Three Enterprise Operating Systems Compared

Anonymous Coward writes "Finally, a much awaited review of enterprise OSes. The guys from NW Test Alliance pitted Red Hat, UnitedLinux, and Windows against each other and rated them on several rubrics. Red Hat won by a slight margin on the basis of its high hardware compatibility and strong security integration."

Comments

Three?

[jejones]

You'd think that the United Federation of Planets would pick one and stick with it...

Re:Three?

[Surak]

Yeah, I know. The triple-boot scenario is a real pain too. The Romulans show up, start firing on us, and we're like "Quick. Fire photon torpedoes!" And, well, sadly the photon torpedo driver is closed source and no one's reverse-engineered one for Linux yet, so we have to sit there and take a pounding while the damn ship boots Windows 2349 Starship Edition.

A real pain, let me tell you.

Re:Three?

[agentZ]

Hi, I'm Clippy! I seem to be unable to comply! Would you like to use the Photon Torpedos wizard to plot a firing solution?

Re:Three?

[91degrees]

You know, you had me wondering WTF you were talking about for 5 minutes until I reread the title of the story. You fucking geeks really take the cake don't you. Are you that idiotic that you don't understand Enterprise Operating Systems are for large corporations?

Well, perhaps you should read the article before the comments.

anyway, let me explian... The comment was what we referred to as a "Joke". This is a deliberately nonsensical comment designed to provoke mirth. By misinterpreting the word "Enterprise", as the starship in the well known Science fiction Series "Star Trek".

Re:Three?

[notque]

Yeah, I know. The triple-boot scenario is a real pain too. The Romulans show up, start firing on us, and we're like "Quick. Fire photon torpedoes!" And, well, sadly the photon torpedo driver is closed source and no one's reverse-engineered one for Linux yet, so we have to sit there and take a pounding while the damn ship boots Windows 2349 Starship Edition.

Reverse-engineered?

But what about the Ultra-Super-Terrorist Stoping-DCMA ver 9.4 Beta?

If you even consider reverse engineering anything, Windows 2349 will not only catch you, but deliver punishment as well.

*shakes violently in thought*

No more Blue Screen of death.....

Re:Three?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please select the next step:

[ ] The firing solution worked. The Romulans have been destroyed.

[ ] The firing solution worked, but the Romulans were only damaged. Fire again.

[ ] The firing solution failed. The Romulans are still attacking.

[ ] I want to try another weapon.

[Next] [Back] [Cancel]

Re:Three?

[twocents]

I hate to point it out, but you are reading Slashdot, which has been known to carry a sarcastic or funny comment or two.

Re:Three?

[tobywan]

No, these funny comments are NOT "deliberately nonsensical." They have sense. They RIDICULE the practice of tacking the word "enterprise" onto terms. They mean that people who say "Enterprise blah-blah" are RIDICULOUS.

Re:Three?

[pnix]

We could always take Windows 2349 and put on a big 50 meter tall monitor on it and click the start menu and the flash of the BSOD will blind them while we pursue to throw our bad CD-R's at them from all the failed burns we've had and then they will bleed to death or something.
Windows destroys our sanity, so we destroy them with windows!

Re:Three?

[wideBlueSkies]

So I guess that Java Enterprise Edition is a big enough bag of coffee beans for a historic 5 year mission?

Re:Three?

[4of12]

Windows 2349 will not only catch you, but deliver punishment as well.

Hey, that's not funny!

Some of us are being punished daily by Windows in 2003.

Re:Three?

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd think that the United Federation of Planets would pick one and stick with it...

Call me picky, but that would have been funnier if it read:

You'd think that Starfleet would pick one and stick with it...

Re:Three?

[dupper]

What about LCARS? That seems to have worked pretty well (other than the shitty security and occasionally gaining sentience).

Re:Three?

[Friendly]

Too bad they did not inculde Novell, then you could fire your phasers.

Friendly

Re:Three?

[ElDuque]

Hey, the only reason I clicked on this article was to read some good ol' nerd jokes.

I wasn't surprised to find the first thread was exactly what I was looking for.
Ok I got one:

Does this mean the Enterprise OS comes with a 20 digit license number written in marker on each isolinear chip?

Hilarious.

debian?

[Anonymous Coward]

isn't debian enterprise ready?

Re:debian?

[JessLeah]

It is. But most people have not heard of it. Red Hat has virtually all of the mindshare in the Linux world (just as Solaris has virtually all of the mindshare in the non-Linux Un*x/Un*xlike world).

Re:debian?

[guacamole]

No, Debian is not enterprise ready. To be enterprise ready they need ISV and OEM support like RedHat has but more importantly, they need a company that would provide enterprise-class support AND release engineering for the OS similar to what RedHat does with their AS/ES/WS product line.

Re:debian?

[Gothmolly]

And also not act like insufferable pricks.

Re:debian?

[AKnightCowboy]

No, Debian is not enterprise ready. To be enterprise ready they need ISV and OEM support like RedHat has but more importantly, they need a company that would provide enterprise-class support AND release engineering for the OS similar to what RedHat does with their AS/ES/WS product line.

Not to mention a hefty price tag for all of that. Companies simply will not accept anything labelled "Enterprise-ready" that costs less than $500 per copy. Service contracts per machine per year must also be at least $1000. Get with the picture Debian. Apt-get is cute, but unless you start charging excessive fees for your product, you're going to be a niche player in the enterprise market. (Yes, that was tongue-in-cheek. apt-get is much nicer than up2date).

Re:debian?

[-jaded-]

Why is modded as flamebait? It seems like a perfectly accurate assessment to me.

Re:debian?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just where does this reputation come from, anyway? They have a well-known license policy, well-known motivations, and they stick to both. That makes them EASIER to deal with, so long as you don't have a different philosophy.

If this is because of some pricks on irc... well, I can assure you that most debian users are very helpful, so long as you don't refuse to read a manual when told where the answers are. There are a few pricks; sure. But the reason they're still around is because they're entitled to be there just like the rest of us. That's what ignoring people is for. The rest will be happy to help.

I've been using debian for years, and it's been a pleasure, both working things out with users, and sorting out problems with developers.

Re:debian?

[DigitalAdrenaline]

Speaking as out IT Manager, we've standardized on Gentoo for all 4 of our Canadian Offices, and we've found support to be far better than it was when we ran our legacy systems. I think Debian would be in a similar situation. When we had a problem with a driver once, Compaq took it pretty seriously. I'd feel comfortable running either.

Not actually a comparison with Windows

[Brento]

Read the article. There's a graph with some stats on Windows vs the two Linux distros, but it's not a comparison between all three - only between the two Linux distros. The last page makes it pretty clear when they only rate the two Linux distros, and Red Hat wins that comparison.

This is *not* a long-awaited comparison between Windows and Linux. It's not even a long-awaited comparison between Linux distros - the whole article spans a whopping three pages, and it's woefully incomplete.

Re:Not actually a comparison with Windows

[sabshire]

A nicer comparison would be Suse, Mac OS X Server, and Windows 2000 Advanced Server.

Re:Not actually a comparison with Windows

[nemaispuke]

No kidding, there is no mention of any tweaks to increase network performance, OS performance, or even if they used jumbo packets on the Gigabit interfaces. The article basically says nothing other than based on a limited test that RedHat is better.

Re:Not actually a comparison with Windows

[Martin Blank]

I'd like to see comparisons on a number of purposes (webserver, database server, etc) done on a range of identical hardware (low-end, mid-range, and high-end servers, or as equivalent as possible in the case of OSX) where the OS installations are done by technicians who are intimately familiar with their particular OS. I'd like to also see these stats updated from time to time with significant new releases from each company.

It bothers me when I see people with a whole lot of experience on one OS and some experience on another OS criticizing something about the one in which they have little experience, and this applies in any direction. As one who has far more experience in Windows than in Linux, I wouldn't expect to be able to set up a well-configured RH web server (working on learning), though I could probably get something basic in place. I've seen the reverse when dealing with Unix people, who have difficulty understanding some of the ways in which Windows handles things.

So far, most of the tests I have seen have either not been comprehensive enough, or have been slanted by the bias of the testing group. I've seen few examples of tests including OSX server, and it would be nice to see how well some OSes scale *down*, since not everyone can afford a $10K or more server for their first foray into whatever it is they want to do.

Re:Not actually a comparison with Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

I completely agree, this whole test and this write-up is garbage. The tests were barely described and there is no detail given to any exact settings used on any of the three platforms. Their simple little tests were no basis for any sort of OS comparison. This is the kind of worthless Linux advocacy that needs to not get posted on /. Good well-documented tests that include a lot of meaningful, specifically-listed criteria are good, but stuff like this is a waste of people's time

Re:Not actually a comparison with Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen the reverse when dealing with Unix people, who have difficulty understanding some of the ways in which Windows handles things.

Yeah, I always have trouble remembering which Wizard to use for what. They really need to make a Clippy for system administration....no wait. That Server Administrator thing they brought in with Win2k Server is pretty much the same thing.

Get over yourself. There is no skill required to admin a Windows box. Admittedly there are good Windows admins, but they are few and far between.

Re:Not actually a comparison with Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd also include Solaris in the above comparison. In fact, what I'd like to see *right now* is a comparison between Red Hat and Solaris on Sun's shiny new (x86-based) V65x box -- Sun will sell it to you with either/or OS on it. OSX is a non-combatant in my field, and not terribly interesting for that reason. Think of it as trying to steer a stampeding herd of cattle in different direction. :-)

Having said that, I'd like to see a comparison between the above and the closest-match Sun Ultrasparc-sorta hardware running Solaris, but I'm not sure which model that is. :-/

-- Just another IT guy in the finance industry

Re:Not actually a comparison with Windows

[gfxguy]

It did mention tweaks - it mentioned that it didn't use ANY, it was out of the box comparisons.

Re:Not actually a comparison with Windows

[jonadab]

Quite so. Webserver, I can just tell you, Linux will walk away with,
but I'd be very interested to see such a comparison for the database
server, (SMB) fileserver, thinclient server, and whatever other
categories the people organising the comparison think important.
(Print server is probably not necessary any longer, at least not
with the high-end hardware, now that you can get a really nice
network printer with a full maintenance contract and also use it
as a color photocopier on the side... but I'm sure there are
other uses for which the comparison could be done.)

> It bothers me when I see people with a whole lot of experience on
> one OS and some experience on another OS criticizing something
> about the one in which they have little experience, and this
> applies in any direction.

I have more experience with Win9x than any other OS, but I criticise
it more than any other OS except pre-X MacOS. Actually, in general,
I tend to criticise OSes in direct proportion to how much experience
I have with them, because it's by experience that you learn the
foibles, the things that are _wrong_ (not just different) with an OS.

I switched to running Linux full-time on my desktop about a year
ago this past April or so (though I'd multibooted for a while before
that), and I'm getting now a pretty good feel for what's wrong with
Linux (or, at least, with Mandrake).

> So far, most of the tests I have seen have either not been
> comprehensive enough, or have been slanted by the bias of
> the testing group.

Indeed, and that goes both ways. Microsoft pays some "Research"
group to prove NT is better, and then the Linux blogs post stories
showing that Linux is better, written by Linux geeks. I don't
trust either side of that. And then of course Apple will tell
you that Mac OS X is the best; it might be a _little_ easier to
believe they know what they're saying if they hadn't said that
about Mac OS 8 and 9 too, which didn't even have multitasking,
but even then I'd still rather hear it from someone who gave
each system a fair shake.

And yeah, I'd want proponents of each OS to configure that OS,
and then the people doing the judging to compare. Either that,
or all three OSes should be left in their out-of-the-box state,
in which case it might matter deeply which distro is selected
to represent Linux.

Re:Not actually a comparison with Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been my experience that most Windows admins are nothing more than point and click monkeys with no true understanding of how their systems work. A lot of them are unaware of the fact that there is a services file on their system. Or they don't know that they can use "AT" to remotely add and remove jobs from the AT list. Or that using VBScript, they can automate a ton of tasks that they stupidly walk through wizards and point and click on every day. How do I know this stuff? Because I'm a UNIX admin. That's the only way you get to really understand how an OS and it's related systems work. Once you know that, looking at any other OS is pretty much the same. It's a lot like knowing how a car engine is built and how it works rather than just knowing how to read user's manual and change the tailights. That's pretty much all the purely Windows based admins and paper MCSEs know... They can change the tail lights and maybe add some pin striping, but dammit if they'll ever be abe to tune the engine and get better performance out of it than the manufacturer intended. Not all Windows admins are like this, but about 95% of them are. This is not a troll.

