it just doesn't cut it.
That's why we decided to code the software in pearl. Pearl is a great language which is very close to machine language. It is somewhere between a 1GL and a 2GL language, you could almost call it a 1.5GL language. This gives it an amazing performance boost, and still allows us to have readable and maintanable code.
Check this quote from the article, quoting Sun: "With so many cooks, Linux is destined to splinter into incompatible versions, Sun says"
What the hell does a cook have to do with a version of software? They only stuck with half the analogy.
If linux hackers are Cooks, then the kitchen must be Computer Science, the computer would be the cooking equipment, and the software would be the meal.
Well, the kitchen is infinitely large, so it isn't possible to have too many cooks in the kitchen. The vast number of resources--cooking equipment--assures that none of the cooks will be forced idle, and the sheer number of cooks ensures a vast variety of dishes will be served. Not to mention the fact that the more cooks you have, the more likely you are to have one or two really good cooks that can in turn improve your average cooks.
If you go to a restaurant, and all they serve are variations on a tuna sandwich, then the restaurant will quickly get boring--no matter how much you like tuna.
--Cheese