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Samba Beats Windows IT Week Labs Test Results
jmhowitt writes "Tests by IT Week Labs
show the latest version of the open-source Samba file and print server software is 2.5 times faster than Windows Server 2003 in the same role.
The news comes as many firms are grappling with the consequences of Microsoft ending support for NT4, coupled with uncertainty about when Microsoft will next update Windows. The performance difference between Windows Server 2003 and Samba 3 has increased dramatically compared with Samba 2 and Windows 2000 Server."
NFS lives in the kernel, Samba in user space. So you're right but remember NFS is utterly insecurable, Samba not. For home NFS is the system of choice but in a larger environment... you want to run Samba (at least until NFSv4 becomes available)
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
Where are the numbers?
Where are the graphs?
The article basically quotes some guy (who is actually selling Samba and thus has a vested interest) saying that Samba is 2.5 times faster than Windows 2003.
Now I have no reason not to believe him, but I was expecting a little more. And I'd wager the suits considering switching to Samba also expect more.
Good points. Here's an additional one: the Samba team doesn't have PHBs to get in the way. In my limited experience, if you're given an existing codebase and told to improve on it, that's exactly what you're expected to do - and it's all you're expected to do. You can't discover that "wow, this legacy code is crap," throw the offending chunks away and write something that works correctly and is more stable and/or secure.
The Samba team has complete freedom with their code, while the Microsoft developers do not.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
MicroSoft has a history of maintaining its monopoly by breaking compatibility with competitor's products by subtily changing (or they claim its extending and enhancing) the protocol. The most famous example were DrDOS and Java. If Samba gets too close, I wouldn't be suprised if MS didn't come up with an "enchancement" to Active Directory or SMB/CIFS or the NT-authentication protocols that will break Samba. The up-coming service pack will be the perfect oportunity for a "security fix" that will wall out Samba for a while.
(Related but slightly off-topic) A few days ago, there was an article about IE having broken support for standards, especailly CSS. I don't think that is an acident. I strongly suspect that MS won't fix IE because the "problem" helps them maintain a monopoly in browsers. If you want to get your stuff to render properly in 95% of people's browsers, you have to code to IE, not the "standard". This means your stuff won't render properly in the other 5% of browsers unless you go through lots of trouble to do browser dectection, alternate pages, or take lots of care for cross-browser compatibility.