Re:Not actually a comparison with Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, and if you look at the testing methodology for both, you will likely shake your head. They post networking stats, and use differing networks for both tests. Gigabit Ethernet for the Linux tests, and 10/100 for the windows tests.

Re:Not actually a comparison with Windows

[Martin Blank]

A lot of the paper MCSE's are just that. I've only recently begun getting my certs, and only because my company's new deal with Microsoft requires that we have two MCSE's on-staff. (That it looks good to some people on a resume also helps.) Most of my knowledge has come from finding a problem, and looking to find a solution to it, rather than getting into reformatting and restoring a backup. I have read several of the NSA docs, I spent two weeks analyzing the security templates, I'm one of the few people I know of who has gotten into the IIS metabase, and the only one to have fixed something in it.

Having started as a DOS guy, I'm still very much a keyboard jockey, and I go looking for files and registry entries whenever I can, instead of just thinking it's unfixable and rebuilding things. Problems are rarely unfixable in any OS; it just takes some time and sometimes some understanding to be able to come up with a solution. Once that solution is obtained, you will, theoretically, be able to fix it again, or at least have a clue of what the original problem was.

Re:Not actually a comparison with Windows

[fmileto]

lair you have never seen a unix guy stumped by windows you may have seen one baffled by the number of steps it takes to do a simple task.

Re:Not actually a comparison with Windows

[JonathanBoyd]

it might be a _little_ easier to believe they know what they're saying if they hadn't said that about Mac OS 8 and 9 too, which didn't even have multitasking,

Who told you they didn't have multitasking? I've been runnng multiple prgorams at once on Macs since System 7 days. IIRC, Multi-finder was in 6, but can't remember what exactly i did and whether it qualified as multi-tasking.

I think that waht you meant to say is that they didn't have pre-emptive multi-tasking. Co-operative is still a version of multitasking however and, in some circumstances (though not many) better than pre-emptive. I'm much happier with pre-emptive, however, as the majority of the world likely is.

Or maybe you meant protected memory which would be a very valid point to join up and down and scream about. I was in denial about the problem for years. Used to be that an application crashed and until you restarted the computer, you'd be really nervous about something going horribly wrong after that. Now, an application crashes and you just restart that app. Don't remember the last time I had to restart for any reason other than a system update.

Re:Not actually a comparison with Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

And then compare it to Solaris and RH running on a Dell 2650, which costs half as much as the Sun V65x

Re:Not actually a comparison with Windows

[Zeriel]

YAAT YHBS YHL.

Anyway, I really pity all those companies (such as mine) that sell a service, but need custom software to do it because no one produces commercial software that even remotely comes close to our needs.

By your logic, since I'm not selling software, all our in-house programmers are a waste of time. 'Cause, y'know, specialized meterological analysis packages are available for sale.

Oh, and just as an amusing unrelated note, I have problems because one of our senior admins is a religious Linux zealot and refuses to even consider analysis of Microsoft products in comparison to Linux. So I'm stuck with working with and idiot exactly opposite you, and I'm curious--did you suffer severe head trauma as a child, as well?

Re:Not actually a comparison with Windows

[Zeriel]

Oh, and one more thing. I'm a linux admin by trade, and I got my MCSE for resume-boosting. It took me one textbook (~$60), two weeks to read it, and then I took the test and passed.

So either you're really, incredibly unsuited for technical work, or I'm a super-genius.

Or maybe MCSEs aren't worth the paper they're printed on (for my money, that's true of any cert except for aforementioned resume-building).

Re:Not actually a comparison with Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

By your logic, since I'm not selling software, all our in-house programmers are a waste of time. 'Cause, y'know, specialized meterological analysis packages are available for sale.

Shows you how much you know about software. Microsoft makes a Meteorlogical analysis package. Micrsoft Meteo XP. Read it and weep bitch hat!

Re:Not actually a comparison with Windows

[Trolling4Dollars]

Wow. You are one of the first pretty reasonable folks I've seen post on Slashdot in a while with regard to the MCSE. I pretty much did the same thing you did. In fact I rarely even bring up the fact that I'm an MCSE because it really isn't worth anything other than the resume boosting you mention.

My personal take on the whole thing is that knowing a little bit about each OS and it's related applications is essential if you want to be relevant in the industry. You can specialize in one (I currently specialize in Unix), but you shouldn't close yourself off to other products regardless of how you feel about their licensing, the company that makes it, etc...

Re:Not actually a comparison with Windows

[Zeriel]

Admittedly, I think the reason the MCSE was easy for me was that I have a solid grounding in administration concepts, unix and otherwise (I interned for a year as a Win2k admin, before the MCSE).

I mean, I don't mind Win2k. Really, I don't. However, my current company uses products that work best under Linux. And that's where the decision point is. Price/performance. Which is why we have Win2k or RH9, depending on their preference, on the desktop. It makes for happier developers which makes for better products. =)

Re:Not actually a comparison with Windows

[buffer-overflowed]

I'm assuming you meant to say "liar." The preview button is your friend. Oh, and software installation is generally a simple task in Windows, and a difficult one (from source) on Linux.

Configuration is generally easier (arguably not a simple task) in a Unix or Linux environment and more difficult in Windows.

Automation and scripting are about as easy on both, with Linux and UNIX coming out a little ahead due to the absolutely amazing variety of scripting shells and languages. You can install Perl on Windows though and that really helps.

Security is about the same, although it's a lot tougher to do useful things with Windows and keep it secured.

Development (definately not a simple task) is far easier on Linux then anything else besides Unix, then again what do you expect... who made it? Developers, for, mainly at first, developer.

No, I don't like admining Windows, and I don't like using Windows it doesn't suit my style and tastes. I don't like being bound to a GUI and I prefer a command line because I type far faster then I can "mouse." Registry editing I find a pain in the ass, and I don't like the file layout and lack of powerful command line tools like grep. I'm also a system control freak, everything must be in the "right" place, it must be configed in the "right" way, etc.

I can generally do things faster in Linux or Unix (and when I say Unix I refer to Solaris) then I can in Windows. This isn't from a lack of familiarity, but rather the way Windows administration conflicts with my style.

The MCSE is indeed the most overrated cert in the IT industry right now. I've met more clueless paper-MCSEs then I have clueless A+ techs. As another poster noted, Unix or Linux people tend to be Admins/something, Windows people tend to be Admins/Tech Support if they have a slash at all.

Ok, back to mindless zealotism. [Linux zealot]VB is the computing equivalent to Herpes and IIS is the internet equivalent to HIV! BLARG! Unix admins are a race of master IT staffers![/Linux zealot]

Oh wait, I didn't mispell enough there to qualify for my fake zealot tags...

Re:Not actually a comparison with Windows

[sheldon]

Webserver, I can just tell you, Linux will walk away with

You seriously think Linux is better as a web server than Windows?

You willing to put some money down on that one?

I have more experience with Win9x than any other OS, but I criticise
it more than any other OS except pre-X MacOS.

That's because Win9x is worth criticizing. Now you understand when we're going to compare web servers it will be running on Windows server, not Win95, right?

Microsoft pays some "Research"
group to prove NT is better, and then the Linux blogs post stories
showing that Linux is better, written by Linux geeks. I don't
trust either side of that.

Well that's a start in the right direction.

Unfortunately you seem to believe that web server claim.

Re:Not actually a comparison with Windows

[sheldon]

Configuration is generally easier (arguably not a simple task) in a Unix or Linux environment and more difficult in Windows.

Not sure how... if you want this repeatable, just script it.

You can install Perl on Windows though and that really helps.

Why bother? You already have the full functionality of WSH and it's far easier to work with than PERL.

Development (definately not a simple task) is far easier on Linux then anything else besides Unix,

Ok, I thought this post was serious now I'm coming to realize it's a troll.

Oh wait, I didn't mispell enough there to qualify for my fake zealot tags...

Ah ha! I knew it. You did well there grasshopper. Stick around slashbot a while and you'll master the Linux trolling skills.

Re:Not actually a comparison with Windows

[cscx]

Yeah IIS just whips Apache in terms of performance. The only server that can compete with IIS in terms of performance is Zeus, but it's about $1000+.

Re:Not actually a comparison with Windows

[sheldon]

The other thing to keep in mind is that web servers are no longer about serving up static pages.

Any web server comparison is going to have a database and some dynamic page generation.

On our Windows server we're not going to be using CGI or old ASP.

Re:Not actually a comparison with Windows

[jonadab]

> Who told you they didn't have multitasking?

<voice id="Number 5">I told me.</voice>

> I've been runnng multiple programs at once on Macs since System 7

I ran multiple programs at once under PC DOS 3.3, but that's task
_swapping_, not at all the same thing as multitasking. Multitasking
is when one program is busy and you can still use the system.

> I think that waht you meant to say is that they didn't have
> pre-emptive multi-tasking.

As far as I'm concerned, "cooperative multitasking" is a misnomer.
It may sound nice on paper, but in practice it is useless. (I said
this first about Win3.1, before I saw Mac System 7 and OS 8 & 9.)
Also, in theory, it is possible to have cooperative multitasking
even on OSes that don't specifically support it (DOS, say), provided
the apps are built for it (which is required whether the OS supports
it or not). In fact, there were apps for DOS that did this (with
specific other apps, by the same vendor generally). There were
also TSRs that hopped on the timer interrupt and took short time
slices out of the background. None of that is the same thing as
the ability to run multiple applications (any applications, apps
not designed specifically for this) at the same time and have all
of them continue to work even if one of them gets busy or hangs.

> Or maybe you meant protected memory
No, that's different. Win9x doesn't have that, either (at least,
not properly -- I know it claims "memory protection fault" from
time to time, but it is also entirely too common that one app
makes another unstable); Unices were the only major OSes that
did until about 2001 (when MS started really pushing NT as a
replacement for Windows). (No, I don't consider BeOS to be a
"major" OS, though it was interesting. VMS is arguable, but I
guess I really don't consider it to be one of the major players.)

Re:Not actually a comparison with Windows

[jonadab]

> You seriously think Linux is better as a web server than Windows?

Yeah, I do. And I'm giving Windows the benefit of the doubt and
assuming it's running Apache.

> That's because Win9x is worth criticizing.

All current OSes are worth criticizing.

> Now you understand when we're going to compare web servers it will
> be running on Windows server, not Win95, right?

Of course. Nobody (well, nobody sane) would use Win95 as a server.

> Unfortunately you seem to believe that web server claim.

Yeah, but not because I read it on slashdot.

Re:Not actually a comparison with Windows

[jonadab]

> Yeah IIS just whips Apache in terms of performance.

There's more to enterprise computing than performance. IIS is
on my "Not On My Network" list (along with sendmail, Outlook,
and Bonzi Buddy). When I said I'd like to see an evaluation,
I meant a thorough evaluation, not just benchmarks.

Re:Not actually a comparison with Windows

[jonadab]

> web servers are no longer about serving up static pages.

No, of course, not. (If it were, TUX would kick everything's
tail.) But actually, while the ability to server dynamic
content is vital, and speed of serving it is important, there
is still also a *large* amount of static content serverd -- the
majority of the bandwidth (on the web) is used by static images,
if I am not gravely mistaken.

Still, dynamic content generation mechanisms are vital, of course.

I'm also puzzled by the "this is NOT CGI, it's better than CGI,
CGI sucks and this is good" movement, lead by the PHP people and
also the ASP fans. Fundamentally, dynamic pages generated by
PHP and ASP do both use the CGI, protestations to the contrary
notwithstanding; they just do it more efficiently than was
generally done in 1996 (in principle, by linking the generator
code into the webserver software in some way, much like mod_perl
does (in theory; the implementations differ), or SSI (which IIUC
does not use CGI since it doesn't need any input back from the
browser), or what-have-you). Okay, so it's more efficient than
1996 technology; but it's still the same old interface.

Then there's client-side code (Java, ActiveX, ECMA Script, VBScript,
whatever) that talks back to the server over a separate (possibly
homebrew) interface. *That* isn't CGI. But it also doesn't rely
on any specific support from the web server software.

