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Red Hat/Apache Slower Than Windows Server 2003?

phantomfive writes "In a recent test by a company called Veritest, Windows 2003 web server performs up to 300% higher throughput than Red Hat Linux running with Apache. Veritest used webbench to do there testing. Since the test was commisioned by Microsoft, is this just more FUD from a company with a long history? Or are the results valid this time? The study can be found here."

628 comments

  1. Just like the samba benchmark by dtfinch · · Score: 5, Informative

    Looking at the first page of the benchmark report, I see that they're using the exact same setup as in their highly contested samba benchmark, with a specific ancient version of Red Hat running on a specific hardware setup that version is known to have performance problems on. They could have at least tried a different server last time, or a modern version of Linux. Under fairer circumstances, who knows, IIS might have still won, but this rigged benchmark has nothing to offer us in deciding which server is faster.

    1. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by PsychicX · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yeah...yeah...

      I just wish, just ONCE that somebody would do a fair evaluation, without an agenda to forward. But I guess that'll never happen. We all have bias...but surely we could at least attempt to get above that?

    2. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by cperciva · · Score: 5, Informative

      ...a specific ancient version of Red Hat

      This report was written in April 2003, according to the first page. They used the most recent version of RedHat available to them.

      This report may be two years out of date, but I can't see any signs of bias in its production.

    3. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by eric76 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Using the same logic, my old '64 International Harvester pickup could be shown to be faster than a Formula 1 race car.

      I have the ideal road for the test in mind.

      Now all I need is for someone to loan me a Formula 1 race car for the test.

    4. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by rokzy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      wrong, it does tell us which is faster - linux. if Windows was faster, why would they need to benchmark against a crippled system?

      sure there's a chance I'm wrong, but for me weighing the CHANCE of better performance from Windows against the CERTAINTY that they have lied about their product (or been completely incompetant) is a no-brainer.

      and that's not considering costs (remember guys, using linux always requires an old, slow mainframe to be factored into the TOC!)

    5. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Coryoth · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Under fairer circumstances, who knows, IIS might have still won, but this rigged benchmark has nothing to offer us in deciding which server is faster.

      I've reached the point where I completely ignore all the studies and benchmarks like this, from both sides. It is, quite simply, far too easy to set the constraints and metrics up so as to make sure you come out ahead. What's worse, it has become absolutely standard practice to do so. Studies have become completely useless because you can guarantee that they've been cooked one way or another.

      Jedidiah.

    6. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by dtfinch · · Score: 5, Informative

      "we applied no additional patches and made no additional modifications to the Red Hat Linux Advanced Server 2.1 distribution used for these tests"

      I remember installing CentOS-3, based on RHEL3, on a server and having terribly slow disk performance with my raid adaptor. Running "yum update" to get the current patches yielded about a 10x speedup. Yet the Windows server gets a dozen or so undocumented registry tweaks.

      In the SSL comparison, they're using the fastest (though slightly less secure) choice of encryption algorithms in IIS and the slowest in Apache. They're comparing RC4+MD5 to 3DES+SHA1.

      And they decided to include ISAPI in the benchmarks without including the apache equivalent. All they test in apache is CGI. So again it's IIS's fastest option versus Apache's slowest option.

    7. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "...I can't see any signs of bias in its production"

      Are you saying you have selective vision, or do you not believe that the test was flawed? The newer kernels, properly tuned and run on good hw, are blazingly faster than 2+ year old kernels.

    8. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Pinefresh · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well, if you really want to know, you could probably do one. It couldn't be too hard to put a simple one togeather, and it would solve the question for you.

    9. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They did standard registry tweaks to Windows, and did similar tweaks for Apache and TUX. They even did ridiculous things like put the 6000 static URLs into the httpd.conf so that it would preload them all! IIS was still 168% faster.

      dom

    10. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by rokzy · · Score: 1

      >Do you even know what a mainframe is? Apparently not, so shut the fuck up.

      Do you even know the MS-funded FUD TOC report I was referenceing as a joke? Apparently not, so shut the fuck up.

    11. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by dtfinch · · Score: 1, Informative

      I didn't read the date, but I did manage to get in the first post, securing my position above the other +5's.

      I still see lots of biases, many of which can't be explained away as being the result of ignorance, laziness, or just knowing all the undocumented ways to tune windows.

    12. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by DrSkwid · · Score: 1

      incompetent

      --
      There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
    13. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

      RedHat 2.1 was fairly old by April 2003. They would have gotten a better benchmark from RedHat 9 machine.

    14. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by spuzzzzzzz · · Score: 5, Informative

      In the past I have seen people post blatantly false things which get accepted as true just because the mods are too lazy to check. So I thought I'd chime in here with links to some evidence to back up parent.

      1) The algorithms used in SSL are listed on page 33 of the pdf linked to. Both linux setups use 3DES+SHA1 and windows uses RC4+MD5 (as parent said).

      2) This page (found via google) has a table comparing ciphers about 2/3 of the way down. RC4 appears to be about 2-3 times faster than 3DES.

      3) This email contains a comparison between MD5 and SHA1. MD5 appears to be 2.5 - 5 times faster than SHA1.

      --

      Don't you hate meta-sigs?
    15. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by darkain · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I personally run a windows based server (yes, hate me if you will, but i need some windows only tools at the moment). I used IIS for about 3 to 4 years, until I started to get heavy into PHP development, running a source control system, and game hosting. I switched from IIS to Apache because it had better support for virtualizing directories based off of conditions in easy to setup script files, which made it easy for me to run the UT2004 server, plus mod download server on the same box. This turned out to be a big hit at lan-parties, since the server had all of the packages, and would share directly from the server folders (but restricted the server's config files from anon access). I later switched to SVN for storing my programming projects, and its integration with Apache is great.

      I am a microsft OS user by nature. I switched to using Apache on my Windows server because of features it lacked, and now I'm never turning back.

      "I am Darkain... and I'm a coder"

    16. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by jurt1235 · · Score: 1

      It all doesn't matter: Performance is not the main issue when buying a system, price is.

      --

      My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
    17. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      I've reached the point where I completely ignore all the studies and benchmarks like this, from both sides.

      Uh, no you don't, as evidenced by the fact that you responded to it.

      It's the same as if you ask 90% of the people if they ignore beer commercials on TV they'll say yes; but somehow, magically, the beer companies still make more money running the ad than if they didn't.

    18. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by xiando · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I personally do not trust someone who claims to be "Veritest is an independent testing agnecy authorized by Microsoft to carry out the testing for applications developed on windows platform." to do a fair evalution of Linux vs Windows. If a company who makes a product gives you a huge pile of money at regular intervals and you are asked to compare that product to another product, who are you going to vote for? Who is your daddy? Sadly, money is everything.

    19. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by xiando · · Score: 3, Insightful

      First of all, performance is in many cases the main issue when buying a system. If you have a huge load then the choice may be between buying one well-performing system or two or three systems to take that load. And when you say "price is" I assume you mean the retail price, which is to me almost totally irrelevant (at least in the long run). The real price for any kind of software is the cost of teaching humans how to use it, costs related to maintaining it and most importantly, costs related to downtime and lost productivity if the software is slow. Performance DOES matter.

    20. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by MemoryDragon · · Score: 2, Informative

      No... for that date definitely not, but things have gotten much faster on the linux side since kernel 2.6

    21. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Cant beat an international harvester.. kick arse!!..

    22. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Speaking as someone who has quite some experience in cryptographic algorithms, I back up parent and grand parent. The benchmark is completely biased in that Veritest really ends up comparing 3DES+SHA1 with RC4+MD5. This unacceptable, I invite slashdoters to complain to Veritest:

      Veritest
      1001 Aviation Parkway, Suite 400
      Morrisville, NC 27560
      Tel 919-380-2800
      Fax 919-380-2899
      E-Mail: info@veritest.com
    23. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe the solution to the problem is Slashdot Labs? Maybe Cowboy Neal can throw 2003 and linux on a couple of servers and provide an independent unbiased review and post the analysis in a follow-up story?

    24. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by zoefff · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Do it like this:
      -invite MS and RH (or other) for the contest, but ask what software versions to buy off the shelf and what to install. Install it yourself and have them tweak it with the configuration, without having extra's installed.
      -Let them agree between each other on as many things as possible: hardware, time to tweak, do's and don'ts, type of tests
      -Compile several benchmark tests: load, response time, static, dynamic. Ofcourse all on the same type of hardware platform.
      -Run the tests with them witnessing and report here!

      One note: Make sure to get the experts on both sides. At MS not a problem, but the linux arena is much bigger.

    25. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by iamacat · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well, I wouldn't use them for purchasing decisions, but this kind of studies are sure useful for pointing out weak spots in your favorite product. Time for Apache hackers get busy and fix such embarrassing performance scenarios.

      I don't think Apache is the right server for static pages and simple CGIs though. It has so many modules and settings that the code path from filesystem to socket has to be much longer than necessary and longer than the feature-limited competition. They should try a simple server like Boa.

    26. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by julesh · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I've actually seen this ridiculously unfair test before. The main thing that is wrong with it is that last access time gathering is switched off on the windows set up but not the Linux one. For web serving, which typically relies on large numbers of accesses to small files, last access time recording is a _severe_ performance drag.

    27. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by ozbird · · Score: 1

      This report was written in April 2003, according to the first page.

      Ah, that would explain why the Slashdot by-line now reads "Don't fear the Penguins" instead of "News for nerds. Stuff that matters."

      Stuff for nerds. News that used to matter.

    28. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Joel+Carr · · Score: 3, Funny

      Now all I need is for someone to loan me a Formula 1 race car for the test.

      Well BAR Honda have a couple they won't be needing for a few weeks... Perhaps you should ask them. ;-)

      --
      Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves. -- AE
    29. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by jrumney · · Score: 5, Informative
      This report was written in April 2003, according to the first page

      Strange, they have a press release on their website dated April 6, 2005 about the report being commissioned by Microsoft. Either Microsoft got ripped off by recycling an old report, or one of those dates is wrong.

    30. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by zobier · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What someone should do in these kind of tests is get an expert Windows team and an expert GNU/Linux team, identical servers and let them configure them as best as they can. That seems fair.

      --
      Me lost me cookie at the disco.
    31. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Pinefresh · · Score: 1

      I wish that were done, I'd be curious as hell to see the results. I'm willing to bet they'd come out just about even though.

    32. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Deviate_X · · Score: 1

      FYI. You might also notice that the test was against a Windows 2003 RC2 (Release Candidate 2) in April 2003.

    33. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by cperciva · · Score: 2, Informative

      Strange, they have a press release on their website dated April 6, 2005 about the report being commissioned by Microsoft

      Different report. That press release talks about Windows Server 2003 vs. RHEL 3.0 -- Microsoft must have asked them to produce a newer version of the report /. linked.

    34. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hmmmm. Would've loved to see what happened to their 2003 server if it were unpatched, too.
      Not talking about performance, but vulnerabilities, zombieeeees et. c.

      Real-world situation testing?

    35. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by inode_buddha · · Score: 1

      Nothing to offer? It looks like the Marketing Dept. got a bunch! My point being, "offer what" and "to whom".

      --
      C|N>K
    36. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by inode_buddha · · Score: 2, Insightful

      How is an "independent agency" "authorized"? I would *love* to see those NDA's.

      --
      C|N>K
    37. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by lintux · · Score: 1

      Where do they describe this tweak? I have no idea how they would do this and how this would make things any faster.

    38. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Jacco+de+Leeuw · · Score: 4, Informative
      One does not even have to be an expert in crypto. Simply type:

      openssl speed rc4 md5 des-ede3 sha1

      (Get OpenSSL here if you are using Windows). You will see that the first two algorithms are much faster, especially for larger blocks.

      I say this shootout is rigged.

      --
      -------
      Warning: Slashdot may contain traces of nuts.
    39. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by cofaboy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Don't forget that MS changed the EULA so that you are no longer allowed to benchmark windows and MS products without written permission. The only commercial people who can benchmark are those who will use a framework defined by MS.

      Any other options will mean no study and no money.

      He who pays the piper calls the tune.

      --
      In the end, It's all bovine dung you know
    40. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe already posted, but RHEL2.1 performance PISSES on RHEL3 and RHEL4 due to THIS BUG:

      https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi? id=121434

      which RedHat just can't seem to fix and it DOESN'T just apply to 3WARE, but ALL IO! ARGH!!!!

    41. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      FWIW here's the results of running this on my x86_64 machine:

      ~ $ openssl speed rc4 md5 des-ede3 sha1
      Doing md5 for 3s on 16 size blocks: 3229671 md5's in 2.98s
      Doing md5 for 3s on 64 size blocks: 2721010 md5's in 2.99s
      Doing md5 for 3s on 256 size blocks: 1858659 md5's in 2.99s
      Doing md5 for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 816811 md5's in 2.99s
      Doing md5 for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 131011 md5's in 2.99s
      Doing sha1 for 3s on 16 size blocks: 3225174 sha1's in 2.99s
      Doing sha1 for 3s on 64 size blocks: 2158082 sha1's in 2.98s
      Doing sha1 for 3s on 256 size blocks: 1167085 sha1's in 2.98s
      Doing sha1 for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 438103 sha1's in 2.99s
      Doing sha1 for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 63982 sha1's in 2.99s
      Doing rc4 for 3s on 16 size blocks: 46931949 rc4's in 2.99s
      Doing rc4 for 3s on 64 size blocks: 13189054 rc4's in 2.99s
      Doing rc4 for 3s on 256 size blocks: 3364646 rc4's in 2.98s
      Doing rc4 for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 861101 rc4's in 2.99s
      Doing rc4 for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 108304 rc4's in 2.99s
      Doing des ede3 for 3s on 16 size blocks: 3450802 des ede3's in 2.99s
      Doing des ede3 for 3s on 64 size blocks: 864132 des ede3's in 2.99s
      Doing des ede3 for 3s on 256 size blocks: 215751 des ede3's in 2.99s
      Doing des ede3 for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 53903 des ede3's in 2.99s
      Doing des ede3 for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 6752 des ede3's in 2.99s
      OpenSSL 0.9.7e 25 Oct 2004
      built on: Sun Dec 19 09:43:29 UTC 2004
      options:bn(64,64) md2(int) rc4(ptr,char) des(idx,cisc,16,int) aes(partial) blowfish(ptr2)
      compiler: gcc -fPIC -DOPENSSL_THREADS -D_REENTRANT -DDSO_DLFCN -DHAVE_DLFCN_H -DOPENSSL_NO_KRB5 -DOPENSSL_NO_IDEA -DOPENSSL_NO_MDC2 -DOPENSSL_NO_RC5 -m64 -DL_ENDIAN -DTERMIO -O3 -Wall -DMD32_REG_T=int
      available timing options: TIMES TIMEB HZ=100 [sysconf value]
      timing function used: times
      The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
      type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes
      md5 17340.52k 58242.35k 159136.02k 279737.28k 358943.85k
      sha1 17258.46k 46348.07k 100259.65k 150039.29k 175297.84k
      rc4 251140.86k 282307.51k 289043.41k 294905.49k 296731.23k
      des ede3 18465.83k 18496.47k 18472.33k 18460.43k 18499.13k

    42. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're obviously joking, but in all seriousness, your test would be valid.

      Computer nerds like to drool over theoretical advantages in the same way car nerds drool over specialised cars, but studies like this aren't for the nerds, they're for a specific target market.

      If this study were fair (I don't know if it is), the choice of hardware would be based on what companies in the target market are typically buying. It would definitely not be based on which hardware is fastest in theory, nor which performs best/worst under one or the other of the respective operating systems.

