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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."
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.
get nemulator
Well, among others they definitely missed OS X Server.
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.
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.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Enterprise distos are all about clustering and load distribution, but these tests are caried out on single machines. What is the point?
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.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
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
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
Since when three pages are enough for enterprise os comparison?
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.
Why didn't they include any Enterprise Operating Systems in their comparison of "Enterprise Operating Systems"?
I mean, like Solaris or AIX.
And also not act like insufferable pricks.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
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.
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.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
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.
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.
0x or or snor perron?!
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!
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.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
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.
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.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
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.
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, it's just a goddamned piece of paper!" - George W. Bush Nov. 2005
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,
It's just the normal noises in here.
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...
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
This might be a stupid post to make, but doesn't Linux bypass the BIOS? Just curious.
I like my women how I like my sugar.. granulated.
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?
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.
FRA: STFU GTFO
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?
//TheToon
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...
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."