Re:Not actually a comparison with Windows

[JonathanBoyd]

As far as I'm concerned, "cooperative multitasking" is a misnomer.

Well as far as the actual definition of multi-tasking is concerning, it is multi-tasking.

It may sound nice on paper, but in practice it is useless.

I found it very useful in practice to be able to listen to iTunes, check my email in the background automatically and browse the web at the same time. No, that isn't very taxing and yes, it's a bit daft that holding your mouse button down long enough would drop your net connection, but it was multi-taskign and I did find it very useful. Not as useful as the proper pre-emptive stuff we have now, but still useful.

Just skip to the conclusion...

[Michael's a Jerk!]

Red HAt won. NAturally :-)



Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Server 9

RATING
4.13

Company: Red Hat Price: $2,499 (includes 24-7 support); cost can be reduced to $1,499 for abbreviated support hours. Pros: High hardware compatibility, strong security integration, feature-rich. Cons: Expensive high-level support; occasionally weaker management.

UnitedLinux/SuSE Enterprise Linux Server 8

RATING
4
Company: SuSE, Price: $749 includes one-year maintenance contract ($699 each additional year). Premium support costs $2,250/year. Pros: Uniform, strong management. Cons: Minor availability issues; tougher to secure.

Enterprise Linux AS Premium Edition

[Lothar]

Quote from the Article "The premium edition, which costs about $2,500, is distinguished from its siblings by clustering capabilities, additional hardware support and service options"

That is very expensive in my book. Can they really defend charging this much. Surely this much money should also include a proper service contract. At least one should have to buy only one copy.

Re:Enterprise Linux AS Premium Edition

[VCAGuy]

I think they can justify it. I mean, when you're used to paying almost $3,800 for Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition with 25 CALs, $2,500 (and no CALs) sounds pretty good!

Re:Enterprise Linux AS Premium Edition

[NineNine]

Well, if you're an IT director in charge of 1000 machines for a $500 million company, $2500 is chump change. That's one week's salary for one of your 25 DBA's. You don't buy Enterprise if you're just going to run one dinky little web server. And people like you, who expect that everything is supposed to be free are true fucking morons.

Re:Enterprise Linux AS Premium Edition

[CrazyWingman]

*ahem* Not to mention the crazy high prices you could pay for something like SunOS, AIX, or UNIX. :P

Re:Enterprise Linux AS Premium Edition

[leomekenkamp]

Do you mean to say that if you are in charge of 1000 machines for a $500 million company, that you only need to buy 1 support contract / licence / whatever?

I take it you are referring to this comment from VCAguy. Calling someone a 'fucking moron' for that comment is a sign of very bad manners to me. And saying that someone expects everything to be free when the only thing he says is that paying $2500 is nicer than paying $3800, is just plain bad reasoning.

But hey, this is slashdot, you already got your +5, Insightfull

Re:Enterprise Linux AS Premium Edition

[UnknowingFool]

Remember this is about "Enterprise" versions of Linux. These versions are designed to run in clustered configurations with high availability and load balacing for a company. The price tag includes support as well. I think for RH it includes 24x7 support. $2500 is very competitive to Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition ($3,999), Sun Solaris, etc.

Home versioins cost considerably less (even free), but don't provide this type of server out of the box. Not to say that you can't get the same type of configuration, but you will have to heavily customize Linux yourself to do it. And there's no support

Re:Enterprise Linux AS Premium Edition

[sjlutz]

Ussually, when I but stuff, I shop around, if you pay MSRP for stuff, I've got a bunch of stuff I'd like to sell you. Here's $2399 for Windows 2003 Enterprise edition: http://www.atomicpark.com/productList.aspx?familyI d=6354&RefID=6

Re:Enterprise Linux AS Premium Edition

[Lothar]

Actually it was me he called a "fucking moron" cause I pointed out that I thought it expensive especially since the SUSE one was significantly cheaper and with similar testresults. But what do I know - I'm not an expert administrating 1000+ machines or clustering for that matter (although I could have checked the prices for windows/solaris first :-). The moderation is somewhat strange sometimes.

I'm not someone expecting everything to be free (GPL). In fact RMS is wrong when he advocates that. Just think of what would happen if you wanted to Open Source SAM Missile defence systems, guidance system, radars etc (might not be the best example but I couldn't help that one). Something has to be closed source. From what I see there is room for both and there should be a healthy balance.

BUT...

[brunes69]

Will all thes eoperating systems also have the voice of Majel Roddenberry?

I think NOT!

Maybe not the bst comparison....

[El Cubano]

According to note at the bottom of the article, the results for Windows Server 2003 came from a previous test (I didn't bother to try and search for it, asthey didn't provide a direct link). It would seem that the comparison would be more valid if the tests were all done at the same time, or at least on the same hardware and have some statement to that effect.

I'm not trying to knock on the test, but just pointing out that even smal changes in hardware components or settings can make a big difference.

Otherwise, it looks like a good and thourough test.

Re:Maybe not the bst comparison....

[Karem Lore]

Erm, in the text it actually says that the previous test on the Win2003 Server OS was done on identical hardware (in fact, the same machine).

Karem

Re:Maybe not the bst comparison....

[Anonymous Coward]

Red Hat won by a slight margin on the basis of its high hardware compatibility

It would also be nice to clarify this line. It's obvious this was mean to say compared to United Linux Redhat won by a slight margin on hardware compatibility. Everything works in windows unless you're a rock and if so there's no hope in Linux for you either.

Re:Maybe not the bst comparison....

[JordanArendt]

Same machine, but differing networks. Gb vs. Mb.

Re:Maybe not the bst comparison....

[enigma971]

According to the article, the Windows test was done on the exact same hardware.

Re:Maybe not the bst comparison....

[Flywheel]

And under Performance on page three there's a link to the W2K3 review!

RTFA

[... James ...]

This isn't a Red Hat vs. UnitedLinux vs. Windows review. The declare Red Hat the victor over UnitedLinux. The compare some things, such as max tcp connections and file transfer times against Windows, but never do they declare that Red Hat has better hardware support or is easier to configure than Windows.

Re:RTFA

[Sanction]

Do they really need to? In an enterprise environment, neither hardware support or ease of configuration are very important. Enterprise OS vendors always have very short lists of supported hardware, rendering hardware support pretty even when it comes to what is rock-stable. With a large and proficient admin staff, ease of configuration is not important at all compared to ease of maintaining consistant configurations and rolling out changes. While Windows may have an advantage in consumer level configuration and consumer hardware support, these evaporate when you enter the enterprise market.

OS X Server

[seletz]

Well, among others they definitely missed OS X Server.

Re:OS X Server

[Anonymous Coward]

For an enterprise solution? OS X server? You're kidding, right?

You're not kidding?

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Oh man, thats some funny shit..

Re:OS X Server

[someme2]

ME: I will now recite three random numbers... 74... 21... 48... 11...

SLASHDOT GUY: Well among others you definitely missed 82.

ME: Thank you for the valuable information.

Re:OS X Server

[Anonymous Coward]

Well for one, they didn't say that this was the be all, end all enterprise operating system shootout.

If they did, Solaris, HP UX, AIX, and the *BSDs would've been included also, but sadly, OSX still would not.

Keep the Mac where it excels, multimedia creation.

Re:OS X Server

[onion2k]

OTHER SLASHDOT GUY: Erm, actually, that was 4 random numbers...

Re:OS X Server

[Anonymous Coward]

The three was also a random number, therefore making it a recital of 5 random numbers.

Re:OS X Server

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, "random numbers" was only recited once.

Re:OS X Server

[Anonymous Coward]

That is because OS X sucks arse. I was recently given a G4 running OS X. The first thing that I did was get rid of that stupid yuppie operating system and installed Yellow Dog Linux on it. Now it is hardcore.

Re:OS X Server

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do the words "I rest my case" spring to mind?

Re:OS X Server

[Ignominious Cow Herd]

MONTY_PYTHON_GUY_USING_WOMAN'S_VOICE "Burma!"

OTHER_MONTY_PYTHON_GUY_USING_WOMAN'S_VOICE "Why'd you say Burma?"

FIRST_MONTY_PYTHON_GUY_USING_WOMAN'S_VOICE_AGAIN "I panicked."

Re:OS X Server

[Anonymous Coward]

Even more PEDANTIC SLASHDOT GUY : Now give me a NON-random number.

Re:OS X Server

[leuk_he]

But...

They were not even random. it was odd, even, odd, even.

By the way: the /. numbers are:

11. Evaluate 2 Linux server OS.
74. Declare linux the winner over windows.
12. ???
14. profit.

Re:OS X Server

[DailyGrind]

YASG (yet another slashdot guy): "LA" is not a number, you insensitive clod!

Re:OS X Server

[christopher240240]

Pedantic: adj : marked by a narrow focus on or display of learning especially its trivial aspects

Re:OS X Server

[Anonymous Coward]

> Well, among others they definitely missed OS X Server.

It was a (poor) comparison of enterprise operating systems, not a wanna-be desktop OS. Seriously, I can just imagine J.P Morgan running data processesing on a bunch of G4's, while the rest of their office is using Windows desktops or terminals. Then they could go to "About This Mac" and monitor their system resources.

*sigh* This place is turning into a Mac user haven.

Re:OS X Server

[Anonymous Coward]

YET ANOTHER SLASHDOT GUY: Imagine a Beowulf cluster of said numbers! First Post!

Re:OS X Server

[damiam]

Just because you can find a pattern in them doesn't mean they're not random. It's quite possible to generate those numbers in that order on a random number generator. If fact, if they were deliberatly chosen not to have any visible patterns, that would make them completely nonrandom.

Re:OS X Server

[tigga]

For an enterprise solution? OS X server? You're kidding, right?

You're not kidding?

It's in exact same category as Linux ;)). It is a small server. It could be clustered to run software which could be clustered.

But for things like Oracle and Sybase you should use Solaris or AIX or HP-UX.

Re:OS X Server

[Anonymous Coward]

That is because OS X sucks arse. I was recently given a G4 running OS X. The first thing that I did was get rid of that stupid yuppie operating system and installed Yellow Dog Linux on it. Now it is hardcore.

Sounds like real dork. You achieve nothing by replace OSX with Linux. You could have best from both worlds - Apple and Unix, but prefer to have Linux, and as far as I know not the best one.

The main reason - to call it hardcore and be called hardcore user...

Comparison of Windows and Linux: Apple and Orange

[reverend0]

Even though it would be "fun" to see a comparison between Linux and Windows, I don't think it really could and should be done. Mr. Gates and Company would like for us to think that it is a viable solution to everything but honestly, as we all have discovered, there is no silver bullet. So what Windows may be good at something Linux may suffer at and vice verca. Now to know each ones strengths is truely valuable.

However what the article does with the two linux distros is good. Now we are comparing two OSes designed for the same general tasks and let them duke it out.

But in the end, I would like to see some list of strengths.

non-enterprise notions of "transactions"

[LinuxParanoid]

One never knows whether a journalist/reviewer/linux-advocate really understands what an "enterprise"-ready OS is. For the purpose of this post, I'm not arguing whether Linux is or isn't one. But I had to laugh after seeing a chart showing "Successful transactions per second" and doublechecking their footnoted definition of transactions.

OLTP? Database? TPC-C? No. A transaction was downloading 20 4k-byte files.

--LP

Re:non-enterprise notions of "transactions"

[1lus10n]

amen to that.

although i am a huge linux fan, anything that says it compares "enterprize OS's" and doesnt include solaris, AIX, et all is begging to be laughed at.

especially if they include windows.

oh and of course they didnt test anything on an enterprize class system either.

but hey.... its has CLUSTER ! support !!!

Re:non-enterprise notions of "transactions"

[Anonymous Coward]

The person who wrote this article is the type of people who recommend Linux.

They just don't get it.

Re:Comparison result

[Anonymous Coward]

Well done, you posted something that was already sent 5 minutes earlier. Don't you read -any- comments before you post your own?

Biased

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

The guys from NW Test Alliance pitted Red Hat, UnitedLinux, and Windows against each other and rated them on several rubrics. Red Hat won by a slight margin

So, they compared RH (Linux), UnitedLinux (Linux again) against Windows (not Linux). Guess which OS has 66% chances of winning, given that, honestly, modern Linux distros and Windows are very close in features and user friendliness ?