      All in all, if you live on the road you have in mind, your old pickup probably is faster than an F1 car. Similarly, if businesses typically own the hardware used in this test (and everything else is in order), Windows 2003 is faster than the version of Red Hat/Apache they tested (which, again, should be the version most applicable to the target market).

    43. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by rfunches · · Score: 1

      Similar situation here. IIS was so easy to use because everything was set up (too easy, because the first time I installed W2K server I didn't have antivirus or a soft firewall installed before plugging Ethernet in and it got a cold x.x). I quickly switched to Apache, but getting a YaBB forum (Perl/CGI) working a few months later was a PITA. Installing Apache and ActivePerl was a PITA, and it caused problems when I moved the site to a hosting company's Apache server because of MS's blatant case insensitivity. PHP, MySQL, and ImageMagick gave me more of a headache when trying to install them on a Windows Apache server.

      Now I'm trying to learn RHL9 because MS doesn't have anything useful in the web server department. Nothing. I'll run Microsoft OSes, but never again will I try to do the things I did on a Microsoft OS.

    44. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Nik13 · · Score: 1

      While I haven't completely switched to apache, I have to agree. The reason why I also run apache now isn't speed at all. That might matter to very high traffic sites, but for most people it's not the real factor.

      They're 2 entirely different products, with each their strenghts and unique features. In a corporate setup with a lot of ASP/ASP.Net pages, windows-trained admins and webmasters, the choice will most likely be IIS. For someone making php/mysql pages to be on the internet on a cheap hosting plan (usually linux hosting), they are more likely to pick apache. It's easier to use apache on both servers, and IIS in non-server OS'es (like XP Pro) is pretty crippled (only 1 virtual site, very limited connections...) Small startups would probably pick apache as well (lower TCO* due to lower licensing costs/lower maintenance/less maintenance or consulting, portability, ...)

      Features, personnal preferences, experience with a specific webserver, what you're hosting, stability, portability, overall costs and such things matter a LOT more than speed in most cases.

      * You opinion may be different on that one, I'm not gonna get in an argument over it.

      --
      ///<sig />
    45. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by kamikazejay · · Score: 1
      While I agree that price is important, it is certainly not the most important. A compromise between price and performance must be made.

      For example, there is no real need to buy a box at twice the price for 10% improvement, in the same way there is no point buying many cheap boxes, when one at a slightly higher price will do the job of many cheaper ones.

    46. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by tacocat · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You don't have to load any of those modules if you don't want to. Thereby simplifying the code path...

      That's why they choose to make them modules rather than baking them into the application itself.

    47. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Chris+Kamel · · Score: 2

      The parent just said "I see lots of biases", he never even cared to explain what some of these might be. How could that be informative!

      --
      The following statement is true
      The preceding statement is false
    48. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Donny+Smith · · Score: 1

      >I just wish, just ONCE that somebody would do a fair evaluation, without an agenda to forward.

      I don't think it'd really matter as usefullness of such tests is quite limited. How many people make OS decision based on result of one benchmark?

      Even those deciding on OS for single-purpose service (like file serving) should first and foremost look at performance under their own workload, then consider non-performance factors (manageability, skills, etc.) and finally look at tests like these.

    49. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you new here?

    50. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Haydn+Fenton · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Slashdot, 7th of May 2005.

      • Linux: Red Hat/Apache Slower Than Windows Server 2003?
        Posted by Zonk on Saturday May 07, @06:20
        from the who-doesn't-love-some-delicious-fud dept.
        phantomfive writes "In a recent test by a company called Veritest, Windows 2003 web server performs up to 300% higher throughput than Red Hat Linux running with Apache. Veritest used webbench to do there testing. Since the test was commisioned by Microsoft, is this just more FUD from a company with a long history? Or are the results valid this time? The study can be found here."


      Slashdot, 11th of May 2005.

      • Microsoft: 2k3 Server vs RedHat\Apache
        Posted by Michael on Wednesday May 11, @09:01
        from the oops-they-did-it-again department.
        fooslashbardot writes "Well, it looks like the suits at Redmond have done it again with the test last week that stated Windows 2003 Server outperforms RedHat\Apache by 300%. We knew the test had been commissioned by Microsoft, and now a recent Wired article has arose which lays claims that Mr. Gates himself was seen slipping the people at Veritest wads of up to 10,000 hundred dollar bills shortly before the announcements were made. Gates has denied all such claims, and says that Balmer smells of Cheese."


      I've never used either, or know anything about Veritest, so I haven't a clue about whether the results are likely to be correct or not. But we all know Microsoft :P
    51. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by thebes · · Score: 1

      That's Redhat Enterprise 2.1, I believe they're up to 3 now...maybe a bit higher.

    52. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by stecker · · Score: 1

      You have a IH pickup? That's awesome!

    53. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Excellent comparison! BTW, if you read the disclaimer at the end of the .pdf by the testing company, they certainly don't want to take responsibility fot the information being correct or relevant. Perhaps that should be at the top of the article, written in this manner: "Testing firm denies any liability in dubious study that shows that their sponsor, Microsoft, had faster software in 2003 than one other company had. If you use their results in designing your system, they will merely chuckle when and if you find the study pointed in the wrong direction."

    54. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by eno2001 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Actually what is needed is a public, non-profit benchmark competition. Both Windows and Linux enthusiasts are welcome to join in. Limit the contest to 100 teams of up to ten people. The 100 teams are all suprvised by the people who run the contest. The contest itself should make no money of any kind in order to keep away any monetary incentive. Hardware donations from the big players are acceptable with the understanding that the hardware will be returned after the compeition. In this way, the ugly little trait called "competition" gets in without any monetary incentive. At that point it's enthusiasts trying to outdo each other on both platforms. With this set up, you really get to test the performance of both OSes in a fair way because enthusiasts are likley to know all the tricks to get their OS and application to perform best. This means you'll likely see Windows outperforming a typical Windows system and Linux outperforming a typical RedHat/Mandrake/Debian/Gentoo/SuSE Linux system. Sounds like fun. SO who wants to get this party started? :)

      --
      -"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
    55. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Bobzibub · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I never understood why this is not illegal. Is preventing benchmarks not a restriction on trade?
      Imagine if the automobile industry did it?
      -b

    56. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by RochL · · Score: 1

      has anyone considered this as a rousing sucess of open source? Microsoft is so worried about differentiating itself from SAMBA and other projects, but they can only use speed as a differentiator !!! If the two systems interoperate so well, isn't this a proof that they are almost identical ? And Microsoft paid to let these labs prove it !! How sweet is that !! .02

    57. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by InvalidError · · Score: 4, Informative

      I do not see why people should be authorized to conduct reviews and benchmarks of publically available products.

      Surprisingly (controversially?) enough, some EULAs forbid public criticism - I wonder if such clauses would ever be found valid in court, I seriously hope not - judges should declare void in whole any EULA that includes any anticonstitutional demands.

      Now that I think about it, I seem to remember that M$ used to include a non-comparison clause in many of its products' EULAs, this "licensed comparison" tells me it probably still does.

    58. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Time for Apache hackers get busy and fix such embarrassing performance scenarios.

      Apache isn't designed for performance. Full stop.

      Turning on noatime (the lack of this makes me suspect a very RIGGED demo) and using a webserver that's actually fast might make a difference.

      But we're talking servers, right? Let's talk about the fact that a win2k3 license is about 10-30% of the cost of the whole damn server. Let's talk about per-seat costs for things as basic as email, and the purchasing hassle that entails. Microsoft should know something about nibbling big companies to death at the low end through lowered costs.

    59. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by epohs · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but who picks the teams?

    60. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by wintered · · Score: 2, Informative

      Thats because the slashdot post is stupidly pointing at the wrong article. The real one can be found here:
      http://www.veritest.com/clients/reports/microsoft/ microsoft_IT_Pro.pdf

    61. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Billly+Gates · · Score: 2, Informative

      Actually I remember this 2003 benchmark. I read here and the editors forgot about it.

      Anyway here is the trick. First off IIS used ASP which does not use a mod interface like cgi scripts which means the engine can run in IIS itself. This makes IIS very fast.

      We have the same thing as ASP in the FOSS world called PHP. Zend is fast because the engine also runs in the same space as apache.

      Or I have seen in older 1999 benchmarks that MS will just use a static html to show how fast there platform is and ignore dynamic content. Also MS used a patch that was not made public which bound the I/O of 4 nic card to 4 cpu's in order to make I/O overhead very low. I think it may be standard in Windows2003 but its dumb tricks like these no one uses in a production environment anyway

      But I do not trust any benchmark that has a "Migrate from Unix to Windows" link on the right side of the report. Nooo its not biased

      However someone can point to a benchmark by the Linux kernel team and taking it as a grain of truth that its faster then net or freebsd. Its a dual standard.

    62. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by gstoddart · · Score: 1
      Actually what is needed is a public, non-profit benchmark competition. Both Windows and Linux enthusiasts are welcome to join in.

      Of course, we've all heard that Microsoft won't let anyone publish benchmarks as part of their EULA.

      So the only people they will allow to publish those benchmarks are the people they are paying to make favourable ones.

      [ of course, that could be just some paranoid Slashdot meme I've picked up, but I do recall reading it numerous times. ]
      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    63. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Cromac · · Score: 1
      Yeah right, because a Linux advocacy site is going to provide an unbiased review of Windows performance? Even if it were somehow totally unbiased (impossible) no one would believe it coming from Slashdot any more than people believe the reports from MS are unbiased.

      Performance tests are intersting but can't really be relied on as a sole measure. It's very easy to change the test to favor one thing or platform over another and setting up "real world" tests is virtually impossible because what is "real world" at one company won't be at another.

    64. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by kelzer · · Score: 0, Redundant

      This report may be two years out of date, but I can't see any signs of bias in its production.

      I see a few signs. The first thing I noticed is that they used Compaq Smart-Start to install Windows. Smart-Start basically ensures that the installed OS automatically gets the right drivers, and configures tweaks specifically for the vendor's hardware. The out-of-the-box Red Hat installs may have used older and sometimes generic hardware drivers.

      I also noticed that for the Red Hat installs, they selected "custom" but left all the pre-selected items checked. IIRC, this installs a lot of crap, including many optional daemons. I doubt their Windows configuration had lots of extraneous services installed and running.

      They shut off access logging in IIS. As far as I could see, they left logging on for Red Hat. This means that lots of disk writes were being generated on Linux but not on Windows. As http request volume goes up in their tests, the RAID write-cache could eventually fill up (only under Linux), at which point the webserver starts blocking while waiting for disk I/O to complete.

      As others have pointed out, there are also possible issues with CGI, the SSL handshaking, etc.

      --

      ---------------------------------------------
      SERENITY NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    65. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by rben · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Sadly, money is everything.

      Not so. If it were, there would be far less support for Open Source projects. Fortunately, as FOSS has demonstrated, large numbers of human beings are quite capable of being motivated by interesting problems and the knowledge that thier work will benefit everyone else.

      Be cynical if you like, but every day you use Linux or Open Office; every day you see a website served by Apache; know that it's because some people value contribution to society enough to donate their time and creative energies.

      --

      -All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
      www.ra

    66. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by KarmaMB84 · · Score: 1

      So 2 years ago when they did the benchmark, they should've reached into the future and downloaded a new kernel?

    67. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by SirTalon42 · · Score: 1

      I think 4 was just released/is about to be.

    68. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Jester998 · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Surprisingly (controversially?) enough, some EULAs forbid public criticism - I wonder if such clauses would ever be found valid in court, I seriously hope not - judges should declare void in whole any EULA that includes any anticonstitutional demands.

      Ever hear of a non-disclosure agreement? Are those 'unconstitutional' in your fairyland world too?

      The US Constitution only affects dealings between the government and private citizens, it has nothing to do with dealings between two private citizens. But then again, this is Slashdot. Carry on with your groundless bitching.

    69. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by SirTalon42 · · Score: 1

      It would be funny if the benchmark said that they had to reformat the server because it was pwned before they could even start the test

    70. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by SirTalon42 · · Score: 1

      Why are you using RHL9? Thats really out of date now, you could easily upgrade to RHEL3 (or CentOS 3 if you don't want to pay for support), or Fedora Core 3. Those will be supported for much more time than RHL9 will be, and they use the 2.6.x kernel which is much faster than 2.4.x.

    71. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Aeiri · · Score: 1

      The US Constitution only affects dealings between the government and private citizens, it has nothing to do with dealings between two private citizens.

      It may not be unconstitutional, but it's at least it would be illegal. If only the constitution were what controlled the nation, then people would be ALLOWED to murder each other.

      But then again, this is Slashdot. Carry on with your groundless bitching.

      Okay, he got a word wrong, illegal vs. unconstitutional, does that really make his claim invalid?

    72. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by webview · · Score: 1

      Is this true? I have seen it mentioned several times, but are there any articles from the media on this? I'm not a lawyer so I don't really want to go through the EULA. For that matter, where is the EULA for IIS?

    73. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by jurt1235 · · Score: 1

      Most boxes are bought based on performance because the geek likes the performance. In reality most boxes are used to a full 10% of their performance.
      In short: Geeks love performance
      Accounting loves price.

      --

      My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
    74. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by zulux · · Score: 1

      Windows team and an expert GNU/Linux team,

      Great idea! Here's the server spec:

      Dual PowerPC.
      No Mouse.
      8 Megs of RAM.
      No hard drive, but an open NFS system in on the network. Ok to boot off the CD-Rom.

      Let's see Windows run on that! ;)

      --

      Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.

    75. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I live a half-mile a way. I'll go launch some potatoes at them.

    76. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by colman77 · · Score: 1

      Maybe they just they just went with the free option. Maybe products like Apache/OO/Linux were made so people didn't have to spend their hard-earned cash on products from companies like MS. Maybe it IS all about the money.

    77. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Jerf · · Score: 1

      It may be illegal. I don't recall a lawsuit on the topic yet.

      Remember, for better or worse, laws and contracts are presumed valid until found otherwise in a court of law. But if you're willing to say a provision or law is "illegal" if it would be found illegal in a court of law with proper jurisdiction, then it may be illegal. (That's not the only definition of illegal one can bring to bear on the topic; other definitions will have other results.)

      (It may sound horrible, but I for one can't think of another way of doing things.... at least not one that would actually work in the real world with people trying to game the system.)

    78. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by _Sprocket_ · · Score: 1
      It's the same as if you ask 90% of the people if they ignore beer commercials on TV they'll say yes; but somehow, magically, the beer companies still make more money running the ad than if they didn't.

      Maybe that 10% are gullable, beer-guzzeling fools. :P

      Kind of like spam. I don't know anyone who likes or responds to spam. But it only takes a few idiots to make the scam worthwhile - apparently they ARE out there.
    79. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by dgatwood · · Score: 1
      It's not a double standard. People on these boards have tried most of these OSes and know that in their experience, certain things are true---like Windows is slow/bloated/insecure, *BSD is slightly slower than Linux---and certain things are not---like Windows is miraculously faster than Linux or more secure.

      It's not a double standard to believe benchmarks that support or only slightly alter your perception based on experience while questioning benchmarks that blatantly contradict your experience. It's just common sense.

      If these tests were based on Longhorn, you might shout "double standard", since most people haven't tried its betas and therefore should be open to the possibility that it might be faster than Linux. Ditto for some new version of Net/Free/OpenBSD that was heavily reworked with performance in mind. That, however, is not the case here. This is like someone telling you that the Ford Pinto you own can outperform a Ferrari if you tune the exhaust system correctly. It doesn't take a research study to know that they're just blowing smoke....