What's more, for one such comparison test where a Linux distro wins that gets posted on Slashdot, how many get ignored my Taco & Co because the Windows OS wins and not Linux ?

Finally, I would have much preferred a Windows vs RH vs MacOS X review : see, I don't plan on buying a Mac, but I'd like someone to describe OS X to me and compare them to similar KDE or Windows features, for example. Yes, I know they don't run on the same platforms (well, RH could) but I'd like to see a detailed comparison chart with Windows, RH and MacOS X compatibility ratings and desktop features/ease of use. Now /that/ would be much more interesting IMHO ...

Re:Biased

[Endareth]

Surely the main question here is the purpose for the comparison, and the reason for the choice of these three products. As they seem to have chosen the winner based largely on (a.) "high hardware compatibility" and (b.) "strong security integration", they could have included OSes such as NetBSD for the first, and OpenBSD for the second. Plus of course OS X, and some of the other more advanced OSes. Limiting the comparison to three only really makes it rather meaningless.

Re:Biased

[brettlbecker]

Why is this being modded up? Even *if* windows was being compared to the extent that UnitedLinux and Red Hat were, which it wasn't, if someone is running the same tests on the same machine using different OSes that are designed to do the same thing, then who cares how many or which OSes they choose to compare? You really are saying that, in a race between between cheetahs and turtles, if you add more turtles, they have a better chance of winning. Ugh.

B

Re:Biased

[operagost]

What if it's a Beowulf cluster of turtles?

Re:Biased

[wfrp01]

Yeah, I'm rather dubious about this whole "Enterprise" branding shtick. What's the problem with running PostgreSQL in a failover configuration on Debian? Support? It's not "certified"? You won't get the same ROI without an ISV SLA? Phghlght.

Of all the systems I've ever used, the best support I've ever recieved has been the community support associated with actively maintained Free/OSS software projects. Don't believe me? Get on a PostgreSQL list sometime, and try to stump them. You won't find a more professional, courteous, and knowledgeable community anywhere. And so on. If you can't find a maillist or newsgroup full of people trying to solve the same problems you are, you aren't trying very hard.

I really want to know what these "Enterprise" OS's offer. For example, when an ISV "Certifies" that their overpriced product will run on an "Enterprise" OS, what does that mean? Does that mean that if you have problems they will assume responsibility? Does that mean that they don't have bugs? Does it mean that if they do have bugs, and you report them, that they will issue patches faster? What specific technologies distinguish RH Advance Server from what I can download elsewhere? Is everything still published w/ an OSS license?

Red Hat makes fine products. They hire very talented people. They should be commended for all they've done for the community. But when did the marketing department take over? And what's the future going to be like, now that marketing is driving?

Re:Biased

[mla_anderson]

Finally, I would have much preferred a Windows vs RH vs MacOS X review : see, I don't plan on buying a Mac, but I'd like someone to describe OS X to me and compare them to similar KDE or Windows features, for example

I don't know if you caught it from the title, article or previous posts, but this was about one Linux SERVER vs another Linux server. It was not talking about workstation class configurations. The machines hopefully didn't even have X installed.

Re:windows won!

[PunkeyFunky]

I guess that depends on whether you consider Windows suitable for enterprise use...

Re:Comparison of Windows and Linux: Apple and Oran

[Tim C]

That's true enough, but if you're designing an enterprise system, you're going to want to use whatever's best.

A more comprehensive set of tests may have shown that, in fact, Windows 2003 Server is best, at least ignoring cost, licensing, etc. Without making this "apples and oranges" comparison, you don't know.

I support open source as much as the next person, but I also support using the best tool for the job.

LCARS is my preferred OS for the Enterprise

[BenJeremy]

...dig the hot chick's voice on bootup!

Re:LCARS is my preferred OS for the Enterprise

[Mononoke]

..dig the hot chick's voice on bootup!

Hey! That "hot chick" is my mom!
--signed: Deanna Troi

Re:LCARS is my preferred OS for the Enterprise

[The Original Yama]

..dig the hot chick's voice on bootup!

Hey! That "hot chick" is my mom! --signed: Deanna Troi

Hey! That "hot chick" is my wife!

--signed: Gene

P.S. I'm not really dead. I'm just hiding out with Elvis.

Somewhat bogus

[tarquin_fim_bim]

Enterprise distos are all about clustering and load distribution, but these tests are caried out on single machines. What is the point?

Re:Somewhat bogus

[Anonymous Coward]

Noway man... My enterprise level server runs on an K6-2/500. Load balancing? Homey don't play dat.

Re:Somewhat bogus

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

Enterprise distos are all about clustering and load

It is early and I actually thought I read the above to say ....Enterprise distros are all about cluttering the load...

Re:Comparison result

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you start posting sensible comments instead of complain about other people!
As for the posting - they were only 5 minutes apart during which a phonecall was answered.

wtf

[Anonymous Coward]

The drivers that the operating system chose initially weren't necessarily the most recent or stable versions, but Red Hat, like UnitedLinux/SuSE, doesn't do an Internet search to find up-to-date drivers such as Windows server platforms.

--
What an awkward way to say Windows can do something important easier

Re:wtf

[arkanes]

Thats funny, because it's not consistent with my experience - after installing Windows, it wants to run Windows Update to get new software, etc. After installing, Redhat (8, last one I installed. I downloaded the 9 CDs 6 times from 4 different mirrors and got a corrupt image every time. Stupid Redhat) wants to run up2date after an install. Granted, this wasn't the server version...

Re:wtf

[metachimp]

SUsE runs YAST right after an install. It wants to update your packages.

Poor article

[vmp17]

Since when three pages are enough for enterprise os comparison?

Re:Poor article

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly! I mean where are all the screenshots? Who ever heard of an OS review or comparison without screenshots?

Re:Poor article

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when do corporate IT officers read multi-page reviews anyhow? And isn't the preferred method of choosing an enterprise OS based on total cost of ownership, as determined on a dinner (or golf course) with the sales representative?

Thanks a lot!

[jaymzter]

Good spoiler right at the end of the article synopsis... Totally ruined my urge to RTFA. At least you didn't spit out some nonsense about Harry Potter dying at the end of Matrix Revolutions

Re:Thanks a lot!

[smithmc]

At least you didn't spit out some nonsense about Harry Potter dying at the end of Matrix Revolutions

You mean... you mean you didn't know? Oops.

Re:High hardware?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not high. You just left a terminator off the scsi chain somewhere.

Enterprise Operating Systems

[Anonymous Coward]

Why didn't they include any Enterprise Operating Systems in their comparison of "Enterprise Operating Systems"?

I mean, like Solaris or AIX.

Re:Enterprise Operating Systems

[Anonymous Coward]

because these are dying?

Seriously though, these are very expensive and usually come along with their own hardware (which today is not much better than a dual Opteron 3.4GHz)

Re:Enterprise Operating Systems

[Atmchicago]

If they tested AIX then SCO would be on their backs trying to find out how the test was already patented by SCO.

Re:High hardware?

[Anonymous Coward]

wow, the funny man strikes again

look who's laughing.....NO ONE YOU UNFUNNY FUCK FACE

I've seen better jokes pulled out of Dubya's corn hole you WORTHLESS SHIT

UnitedLinux == SCO

[JessLeah]

Just in case anyone missed this connection: UnitedLinux was founded by four companies, including SCO. Please bear this in mind when making purchasing decisions.

From www.unitedlinux.com:

"The four partner companies in UnitedLinux LLC - Conectiva, the SCO Group, SuSE Linux and Turbolinux"... ... ...

Re:UnitedLinux == SCO

[powerlord]

And in the article, SCO refused to send a copy of their distribution (as opposed to the other three members of United Linux), and then pulled out of the evaluation.

Perhaps they were afraid that being beaten in an Enterprise setting might make it harder for them to prove that their code is responsible for Linux's Enterprise Readiness.

sincere question

[mirko]

Why is this review "much awaited", who are these NW people ?
Why are are they supposed to be specialists ?
I personally think such reviews are just pure hype until the marks OS receive also correspond to their market share.
Otherwise, this just means that these NW people would like to see RedHat more widespread because it is more expensive and more secure than the other soft they tried...

Re:sincere question

[jerobins]

Well, check out the information on the NWW Fusion web site regarding the members of the testing alliance. They are all independent test labs, not affiliated with any specific vendors. Each review includes a "How we did it" section which describes (in sometimes insane detail) of how the testing was performed. I work for one of the test labs. We survive solely based on credibility of the work performed. As does the magazine...

Re:sincere question

[mirko]

Thank you for the info, it was a very nice way to spell "RTFA". :)

I was however reluctant to do so (I mean : to "RTFA") because of the over-emphatical way the submitter described the study...

Re:sincere question

[jerobins]

Having co-wrote one of the NOS roundup articles for NWW in the past, I realized how quickly readers became very emotional over just the results (or a summary graph or table). The problem is management. We found out that there are an inordinate number of IT managers that decide policy based on the results of published reviews...many of whom never read the article - just the summary graph or scorecard as it appears the story submitter did.

Sadly I've seen many of the same types of IT mgmt. decisions and I do feel sorry for the techies in the trenches (which includes myself, at times, as a consultant) trying to convince mgmt. to consider the various technologies. It can be very tough.

Reviewer doesn't know jack!

[cdc179]

What is this reviewer smoking? Statements such as,

The wizard worked well and mostly made astute choices, although it divided our disk arrays into seemingly bite-sized devices with seven partitions. By contrast, the UnitedLinux distributions divided the two disks we used into larger chunks, which is a better way to reserve server space for future operations.

Shows that Tom Henderson doesn't know what he's talking about. How could anybody think that one large partition is better than lots of smaller ones. If one is consentrating on enterprise level systems one would be using LVM and have lots of partitions so they could add drives as they go and increase the partition sizes on the fly.

Re:Reviewer doesn't know jack!

[operagost]

Only if you're using Oracle!

Not Rubrics, Criteria!

[wagemonkey]

They were rated on several criteria .

Re:Not Rubrics, Criteria!

[Anonymous Coward]

wagemonkey is correct though and didn't deserve to be modded down. Why use a fancy word such as rubric not quite correctly when a plain one will do?

Re:Not Rubrics, Criteria!

[belroth]

Agreed, it's a shame he's modded down for being right, but then on /. anything goes.

Re:Linux Fanboyz

[Anonymous Coward]

You are quite obviously a fucktard.

Any CEO who "bets" the farm on Redmond is a jackass anyway, and deserves it when his costs go through the roof when Microsoft decides on a whim that they haven't made enough money this quarter.

Besides, anyone with even half a brain knows that you only trust mission critical enterprise applications to UNIX. I won't even be picky about which one. I just know that if I run the app on UNIX, I'm going to be out enjoying my weekends, not rotting in the data center trying to fix my poor busted ass server or apply some more security patches so that some l33t kid down the street doesn't 0wn my box.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Except linux is shit and so are the applications. Look at GIMP, its sooooo unbelievably shite!! Its overhyped and accepted because it is FREE! As far as I am concerned, you are PAYING more on loss of productivity as its a entirely shitty user experience.

Re:Slight Margin

[Anonymous Coward]

didyou even bother to look at a distro other than Redhat? (in this case SuSe)

Re:Enterprise Linux AS Premium Edition - Netware?

[Havokmon]

I think they can justify it. I mean, when you're used to paying almost $3,800 for Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition with 25 CALs, $2,500 (and no CALs) sounds pretty good!

$2500 for NetWare 6 + Upgrade Protection for a 50 user 'upgrade' license. That includes a 2 node 'Cluster'. (File level connection failover).

You'd think 'NW' would throw NetWare in there :P Especially now that NAMP (Netware + Apache + MySQL + PHP/Perl) is now standard with Netware 6.5. So out of the box, you have failover ('clustering') support for everything from the standard Apache/MySQL to file-level reconnection.
Most people don't know this, but failover can be done with a single SCSI drive, and 2 PC's with SCSI controllers all on seperate SCSI ID's. It's a poor-man's 'cluster'.

Re:Comparison result

[Anonymous Coward]

Redundant shouldn't be -1. It should be zero. Trolls, firstposts and flamewars is more likely to become -1.

The moderators sucks. Worry more about modding good comments up than modding down. Most people browse on +1 or higher anyway. Anything below 1 will escape the majority.

Re:Comparison of Windows and Linux: Apple and Oran

[Anonymous Coward]

That's true enough, but if you're designing an enterprise system, you're going to want to use whatever's best.

Suppose there isn't something that's "best" for the general case, but only something that's best for your particular problem?

Meanwhile, from someone who didn't fail statistics

[panurge]

The conclusion is not justified by the scoring system. If points are awarded in intervals of half a point, as they seem to be here, then the quantisation error of each score is +/-0.25 points. A difference of half a point between the cumulative scores is just too small to be meaningful.

This isn't to say that the conclusion is wrong - it may be entirely correct. It's just to say that I get pissed off by pointless "scoring systems" that are apparently objective (they're numbers...) but are actually completely subjective and just intended to give a spurious authenticity to the conclusion. If they said "We think Red Hat's security is better and that's a reason to prefer it", fine.

And if you don't understand why a result based on a scoring system where the difference in scores is less than the expected uncertainty of the result is not valid, then what are you doing trying to benchmark a technical product?

Oh well, rant over for now.

What's a "rubric"?

[CoolVibe]

Is it some new kind of puzzle? I thought rubik's one was hard enough.

Re:What's a "rubric"?

[HexaHurri]

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=rubric&r= 67

Re:What's a "rubric"?

[CoolVibe]

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=joke

Re:What's a "rubric"?

[FunkSoulBrother]

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=unfunny

Aren't we missing something?

[Theovon]

Two Linux distros and Windows doesn't exactly constitute a good sampling of "Enterprise" operating systems. I'd have thought they'd pick one Linux, Windows, and say, Solaris. Or HPUX or AIX or SOME other OS that's been used heavily on servers. Hell, even VMS and OS/390 would qualify.

But I didn't read the article. Yeah, I know. Flame me. I'm sure they have their reasons for such a small sampling.

Quit talking about linux vs windows

[codepunk]

Anyone that really knows operating systems knows for a fact that Windows is not even in the same league as a Linux box. Hell it doesn't even come close to matching the abilities of Linux. This was a informative article but I would like to see more information on the new RedHat advanced server distro. Advanced Server 2.1 has worked very well for us but I cannot wait to get my hands on the enterprise distro with the new LVM. it rocks.

Re:Quit talking about linux vs windows

[Anonymous Coward]

At least this parent doesn't try to muddy the water with those annoying statistics.

Re:Quit talking about linux vs windows

[bc8o8]

Anyone that really knows operating systems knows for a fact that Windows is not even in the same league as a Linux box. Hell it doesn't even come close to matching the abilities of Linux.

The problem isn't the people who know OS's, the problem is the 90% of users that don't. These people hear all this talk about alternatives to Windows and don't know what to think of them. They want to see how these other OS's compare to the one they have known for years now. They want to know how easy it will be to set up and maintain, and that all their hardware will be supported.

It's comparisons such as these that will really boost the acceptance of Linux as a marketplace competator. I agree this article is a little incomplete and doesn't do a great job of making an all around comparison, but it's a good start.

Re:Quit talking about linux vs windows

[buffer-overflowed]

What criteria are you basing this on?

Clustering, what?

The two high-end OSes (Windows 2003 Server and Redhat Advanced Server) can do a lot of the same things. If your OS can't do what Jim Bob in management wants, it's not going to be purchased.

They did a bad comparison of "enterprise" class systems (and god do I hate that buzzword) without including any of the real "enterprise" class OSes (Solaris, AIX, etc.).

Look, I can make claims without any facts or basis too, Linux isn't in the same league as Solaris or AIX.

Now would you care to elaborate?

Re:Comparison of Windows and Linux: Apple and Oran

[Anonymous Coward]

Well of course you want to pick what's best for your senario. But if that requires all kinds of installing and configuring, i might not be the best choice after all. Even if linux has the best solution for a particular problem, it's most likely gonna lose if there's an "almost as good" option for the windows system you already have that doesn't require RTMFing for hours to get a new system set up to the same level as your current windows one.

Enterprise and Open Source

[zmooc]

Enterprise systems are all about one thing: guaranteed reliability. IMHO reliability on the long term is best guaranteed by using Open Source; what good is an enterprise-ready system with a planned lifespan of 25 years with absolutely no guarantee that the platform it's based on will still be around in 10 years? MS-DOS, Windows 3.1 and NT3.51 failed here; if your enterprise was depending on one of these, an upgrade was forced upon you and all you can do is pray your software works with the new version. This will always be the case with closed-source software.

With Open Source Software, this is not a problem at all; support can be done by anyone that has a brain to understand the source and you pretty much get the guarantee it'll work as long as you want.

Closed Source Software in the enterprise IMHO is a short-term solution to a long-term problem. It's basicly based on trusting a few people and then feeling safe because it has cost you a lot of money. And paying others is a lot easier than using your brain.

Re:Enterprise and Open Source

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoken like a true zealot who probably hasn't written anything above a "Hello World," and in bash script no less.

MS-DOS, Windows 3.1 and NT3.51 failed here; if your enterprise was depending on one of these, an upgrade was forced upon you and all you can do is pray your software works with the new version. This will always be the case with closed-source software.

Those products didn't just stop working. You were never forced to upgrade. If you want the new features of the new products, then you upgrade. I've seen plenty of WinNT 3.51 and MS-DOS solutions still chugging along just fine.

With Open Source Software, this is not a problem at all; support can be done by anyone that has a brain to understand the source and you pretty much get the guarantee it'll work as long as you want.

Yes, "anyone with a brain," obviously they can understand several million lines of source code with a glance and be able to fix logical errors or hack on new features within minutes. Bzzt! Wrong! Can you get someone to hack at it? Sure. Is that qualified support that you can trust on? No, especially in the mind of a business.

You might want to check out open source in the enterprise. Vendors providing Linux solutions also enforce support lifecycles. You won't find published material on any version of Redhat Linux prior to 7.1 on their website. Can you call and get support for prior versions? Sure, but it'll cost you, and if you want the new spiffies that they've brought out in newer versions be prepared to upgrade. Or you can pay that kid to Redhat's altered KDE 3.x onto the Linux kernel 1.0. But then you're right back to praying again, but this time who are you gonna call when it doesn't work?

When you grow up and learn what the word "enterprise" means, maybe we can talk again. In the meantime, yes, I would like fries with that.

Re:Enterprise and Open Source

[operagost]

OpenVMS is closed source, yet there are many systems out there still running version 5.5-2, which I believe was released in 1991 or 1992. Some are still running 5.0 and 4.7, but those are rare because the hardware platforms are extremely old and unlikely to meet the needs of a growing business, and the OS is not Y2K compliant.

Re:Enterprise and Open Source

[mpe]

Enterprise systems are all about one thing: guaranteed reliability. IMHO reliability on the long term is best guaranteed by using Open Source; what good is an enterprise-ready system with a planned lifespan of 25 years with absolutely no guarantee that the platform it's based on will still be around in 10 years? MS-DOS, Windows 3.1 and NT3.51 failed here; if your enterprise was depending on one of these, an upgrade was forced upon you and all you can do is pray your software works with the new version.

Assuming that an upgrade is possible. You could have something like CP/M where not only is the platform dead the company which made it ceased to exist.

With Open Source Software, this is not a problem at all; support can be done by anyone that has a brain to understand the source and you pretty much get the guarantee it'll work as long as you want.

Without having to hope that some other company is still both in busines and wants to support it.

Closed Source Software in the enterprise IMHO is a short-term solution to a long-term problem. It's basicly based on trusting a few people and then feeling safe because it has cost you a lot of money. And paying others is a lot easier than using your brain.

You can just as easily pay others to work on open source software. Be they employees or contractors. With less risk of your company's fortunes being tied to those of a software company.

Re:Enterprise and Open Source

[msi]

With Open Source Software, this is not a problem at all; support can be done by anyone that has a brain to understand the source and you pretty much get the guarantee it'll work as long as you want.

I understand what you are saying but I want a team of people with a lot more than half a brain each supporting my enterprise software.

As for hardware what hardware can we get for 25 year old systems that use MS DOS, win 3.1 or Win NT 3.51.

Re:Enterprise and Open Source

[zmooc]

First of all, I've implemented quite a few enterprise-level applications. Mostly for the government and police in my country. All of them are based on Open Source and most of them where delivered including the source for exactly the reasons I gave in my previous comment.

All of your arguments have absolutely nothing to do with the software being Open Source or not:

Those products didn't just stop working. You were never forced to upgrade. If you want the new features of the new products, then you upgrade. I've seen plenty of WinNT 3.51 and MS-DOS solutions still chugging along just fine.

So? Support is not about new features or new products. It's about fixing problems. Fixing problems in these OS's after support was terminated is totally out of the question and therefore when you're trying to keep an enterprise level system running, you definately forced to upgrade. Had you used Open Source, you'd still have the option to try to find support elsewhere. I'm not saying you'll find it, but with a closed source product I can tell you for sure you won't find it.

Yes, "anyone with a brain," obviously they can understand several million lines of source code with a glance and be able to fix logical errors or hack on new features within minutes. Bzzt! Wrong! Can you get someone to hack at it? Sure. Is that qualified support that you can trust on? No, especially in the mind of a business.

Ok "anyone with a brain" may be a bit to easy but the fact remains that had you used Open Source you'd have the option of trying to find support elsewhere. The complexity of the software is totally unrelated to it being Open Source or not.

You might want to check out open source in the enterprise. Vendors providing Linux solutions also enforce support lifecycles. You won't find published material on any version of Redhat Linux prior to 7.1 on their website. Can you call and get support for prior versions? Sure, but it'll cost you, and if you want the new spiffies that they've brought out in newer versions be prepared to upgrade. Or you can pay that kid to Redhat's altered KDE 3.x onto the Linux kernel 1.0. But then you're right back to praying again, but this time who are you gonna call when it doesn't work?

Again, whether the source is open or closed doesn't have anything to do with when your support-contract is terminated. It has everything to do with your chances of finding support elsewhere when a migration to a newer product is not an option.

Re:Enterprise and Open Source

[etcpasswd]

With Open Source Software, this is not a problem at all; support can be done by anyone that has a brain to understand the source and you pretty much get the guarantee it'll work as long as you want.

I'd assume that in an Enterprise environment, you'd pay for support from the vendor, as opposed to an inhouse hacker. With vendor support, *they* have access to source I assume - irrespective of whether *you* have access to it.

Re:Enterprise and Open Source

[swordgeek]

Fundamentally, I see one difference between your position and your opponent's: What support do you want?

On the one hand is very carefully regulated, guaranteed, and finite support from closed-source vendors. We will provide guaranteed support for a certainl period, and then you're SOL. On the other hand is infinite support of no particular quality There's no guarantee of fixes or patches, but of course you're free to find or write them yourself for all eternity if you want.

Now consider that Sun just EOL'd Solaris 2.6 support, meaning that you can 'only' get best-effort support for another five years. In 2008, there will be no source-code support whatsoever for Solaris 2.6, which came out in 1997. Eleven years of support, the last five of which are at a bare minimum as good as you ever get with Linux. There's also a guarantee of a very predictable upgrade path--in 'x' years from some initial release, you will be able to move up two versions of the OS and there will be little change in day-to-day operations.

For the most part, this is what companies pay for. A reliable, predictable support life; and a reliable, predictable upgrade path. I don't want my firewall OS to change from ipchains to iptables overnight. I don't want to have to find and hire some coder to repair a bug I found--I want a VENDOR to do that legwork for me, and that's why I'll buy Solaris/Sparc.

In many circumstances Linux is a good idea, but in this sense it's too unpredictable to qualify as an Enterprise OS.

Re:Enterprise and Open Source

[Tony-A]

When you grow up and learn what the word "enterprise" means, maybe we can talk again

Enterprise is not:
"altered KDE 3.x onto the Linux kernel 1.0". Wrong on both counts.
"understand several million lines of source code with a glance". It's the ability to understand the few that matter in the context that matters.
"hack on new features within minutes". "New features" are not a feature of Enterprise computing.

"Those products didn't just stop working. You were never forced to upgrade." At least as true of Open Source. Would you be able to retrofit an XP driver to WfW?

You won't find published material on any version of Redhat Linux prior to 7.1 on their website.
We were talking about Enterprise computing, right? If I have problems with RH 6.2, I'll then upgrade, probably to RH 10 or 11.