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    80. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by _Sprocket_ · · Score: 1
      I've reached the point where I completely ignore all the studies and benchmarks like this, from both sides.

      You can afford to do that if you're the primary decission maker in your environment or your management also ignores these studies. Otherwise, you better know if (or more likely why) a study is flawed and why it doesn't apply to your environment.
    81. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Would folks please mod this up? Discussion of a two-year-old benchmark is way less interesting than the discussion of the current one IMHO.

    82. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Glonoinha · · Score: 3, Funny

      Just put up two professional servers, fill em with some nudie-pix and post the links to FARK at the same time. That's about the most intense benchmark known to man.

      --
      Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
    83. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Bert64 · · Score: 1

      They also failed to mention that Apache supports AES encryption with cipher strengths of 128 and 256-bit, which is much stronger (tho not sure of performance) compared to anything IIS supports.

      An equally fair benchmark would be comparing AES-256 ssl speeds on both platforms, with IIS scoring 0 for dropping all the requests.

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
    84. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Jacco+de+Leeuw · · Score: 2, Informative
      In the SSL comparison, they're using the fastest (though slightly less secure) choice of encryption algorithms in IIS and the slowest in Apache. They're comparing RC4+MD5 to 3DES+SHA1.

      I found another flaw on that same page.

      VeriTest also write that Windows 2003 was using RSA key exchange and Red Hat was using Diffie-Hellman (DH).

      But DH is vulnerable to a Man-in-the-Middle attack so SSL uses RSA to perform the authentication.

      So Red Hat is doing RSA and DH, whereas Windows is doing only RSA!

      Using OpenSSL's ssltest program I noticed that DH+RSA was 50% slower than RSA:

      $ time ./ssltest -num 1000 -tls1 -cert server.pem -key server.key -c_cert client.pem -c_key client.key -cipher "RC4-MD5:@STRENGTH" -client_auth -server_auth -CAfile cacert.pem
      $ time ./ssltest -num 1000 -tls1 -cert server.pem -key server.key -c_cert client.pem -c_key client.key -cipher "EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:@STRENGTH" -client_auth -server_auth -CAfile cacert.pem

      And I would not be surprised if Windows 2003 was using SSLv2 (faster and insecure) while Linux was using TLS1! Because that is another parameter that VeriTest is not disclosing.

      --
      -------
      Warning: Slashdot may contain traces of nuts.
    85. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by ThisIsFred · · Score: 1
      Looking at the first page of the benchmark report, I see that they're using the exact same setup as in their highly contested samba benchmark,


      Oh, right right, I remember that. Remember this one? The test where IIS was faster but only when using 4 NICs bound to each of one of 4 CPUs in a quad processor machine, serving static pages to Win9x clients through NetBEUI?

      Something is always amiss when the gap in performance is that large. 300 per cent? I don't think so. Ten to thirty per cent, I'd believe it.

      Some things to consider: Three of the four tests involved only static content. Only one of the test configurations used Apache 2.x. Apache was using plain old CGI. DedRat was running a four year-old kernel (sorry, only two years old at the time). They used Intel's drivers with the default settings. No patches or Apache tuning, or other caching add-ons or adjustments.

      What is it with Microsoft and static page serving tests anyway? It's always the same thing with these tests: Cache the shit out of static pages, leave the competitor's product at the default settings.

      --
      Fred

      "A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
      -RMS
    86. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by rfunches · · Score: 1

      I wasn't aware of a derivative for Red Hat enterprise-level products, so I stuck with the last free distro I found on linuxiso.org. I've used RH on and off for a few years so I'm more familiar with it. Since this was my first foray into Linux for servers, I installed what I knew -- which is why I started off with Windows rather than *nix.

      Would Fedora make a better small- to medium-scale server or is there a better-suited distro (Linux or other variants, like BSD)?

    87. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by r_jensen11 · · Score: 0

      Actually what is needed is a public, non-profit benchmark competition. Both Windows and Linux enthusiasts are welcome to join in.
      Of course, we've all heard that Microsoft won't let anyone publish benchmarks as part of their EULA.
      So the only people they will allow to publish those benchmarks are the people they are paying to make favourable ones.
      [ of course, that could be just some paranoid Slashdot meme I've picked up, but I do recall reading it numerous times. ]
      That's why each of the teams is its own corporation. When MS sues them, they simply dissolve, and none of the people from the team can be sued (since it was a corporate action.) Oh the wonders of abusing businesses....

    88. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Wdomburg · · Score: 1

      RHEL 4.0 was released on February 14th.

    89. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Wdomburg · · Score: 1

      Nice generalization. Do you have anything to back that up other than anecdote and conjecture?

    90. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by wft_rtfa · · Score: 1

      The people who buy MS products because of these benchmarks are the same people who voted for Bush because of his townhall meetings. This kind of stuff works on over half of the US.

      --
      :-] :0 :-> :-| :->
    91. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As written in the Jargon File :

      There is three kinds of lies : lies, damn lies and benchmarks.

    92. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Bert64 · · Score: 1

      Dell did some benchmarks a few years ago, between redhat and windows systems running on their hardware.. Their benchmarks showed a considerable advantage for redhat, and a hardware vendor has more to gain from showing the maximum possible performance from their hardware, rather than making a particular software stack look poor.. Tho dell are still too microsoft-centric for my liking, which makes it even more interesting that their benchmarks showed an advantage for redhat.

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
    93. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by mrroach · · Score: 1
      The constitution does not prevent citizens from entering into contracts constraining their own speech (ever heard of an NDA?). It prevents Congress from doing so. You should really read it. It's quite clear. Here you go.

      Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.


      -Mark
    94. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by jurt1235 · · Score: 1

      10 years ago on much more expensize hardware (IBM mainframe, diskset of 50GB for $ 25000) we stopped optimizing for performance and space since making optimized software was too expensive compared to the hardware.
      So this was even with using more resources than initialy available. On our own machines right now, serving website traffic in a hosting firm, the hardware is used by badly written php scripts. Totally not optimized in any way. Still machines stay below 10% usage

      --

      My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
    95. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by dascandy · · Score: 0, Troll

      Expert windows team? Where do you get those?

    96. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm sorry. I forgot to put:

      </humor>

      at the end of my message. I know with the diversity of ideas, people, and opinions on slashdot, it's pretty much impossible to tell any more. I realize what you were saying, and it is pretty much self evident, but I often forget if you don't explicitly say that you are joking, then people here tend to take you seriously.

    97. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by omb · · Score: 1

      No, dont ignore them, they are interesting and
      informative<p>
      They reflect where M$ sees competition, and offer an insight to how their marketeers feel they can
      respond<p>
      But now stock options dont work anymore, the market-droids are much less motivated.

    98. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, at least I can spell bias and biased better than you! But you're right- I didn't read the whole thing- I didn't get (receive, understand, see, whatever) that it was a 2-year old test. Sorry! At 2:45am I guess I am a moron and I'll restrain myself from posting when I'm so tired.

    99. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by bit01 · · Score: 1

      Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech,

      You mean the congress created civil law that allows private NDA's to be enforced is invalid?

      Good, that's often how it should be. Unfortunately, excessive law stops that from being the reality.

      Free markets depend on making informed decisions based on the free flow of truthful information. When that flow stops the free market is dead. Companies and marketing parasites like to muddy the waters about that simple fact.

      ---

      Scientific, evidence based IP law. Now there's a thought.

    100. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by stedo · · Score: 1

      Interestingly enough, I got MS Visual C++.NET recently and read the illegible EULA when waiting for it to install. Apparently, I am forbidden from disclosing the results of any benchmark of the .NET portion of the software to a third party. I don't know about unconstitutional, but it strikes me as very anticompetitive.

    101. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by AstroDrabb · · Score: 1
      The US Constitution only affects dealings between the government and private citizens, it has nothing to do with dealings between two private citizens.
      Huh? I tell you what. Try to sell away your 1st amendment right and see if a judge will allow that. I will sell you my 1st and 2nd amendment right for only $1,000,000. But guess, what. Our Constitutional rights are inalienable rights. You cannot sell them or trade them.

      You are wrong. You are very, very, very wrong. The US Constitution does not only deal with "dealings between the government and private citizens". If you really think that is the case, then give me $1,000 for my 1st Amendment rights. Then I will sue you and keep your $1,000 and get my 1st Amendment Rights back.

      --
      If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
      it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
    102. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by AstroDrabb · · Score: 1
      What you say is true. However, no contract can take away your inalienable rights. Go ahead and try to sell your 2nd amendment right and see how far you get. You cannot give it away.

      NDA's are another beast. An NDA is not giving away your inalienable rights. You are agreeing to not talking about something for a certain period of time. If an NDA said you shall never talk about something again, that NDA would die very quickly in a court of law.

      As far as the MS no comparison/benchmark crap goes, just don't agree to it. Have a friend install the software and then you come along and do the test. Problem solved.

      I personally have never agreed to an MS license. When I installed MS Win XP Pro Corp edition (which I get through my MSDN subscription) on my personal computer, I had my wife click on the "I Agree" button. So MS has no legal claims against me since I never agreed to their crap.

      --
      If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
      it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
    103. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Wdomburg · · Score: 1

      That would be what we call "anecdote". I can counter by talking about having thirty or so web servers at work running pretty close to capacity (especially during peak times) but it would be pointless. Neither of us have presented anything that would suggest our experience is the common case.

    104. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by sparkz · · Score: 1
      The 8-CPU server which produced the 300% improvement isn't documented - Figure 39 in Appendix A does not exist (or, at least, doesn't show up in GGV or AcroRead).

      On the other hand, the report seems to say that they didn't use ISAPI, which would have produced better results for IIS (but isn't available for Apache) - Figure 9.

      The doc also says that they contacted RedHat about some apparently contradictory results, that RedHat escalated the issues, but didn't get back to them in the 30 day limit they had the servers on loan from HP. They didn't have a comparative escalation issue with Microsoft, which would have been useful, but failing to get back to a benchmarker within 30 days is a pretty poor indicator of RedHat in 2003.

      This sounds pretty solid to me; of course, without any info of how the software was configured, it's meaningless, unfortunately. And as it doesn't cover security issues, necessary downtime for security patches, or any outages (due to software crashes, or hack attempts ... how about 10 of each config in a honeypot?), the business value of a report shouting "300%" diminishes. Well, no - to some people, the "300%!!!" will end the argument. To people who understand the issues, that's an interesting and useful figure, to be balanced against the costs.

      --
      Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
    105. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by InvalidError · · Score: 1

      What part of an NDA applies to PUBLICALLY AVAILABLE products? You and many others apparently missed this detai from my post.

      If I publish something, it is free game to all criticism and no EULA should be able to prevent it... but some do try, with the "If any clauses should be found not to apply, this shall not affect applicability of all other clauses" umbrella so EULA writers can lay it on as thick as they feel like. ... at least until the day judges decide to protect the general public and decide to void in whole EULAs containing any form of illegal clauses - zero nonsense tolerance.

    106. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by InvalidError · · Score: 1

      The line is very thin between the two.

      As I said in my post, these licenses try to limit open discussion about publically available products. To me, this reads very much like an attempt to impede free speech for very questionable reasons.

      If the USA truly is the "land of the free", it must be for a different reason... what kind of free country allows corporation to dictate how people can discuss about their *published* works? If a company does not want its products criticised, analyzed and compared, it should simply not release them to the general public!

    107. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by sumdumass · · Score: 1

      Well if it is on condsition of using the product, there might be some legality to aplying limits to what you can do with it. This might include you personaly running benchmarks or compisioning someone else to and publishing the results publicaly. Because there is no law that i know of that explicitly say you can.

      However, There should be nothing stoping you from placing a production server in place and someone else checking the bench marks from another computer then publishing the results. The thing is, that if you realy want to use someone elses software, you generaly have to make some consessions to them. This may be money, promisses to not do certain things, or even worse unless a previous law protects or allows you to do it. This isn't much different in reality to me requiring people who rent apartments from me to be at least 18 years of age and have decent credit. Sure the rental is availible to the public, as long as they meet my requirments.

      Somethign i think would be interesting is if the samba team or some redhat branch could actualy file suite for slander and liable and attempt to prove that "microsofts" or who ever they commisioned to do the studdy actualy did it in a way to purposely damage the name and reputation of the parties involved. This if true would be much like spiking someone fuel before a race to make this vehicle perform poorly just to claim that your manufacturered brand is better or gasoline provides more power. Or someone giving a horse a seditive right before a race to make it run slower so you can claim you feed is better then the mix given to that slowed horse. There are several steps wrong with this and might be legaly acountable if someone wishes to persits. Of couse someone might have to do a test using real versions of software that are supported and generaly in production with updates simular to the windows 2003 versions to demonstrate the difference in results. Maybe thats why a clause in the EULA is so important these days.

    108. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by sumdumass · · Score: 1

      I th8iink that report deals with the setup time and costs of running windows 2003 server and rhel 3.0 but doesn't touch the bench marks. (or at least i didn't see any performance benchmarks). There is also an update to the report mentioned in the article were they misreported some test result giving linux too much credit.

    109. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by sumdumass · · Score: 1

      A manager i had once told me that it isn't what you know, it is who you know that knows. Later i found this to mean that he was a complete idiot when it came to anythign involving a computer or server. His qualifications of leading an IT depertmant was developed from a few seminars and a couple of other people that went to seminars but understood the subject better then him.

      This is typicle of most people who make decisions on what to buy and implement. This study does so much to prove to them that they are making the right choice by spending the extra money. The sad part is that no matter how much we know about the setup being wrong, we don't count because we are under them and they have to apear to know whats going on. If your in the position to make these decisions then you company is in an advantage. The majority of us however seem to be at a loss.

      I don't work in that type of position any more (i'm glad too). I got sick and tired of companies requiring colledge diplomas as a requirment to a managment position and then finding out that a degre in physical education qualified a person to manage the IT department or HR.

    110. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by linuxfanatic1024 · · Score: 1

      How true. M$ even seems to proudly state that every study on their site is "Microsoft-sponsored". Is this something to be proud of? All it proves to me is that Microsoft buys ("sponsors") their way out of everything. Visit http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/facts /default.mspx to see what I mean. It's pretty sick that Microsoft seems to make the fact that all the studies are Microsoft-sponsored appear to be a good thing.

      --
      Microsoft-free since March 28, 2004
    111. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're an idio. Yes an idio. That was no typo. You aren't smart enough to warrant the "t"

    112. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I know of a great way to even out their testing methods. Feed both systems a few of the many viruses circulating the internet. The one still working is the winner.

    113. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      An NDA is not giving away your inalienable rights. You are agreeing to not talking about something for a certain period of time.

      Thats same as "keep your mouth shut or else...".

      If an NDA said you shall never talk about something again, that NDA would die very quickly in a court of law.

      No it won't. If an NDA is valid for 5 years it can as well be valid for 50 years. Its just that you are free not to sign an NDA. If that means you can't get a job, then you are free to be unemployed and eventually die of hunger/diseases etc.

      I personally have never agreed to an MS license. When I installed MS Win XP Pro Corp edition (which I get through my MSDN subscription) on my personal computer, I had my wife click on the "I Agree" button. So MS has no legal claims against me since I never agreed to their crap.

      Then you already are guilty since the EULA forbids you to use the product if you do not follow its terms and conditions. And surely, if your wife installed a GPL software and then lets you use it, you don't get the chance to make it proprietary/closed-source simple because you did not click on the "I agree" button. Your argument will collapse in a court in 1 second.