Re:Enterprise and Open Source

[buffer-overflowed]

Just something in support of your argument.

Grandparent poster, Have you ever had to modify code that's even in the hundreds of thousands of lines, and poorly documented? How long does it take before your familiar enough with it to modify it? A week, two weeks? A month? Even with appropriate documentation, large sections of code contain concepts that you may not be familiar with and this increases the delay until you can competently modify or patch it.

You have the source, sure, but do you understand it? Can you modify and fix it? Even a quick hack takes time to figure out where to put it in, a little thought, and this is working independantly and without any procedures.

When you need a solution now, even if you have a lot of software people, it takes time before they'll be able to competently patch it. Time you probably don't have. Keeping people on hand who know every bit of software you run may be an option but it's prohibitively expensive, especially if you're not a software company. It may be in the cards for the future however.

The kernel is huge, but with your superior grokking skills, I'm sure we can expect you to perfect it within the next few months right? Then you can work on making X11 as good as proprietary X-servers.

Having the source, does not fault-proof and easily fixable a program make. It just makes it possible to fix it. It's also possible that I'll win the lottery tommorrow however.

Re:Enterprise and Open Source

[buffer-overflowed]

Very well said.

When dealing with a Vendor, you have guaranteed access to the people that wrote and understand the code, and who will fix problems for you.

When using open source, you do not, but you can fix the problems yourself. It's going to take more time to do this however.

Completely depends on your needs and what type of "support" you want.

Re:Comparison of Windows and Linux: Apple and Oran

[spinkham]

Depends on who your engineers are.
I'd have to sit down and "RTFM" for many hours to get anything running on windows. On any Unix variant, there's much less for me to figure out.
The windows solutions are as hard to use at this point, it's just a matter of what you already are familiar with. The windows way of managing servers seems optimized for keyboard and mouse at each server, much different from the unix setup which is optimized for text usage and much more scriptable.
I am personally much more comfortable making changes across 150 Unix machines then across 150 windows machines, and that's the sort of enterprise class applications I've worked with.

Well mod me flamebait

[Graspee_Leemoor]

WTF is an "enterprise" anyway? Oooooh, a really big and important company with really important computer needs...?

"Enterprise" is the edition of Microsoft you buy if you've got far too much money and you want all the features enabled, I know that much.

But "Enterprise" ? WTF? And SME- small to medium enterprise ? Whoah, it's like a really big company except it's small... What?!

Oh, I've got it now- "Enterprise" is a way of describing computer systems or companies so I know in advance that they're really boring and have nothing to do with flashy graphics or fun technologies. It's an enterprise-ready mail-server! (Yawn).

graspee

Re:Well mod me flamebait

[The Creator]

WTF is an "enterprise" anyway?

The way i'v learned it, is that if you use "workstations" you are an "enterprise", if you use "desktops" then you are just a corporation.

Re:Well mod me flamebait

[William Tanksley]

I don't know how the word originated, but the definitions I've read agree that it refers to any system where the hardware is cheaper than what it would cost if the hardware failed.

This leads to a lot of money spent making sure that everything is right about the system -- hence often the bureaucracy the following poster identifies with the word.

-Billy

Your math is astonishing

[expro]

So, they compared RH (Linux), UnitedLinux (Linux again) against Windows (not Linux). Guess which OS has 66% chances of winning, given that, honestly, modern Linux distros and Windows are very close in features and user friendliness ?

This is one of the silliest assertions of numbers I have seen. It might be true if the comparison were Linux versus Windows, and you were rolling dice to determine the outcome, in which case the comparison is useless. If it is a valid comparison, it takes only one to win, and you can add all the inferior ones you want, and it does not affect the chances of the winner winning. It is not the preponderance of similar entries that makes that sort of entry likely to win.

Had you read the article, you would find that Windows was not being compared at all. Oh my, a rigged comparison where only Linux could win. And the Formula 1 is rigged so that only cars can win, no bicycles or NASA spacecraft... how sad!

Which i386-based box has 72 CPUs?

[Anonymous Coward]

And don't give me any crap about clusters. There's no way to share memory irectly between threads running in a cluster like you can on a single machine like an E15K.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

So what is different?

Well windows is written by a highly respected innovative software company, and linux is written by pot smoking hippies, standing hand in hand singing "We are the world"

Re:Let me summarise that for you

[I start fires]

Shouldn't it be

RedHat trash vs SCO trash vs MS trash

is BSD dead finally?

[axxackall]

I don't see any BSD in the review. Does it mean that BSD is no more enterprise ready?

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

singing "We are the world"
No. It's "I'd like to teach the world to sing..."

Re:Comparison of Windows and Linux: Apple and Oran

[borgboy]

Absolutely. I agree with you 100 percent. It depends upon your (staff's) experience. Although, it's *nix I have to sit down and RTFM for.

Re:Comparison of Windows and Linux: Apple and Oran

[borgboy]

So what Windows may be good at something Linux may suffer at and vice verca

You're new here, huh? ;)

I wish I had mod points today. I'm actually seeing some rational discourse.

Linux/Windows Not Enterprise!

[gypsyx]

Um... Neither Windows nor Linux are enterprise operating systems. PC hardware is just that: hardware good enough to run on your personal computer. Yes, I've heard all about how Linux runs on just about every computer invented. But let's stop and think about that. Linux lacks so many features found in the commercial operating systems. Why someone would want to run Linux on a GS1280, Superdome, E10k, or S/390 is completely beyond me. If you can afford the big hardware, you can afford the OS licensing. Why would someone choose Linux over Solaris, AIX, HP/UX, or Tru64? Easy: Ignorance. Either that or they think that the developers don't deserve to get paid for making a superior product. The Linux toy cannot seriously be compared to a commercial, enterprise grade UNIX or non-UNIX operating system.

Anyway, I'd like to see a comparison for the major players of the real enterprise OS market: z/OS, OpenVMS, Solaris, AIX, Tru64, and HP/UX.

Re:Linux/Windows Not Enterprise!

[NullProg]

Why would someone choose Linux over Solaris, AIX, HP/UX, or Tru64? Easy: Ignorance.

Not really. Linux scales nicely on enterprise hardware. Think about it from an IT/Mangement point of view. An O/S that can run the mainframe, departmental server, desktop, and the POS terminal out front will cut maintenance, support, training, and developement costs.

The Linux toy cannot seriously be compared to a commercial, enterprise grade UNIX or non-UNIX operating system.
Maybe, but this toy is being used by Google, Charles Schwab, Home Depot, E*Trade, and many more.

Enjoy,

Re:Linux/Windows Not Enterprise!

[mpe]

Why someone would want to run Linux on a GS1280, Superdome, E10k, or S/390 is completely beyond me. If you can afford the big hardware, you can afford the OS licensing.

One obvious reason is that with Linux you are free to do with it what you want. You can just as easily afford to pay someone to configure and alter it to do what you want it to do. Something you don't get simply handing over money for proprietary software licences.

Re:Linux/Windows Not Enterprise!

[iabervon]

PC hardware is insufficient to run a proper production server, but there is Intel-based hardware that is, and a cluster of PC hardware is, as well.

If anyone knows what is necessary for an enterprise system and is willing to suggest it, it's got to be Oracle. Oracle's platform of choice, both for suggesting to customers and for the customer databases they host, is now Linux. For that matter, IBM is largely moving to Linux these days, despite being in the middle of your list.

In the particular case of IBM, they don't need to charge you OS licensing fees for the OS on your S/390, since they're selling you the big iron. This means that they can pay their developers to work on Linux (in particular, features desireable in this configuration). You want to use Linux on your big hardware because IBM, Oracle, and so forth are all working on it. If you use AIX, you only get IBM's work. Don't you think enterprise software would be better if it didn't have to get separately implemented 6 times?

Re:Comparison of Windows and Linux: Apple and Oran

[arkanes]

I was at the Windows 2003 launch in NY, and the dude giving the presentation touched briefly on Linux (it was very interesting, actually - he certainly didn't dwell on it, was basically dismissive). They did show some benchmarks (against Redhat 5, oddly enough) but the impression given was that they aren't interested in competing in a pure performance arena. He was hyping Windows 2003 as an end-to-end solution, because of all the bundled middleware and groupware and whatnot. And lets be honest, if thats what you want, Linux isn't going to provide it - certainly not out of the box.

Defining "Enterprise"

[MosesJones]

They are talking here about small server environments rather than Enterprise IMO. This is not done by the sort of people who could size up a Data Warehouse or an SAP solution. I mean do I care about the download speed ?

OS/390, AS400, HP-UX, Solaris, AIX those are what the Enterprise runs on. The Web-site however has a choice. Yes I know that you can run Linux or Windows under SAP if you want to but this was not a comparison that matters to the enterprise.

You're not fooling anyone

[Anonymous Coward]

I never once met any person with sound Unix and/or Linux knowledge that couldn't point-and-click their way through Windows administration (I've worked with at least 20 said individuals over time). Winodws is not very powerful, and hence, it provides a person with very little in terms of administration and configuration. Windows admins are 99.9% of the time far behind Unix and Linux admins in terms of overall IT competency. Everyone in the industry knows this, this is why Unix and Linux admins make more money are more often multi-tasked (network admin slash database admin, or network admin slash web programmer). The most incompetent IT workers that I ever met were (in order of incompetence):

4. An MCSE course instructor and his assistant, both were equally woefully ignorant of any real IT knowledge. For crying out loud, neither could ever operate a switch (yes, just a mere switch) that we provided them for internet connectivity for their classroom. Three or four students dropped out of their class after watching me have to help THE INSTRUCTORS solve simple problems that arose with their Win2K servers.

3. A "server engineer" at a local college

2. This admin at a local bank (he was so dense that he thought Windows clients couldn't print to a printer if the print server was Unix or Linux)

1. My old boss, who was a Netware and Microsoft admin - we had to clean up his messes daily

Re:You're not fooling anyone

[sndOnTuesdayNight]

Yes, TCO is much higher with non Microsoft platforms. Good point.

Re:You're not fooling anyone

[Martin Blank]

There's a difference between being able to run through a basic configuration and being able to thoroughly configure something. Like I said, I could get a RH box up and running as a web server, but it would not be the best configuration.

I've seen plenty of MCSE's that know nothing more than the book told them, and sometimes less. I've seen far too many that have used only the cram books to pass them, and this leaves them with even less knowledge. The instructors know enough to teach the book, and occasionally a little more.

I know I'm mostly a Windows person. I'm trying to add Linux, FreeBSD, and Cisco to that, and maybe OSX. Just because there are a lot of flaming idiots out there with credentials doesn't mean that we all are. I've met more than enough flaming idiots with CNE's and various Cisco certs to know that paper means nothing to anyone who has been in the trenches for more than a year. I imagine I'll be meeting some RHCE's and LPIC's in the near future that will be similarly aggravating.

Re:You're not fooling anyone

[Zeriel]

Y'know, I have to disagree. Windows adminning with wizards/point-click is sorta like Linux adminning with mini-HOWTOs. It gets the job done, but until you read the manual and stick your head under the hood, you're not really doing it.

Admittedly, most windows "admins" are crap, but for the same reasons that most viruses target windows--the market is bigger.

Re:You're not fooling anyone

[Anonymous Coward]

Broad sweeping statements like 'most windows "admins" are crap', takes a good point and flushes it down the toilet.

Here, 'most [insert racial group here] are lazy and stupid'. Fill in the blanks, it's broad and sweeping to the same extent, have you met most windows admins?

Re:You're not fooling anyone

[Zeriel]

I've personally worked with ~150 windows admins. That's not terribly small for a sample set, IMHO, although I don't remember enough statistics to know what certainty that gives any conclusions I draw (and I'd also have to know the total population of windows admins, and assume a normal distribution of skills among windows admins, etc).

My point is that merely due to job churn and sysadmin classes, I've met and worked with a freakin' pile of windows admins. About 60% of them fall into the "Wow, computers are where the money [is|was] at. What's a partition again?" set.

Re:You're not fooling anyone

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but do you know how to dual boot windows xp home and pro on the same system without using a 3rd party partition manager?

Re:You're not fooling anyone

[Zeriel]

I haven't worked with XP, and I make no claims about being a windows admin. My MCSE dates back to Windows 2000.

My point stands that most of the Windows admins I've worked with won't even understand your question.

Re:You're not fooling anyone

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you have not worked with a windows admin. You have worked with an average user who happens to have a server.

It's a fine point, but it means that Windows makes administration easy for the beginner and that there is, overall, a lack of good talent in the field.

Q: What do you call the person who graduates last in their class at medical school?

A: Doctor.

Re:You're not fooling anyone

[Zeriel]

Y'know, you made my point exactly. Most "Windows Admins" are crap, at least in my experience.

Re:Meanwhile, from someone who didn't fail statist

[archen]

Well we could always go to the "pinball score inflation system".

As you can see windows is very good for a desktop operating sytem, which gives it another 8 million points. KDE on Linux while not being perfect also did quite well so it only scored 2 million below windows. Emacs comes in at a low score of 3 million total as a desktop operating sytem. In our next review we will be showing the differences between file servers... as soon as our point system is upgraded to a 64 bit processor

No OS/400? No OS/390? WTF, Windows?!?

[GojiraDeMonstah]

I thought the title said Enterprise OS. All of the >$10 Billion/year companies I've written software for run *nix on Sun and/or *nix and/or an IBM OS on medium to big iron. They are not running Windows as an "Enterprise" platform.

I'm not talking email servers where a few poor sap CIOs got talked into running Exchange farms, or similar unfortunate tragedies with IIS, I'm talking the ERP stuff that runs the factory, accounting, payroll, and other stuff people have to bet their businesses on.

I realize OS/390 and Windoze are apples and oranges, but come one, they said ENTERPRISE. Now if they mean "Enterprise" as 2 guys and a van and a laptop, then hell yeah bring on the Windows. Otherwise, it's like having a review of the world's fastest street cars pitting Acura vs. Mazda vs. Toyota. The Lamborghini and Ferrari folks are tapping their feet and rolling their eyes. Put DB2 on an S/390 and on the bitchinest Windows box you can get your hands on, then do the test. I dare you.

E-mail support

[Andrewkov]

We made several tech support queries to SuSE and Red Hat using a third party's credentials. We sent via e-mail four questions to both providers that ranged from neophyte to advanced, to both providers. Red Hat replied with the answers within an average of two hours, and SuSE within eight. All answers were correct, but the replies from the Red Hat staff added more information about the suggestions they proposed.

This is an interesting test that I haven't seen done before. Interesting to note that Suse took much longer to reply to the emails, although the article doesn't mention if the Suse support people are located in Germany, and if the time zone difference could be the cause. Red Hat's more detailed responses sounds like a plus, though. Although I would like to have seen the actual questions and responses. Anyway, this sort of thing is important for a company like mine, where we use Linux, but can't (or won't) afford 24/7 support (I should mention that Linux isn't a primary platform here, we do have 24/7 vendor support for our mission critical systems). So getting a quick response on emails is a big selling feature.

Re:E-mail support

[Master Bait]

If you want quicker support than Red Hat try usenet.

Re:E-mail support

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, if you call "RTFM" and "read the man page" support.

Re:Comparison of Windows and Linux: Apple and Oran

[Anonymous Coward]

Granted, and that is a continuation of my point. When the differences are not extreme, people will use whatever is easiest, not whatever is best. In your case, Unix is better so that what you use, even if there might be a better Windows solution. It doesn't always (or even often) matter which is technically better, anyone here can tell you technology isn't nearly as important as ease of use. Unfortunately the best technology doesn't always make the best solution

Complete list of enterprise systems

[krislyn]

If they were going to review Enterprise operating systems, they should have included IBM MVS. Now there's an operating system.

Question

[HopeUnknown]

Ok, has /. EVER posted an article in which Windows actually beats Linux? It must have happened at some time or another.

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

They should have at least mentioned in the article that Windows was tested on 100Mb ethernet while the Linux systems were tested on GB. They did provide links to the test configurations, but this is a major fact to leave out, at least when you are testing network performance.

Re:Question

[some old guy]

It must have happened at some time or another.

Um...no, it hasn't, and never will.

By any benchmark, NT 4.0 SPx (aka Win2K)can not, by ihnerent design, outperform any of the various Unices deployed as ERPs my major corporations. Too much overhead, too much housekeeping.

Which enterprise?

[cybercuzco]

Which Enterprise are they talking about? A-E or NX-01? And how do they know what OS will be around in the 22nd, 23rd or 24th century?

Re:Let me summarise that for you

[Flywheel]

you mean Redhat trash vs SuSE trash vs Redmond trash ??

AFAIR SCO's primary role in the UL konsortium has primarily been a search and destroy, they had little or nothing to to do with the actual UL base distribution.

Comentator doesn't know jack!

[LO0G]

Lots of little partitions is only good if you have lots of spindles.

Otherwise you're just causing your disk heads to thrash as they move from one partition to another.

Unnecessary head movement on your disk drive slows down your system performance, which is a bad thing on an enterprise server.

A single honking big partition is WAY better than lots of tiny partitions, UNLESS you've got lots of spindles on your drives, in which case you want to stripe/mirror them for fault tolerance.

I'm assuming that the disks in the machine in question is a typical machine configuration, and not connected to a SAN, if there's a SAN involved, the equations are significantly different (since the SAN has lots of spindles).

Re:Comentator doesn't know jack!

[xsbellx]

Otherwise you're just causing your disk heads to thrash as they move from one partition to another.

I am sure there is the distinct possiblity you are correct, however, I have not seen any quantified data to back this claim up. Head movement is more a function of I/O load and caching algorithms (drive, controller, OS and application).

A single honking big partition is WAY better than lots of tiny partitions

This is a very debatable point. Typically, the most fatal data losses occur when filesystem metadata is corrupted (obviously excluding hardware failure). It would seem reasonable then to have less data controlled by this metadata. In the event of corrupted metadata, the amount of data to restore would be smaller when using multiple partitions and therefore recovery time will be faster.

Additionally, your statement does not take into account requirements such as raw partitions. Nor does it address the issue of inadvertantly filling a filesystem. Typically a full filesystem will have an adverse impact on the applications using files on the filesystem. With one filesystem, all running applications will be impacted.

Re:Comentator doesn't know jack!

[Anonymous Coward]

A single honking big partition is WAY better than lots of tiny partitions, UNLESS you've got lots of spindles on your drives, in which case you want to stripe/mirror them for fault tolerance.

Bullshit.
There may be situations where one, large partition makes sense. Usually, that is not the case. Security concerns, disaster recovery and disk management are generally easier to manage with multiple partitions. When you make a sweeping statement that a single partition is "WAY" better in all situations, you are revealing you don't know much about all situations.

Re:Hmm

[Bull999999]

"Its overhyped and accepted because it is FREE!"

That explains why the graphics guys on Windows use M$ paint instead of Photoshop.

So revelent...

[funwithBSD]

Fortune 500 company, and we don't deploy any of those systems enterprise wide.
No linux boxen anywhere, and NT is strictly an app server deployment.
For enterprise wide deployement we use Novell (yuck) for file and print, VMS, A/S400, Solaris and AIX for DB/Middlerange and Web.
MVS for the big apps.
Why so many? We grew by acquiring other companies.

Re:No OS/400? No OS/390? WTF, Windows?!?

[Flywheel]

Well you know - if Redmond says Enterprise and even prints it in the pretty little cardboardbox then it must be true. That Windows is totally unfit to be used outside an XBox cabinet is irrelevant.

I laughed out loud when they very enthustiatic talke about the wonderfull new wizards in the review - then I becane utterly depressed - now I think I will raid the fridge for cold beer!

Re:Slight Margin

[PeekabooCaribou]

Well actually, I was being sarcastic. "Enterprise operating system" and such, with judges swayed by shiny buttons and a pretty color scheme, etc. etc. Got a -1 Offtopic when I was already at 0, though, so maybe I should stick to just reading the articles. =P

Don't need a print server?

[panurge]

Any sensible management is going to want to have some sort of control over how that big color printer is used. And if they have heavy print tin, they are going to want to be able to control the print queues. This is supposed to be _enterprise_ dammit! Not just a big MFP stuck next to the water cooler.

Sadly, the effective print monitoring tools like MegaTrack and FollowMe don't seem to run on Linux yet. Sadly because the sort of organisations that want to use enterprise Linux on X86 boxes may well be interested in the kinds of cost saving that you can get by keeping printing under control.

Re:Meanwhile, from someone who didn't fail statist

[panurge]

Excellent. But can you imagine the reaction of the advertisers in the comics?

I suspect a lot of these scores are actually designed to stay close to a norm to protect from the wrath of suppliers. It's often instructive to compare product reviews in French, Italian and German magazines to those in the English speaking ones. Their journalists seem to work on the basis that US lawyers and marketeers can only read English and Spanish and won't find out what is being said about their boxes. I remember a French photographic magazine once describing, in a headline, a well known Japanese camera as having "ergonomie franchement horrible", and giving it one star. To read the US photo journals you'd think it turned you into Herb Ritts. Happy days.

Re:Linux Fanboyz

[swordofstars]

Can anyone tell me if he's serious here? I honestly can't tell if he's joking to be prowd [sic] to be an American. Why do people like this even come to this site?

Re:Comparison of Windows and Linux: Apple and Oran

[mpe]

The windows solutions are as hard to use at this point, it's just a matter of what you already are familiar with. The windows way of managing servers seems optimized for keyboard and mouse at each server, much different from the unix setup which is optimized for text usage and much more scriptable.

Or a KVM port, but either way you are likely to be winding up with additional hardware for Windows. How easy is it to operate a Windows server with just a power and network lead plugged into it...

No Novell?

[Friendly]

WTF? Nice to see that the Novell was once again left out of the testing. Why don't you Linux Zealots try and broaden your horizons. After all the recent Novell is "Linux's best friend" posts the last couple weeks and still they get no respect. Novell would rape your Linux in such testing. Also Novell is now giving away 5 user Small Business Licenses. You have to jump through some hoops to be able to get your hands on it, but it is pretty painless. Novell is by far the best NOS out there, it is mature, stable (600+ day uptimes any one), and has great applications. Also most if not all on Novell'a apps run on UNIX, Netware, Linux and Windows.

For the love of god Linux is not the end all be all of NOS, if you hate M$ that much (I do) look at all the alternatives. Free does not make it better.

Friendly

BIOS?

[vmfedor]

"After we changed a BIOS value, UnitedLinux correctly found the multi-CPU configuration and adjusted to it."

This might be a stupid post to make, but doesn't Linux bypass the BIOS? Just curious.

Re:BIOS?

[damiam]

No. Nothing bypasses the BIOS.

Re:BIOS?

[vmfedor]

Well, not so much 'bypass' as 'ignore.' I thought Linux uses it's own settings and doesn't give three licks what the BIOS has to say.

Linux/Windows are Enterprise!

[crashnbur]

According to the handful of sources I just checked (Webopedia, Net Lingo, and this among them), an enterprise is simply a business organization. From Webopedia: "In the computer industry, the term is often used to describe any large organization that utilizes computers. An intranet, for example, is a good example of an enterprise computing system."

I find it hard to believe that Microsoft or Linux would not fall under the category of "enterprise" products here. Certainly, Microsoft and Linux develop enterprise products for enterprise computing systems on enterprise computing systems...

I'm sure the sources I checked are not the final authority on such things, but I only bring it up because I have never known any other definition of "enterprise" with regard to computing. Now, if you're just commenting that some enterprise products are far superior to others, I can agree with that.

Re:Linux/Windows are Enterprise!

[gypsyx]

A very good point. Nobody really defined what was meant by "enterprise operating system" here. Most often the term is used to describe a server (as opposed to workstation) designed to run large applications to accessed by hundreds of people (or more) at a time.

For example... You work at a bank - a big bank. You have one S/390 mainframe. It runs a huge database with all of the customer account data. Batch jobs run hourly to update account balances based on the interest rate of the hour. All day long, the system processes thousands of transactions updating account information from tellers, loan officers, internet terminals, and ATMs. Every night, thousands of bills, account balance sheets, check registers, etc. are all printed and sent to inserters based on the contents of the database. Failed print batches are automatically queued on alternate print spoolers - maybe in a different city or state. Everything bank-related happens there (I can't be more specific as I don't work in a bank). The next LPAR has the same exact software, but the developers compile and debug on it without hurting the production data or applications. Finally, in the next LPAR, the business management software processes payroll, accounting, HR, etc.