    114. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by CAjalat · · Score: 1

      Why not? They did and reach into the future and ran tests on Windows 2003 Server didn't they? So why shouldn't they reach into the future and run tests on newer Linux Kernels?

    115. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by jrumney · · Score: 1
      There is also an update to the report mentioned in the article were they misreported some test result giving linux too much credit.

      Translation: They didn't get the result that Microsoft paid them to.

    116. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But...are they authorized by Red Hat?

    117. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by InvalidError · · Score: 1

      I guess I should write my own EULA to promote my projects...

      "You may freely use this software on the condition that you only speak good of it, saying or demonstrating anything bad about it violates this EULA and may net you a silly but insanely expensive lawsuit."

      This is how I perceive these unreasonable clauses. As far as I am concerned, these are void and unenforceable since we all know they will only make the related conversations move to less obvious/official channels.

      BTW, if companies were allowed to limit their customer's free speech by sales (or other) agreements, we would not be seeing the *sucks.com company sites fight off corporate lawsuits so easily and frequently.

    118. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Teun · · Score: 1
      Surprisingly (controversially?) enough, some EULAs forbid public criticism - I wonder if such clauses would ever be found valid in court, I seriously hope not - judges should declare void in whole any EULA that includes any anticonstitutional demands.

      In many countries EULAS are not worth the media they're on, why not do the test in such a place?

      --
      "The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
    119. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by mrroach · · Score: 1
      you already are guilty since the EULA forbids you to use the product if you do not follow its terms and conditions. And surely, if your wife installed a GPL software and then lets you use it, you don't get the chance to make it proprietary/closed-source simple because you did not click on the "I agree" button. Your argument will collapse in a court in 1 second.


      Are you suggesting that you can be bound by the conditions of a contract by not accepting it? The person who is bound by that "contract" is his wife, and she may be violating the EULA by letting someone else use the computer, but he is not violating any agreement (because he never made one).

      The GPL, on the other hand, is not a contract at all. Copyright law is the thing that prevents him from making any copy (whether open or closed) of the software at all. The GPL is a license that is granted to those who follow its conditions.

      -Mark
    120. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by sr180 · · Score: 1
      Sorry, you wont be able to use them. F1 Has very strict rules on the amount of testing that F1 teams are allowed to complete. Hondas testing would already be pre-planned and mapped out across the year. (Maybe see if they still have last years car available)

      --
      In Soviet Russia the insensitive clod is YOU!
    121. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by larry+bagina · · Score: 1
      It's not "illegal" either. Per the Constitution, the legislature writes laws and the executive branch enforces them.

      EULAs are contracts - agreements between private citizens enforceable by a court. A court may find the contract (or a specific clause) unenforceable, but it's not illegal.

      And yes, if you don't know jack shit about what you're talking about, it does make your claim anticonstitutional. Oops, illegal. Oops, invalid.

      --
      Do you even lift?

      These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

    122. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Senior programmer? More like 6th year senior. In high school for retards.

    123. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by sumdumass · · Score: 1

      As far as being void and unenforceble, that an opinion you mihgt have to fight for. I agree with you on the setiment of how those EULA are not right. The problem is that unless a specific law gives you more rights, you might have a hard time protecting yourself form it. Freee speech is a thin line here and i would question if the first amendment actualy comes into play. It is simular to a church kicking you out for saying swear words durring service. Some people (including me) question the entire validity of EULA's when you cannot return the software or have to jump through hoops of fire to get some sort of refund or credit.

      *sucks.com and companies simular to them can either evaluate the license and then unaccept it or take information already made public from other sources. This wouldn't violate the EULA. aspecialy if you found you couldn't accept the licenses later and relinguished the right to the software. (the license should cover any more as long as you do not use thier software) Non disclosure agreement might carry more weight though.

    124. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by InvalidError · · Score: 1

      I am not going to contest the validity of NDAs... most NDAs are meant to protect trade secrets and priviledged information not available to the general public, generally related to unreleased products and internal projects.

      Most NDAs have real-world justificative reasons behind them. Non-disclosure/comparison clauses in EULAs are highly questionable at best since their only net effect is hindering public review.

      And yes, not being to be able to get a refund for software after finding out that one does not find the EULA acceptable is highly moronic if there is no practical way of checking it out until after unwrapping it... and sometimes, the printed EULA does not match the click-through EULA... and even the click-through EULA may be amended by online updates.

      There are way too many ways for companies to screw customers over with these things. Me, I have roughly the same attitude with EULAs as I do with pop-ups: just click whatever it takes to make it go away and be on my merry way.

    125. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by MasTRE · · Score: 1

      > One does not even have to be an expert in crypto. Simply type:

      openssl speed rc4 md5 des-ede3 sha1


      This thread is a great example of /. at work (as rare as that may be). dtfinch (661405) pointed out the problem, knowledgeable readers backed it up (some ACs - with which I have no issue, as I myself value privacy), then eventually somebody (you) provided a simple way for testing it out yourself in a jiffy, all within the span of just 3h 33m!

      My hat's off to you, gentlemen!

      --
      Must-not-watch TV!
    126. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by gilesjuk · · Score: 1

      It probably goes like this:

      Testing company: we can do two comparisons for you, a fair one for $2000 or an unfair one for $10,000

      Microsoft: unfair one please.

    127. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or, because it's free.

      Really, money is just a placeholder for time, effort, and resources. It *is* everything, although to many people, their personal wellbeing and that of their fellow man has a higher cost in monetary terms than simply what they would be worth if soaked for all their money. That's the basic distinction between "good" and "bad" in general, whether other people and nature are valued appropriately against purely personal interests.

    128. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by jusdisgi · · Score: 1

      Surprisingly (controversially?) enough, some EULAs forbid public criticism - I wonder if such clauses would ever be found valid in court, I seriously hope not - judges should declare void in whole any EULA that includes any anticonstitutional demands.

      Sorry, guy, but you have no idea what you're talking about. The first amendment begins, "Congress shall make no law..." A company's EULA forbidding certain speech does not constitute Congress making a law against it. Non-disclosure agreements, celebrity endorsement deals, and other contractual obligations to speak or not to speak a certain way are perfectly legal and the Constitution does not forbid them. Any two entities can enter into a contract which forbids either of them to speak, with specified (civil) legal action as a consequence of breaching the contract.

      Nice try, though.

      --
      Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
    129. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by InvalidError · · Score: 1

      Well, this still does not change the fact that EULAs are generally trivial to work around of and that a company would have to prove that people have read and agreed to them... which is rarely the case when someone installs software and others use it, as often the case on shared PCs and PCs maintained my someone other than the owner(s) and primary user(s).

      One very simple example: I go to a local computer store and play with the stuff that is on display, write up a wrap-up of all the crappy stuff I tried, where are the EULAs here?

      Commercial products, software or otherwise, are in the public domain and therefore cannot avoid criticism, however restrictive whatever EULA they may come with may try to be. It is unlikely that any reasonable judge would rule against verifiable observations against commercial products, however damaging the findings may be. Opposing speech about public facts is highly unlikely to succeed.

      NDAs are about protecting trade secrets, not exactly comparable to criticism/review of commercialized (public) products.

    130. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Martin+Blank · · Score: 1

      Didn't McAfee get burned not too long ago on the benchmarking clause of their EULA, where they said that benchmarks could only be published with the express written consent of the company? I seem to recall that the courts found this an illegal abridgement of First Amendment freedoms, and pronounced the clause unenforceable.

      --
      You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
    131. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by The+name+is+Dave.+Ja · · Score: 1

      We're now up to 5... do I hear 5?
      RHEL 5 - Going once, going twice...

    132. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by Roadkills-R-Us · · Score: 1

      Nonsense. They could give me lots of money to do the test. I would be fair and honest. To make sure there's no incentives to cheat, make it a guaranteed one time test; I can never take money from them again. One million dollars, and I am your impartial judge.

    133. Re:Just like the samba benchmark by tsstahl · · Score: 1

      Hmmm, maybe Microsoft if violating Red Hat's EULA by posting benchmarks.

  2. Three hundred percent? by PsychicX · · Score: 2, Insightful

    10%? 15%? Those are numbers I'd believe. But THREE HUNDRED PERCENT? I like Microsoft, and I like when somebody defends them. But this is just bull.

    1. Re:Three hundred percent? by superpulpsicle · · Score: 1

      I am not even sure you can get 300 percent difference racing a 486 PC and a 1Gz PC in any test.

    2. Re:Three hundred percent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      I'll buy the 300% figure. I'd also wager there're tests I could run where Linux+Apache would outperform Windows+IIS by 300%. Optimize the test to show one system is better, optimize the system you want to cast in a favorable light to perform well against that test, ...

      This paper is fucking bogus though. I mean the interesting graph would show time-to-request-completion on the vertical axis (taken at the 95th percentile) and number of requests made per second on the horizontal axis. That would mean something. This is just ludicrous and lacking in any real value.

    3. Re:Three hundred percent? by ninboy · · Score: 0, Redundant

      you like microsoft ? um is this slashdot ?

    4. Re:Three hundred percent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The 300% faster figure was from a static file test. Since IIS 6 can serve static content from kernel mode, it can go much faster than Apache. TUX can also serve content from kernel mode, so IIS was only 160% faster than it with 8 CPUs. TUX didn't scale (4 CPUs was faster than 8), as IIS was only 12% faster with 1 CPU.

      Keep in mind this report is from 2 years ago.

      dom

    5. Re:Three hundred percent? by egregious · · Score: 1

      I am not even sure you can get 300 percent difference racing a 486 PC and a 1Gz PC in any test.

      Um, let's say you have a 200MHz 486... 300% better is 600Mhz. Shock! I found one!

    6. Re:Three hundred percent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      you have no idea what you are talking about. Please read his post and actually think next time.

    7. Re:Three hundred percent? by shobadobs · · Score: 1

      Well, no. Mathematically speaking, 800 Mhz is 300% better than 200 Mhz. You see,

      200 Mhz is 0% better than 200 Mhz.
      250 Mhz is 25% better than 200 Mhz.
      400 Mhz is 100% better than 200 Mhz.
      600 Mhz is 200% better than 200 Mhz.
      800 Mhz is 300% better than 200 Mhz.

      You take the percentage and then add to find how much better it is. So 600 is 300% of 200, hence (600 + 200) is 300% better than 200.

    8. Re:Three hundred percent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I like Microsoft, and I like when somebody defends them.

      I've been in IT for about 17 years. I've seen MS destroy "the little guy" time and time again, with thier power and yet with all that power, money and developer base, deliver garbage year after year, to this day.

      Then I compare them with offerings like Mac OS X, the BSD's and Linux and wonder, how on Earth someone can say, "I like Microsoft".

      Seriously now, what is there to like about them?

    9. Re:Three hundred percent? by Mad+Merlin · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Um, let's say you have a 200MHz 486... 300% better is 600Mhz. Shock! I found one!

      And you let me know when you find a 200 Mhz 486, ok?

    10. Re:Three hundred percent? by menkhaura · · Score: 2, Funny

      Four words:

      Well paid microsoft employee.

      --
      Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
      Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
    11. Re:Three hundred percent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You want that as a 486DX or SX?

    12. Re:Three hundred percent? by InfraRED · · Score: 1

      I had my 5x86-133 overclocked to 200 (4x50Mhz).

      --
      metamoderate!
    13. Re:Three hundred percent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      A lot of people like to complain about Microsoft, especially Windows. They usually think Linux is 'cool', but then when they try it and see how much doesn't work (eg half the hardware in my laptop) without installing a plethora of patches from various sources, and find out that some of it doesn't work as well as it does under Windows, they come to the conclusion that Windows isn't really so bad after all.

      In my own experience, there's also a big difference based on the usage. For example, my servers almost never go down unless there's a power outage (no matter which OS they're running). Desktops tend to have more stability problems (mainly with video-intensive stuff like games, where a dodgy video driver can cause no end of problems), and laptops have all the problems of desktops, plus more power-management issues. Overall, I help friends troubleshoot Windows crashes from time to time, and they're invariably caused by dodgy, unsigned device drivers (usually for hardware that doesn't work at all under any other OS), not bugs or flaws in the OS itself. (For the uninformed, a dodgy driver will crash UNIX, Linux or BSD just as easily as Windows.)

      There are plenty of good things about a lot of other Microsoft software, like Word and Excel. I used to be somewhat hostile towards Microsoft (because of my UNIX background), but despite my best efforts, I could never find a spreadsheet competitive with Excel. I still prefer typesetting tools common on UNIX to Word, but the fact that copy/paste works pretty well on Windows is a huge benefit.

      These days, I generally just use what best gets the job done (ie I'm not inherently pro- or anti- anything), and that means I mostly use MS Windows and MS Office for day-to-day work, and MS .NET for GUI programming. For non-GUI programming, I still prefer the UNIX command line and GCC, but I don't really do much programming at all any more.

      At the end of the day, Microsoft software is just like any other: it has strengths and weaknesses. In some cases, it's the best tool for the job, and in others it isn't. Anyone who can't see that must have either (a) very limited experience, or (b) an irrational bias against Microsoft.

    14. Re:Three hundred percent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They brought computing to the mass market, which in turn drove costs of computing down so that assholes like you can keep your pissant job.

    15. Re:Three hundred percent? by NickFortune · · Score: 3, Insightful
      The best tool for the job? Well sometimes, maybe. Perhaps. But look - a spanner is a tool, right? Well in the case of MS we're talking about spanners that we can't buy but only licence. Spanners that MS can take back from us any time, despite the fact we paid good money. We're talking spanners that have been designed to stop working if we move to a house with a bigger garage.

      A lot of people would say "if you don't like that, don't use MS spanners". Fine. Done deal! :)

      Just a little way down the metaphorical road, there's a shop that sells spanners at a fraction of the price that MS does. They may not be as pretty, and for some jobs they aren't quite as exact - but they've been getting better for years and the difference is scarcely noticeable these days. And if you can do without the fancy packaging, you can go online and get that same tool free..

      And it's then yours to use legally, wherever and however you wish - so long as you don't try and claim you designed it.

      So the question is: by what criteria do you evaluate best? None free software, security holes, forced upgrades... with many people these things carry a hefty negative.

      --
      Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
    16. Re:Three hundred percent? by Al+Dimond · · Score: 1

      I know this is a rather dumb post that I shouldn't waste my time responding to, but... a 3x processor speed advantage doesn't give you a 3x performance advantage.

      You'd also need 3x faster memory and bus speeds, and 3x faster hard drive speed for many applications. For a web server you'd need a faster network card and a faster surrounding network.

    17. Re:Three hundred percent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I can condense that for you in one word. SELLOUT.

    18. Re:Three hundred percent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I understand what you're saying. However, the one criteria I use in choosing software is the maximisation of net benefit to me, ie the benefit minus the economic cost (which includes both accounting costs, like licensing fees, and opportunity costs, like additional time spent to do the same job as an alternative, an inferior result, etc). In other words, the software has to provide benefits like helping me get my work done more efficiently, learn more effectively, have fun, whatever it is, and the price has to be low enough to make the benefits (versus alternatives) worthwhile.

      If, with respect to a particular product, X is the benefit to me, Y is the accounting cost and Z is the opportunity cost, the net benefit of X-(Y+Z) is not necessarily maximised when Y is equal to nought. A higher value of X and/or a lower value of Z can offset any given value of Y.

      All things being equal, my first choice would be to use public domain or BSD/MIT-licensed software, since public domain grants the most rights to me, and the BSD/MIT licence is very close behind. However, all things aren't equal, and if the net benefit of a proprietary product is higher than that of a free product (either because of a higher total benefit, or lower opportunity costs), the proprietary option will still win.

      As an example of the above, Linux is free, so naturally costs less in accounting terms than Windows, but I'd rather be out partying with my mates than sitting at home configuring it, debugging test-quality drivers, etc. So, if using Linux means I have to spend enough time on things like that (versus time spent on the same with Windows), free is no longer good enough: someone would actually have to pay me to make using Linux worthwhile. In cases where Linux is already a better solution, the lower accounting cost means it obviously wins (but if the computer I'm buying comes with Windows anyway, because that's how the firm selling the computers maximises its profit, the accounting cost for Linux is actually the same or higher).

    19. Re:Three hundred percent? by InvalidError · · Score: 1

      But the 5x86 is not a 486.

      If you go in the 586/Pentium-class chips, 200MHz is no big deal, the non-MMX Pentium went to 200MHz and the MMX version was mass-produced up to 233MHz, where it was madly successful as a notebook chip.

    20. Re:Three hundred percent? by o517375 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Or maybe a soon-to-be-Google-employee

    21. Re:Three hundred percent? by SaDan · · Score: 1
      But the 5x86 is not a 486.


      Yeah, it was. The AMD 5x86 chip that ran at 133Mhz (4x33Mhz) was also given a PR-75 speed rating, because it was the only chip AMD had at the time that could compete against the new Pentium processors from Intel. It was a 486 core that had 16KB of L1 cache.

      And, for what it's worth, I had a 5x86-133 chip that I ran at 160Mhz and later 200Mhz.
    22. Re:Three hundred percent? by tomhudson · · Score: 1

      I'll see your one word, and raise you by two letters: M$.

    23. Re:Three hundred percent? by junkcode · · Score: 1

      I had started off with Windows 95 running on a 233MHz Celeron with 16MB RAM, it worked perfectly well.. giving me enough visual appeal to keep me satisfied. Around that time, i tried RHL (latest at that time), and i could barely get GUI working with a preferably resolution.
      I always felt Microsoft offered the best OS/User-Experience (or Friendliness) any day, compared to Linux.
      I love Linux for its power and 'openness', but it still remains a 'Geek OS'. For a desktop/home user - Windows still remains the default choice; I'm not quoting from any statistic, just from what i see around me.
      So, I like Microsoft/Windows for making computers more friendly, and approachable for the Novice users. And I love Linux for its power, flexibilty etc.
      And just an opinion -- I don't think Linux would have got so popular if it wasn't for its anti-microsoft/windows (replacement) approach.
      Lastly.. I'm not on the M$ payroll list! :)

      --
      --- infoGreG
    24. Re:Three hundred percent? by kicken18 · · Score: 1

      I would have to agree with you here. When I ran Deadly hosting the game server company i used Windows for my game server boxes and FreeBSD for things like teamspeak servers, re-direct servers etc. Thats because windows is better for game servers esspecially since windows versions always come out first, but there are performance issues aswell. FreeBSD however, isnt that powerful but its cheap and easy to run small boxes for a few little programs where there is no point paying a lisence fee for an OS which has so much power which i am not going to use. Another thing I have to say, is cant fault windows support. They have always helped me and I like how you can contact them with reviews of their softwear and tell them if there help files are good or not down to a specific article. Open Source softwear is free or very cheap, so the programmers are not getting paid, hence they wont put 100% effot into it as they have other jobs etc or they will quickly move on to a paid job. So support is a key issue. If i make i dont know...BlueHat, i have 15 coders and 3 lead coders. If 2 lead coders leave I might not have anyone good enough to replace them quickly. If i have deadlines and patches but missing 2 leaders then its not going to be very productive. Support has come up befor for Open source and although you can get other people to help you out, nothing is ever clear cut but with MS there is and they do have some of the worlds best programmers there. I will use what ever tool is best for the job. I use XP becuse there is alot of programs for it, i like it, runs well, I can do everything that I want and more and unlike my windows 98 expriance, its totally stable, I cant actally remember the last time it crashed on me.

      --
      Visit My Blog at http://spaces.msn.com/members/chrisharries
    25. Re:Three hundred percent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They brought computing to the mass market

      I thought low cost of hardware brought computing to the mass market, not the high cost of software, but what do you know?

    26. Re:Three hundred percent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because for every "little guy" that got ran over for being slow, thousands of more jobs were created. Microsoft made computing common and accessable. Microsoft made most of us employed.

    27. Re:Three hundred percent? by ruiner13 · · Score: 1

      Apparently they have also destroyed your ablility to know when to use a comma, man.

      --

      today is spelling optional day.

    28. Re:Three hundred percent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You've got to be joking right?

      I love OSX and BSD, but Windows is also pretty damn stable since NT / 2000. XP hasn't crashed for me in over 280 days and at our several data centres we still have NT4 and 2000 deployed on almost all of our servers, including over a hundred terminal servers using Citrix.

      It's been extremely rare to see any downtime, especially with the Win2k boxes. NT4 crashes about once a month, which is clearly quite bad. But our analysis always shows it to be due to poorly written printer drivers by HP.

      Due to the nature of our business, we can't at any point accept downtime - since this could potentially compromise the health service here in the UK.

      Speaking to various admins and government employees, they outline that the UK health service will never switch to an "amateurish OS" such as Linux - "something written by kids" as many of admins say.

      Our massive team of programmers have analysed a lot of the code in the Linux kernel since 2.2 and many drivers since then, according to them "it sends shivers down their spine to hear that linux is being used by other governments".

      Yes, we also receive from Microsoft a large portion of the Win2k source code, due to government requests.

      Every year we employee younger people, a lot of them hate Microsoft and are Linux zealots, that is until we show them and explain to them the code behind the Linux kernel, not to mention the laughable free software "philosophy".

    29. Re:Three hundred percent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      lol!
      Precisely correct.

    30. Re:Three hundred percent? by NickFortune · · Score: 1
      Opportunity cost is an interestng way to consider the problem. I'd want to factor in the financial cost of vendor lock-in and a forced upgrade cycle.

      Then there's the cost in terms of usability from worms, virii and and associated hacks. There's the opportunity cost of being denied the chance to learn a bit about my system.

      But I don't suppose there's such a thing as a typical set of criteria when deciding which software is best. That makes it a little difficult to dismiss out-of-hand someone's choice as an "irrational bias".

      It doesn't sound like you've had a particularly happy experience of linux, but then It doesn't sound like you've had a very typical one either. Of course, some laptop vendors are still a bit linux hostile, but my tosh is fully functional without causing me any real dificulties.

      I had more dificulty when internet explorer got subverted on my old windows machine. To fix that I ended up having to re-install the entire OS. Or the system restore disc that didn't include all the drivers. Then there was one from a different vendor that chose to reformat the hard drive. Those incidents cost me quite a few nights when I could have been out partying with my mates. I've lost more time to proprietary software than I ever have to free software.

      Really, this all sounds like a grass roots spin on the old Total Cost of Ownership argument. I didn't buy into that for the workplace, and I don't think I believe it in the home either. Sorry.

      --
      Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
    31. Re:Three hundred percent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Describing MS as a load of spanners? Brilliant! (I guess it's a UK thing)

      Seriously, that's a good analogy.

    32. Re:Three hundred percent? by tcatt · · Score: 1
      I like Microsoft simply for the comedy factor they provide. Someone like yourself and myself and many others who know better can afford to just sit back and laugh, no?

      Pray, let them continue! My world would be so much less amusing without the ongoing Microsoft foot-in-it's-own-mouth campaigns we keep seeing.

      Oh, I know it's a shame that so many actually believe their rhetoric, and we should continue to be diligent in pointing to the silly monkeys and letting others know just where that unseen finger actually is, but y'know, linux has obviously hit it's powerband and has a lot of gears to go, Apple had a near-death experience which has inspired them with a new vigour for life, whereas Microsoft is just showing evidence of stalling out..

      Should the day come in which there is no more Microsoft, who will we laugh at? Who will we blame? Will we be happy, or will we be sad? Who will be the monkeys once we've killed all the monkeys?

      Yes, in my own nutty way and for my own nutty reasons, I like Microsoft, and I'm glad they're around.

      Where else can I "Get The Farce" and walk away feeling so much better about myself?

      --
      [I have no name!:/]# _
    33. Re:Three hundred percent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Linux has been fine for me on servers, but not noticably better than any other server OS (like BSD or Windows). On most laptops, the hardware support just isn't as good as Windows (nothing is), especially when frequently adding and removing hardware dynamically. All in all, it takes more time for me to configure and maintain Linux than Windows, and Linux doesn't solve my problems as well as Windows, so for me (a university student in a non-technical subject), Windows is better, even though Linux is free. That only applies to the specific things I use a computer for, and it would be nonsense to claim such a thing generally.

      The point is not a vague and meaningless claim about one OS being better than another generally. Rather, it is that there are scenarios where Linux is better and scenarios where Windows is better, and further that the licensing cost is relatively insignificant in terms of the overall cost/benefit analysis.

      The Total Cost of Ownership argument itself actually makes a lot of sense, and is the basis on which any well-run businesses invests. That's why Microsoft's marketing people are trying to claim Windows has lower TCO than Linux (contrary to Slashdot/geek myths, most managers actually make rational, well-informed decisions, based on financial analyses well beyond the competence of IT staff). That doesn't, however, mean Windows automatically has the lowest TCO in reality. Linux can very easily have a lower TCO in some scenarios, but in others, Windows wins.

      Expanding TCO-like ideas to home users is more complex, and the theories are beyond most home users, but they're still applicable.

    34. Re:Three hundred percent? by NickFortune · · Score: 1
      The trouble with TCO is that Microsoft have brought the argument into disrepute. On the one hand there's their sponsor ship of skewed "independent" reports. On the other, their laughably one-sided and poorly named Get The Facts campaign. If you have to compare RedHat's most expensive corporate package running on a top of the line against OEM XP bundled on a mass market Dell, then you needn't expect to be taken any too seriously.

      If a fair and even handed consideration of TCO made a compelling case for Microsoft, then I expect that MS would have used just such an argument. MS is not, after all, known for employing idiots. What they did was present a one-sided and distorted picture masquerading as a fair and even handed treatment. This strongly suggests that they couldn't make a convincing case without the use of deception. If the facts are on your side in the first place, then why risk calling into question the integrity of your argument?

      As for those managers who are making rational and well informed descisions, well they seem to be switching to Linux. And the best indication that this is so lies is Microsoft's recent descision to support linux under virtualisation. This is not a thing they would do if they unless they feared losing sales to Linux.

      For home use, I think part of the problem is that we get used to the inconveniences of the system we use reguarly. The big one on Windows would be malware. In your original post you said that , when troubleshooting friends' systems, you invariably found that poor third party device drivers were to blame. I too often troubleshoot friends' systems and by far and away the most common problem cause of problems I find is malware, followed by registry errors.

      We tend to become accustomed to such aggravations over time, and come to accept them as part of the business of using a computer. On the other hand we change to a new system and all the aggravations are new and strange and scary, so we perceive them as being that much bigger than they really are.

      And some of the aggaravtions we are accustomed to are severe. My father needed a new machine. So he bought a new e-machines box. About £250 it cost him. Then we got it back and found out that his canner would not work. Nor would his printer. And the copy of MS Office that he already owned refused to install on the new machine. And the retail copies of office didn't include publisher which he needed. Another £200 right there. Add it all up and that cheap new computer was looking to set him back more than a grand! This is an aggravation MS would like us to become accustomed to; to accept as part of the computing experience. I don't accept that.

      In the case of my father, I set him up with linux. I had to do some searching to make the scanner work, and I never did get the framebuffer going so I could hide the scrolling boot messages behind a slice of eye candy. Everything else just worked.

      That's a thousand quid versus nothing at all. Furthermore, since XP came bundled with the hardware, we can consider the cost of the OS in both cases to be zero. We saved 800 quid by removing XP. There's your total cost of ownership as far as I'm concerned.

      At the end of the day what MS want are revenue streams. You'll never stop paying them, because their marketing strategy is based upon forcing you to pay and pay and pay again. Linux is under no such pressure. With linux's increasing adoption, linux drivers are getting better quickly and the shortage of linux competant support staff is rapidly being filled. MS on the other hand is never going to stop trying to force you into buying that next upgrade. And so long as that remains true, choosing windows based on TCO is at best an inheretly short-term strategy. Choosing linux on the other hand may well work in the short term, and wins hands down over time.

      --
      Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
    35. Re:Three hundred percent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't disagree with much of anything you're saying, although I'm not familiar enough with Microsoft's TCO marketing to say whether or not I agree it's been disreputable (or at least more so than any corporate marketing).

      The one thing I would disagree with is that rational, well-informed managers are necessarily buying Linux. In the server market, some are buying Linux and some are buying Windows, as shown by rising server market shares for both, and I'd say this shows each is best in some cases. In the client market, Linux hasn't made a dent yet, but that will change if it really is better. Mind you, that has to include all factors, especially network economies, which make Windows much better overall than a technically equivalent alternative in the client market (in the server market, this isn't the case).

      The point I was making all along is that MS software (Windows, Office, whatever) is best in some cases, and not best in others, and that anyone who looks at it objectively can see this. In your case, it sounds like it clearly hasn't been, and I certainly believe you. I know for me and most of my mates, Windows clearly has been best (several of the more technical ones have tried Linux, and gone back to Windows), which reinforces my point that neither one is inherently better for all people and all tasks, and that it's irrational to claim otherwise.

      As for being accustomed to annoyances, well, I learnt BSD before Windows, so it was my natural choice, and I doubt I'd be able to tolerate Windows without the ability to add a UNIX-like command line (I use SFU/Interix, but Cygwin is a decent alternative). The only reason I mostly use Windows now is because it works better in the common scenarios facing me, and that's taking all the cost/benefit factors into consideration. Again, I'd never try to claim that my situation is univerally applicable to anyone else (much less everyone else), but the situation is similar for most of my mates: all things considered, Windows really is better for most of us, even the ones (like me) who are very familiar with Linux and BSD/UNIX.

      I've also had to deal with removing malware on other systems (I've never had any malware or viruses on my systems, since I'm fairly savvy, technically, and suspicious of executing anything unfamiliar), but it's more of a social phenomenon than a technical one (remember, the first Internet worm was on UNIX, and was much more severe than any of the Windows worms has been -- it essentially shut down the Internet). Average users demand the ability to execute attachments sent to them by people they know, and so all the malware authors have to do is convince them that they can be trusted. If FireFox becomes the number one web browser, for example (I know a lot of people who use it now), I've no doubt it will become the primary target of web-based malware.

      All in all, I'd say malware can be considered a negative effect of network economies, but one that has not been high enough in the cases I'm familiar with to offset the benefits of Windows (not even close), but has often been high enough to make switching from IE to FireFox worthwhile. I'm sure there are cases where switching from Windows to Linux (or another OS) because of malware/viruses has been worth it too, but I'd venture to say these case are fairly small in number.

    36. Re:Three hundred percent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      At the end of the day what MS want are revenue streams. You'll never stop paying them, because their marketing strategy is based upon forcing you to pay and pay and pay again. Linux is under no such pressure. With linux's increasing adoption, linux drivers are getting better quickly and the shortage of linux competant support staff is rapidly being filled. MS on the other hand is never going to stop trying to force you into buying that next upgrade. And so long as that remains true, choosing windows based on TCO is at best an inheretly short-term strategy. Choosing linux on the other hand may well work in the short term, and wins hands down over time.

      I actually missed this bit the first time. Again, I completely disagree that accounting costs can be considered a decisive factor. TCO is based on the life of the system, not anything short-term. The purchase price, in contrast is purely short-term, and looking only at accounting costs, and especially at only a subset of them, is extremely naive (nobody doing this sort of thing would last long in any well-run organisation).