To give a little credit to Linux, maybe there's another LPAR running Linux in an internet DMZ holding up the online banking services. The particular Linux instance can reboot when it needs to every few months, or when new (daily) security fixes become available. It doesn't matter because internet users are used to websites that are down because of Linux and Windows problems.

Anyway, I'm not talking about a couple of PC's running QuickBooks here. I'm talking about hundreds of gigs of accounting data passed over every couple of minutes. If the system goes down, the bank may go out of business. It's been running for maybe 10 years since its last major upgrade. Hardware is replaced without reboots. CPU upgrades and replacements, memory enhancements, additional peripherals, etc. are all replaced hot without rebooting.

All of that happens on a single machine that doesn't really even really have fast processors - just a bunch of I/O bandwidth. Never going down, upgrading without restarting, managing heavy workloads, having built-in fault tolerance, and having system people who know what the heck they're doing are all part of enterprise computing. z/OS, OpenVMS, and certain high-end Unices are the operating systems that run in these kinds of environments - not Linux or Windows. The operator isn't some MSCE or RHCE who knows a lot about PC's that can plug drives into a RAID-5 pointing out their reduntant features. The operator is a system programmer re-writing the OS while it runs, without interupting operations.

When I think of enterprise operating systems and enterprise computing, I don't think of the thousands of PC's, Macs, and Sun Blade 150's on everyone's desks. I think of the big computer in the back that does all the real work. An enterprise OS is definately not named after it's GUI (Windows - which I don't believe is even capable of running without it's GUI). An enterprise OS is definately not a college programming assignment written over a few beers in the dorm room late at night. While Linux and Windows may be starting to see features like redundant power supplies and RAID, enterprise systems have been enjoying the capabilities described above for 20 or 30 years.

Re:Linux/Windows are Enterprise!

[Jonner]

I must say, your superior, condescending style is highly entertaining. You must be a "system programmer re-writing the OS while it runs." I can just imagine you sneering at the moronic peons slaving away at their desktop toys, sending email and sharing files through the playthings they call servers and wiling away their time on that cute upstart called the web.

Yep.

[pb]

Also, note that Windows scored a 4.25 in their earlier review, better than both Red Hat's 4.13 and UnitedLinux's 4.00. However, I don't think it'd be fair to compare those ratings across reviews; I just mention it to showcase how far off-base "Anonymous Coward" is here, and how little fact-checking (err... zero) Timothy does in his article posting.

But hey, why should /. editors have to read the articles? Most of the other people here don't either.

XFS

[Door-opening Fascist]

I'd be interested in seeing how XFS and NTFS/WinFS compare to each other in terms of large/small file performance, lots of file accesses, etc. Does anyone know of any such comparisons?

AFAIR?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIR

AFAIR? WTF? It's "AFAIK" or "IIRC". You can't just make shit up, use an acronym, and expect people to know what the hell you are talking about.

Acronyms are shorthand for COMMON PHRASES. "As far as I recall" is not a common phrase, and barely makes sense. Now you know.

HAND.

Re:AFAIR?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIR : As Far As I [Remember|Recall]. Just because you're an ignorant asshole, doesn't mean the phrase doesn't exist. It is in use on some of the largest IRC networks in the world right now, and has been in use for the past decade. Get over yourself.

And those would be...

[Anonymous Coward]

OS/400, OS/390, and what else, exactly?

OK Timothy, we know Windows sucks, can we move on?

[joejoejoejoe]

thanks,
Joejoejoejoe

Re:Comparison of Windows and Linux: Apple and Oran

[gregmac]

A more comprehensive set of tests may have shown that, in fact, Windows 2003 Server is best, at least ignoring cost, licensing, etc.

Windows is a great platform for getting a full network setup. Fresh from the install, you can get most network services configured and running very quickly.

Where Windows breaks down is in flexibility. As soon as you want to do something slightly differently than MS expects you to, you run into a brick wall. If you're lucky, there's a company that's already developed a solution to do what you want, although it will likely cost you a fair chunk of change.

With Linux, it takes more work to set things up, but the result is (usually) that you understand everything a whole lot better. When there's a problem, you can track it down a lot faster. If you want to do something differently than most people, and there's not already an option for it, then you're a lot more likely to find an OSS solution that fits or is close, and you can modify it to work, and contribute back your changes. If all else fails, you have the source code to tweak, which is a lot easier than trying to figure out MS's APIs and how to hook in to do what you want. Of course, that's assuming the API calls you need are even documented..

"Enterprise"

[ajs]

Enterprise is a widely mis-used term, but essentially it refers to any company.

Enterprise software is a niche market for software that aims at companies where procurement of software is managed at a corporate level, removed from the immediate IT infrastructure. That is to say that the grunts who maintain the hardware may get to feed information into the decision-making process, but ultimately, they're not even in the department that buys the software and/or hardware.

This presents many interesting differences from the rest of the software world. There are concerns like training, escarow and liability that rarely if ever come up in smaller organizations that will be sales lead-ins in the Enterprise market.

It's just a different type of sales and support model, which a company MUST take into account in order to succeed in certain areas.

UnitedLinux != SCO

[drewness]

UnitedLinux is a standard that four companies have decided on. It's essentially LSB + a couple other standards. SCO joined in on it back when Ransom Love was in charge. Before the litigious bastards were put in control. They may have even been Caldera still back then. (I don't remember and can't be assed to check right now.) I have no doubt that Connectiva, SuSE, and TurboLinux are not in the least bit amused by SCO's current actions. The money goes to the company that actually sells the product, so if you don't like SCO, then don't buy SCO's UnitedLinux offering (assuming they actually have one. Again, can't be assed to check). Instead, buy SuSE Enterprise Linux Server 8 or TurboLinux Enterprise Server 8 or whatever Connectiva calls theirs. (The english version of their webpage at least is pretty devoid of information. All it has is an old UnitedLinux press release.)

Lies!

[metamatic]

SLASHDOT FOLLOWUP: Some anonymous guy with a web page has done an analysis proving that those so-called random numbers don't actually meet statistical randomness tests.

Enterprise?

[TheToon]

Really? Three "Enterprise" OS? RedHat, UnitedLinux and Windows?

Bah!

None of them are really ready for the enterprise. What if they compared Unix (AIX, HP-UX, Solaris) with z/OS (MVS) or OS/400?

Linux and Windows are still condenders, imho. They have their uses in parts of an "Enterprise", but are any of them ready to kick out the operating systems that sits at the heart of todays very large corporations?

only an prize for FAILING

[Anonymous Coward]

There once was a stupid AC
Who thought that he had a FP
He FAILED as you see
And I giggle with glee
As he gets his fat ass kicked by me.

Five-rhyme limerick, asshat. Treasure it as a reminder of how you FAILED IT COMPLETELY.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Enterprise OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

RH? Are you people kidding? "Enterprise" means stable and supported.

Some comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

Two versions of Linux, and Windows? No Solaris/HP-UX/IRIX/AIX etal? what kind of credible comparison can this be?

Re:In my opinion, open source is the key

[TheToon]

It's easy to underestimate the sheer power of having your own IT department capable of fixing the operating system bugs, adding core features, collaborating, and shareing the source with brilliant volunteers rabidly eager to sink their teeth into the next big challenge, free of charge.

This is for the enterprise. The world of pointy-haired managers an PFY in the IT department. Do you really think that managers get's happy-happy thoughts of the PFYs changing code in the RDBMS system? or the kernel on their USD 100 million server? where they will loose USD 2 million each hour the system is down?

I love OSS as much as anyone, but the enterprise just isn't ready to chuck out their mainframes with DB2 or Suns with Oracle.

Though they are considering Linux on their mainframe, so there's hope yet :)

Re:Linux Fanboyz

[Anonymous Coward]

You're new around here, aren't you? :-) It's a kind of sport, winding up the earnest and idealistic teenagers who are out there. People used to do it to me when I was their age. I guess it's just perpetuating the phenomenon. It's a sick and twisted way of getting a cheap laugh.

None of the above.

[some old guy]

Timothy got it right in his "dept." tag.

While IBM is making great strides in its quest to scale Linux up into the Big League with MVS, Solaris, and HP-UX as an eventual AIX replacement, it is just not there yet for major enterprise deployments (defined as >5K unique clients with >10K unique users spread over >50 locations).

And Windows? One of the few nuggets of eternal IT wisdom that Fortune 500 CEO/COO's either carried away from business school or learned the hard way is that Windows is fine on your secretary's desktop, but never bet your business on it.

Re:No OS/400? No OS/390? WTF, Windows?!?

[agaffin]

Do any of you people actually bother to read the articles you discuss?

The headline of that article is: Enterprise Linux server distributions

Not that a comparative review pitting Linux against Solaris or Windows Server 2003 (oh, hell, OK, Linux vs. AIX) isn't a good idea, but the article doesn't pretend to be all encompassing.

Re:Comparison of Windows and Linux: Apple and Oran

[Jellybob]

Painfully?

Every copy allows two terminal server sessions for administrator access without wheeling out the monitor.

Re:Comparison of Windows and Linux: Apple and Oran

[bobbozzo]

How easy is it to operate a Windows server with just a power and network lead plugged into it...

Well, I do it, but it sucks. We use VNC (free, but slow), and Timbuktu (not free, sometimes crashes, quicker), and are able to do everything except get into the bios that way. TSClient would probably work too, but we are running an NT4 server so it wasn't an option.

I do prefer *nix with SSH however. If you know what you are doing you never need a GUI.

Re:Comparison of Windows and Linux: Apple and Oran

[Anonymous Coward]

Still 150 terminals opened for what would have to be an easily scriptable task IS painfull.

Free = Better..

[msimm]

Well you have some good points. But you should rethink your last statement.

Free does not make it better.

To the credit of the Linux zealots, Linux is not just a technical achievement, its an ideological statement.

So while your right to direct kudos to Novell, it should be no surprise if we tend to focus more heavily on Linux (er..GNU/Linux).

Re:Comparison of Windows and Linux: Apple and Oran

[haruchai]

Have you tried TightVNC? www.tightvnc.com

Re:Comparison of Windows and Linux: Apple and Oran

[jtev]

What the fuck are you refering to with windows being easy to get a full network setup compared to linux? Last I checked the ONLY think missing out of the box in most linux distros is a groupware server, an IRC server, and drafting software. and you can use hacks for most of those functions. The thing that linux gets dinged on all the time is the fact that most defaut installs are "Wide open" with all the services you may or may not want running their ass off. Once the service is set up, setting up content is about the same on either OS. Plus, you save a shitload on licencing costs if you go with the linux solution. If you look at what servers do, Windows is the one that's playing catchup. Linux is already where you want it.

! and now for something completely different

[leuk_he]

If fact, if they were deliberatly chosen not to have any visible patterns, that would make them completely nonrandom.

Y0u Ru1ez!

NCC 1701(b/d)

[Felinoid]

Enterprise operating systems? Maybe in a star trek way.

United Linux NCC 1701 (B): Originally designed to have transwarp but that was scrapped. Whats left is a federation joke.
A five year cruse who's most notable event was getting Kirk killed in it's maden voyage so it's not all bad.

United Linux was that effort to make a standard platform for other Linux distros. Binarrys.. yeah.

RedHat NCC 1701:
Transporter malfuctions pleage this ship.
Redhat has taken some questionable design choices that are like the transporter accadents. Only just enough to get your notice. Avoidable. Don't use X.0 releases and use the shuttle.

Windows NCC 1701d: A marvle of high tech. At first no problems at all.
Over time however the holodecks wig out.
Great so rip it out only some wiz felt put the dignostics in the holodecks.
And a kid can take over the ship.

Right now 2003 is going good but we know the history. It works, an auxillery feature wigs and importent features were put into it. Can't remove.

Re:No OS/400? No OS/390? WTF, Windows?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if you want to get technical, smartass, Linux will run on an S/390, which is an actual honest to God Enterprise machine, unlike the holy-smokes-Batman-my-First-Server-by-Mattel pieces of shite that can run Windows. Read the article your fucking self, it says that hardware is part of the equation.

Re:Comparison of Windows and Linux: Apple and Oran

[bobbozzo]

No, but I'll check it out. Thanks!