      What you're saying here is that a good with a lower accounting cost is always better in the long run than one with a higher accounting cost, which is absolutely not the case. As I pointed out previously, net benefit is a function of total benefit, accounting costs and opportunity costs, and a product with higher accounting costs can certainly be a better value overall, irrespective of the time span.

      Remember also that things like wages for support staff are part of the accounting costs, and are generally much higher than software licensing fees. Accounting costs are not the same thing as licensing fees, and in a business environment can easily be higher for a nominally free product than for one with high licensing fees.

    37. Re:Three hundred percent? by NickFortune · · Score: 1
      I don't think the malware issue is that cut and dried. Consider the firfox spoofing attack that used i18n charsets to create bogus links. There was a fix avalable as an extension for that within 24 hours IIRC. The workaround fix was posted almost straight away and a new version which wasn't vulnerable was available inside a week or so. It takes a month or two to get MS to even admit a problem exists. There are some (supposedly) they have stated they will never fix.

      You may never get malware problems, technically savvy as you are. On the other hand, that does rather weaken your argument as windows as the platform of the ordinary user. On todays net your brand new XP box will get owned long before it finishes downloading the first service pack.

      In general though, and as you say, we seem to be in broad agreement on a lot of points. I'm certainly no mad zealot to insist that everyone should use linux. All the same, I'd have thought the forced upgrade problem was a compelling argument for anyone. Maybe you have to be bitten by it a few times before you really feel its force.

      Maybe we should have this discussion again, post longhorn perhaps, and see if you still feel the same way ;)

      --
      Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
    38. Re:Three hundred percent? by NickFortune · · Score: 1
      Actually I prefer to think of it as covering lifetime of the person or enterprise using the software. Forced upgrade cycle, broken backwards compatibilty, software bloat... all these things cost me money. Not just on this purchase, but on the next, when I find myself locked in by MS proprietory formats, and the next when they change things around so all my perfectly functional peripherals need to be replaced, and the next, when I have to buy yet another version of office. Don't even get me started on their attempts to inflict a software leasing scheme on their customers.

      Consider the TCO of MS software across your entire lifetime. That's you personally, not your current piece of hardware. That's the long term view. To consider the matter puerly in terms of a single piece of equipment, likey obsolete in a year or two, that is what I call short termist.

      --
      Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
    39. Re:Three hundred percent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      You may never get malware problems, technically savvy as you are. On the other hand, that does rather weaken your argument as windows as the platform of the ordinary user.

      It may do, but I don't think any current operating system has a good mechanism to stop social attacks from trojans, worms and other malware, whilst leaving the system usable by ordinary users. Windows is actually getting a lot better about it, but a lot of people still just click through all the warnings.

      Microsoft do at least roll the SPs into the OEM releases, so if you buy a new PC, it will be running the latest SP. If you're going to install it manually, you've got to build your own CD by downloading the SP and 'slipstreaming' it into the retail CD. It's pretty easy for a technically savvy user to do, but normal users could never do anything like that (a lot would probably have trouble installing Windows anyway).

      I'd have thought the forced upgrade problem was a compelling argument for anyone. Maybe you have to be bitten by it a few times before you really feel its force.

      Maybe we should have this discussion again, post longhorn perhaps, and see if you still feel the same way ;)

      Well, I actually like running the latest software (I've run FreeBSD-CURRENT on systems I use daily), so upgrading isn't much of a negative for me (as long as the value is higher than the price). For those who dislike upgrading, it might be a bigger negative than it is for me, but I'll be looking forward to upgrading to Longhorn. ;)

    40. Re:Three hundred percent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      For me, upgrading software is really no different to upgrading hardware. Both become obsolete after a few years and have to be replaced, so I consider the whole thing as a package, factoring in some upgrades along the way (eg a few SPs for the software and maybe one major OS upgrade, plus a few component upgrades on the hardware side, perhaps with one CPU upgrade).

      I'm not going to use my current PC for my whole life, and nor am I going to use Windows XP for my whole life, so I'm interested in the value over the period during which I'll be using them, in current terms (ie factoring in inflation and interest rates over the period). I'd actually be happy to lease the OS (especially in a business environment) if doing that offered more favourable terms than buying a licence and disposing of it after a few years.

      It's a good point on the formats, but again, since nearly all of the people I interact with also use MS Office, the benefits of being able to exchange data with each other are (in my view) worth more than the risk of having to convert all my old files if I change to something else down the road. When using MS Office, I also normally use the XML formats, which are documented, so that mitigates the format risk to some extent. (The same applies to almost all the lock-in issues: the lock-in risk has to be balanced against the benefits of the ubiquity of the format.)

    41. Re:Three hundred percent? by NickFortune · · Score: 1
      I'm not going to use my current PC for my whole life, and nor am I going to use Windows XP for my whole life, so I'm interested in the value over the period during which I'll be using them

      But you are going to be using computers for your entire life, or so it seems reasonable to assume. Why are you so interested in the cost of using MS products over the lifetime of the hardware, and yet so disinterested in considering the same cost over a longer period? It sees inconsistent somehow.

      MS have said, in effect: "it's not sensible to simply consider the purchase price, because buying linux may prove more expensive over the lifetime of the hardware". I can see the logic in that, but why not take it all the way: "It's not sensible to consider simply the lifetime of the machine, since buying microsoft products may prove much more expensive over the course of your lifetime".

      If the logic was valid coming from MS, it should hold up when I use it too. Otherwise you're just trying to insist on a context that best supports your argument. (And in that case I have two counter examples - one longer term, and one shorter).

      --
      Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
    42. Re:Three hundred percent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      But you are going to be using computers for your entire life, or so it seems reasonable to assume.

      Probably so, but not the same one, hence each one is an individual investment to be analysed on its merits. I'm fairly certain that all of the software I'm using today will have essentially no value in ten years (and probably well before that), and the same holds for the hardware.

      Why are you so interested in the cost of using MS products over the lifetime of the hardware, and yet so disinterested in considering the same cost over a longer period? It sees inconsistent somehow.

      It's actually the lifetime of the PC as a whole, including both hardware and software. Again, the PC I'm using today isn't the one I'll be using ten years from now. If every time I buy a PC I pick the one that provides the highest net benefit over its lifetime, I'll naturally end up with the highest net benefit overall, unless there are factors I can analyse with a high level of confidence over a longer period than the lifetime of a given PC. I don't think there are, at least not that are applicable to periods substantially longer than the lifetime of a PC, but examples woud be welcome.

      MS have said, in effect: "it's not sensible to simply consider the purchase price, because buying linux may prove more expensive over the lifetime of the hardware". I can see the logic in that, but why not take it all the way: "It's not sensible to consider simply the lifetime of the machine, since buying microsoft products may prove much more expensive over the course of your lifetime".

      The difference is that one is practicable and the other isn't. Estimating the value of a PC over a period of, eg, 2-4 years can be done with a reasonable degree of confidence, and can therefore be used as a basis for investment decisions. Analysing the value of a PC that will be obsolete in a few years over a period of 80 years doesn't produce a meaningful result.

      If the logic was valid coming from MS, it should hold up when I use it too. Otherwise you're just trying to insist on a context that best supports your argument. (And in that case I have two counter examples - one longer term, and one shorter).

      I'd say it is valid, and the way for Linux to make inroads is therefore to prove that it provides a larger net benefit over a period of time that can be meaningfully analysed, eg the life of a given PC. It's not necessarily one PC lifetime either; multiple investments could be considered, but the problem is predicting what investment decisions you'll be facing in 3 years, or whenever you next replace your PC. Compared to concrete data available today, predictions of the state of IT products in three years have very limited value.

      I should point out that one-off costs (eg converting from one OS to another) can be justified if, excluding them, an investment in a particular system produces a higher net benefit over its lifetime. E.g., a high cost of migrating from Windows to Linux wouldn't stop me doing it if Linux offered a substantially larger net benefit over the lifetime of my next PC, and this could reasonably be expected to continue to future PC investments. It would then be a matter of comparing the one-off costs with the estimated future benefit (at present value), which naturally becomes less and less meaningful the further into the future you go.

      All in all, the longer you can go the better, I just don't think it's reasonable to expect any degree of accuracy in predicting the overall value of multiple PC investments 10 years into the future, much less over a lifetime. After all, 10 years ago, Linux wouldn't have even been a factor in server investment decisions, but today it's one of the most important server OSes around. How meaningful, then, were 10-year server investment plans in 1995?

    43. Re:Three hundred percent? by NickFortune · · Score: 1
      I don't know...

      On the one side we have a company whose investors are accustomed to tremendous growth; one that finds the market for its product approaching saturation, and which has a track record of using its market dominance to force customers into unneeded and largely cosmetic changes.

      On the other hand we have a body of enterprise grade software, with no corporate imperative to make you pay anything at all.

      And you say you can't accurately predict the comparative costs beyond the lifetime of your current machine? It doesn't sound like something that requires superhuman foresight to me.

      What were you saying earlier about "irrational bias?"

      --
      Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
    44. Re:Three hundred percent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      I don't know...

      On the one side we have a company whose investors are accustomed to tremendous growth; one that finds the market for its product approaching saturation, and which has a track record of using its market dominance to force customers into unneeded and largely cosmetic changes.

      On the other hand we have a body of enterprise grade software, with no corporate imperative to make you pay anything at all.

      There are costs associated with any investment, and the absence of a particular cost (eg licensing fees for particular software) doesn't eliminate all the other costs. The system using software with licensing fees only has to either offer additional benefits or lower costs in other areas (and software licensing fees are a relatively insignificant part of the overall cost of a PC over its lifetime) to provide better net value overall. You can run around this issue all you want, but it won't go away.

      And you say you can't accurately predict the comparative costs beyond the lifetime of your current machine? It doesn't sound like something that requires superhuman foresight to me.

      Yes. Trying to predict the costs and benefits of a computer you plan to buy in six years and run for another three is an exercise in futility. The technology sector is far too dynamic for such predictions to be at all meaningful.

      In any case, it's difficult to see what you're trying to accomplish by arguing that investment decisions should be based on two or three PC purchase cycles instead of one. You've provided nothing to support the implicit suggestion that this would impact calculations of return on investment one way or the other.

      What were you saying earlier about "irrational bias?"

      You clearly think Linux is a better option for you than Windows. The question is, do you believe that Windows is, or can ever be, a better option that Linux? If so, you're agreeing with me. If not, it's quite obvious you're irrationally biased. Those of us who take the rational approach evaluate each PC purchase on its merits (net benefits over the expected lifetime), just like purchases of anything else.

    45. Re:Three hundred percent? by NickFortune · · Score: 1
      You clearly think Linux is a better option for you than Windows. The question is, do you believe that Windows is, or can ever be, a better option that Linux? If so, you're agreeing with me. If not, it's quite obvious you're irrationally biased. Those of us who take the rational approach evaluate each PC purchase on its merits (net benefits over the expected lifetime), just like purchases of anything else.

      As long as you stick to "ever can be" then we've never been in disagreement. Except maybe in so far as my belief that linux wins hands down over the long term. Since that's a scenario you refuse to consider, however, we can hardly disagree on it. I do have dificulties with your definition of irrational bias, at least to the extent that you seem to define it as not holding your opinion.

      Where we do disagree is the question of whether the TCO argument, as presented by Microsoft, holds water. Specifically, I doubt that the total lifetime of one piece of equipment is the most rational timescale to evaluate those costs. I might take your point regarding the limits of accurate forcasting, if you hadn't been at such pains to stress that financial costs are far from the only consideration. In any case, this does not seem to be a prediction that requires six sigma confidence.

      You've provided nothing to support the implicit suggestion that this would impact calculations of return on investment one way or the other.

      MS have a vested interest in forcing you to pay for the same software over and over. No such pressure exists for linux. With MS you're going to pay for each upgrade over and above the nominal cost. Such has been my experience, as discussed previously in this thread. I might just as well ask what evidence you have to suggest that you can accurately predict benefits over a single machine lifetime. Unless you have a working crystal ball, it's all guesswork in the end.

      The major advantage to considering TCO over a single machine lifetime would seem to be that it's the only time frame that accords MS's TCO argument even a shred of dignity. I expect we'll have to disagree on that. I trust we can do so without my being labeled as biased and irrational.

      But if not, we can always have a discussion about who precisely it was that appointed you the sole arbiter of rationality for Planet Earth, can't we?

      --
      Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
    46. Re:Three hundred percent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      As long as you stick to "ever can be" then we've never been in disagreement. Except maybe in so far as my belief that linux wins hands down over the long term. Since that's a scenario you refuse to consider, however, we can hardly disagree on it.

      I'm not refusing to consider it, just pointing out that: (a) it can't be predicted in any meaningful way; (b) it isn't how businesses make investment decisions (because of (a)); (c) you haven't provided any argument to support the notion that choosing the best value over each 2-4 year investment period isn't the best way to estimate which is the best value over multiple such cycles.

      I do have dificulties with your definition of irrational bias, at least to the extent that you seem to define it as not holding your opinion.

      No, not at all. If you refuse to consider the possibility that X can ever be better than Y, when both are changing rapidly, and could be completely different in five years to what they are today, that's irrational. It has nothing to do with my opinion of which is better or worse for a particular scenario today (nor with your opinion of of the same.).

      Where we do disagree is the question of whether the TCO argument, as presented by Microsoft, holds water. Specifically, I doubt that the total lifetime of one piece of equipment is the most rational timescale to evaluate those costs. I might take your point regarding the limits of accurate forcasting, if you hadn't been at such pains to stress that financial costs are far from the only consideration. In any case, this does not seem to be a prediction that requires six sigma confidence.

      If you'd like to say why, we can discuss it. Otherwise, it's just running in circles and obscuring the issue because presumably you think Microsoft can win an argument about TCO over the lifetime of an investment in one system, but for unexplained reasons not over the lifetime of multiple such investments.

      MS have a vested interest in forcing you to pay for the same software over and over. No such pressure exists for linux. With MS you're going to pay for each upgrade over and above the nominal cost.

      Upgrades are quite obviously part of the (normal) licensing cost, and are naturally factored into the total accounting costs over the period. The point is that the value has to be high enough to make these investments worthwhile. If you think people buying PCs with Windows are forgetting that they're going to have to pay for periodic upgrades, that may go some way towards explaining why you think they're making poor choices. The reailty is, however, any competent purchasing manager considers these sorts of things in great detail.

      Such has been my experience, as discussed previously in this thread. I might just as well ask what evidence you have to suggest that you can accurately predict benefits over a single machine lifetime. Unless you have a working crystal ball, it's all guesswork in the end.

      The evidence would come from the previous 2-4-year cycle. Even if you screw up once or twice, the estimates will tend to get more precise each time. Moreover, this is how *all* business investment is calculated, not just PCs, so people running businesses have to be fairly adept at estimating the costs and benefits of a given investment over its lifetime, or they'll be driven out of business by those who are better at it.

      The major advantage to considering TCO over a single machine lifetime would seem to be that it's the only time frame that accords MS's TCO argument even a shred of dignity. I expect we'll have to disagree on that. I trust we can do so without my being labeled as biased and irrational.

      No, the major advantage is that this is how businesses plan their investments! The key point you have to realise is that Microsoft didn't come up with the notion of calculating the net present value of all costs and benefits of an investment over its lifetime. Rather, that's very standard business practice for all

    47. Re:Three hundred percent? by NickFortune · · Score: 1
      If you can't provide a coherent argument as to why your argument is rational, and have to start dancing around notions of an 'arbiter of rationality' for the planet, I'd say that speaks for itself. If your argument is rational, you should be able to defend it.

      See? That's better already. Instead of proclaiming my irrational bias as fact, you've provided a coherent argument as to why you feel this might be the case. Perhaps we could proceed in this new spirit of mutuality?

      As for supporting my argument, I thought I had already laid out my position. Maybe I could have made myself clearer. Let's try a thought experiment.

      Suppose you are a small business and you have a hardware upgrade planned. You can choose MS or Linux. In the short term Linux can be available for free, while MS require new OS licences, and new licences for the Offcie suite. Linux wins if only this timescale is considered. Even MS do not dispuite this. Let's call this Timescale One.

      Timescale Two considers the total lifespan of the equipment. in this analysis we get to consider the costs of retraining staff and support people to use linux, possible migration issues, maybe a support contract with one of the commercial distros. Of course, these many of these same costs may apply for a migration, say, from 98SE to XP, and the cost of MS software licences still needs to be considered. It should also be noted that by ceasing to support a given OS, MS can pressure businesses to upgrading the version of windows in between planned hardare upgrades. This will again incurr licence costs for winodw, office and possible migration costs for the business as a whole. Similarly, if they have in house coding expertese, MS can inflict expense upon them by changing the implementation language as they recently did to VB. All that said, it is possible for MS to win over Timescale Two. This I do not dispute.

      Timescale Three is ongoing starting with the next upgrade. A linux shop has no new costs other than hardware. Maybe a new deal with a distro if they've changed architecures and want to use binary packages, but that's not essential. After three years as a Linux house they have the in house experience such that the retraining expense does not need to be repeated, nor the costs of migration. In all likelihood they don't have to change their software at all.

      With MS software however, the company pays the same costs as it did on the previous iteration. It retains the option to migrate to linux under the conditions already discussed, although the longer they remain with MS the more painful this migration may become due to increased entaglement of company data in proprietary formats and patchy supports for open standards. Nevertheless, the option remains open.

      With subsequent iterations the situation is the same. The MS shop incurrs the same costs again and again, while the linux shop does not. On Timescale Three, Linux wins.

      Timescale Two is very convenient for Microsoft because it allows them to misrepresent the one-time-only costs of migrating to linux as a repeating overhead similar in magnitude to those incurred by licencing MS software. However, as I hope I have persuaded you, it distorts the picture over the longer term. If you want to consider the matter on terms of opportunity cost, then the opportunity cost of choosing MS is being tied into another cycle of Microsofts predatory pricing and manipulation.

      It may well be the case that standard accounting practice only considers Timescale Two. I dare say that is very useful in most cases. However business is above all pragmatic, if for no other reason than that business that are not rarely succeed. If a buisiness practice ceases to reflect accurately the reality of the market, that practice gets modified or junked in place of something that works better.

      The open source movement is a new thing. It has never before been possible to create a commonwealth of resources that could be freely distributed at no disadvantage to anyone. A

      --
      Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
    48. Re:Three hundred percent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Perhaps the differences are mostly a matter of definitions. As I stated before, the net benefit is a matter of total benefit minus economic cost (accounting cost plus opportunity cost). This applies to all of your timescales, so I'll comment on each.

      Timescale 1:

      If the benefit of both groups of software is assumed to be exactly same (a very questionable assumption), then what matters is the economic cost. The cost of licensing fees for commercial software is obviously higher than for free software, but it isn't the only cost! There is also the cost of installing and configuring the software (either an accounting cost of paying someone to do it, or the opportunity cost of doing it instead of something else). Even on this very short-term basis (which would not be valid for business planning), assuming identical benefits from either choice, the licensing fees alone are not decisive. It is only if all the other costs/benefits are very close that licensing fees become decisive.

      Timescale 2:

      Here you run into a problem. A business making investment decisions would not consider one-off costs such as retraining staff to be part of the normal cost of the system. What would be considered would be the costs of running the system, including the cost of hardware, salaries to staff, etc. Retraining costs would be considered over the lifetime of the value of the new training (including expected retention time of employees), not over the lifetime of the current or next computer system.

      In the overall context of owning and running a system for, eg, three years, licensing fees are typically a very small part of the cost, with such things as staff salaries being far more important. Moreover, no matter how high the total costs are (licensing fees, hardware, salaries, electricity, space for the machines, etc.), they cannot be looked at in isolation. What matters is the benefit minus the cost; otherwise there would be no reason ever to invest in anything with a positive cost!

      Timescale 3:

      Once again, it is not only the hardware. There are costs that vary based on the OS (I'm not arguing here for one or the other, only that they vary), such as staff costs. The assumption that the benefit of different OSes is precisely the same is also not tenable, so a higher cost does not necessarily mean a lower net benefit. For example, in my environment, because of network economics, there are substantial benefits to me of using MS Windows and MS Office that would not be found in technically equivalent (or superior), but different, products.

      I don't think I'm really disagreeing with you so much here anyway. I would not consider one-off costs to be an investment in the computer system, but rather an investment in the employees being retrained. The timescales for such investments (computer system and employee training) would therefore be different, and each would have to be looked at on its merits. (Of course, the choice of computer system would have an impact on the training/retraining requirements, but the two would still be treated as separate investments.)

      If MS are trying to include one-off retraining costs as part of the normal cost of a system running Linux, over its lifetime, I don't think they'll fool many people. If they're rather saying the recurring costs of running a Windows system are lower than those of running a Linux system (or even marginally higher in the case of existing Windows customers where retraining costs would be very high), people will listen.

      Open source is a new thing, but it doesn't create something out of nothing. Just as commercial software firms have an interest in selling licences, those who fund development of supported open source systems have an interest in selling support services.

      At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if a firm invests in licences, external support services, in-house support services or even in-house development of bespoke software; whichever of the four provides the highest return on investment is

    49. Re:Three hundred percent? by NickFortune · · Score: 1
      If the benefit of both groups of software is assumed to be exactly same (a very questionable assumption), then what matters is the economic cost. The cost of licensing fees for commercial software is obviously higher than for free software, but it isn't the only cost! There is also the cost of installing and configuring the software (either an accounting cost of paying someone to do it, or the opportunity cost of doing it instead of something else).

      mmm... I've always granted you that MS apps (or apple, IBM or anyone else) can sometimes be the best choice for some particular circumstances. The trouble is that opportunity cost is intimately bound up with the goals and circumstances of the company or individual. It seems difficult to generalise given the inherent variation in opportunity cost, which in turn appears to be one of your points.

      And yet, Microsoft do generalise in their TCO argument. They say that Linux is more expensive than windows -- end of story. The only way to make such an analysis, even a fraudulent one such I believe this to be, is do disregard the opportunity cost and only consider the accounting cost.

      So I'm not sure I understand how you can defend their postion. Surely either they are wrong for not factoring in opportunity cost (which can't be done) or else analyses based purely on accounting cost are admissable, in which case my rebuttal is valid.

      Of course, this assumes intellectual honesty on the part of the MS marketing team. I'll come back to that.

      Timescale 2:

      [...]

      In the overall context of owning and running a system for, eg, three years, licensing fees are typically a very small part of the cost, with such things as staff salaries being far more important.

      I've skipped over the issue of oportunity cost here, because they'd essentially be a rehash of those given for Timescale One

      The staff salaries issue is a part of the argument that I've not so far addressed. MS contend that the cost of linux support personelle is higher because the skills are rarer. The opposing argument, which I cannot personally verify, is that you need fewer linux support staff because the system is prone to fewer systemic errors than windows.

      What I can verify is that demand for linux personell is on the increase. As a contractor, I've seen demand for linux jobs increase over the last two years from "never hear of it" to "I understand you have linux experience".

      Where there is demand, people will position themselves to satisfy it. And as the body of linux literate staff rises, so the costs of employing them will go down. Given all that, it doesn't seem reasonable to assume that staff costs for linux, if they are in fact higher, will remain that way.

      As for electricity and machine room space, I think we can safely regard them as being equal for TCO purposes. I can't think of a single application that windows can do on a generic beige box but which requires Big Iron to do under linux. (Or vice versa, though I'm inclined to believe that scenario more readily :))

      Timescale 3:

      Once again, it is not only the hardware. There are costs that vary based on the OS (I'm not arguing here for one or the other, only that they vary), such as staff costs. The assumption that the benefit of different OSes is precisely the same is also not tenable, so a higher cost does not necessarily mean a lower net benefit.

      Benefits are like opportunity cost - highly relative and effecively proof against generalisation.

      If MS are trying to include one-off retraining costs as part of the normal cost of a system running Linux, over its lifetime, I don't think they'll fool many people. If they're rather saying the recurring costs of running a Windows system are lower than those of running a Linux system (or even marginally higher in the case of existing Windows customers where retraining costs would be very high), people will listen

      --
      Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
    50. Re:Three hundred percent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      And yet, Microsoft do generalise in their TCO argument. They say that Linux is more expensive than windows -- end of story. The only way to make such an analysis, even a fraudulent one such I believe this to be, is do disregard the opportunity cost and only consider the accounting cost.

      The purpose of Microsoft marketing is obviously to sell licences, but it must have some coherence, or it will have no effect. The marketing I've seem from them (which is not much) has had some coherence: it has focussed on accounting costs of running a Windows versus a Linux server for a given number of years, and included numbers with and without training/conversion costs. In some of the scenarios, Windows was cheaper to run, whilst in others, it was more expensive (you can guess which was the larger group ;) ). In a few of the scenarios, Windows was about the same or marginally more expensive to run, but it would have taken decades to recover the retraining costs (ie too far into the future to be meaningful). Naturally it was designed to put Windows in the best light, but my impression was that it would have provided useful input to a purchasing manager, in constructing an investment analysis for a specific case, and this probably what it was intended to do.

      Mind you, I didn't analyse every aspect of the MS-sponsored TCO study I read, and so I can't defend or refute it. On a general level, however, the methodology looked reasonably sound.

      So I'm not sure I understand how you can defend [Microsoft's] postion.

      I haven't been trying to defend Microsoft's position per se. :) I've been saying all along that each investment has to be considered individually, and that it's irrational to assume before doing such an analysis that Microsoft software will never be the best solution (and the same applies to Linux or anything else).

      The staff salaries issue is a part of the argument that I've not so far addressed. MS contend that the cost of linux support personelle is higher because the skills are rarer. The opposing argument, which I cannot personally verify, is that you need fewer linux support staff because the system is prone to fewer systemic errors than windows.

      I'm not trying to support the Microsoft argument! The main point I've been trying to make is that a lower accounting cost for a particular aspect of an investment doesn't mean a better value, and that licensing costs are typically a small part of the equation. This also supports my argument that each investment should be considered individually.

      Where there is demand, people will position themselves to satisfy it. And as the body of linux literate staff rises, so the costs of employing them will go down. Given all that, it doesn't seem reasonable to assume that staff costs for linux, if they are in fact higher, will remain that way.

      To some extent, but it's all too unpredictable to be of much use in specific investment decisions. It can equally be argued, for example, that if Linux were to start gaining market share from Windows, it would put upward pressure on wages for Linux administrators, and downward pressure on wages for Windows administrators.

      As for electricity and machine room space, I think we can safely regard them as being equal for TCO purposes.

      Probably so, but for a corporation with a large number of machines, power consumption for PCs adds up to a lot, so better power management software can actually make a difference.

      You can pay for a support contract with RedHat, or Novell, or you could employ someone like myself, or you could develop your own expertise in house. And if one of those options isn't working, you can change.

      It isn't all that different with Microsoft. Naturally there is only one supplier for the OS itself, but the direct relationship is usually with a systems vendor like Siemens, Dell, IBM, HP, etc, who each have the ability to influence Microsoft. There is also a lot of vari

    51. Re:Three hundred percent? by NickFortune · · Score: 1
      I'm not trying to support the Microsoft argument!

      Well, it looks like we've been arguing at cross purposes then.

      I had a look at the Get The Facts site. In its current incarnation at least, it's a lot less one sided than I'd been led to believe. On the other hand there's no shortage of headlines with MS marketing chief saying that "windows wins every time" and citing the site to support his assertion, so maybe its not too surprising that I got the wrong end of the stick.

      It isn't all that different with Microsoft. Naturally there is only one supplier for the OS itself, but the direct relationship is usually with a systems vendor like Siemens, Dell, IBM, HP, etc, who each have the ability to influence Microsoft. There is also a lot of variety in device drivers, applications, development tools, etc. OS crashes/hangs, for example, are almost always caused by device drivers, so if the PC vendor doesn't offer reliable drivers, you can switch.

      Try getting a version of windows without explorer :)

      Being serious, the tight integration of the MS desktop seems to be the source of most of their security woes. Features that would have been really cool in an offline world turn out to be a liability in the context of the internet.

      I'd like a version of windows that ran on top of a dos prompt again, so I could run a different window manager. That'll never happen. one reason MS went nuts about netscape was that they feared netscape would evolve into a desktop environment and they'd lose that level of control.

      I'd like a registry that didn't encrypt half its information. Hell, I'd like to go back to config files I could read and edit and which never filled up or got corrupted. I'd like ... well you get the picture. I've also wandered out of the context of support.

      At the end of the day though, it's the same story. With Microsoft you get what you're given. With Linux, you choose. Not having those options is part of the opportunity cost of choosing MS. Well, to me, at least :)

      As for the OEMs, I wouldn't rate small buisness' chances of motivating Dell as much higher that MS. On the other hand there are open source drivers for a lot of devices now. Intel themselves released the drivers for the IPW2100 wifi chips. Others have been reverse engineered, some now work better than the vendor supplied drivers. You have to do a bit of reearch first, but that should be part of the planning process.

      Renting can actually be better if the money that would have been invested in the house can be put to use in a way that generates a higher return. Yup, and a lot of large businesses rent property for corporate hospitality because they don't want to have to set up department specially to maintain the premises.

      But if you could buy outright, I'd guess that you would. A business venture might come along to tempt you to chance the capital elsewhere, but property is still the best long term investment you're going to make. Like Mark Twain said "Buy land, they've stopped making it."

      I still believe that long term, windows represents a poor choice for anyone. I understand why you don't share that view. Still, if I had to give a lng term recommendation, it would always be open source.

      --
      Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
    52. Re:Three hundred percent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Game servers run better on Windows? We had a local LAN party, and there was the usual problem - the guy who runs the server gets lousy framerate (not Windows fault), and if his PC crashes, the game ends. Not a good thing. A dedicated server would be nice, but noone had an extra machine. As I was running on Linux, I thought: "Hey, a dedicated server is just an other process... Linux can multitask for real". I started the dedicated server, then launched the game. Server: 127.0.0.1, Connect. The game ran perfectly, no slowdowns like with the normal in-game server, and if the game crashed (which it didn't, but I did get tired of playing and closed the game), the server kept running. The local Windows guys couldn't even imagine that this would be possible.

    53. Re:Three hundred percent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I understand your arguments, but here is where I think that you're wrong: You're not talking about people who are new to computers, you're talking about people who are already used to the Microsoft way of doing things. Like yourself. You think the Microsoft way is easy, but that's only because you have learned that way over several years.

      For a new user it's different. Windows is not easy to use, things are hidden in illogical places, and lots of things have stupid defaults that can only be changed in deeply nested dialog boxes or even the registry. One simple (and old) example: The button you use to turn OFF the computer is labelled "START". Yes, that one was new when Windows 95 was out. That doesn't make it irrelevant to a new user. You have had 10 years to learn to click start when you mean stop, but a new user hasn't. To him, a button labelled "start" would be the last thing to try for turning off the system. Probably someplace after the power button, ripping out the power cable, and throwing a bucket of water on the case (hey, it works for "turning off" a fire).

      This is not the only example, it's just the most obvious one. Personally I started with Windows 3.11, and am now on Windows XP, where I do VB.NET development. I still have problems with finding simple things that have been hidden deeply in the control panel or elsewhere, or sometimes even the registry. Simple things. Not complex operations that only a programmer would do, but things that I'd expect a new user to get just as frustrated when he couldn't find as I do when I can't.

    54. Re:Three hundred percent? by Decaff · · Score: 1

      They brought computing to the mass market

      No they didn't. Computing for the masses started way before MS-DOS, with systems like Tandy and Commodore computers in the 70s. MS-DOS was just one of several possibilities for an OS to run on the IBM PC in the 80s. The real step forward was in terms of hardware, with PC-clones like Amstrad and Compaq bringing cheap computers. The OS was secondary, as there were other alternatives shipped with these machines, such as DR-DOS and GEM.

      which in turn drove costs of computing down so that assholes like you can keep your pissant job.

      Microsoft keeping prices down? This is the company that has been subject to legal action about over-pricing.

  3. Easy by green+pizza · · Score: 5, Informative

    Out of the box Apache doesn't do too well. But take some time tuning it, and your OS's TCP/IP stack, and you can easily outperform even Zeus. Read some of the tuning guides.

    1. Re:Easy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Does IIS have to be tweaked like this?

    2. Re:Easy by zeromemory · · Score: 4, Informative

      Furthermore, IIS performs better than Apache under light to moderate loads. Once you start moving to heavy loads, IIS begins to choke and eventually just can't handle any more clients. Apache just happily continues running.

      However, this might be more an effect of the underlying operating system than the actual server program. I haven't seen a comparison of Win32 Apache versus IIS, so I don't know.

    3. Re:Easy by Trejkaz · · Score: 2, Funny

      Nope, IIS is naturally slow and unable to be tweaked at all. :-)

      --
      Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
    4. Re:Easy by dtfinch · · Score: 4, Insightful

      IIS was heavily tweaked for this benchmark. But for most uses, both IIS and apache are fast enough out of the box.

    5. Re:Easy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Apache just magically keeps going, and going, and going, and going...

      Hey jackass, eventually Apache will his its MAX_CLIENTS too.

    6. Re:Easy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, IIS chokes under heavy loads, thats why Microsoft.com is always going down.

    7. Re:Easy by Electrum · · Score: 1

      But take some time tuning it, and your OS's TCP/IP stack, and you can easily outperform even Zeus.

      You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. Apache uses a single thread / process per connection. Zeus multiplexes all connections in a single (or multiple, one per CPU) process. Zeus and any similarly architected server will always outperform Apache.

      Apache works well for a lot of things, but speed isn't one of them. Even if the test was fair, I wouldn't be surprised if IIS is faster than Apache. A comparison to Zeus or lighttpd would be better.

      A good starting place to learn about server architecture is The C10k problem page.

    8. Re:Easy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, that is why microsoft.com needs a thousand servers where 100 Linux boxes would do the same job better.

    9. Re:Easy by WMD_88 · · Score: 1

      Microsoft.com is proxied by Akami. I wouldn't be surprised if MS themselves used only one box.

  4. Questions by atfrase · · Score: 1

    Questions: 1) Is there any reason to believe the results from this company would be valid "this time", if they never were before? 2) Can we please refrain from common basic grammar mistakes on the front page? 'There' is not a posessive...

    1. Re:Questions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Can we please refrain from common basic grammar mistakes on the front page

      Yeah everyone, better listen up to the grammar nazi. Before posting your message on slashdot, be sure to run it through a spell and grammar checker to be sure to catch any typeohs or goofupz. Woodint wansta pyss offs teh grammah nazees!

      Seriously, could the grammar nazis find an english lit website to go to and spend their time anal probing each others casual messages there instead of here? Kinda of sick of it.

    2. Re:Questions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I would have got him on misspelling the word "possessive" but I kind of agree with him. People who can't differentiate "there" and "their" tend to hack me off too.

    3. Re:Questions by StuffJustHappens · · Score: 1

      Basic grammar mistakes drive me mad too - I half expect to see "new's for nerd's" on the front page at times.

      --
      --What's this sig thing all about then? Should I have one?
    4. Re:Questions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      their, there, they're

      your, you're

      If you're proficient at typing/writing, you don't think about how you want the word to look on the page/screen, it just flows from your brain to your hand. Unless you're some kind of savant, the inner monologue in your brain is something akin to a conversation you're having with yourself, ie, what ends up the the screen/page comes from the _sound_ that the word makes, not its visual appearance. Thus, from your brain's point of view, "you're" is as good as "your" and "their" is as good as "there" is as good as "they're", because they sound the same, and in context it is not ambiguous. This, however, doesn't excuse the lazyness of failing to proof-read your post. It doesn't take that long.

    5. Re:Questions by natd · · Score: 1
      To start with, "their" and "there" aren't pronounced the same. Not that that is in the least an excuse anyway.

      You may as well suggest 'ure' us as good as 'your'.

      --
      Only big ligs use sigs.
    6. Re:Questions by natd · · Score: 1

      (and my typo of 'us' for 'is' can presumably be excused if I say I have a Kiwi accent.....)

      --
      Only big ligs use sigs.
    7. Re:Questions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In standard (British) English, 'there' and 'their' are pronounced identically. The same holds for standard American English, so if you pronounce the two differently, it's a feature of your dialect, and not something generally applicable to speakers of English.

    8. Re:Questions by natd · · Score: 1

      I missed this at the time, but if this thread is still being read, I say 'bollocks'. It's impossible for me to explain the difference here, but they hboth have a subtle difference.

      --
      Only big ligs use sigs.
  5. "...the test was commisioned by Microsoft" by SlashChick · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Let's see. A test commissioned by Microsoft says IIS is faster than Apache. The link for more information goes to microsoft.com. Is this really "news"? Seems more like a thinly-disguised press release...

    1. Re:"...the test was commisioned by Microsoft" by green+pizza · · Score: 1

      Seems more like a thinly-disguised press release...

      s/press release/troll

    2. Re:"...the test was commisioned by Microsoft" by Begossi · · Score: 1

      Slow day on slashdot. Pretty much any crap gets greenlighted for the first page.

      --
      Friend of the Wise, Brother of the Brave.
    3. Re:"...the test was commisioned by Microsoft" by august+sun · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Can we please for once be mature about it and look at their methodology objectively? I'll even grant that because it was commisioned by MS a little extra scrutiny is certainly due; but summarily discarding the study simply for this reason is the intellectual equivalent of sticking our fingers in our ears and screaming "lalalalalala" at the top of our lungs.

    4. Re:"...the test was commisioned by Microsoft" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's not a slow day, that's a _normal_ day.

    5. Re:"...the test was commisioned by Microsoft" by HomeworkJunkie · · Score: 1

      Maybe people are tired of hearing the same old FUD. I dunno. It seems like we are arguing with trolls that are working in a similar way to the anti-science and anti-evolution brigade: http://users.pandora.be/vdmoortel/dirk/Physics/Imm ortalFumbles.html/

      (if the above URL has a space in the word Immortal, don't blame me :) It looks fine in the comment, but the preview puts a space in. Anyone know why?)

      They say/do something that goads people into flaming them and then they turn around and say that you're abusive and cannot argue reasonably.

      They won't listen to reasoned argument because the're set in their ways and blinkered to other possible arguments or they have something to gain from putting down your side of an argument, whether it be tecnological (as in web server performance) or scientific (as in evolution).

      --
      "Why take life seriously, you're not coming out of it alive anyway."
    6. Re:"...the test was commisioned by Microsoft" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I stick my penis in your mom's mouth and she screams "lalalalalala" and I really like it.

      What gives, son?

    7. Re:"...the test was commisioned by Microsoft" by cranos · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Um okay I did the "mature" thing and checked out the report. The report is two years old and compares an RC version of w2k3/IIS6 against an old version of Redhat AS/Apache thus rendering it completely useless for doing an evaluation today. Not only that but it neglects to compare against other linux distributions such as SUSE or Mandrake thus rendering the "Windows better than Linux" claims deceptive at best.

    8. Re:"...the test was commisioned by Microsoft" by jmv · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The thing with benchmarks is that when they're made by an organisation you can trust, you don't really have to dig the details (and there are always some details you won't see). If I have to dig through everything, I might as well do the benchmark myself! Now, looking at a benchmark sponsored by Microsoft is like reading a study on climate written by an oil company, a study on health by a tobacco company... or even a Linux-Windows benchmark done by RedHat (although I trust RH a bit more than MS).

      The only benchmark by MS which I might trust is one saying Windows is slower and/or worse than Linux. Somehow, I never saw any of those.

    9. Re:"...the test was commisioned by Microsoft" by X0563511 · · Score: 1

      Slashdot adds a space every set number of unbroken characters. This is because people used to put huge unbroken lines to make the screen scroll over to the side for miles.

      --
      For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
    10. Re:"...the test was commisioned by Microsoft" by Mad+Merlin · · Score: 1
      (if the above URL has a space in the word Immortal, don't blame me :) It looks fine in the comment, but the preview puts a space in. Anyone know why?)

      Slash(?:code|dot) chops up any long strings of characters without spaces in them so that they have spaces in them. This is so that trolls can't mess with the page format (as easily) by putting in exceedingly long lines. There are a number of other components to the lameness filter that you'll probably stumble across sooner or later.

    11. Re:"...the test was commisioned by Microsoft" by satmech · · Score: 1
    12. Re:"...the test was commisioned by Microsoft" by 1u3hr · · Score: 2, Informative
      (if the above URL has a space in the word Immortal, don't blame me :) It looks fine in the comment, but the preview puts a space in. Anyone know why?)

      Trolls used to put long strings in which would stretch the page way over.

      Learn how to use HTML links; like ImmortalFumbles that, which you code like

      <a href="http://users.pandora.be/vdmoortel/dirk/Physi cs/ImmortalFumbles.html">ImmortalFumbles</a>

      (Slashdot will iinsert spaces in this of course.)

      Also, your original URL had a trailing / which made it bad.

    13. Re:"...the test was commisioned by Microsoft" by chthon · · Score: 1

      A study paid for by a company, touting that companies product as the best, is just a commercial.

      In some magazines and TV you sometimes see (here in Europe (Belgium and Holland)) in a small type "Commercial information".

      I think it is frowned upon to pose such things as not being commercial, I think that it would even be possible to file a complaint against such things.

    14. Re:"...the test was commisioned by Microsoft" by august+sun · · Score: 1
      Now, looking at a benchmark sponsored by Microsoft is like reading a study on climate written by an oil company, a study on health by a tobacco company... or even a Linux-Windows benchmark done by RedHat (although I trust RH a bit more than MS).

      That's just the thing, the source shouldn't matter at all. I don't care if it's the CEO of Texaco telling me that all alternative fuels are crap. His statement will stand or fall on its own merits, regardless of his vested interest in the matter. His being the CEO of Texaco has zero bearing on the soundess of his argument. Granted this is idealized and as a practical matter it's usually wise to give closer scrutiny to those with a proverbial pony in the race. It is, however, ludicrous to discard their claims on this basis alone as some are wont to do around these parts for anything bearing a MS emblem.

    15. Re:"...the test was commisioned by Microsoft" by GISGEOLOGYGEEK · · Score: 1

      On behalf of every windows hater here (well, its slashdot so that's everyone) ....

      lalalalalallalalala!

      I can't hear you!

      --
      George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
    16. Re:"...the test was commisioned by Microsoft" by Alsee · · Score: 1

      The only benchmark by MS which I might trust is one saying Windows is slower and/or worse than Linux. Somehow, I never saw any of those.

      Prosser: That depends where you were looking
      Arthur: I eventually had to go down to the cellar...
      Prosser: That's the display department
      Arthur: ...with a torch
      Prosser: Ah, the lights had probably gone
      Arthur: So had the stairs
      Prosser: But you found the notice, didn't you?
      Arthur: Yes. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard".

      -

      --
      - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
    17. Re:"...the test was commisioned by Microsoft" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You missed your closing '/'.

      Shame on you.

    18. Re:"...the test was commisioned by Microsoft" by tjstork · · Score: 3, Interesting

      They are looking at the methodology objectively and have in the past. The deal is that MS keeps rolling out this same study, using the same methodology, and it isn't true.

      a) they use a slower kind of encryption on the apache side, which makes apache seem slower.

      b) they use a 2003 version of Red Hat with a 2.6 kernal whereas Linux is now up to a newer version.

      c) they make other tuning decisions for the RH they do use in order to slow it down, and to speed Microsoft up.

      In short, the test is rigged so that MS wins and Linux loses. It is that simple.

      --
      This is my sig.
    19. Re:"...the test was commisioned by Microsoft" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks for the info :) You live and learn.

      As far as the traliing / is concerned, I took the example on the Post Comment page as they way it should be entered :D

    20. Re:"...the test was commisioned by Microsoft" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That which I tell you three times is true: kernel! kernel! KERNEL!

    21. Re:"...the test was commisioned by Microsoft" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      U r so smart. keep posting obvious shit to the internets and wait for your job to be outsourced to some sand nigger who doesn't waste time at his job.

      How about that you penny wise-pound foolish arrogant nerds.

    22. Re:"...the test was commisioned by Microsoft" by tjstork · · Score: 1

      You know I've been mispelling it for twenty years and I'm almost so frigging old that I may just never change! :-)

      --
      This is my sig.
    23. Re:"...the test was commisioned by Microsoft" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's like a database performance benchmark done by MySQL. Oh wait, you dumbass motherfuckers always tout that shit.

    24. Re:"...the test was commisioned by Microsoft" by Master+of+Transhuman · · Score: 1


      That's because it's easy to believe that a stripped-down DBMS without half the features of Oracle would be faster than Oracle.

      Excuse me, but it's hard to believe a bloated, complicated, over-featured piece of shit like Windows 2003 Server can possibly run faster than ANY even-slightly-bloated version of Linux.

      I will admit that if they were comparing Windows GUI to KDE, that Windows might actually be faster - given that I was downloading babe pictures from the Net the other night via FireFox on Mandrake 10.1, and it was taking 15-20 seconds to save a freaking image file, whereas FireFox on Windows can do it in a couple seconds... I dunno, might have been something wrong with either KDE on my system or the Linux version of FireFox...

      --
      Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
    25. Re:"...the test was commisioned by Microsoft" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      The only benchmark by MS which I might trust is one saying Windows is slower and/or worse than Linux. Somehow, I never saw any of those.

      This just released: Windows "Total Time until Crash" benchmark results slower than Linux!

      How's that for spin?

    26. Re:"...the test was commisioned by Microsoft" by omb · · Score: 1

      Yeh, we can be mature Mr Astroturfer, but patient
      with this _CRAP_ no.

      We have seen M$ run biased comparisons again, and
      again and again, and debunked them. Most journalists and even many PHBs are up to speed.

      I asked a CIO in a F50 company who tried to suggest IIS based servers if he would agree to support them and resign if they crashed under load, and his answer was to notice an urgent appointment elsewhere, the CEO then asked a few pointed questions, and I suspect they will soon have a new CIO anyway.

      It is much too late to fight on security, performance or cost, M$ you lost.

    27. Re:"...the test was commisioned by Microsoft" by Negativeions101 · · Score: 0

      You can discard this study based on that reason... becasue 1) historically it's been done time and time again by Microsoft and pretty blatantly. Ignoring shit like this should be a knee jerk reaction by now. 2) Who gives a shit. It's useless information. No one's life depends on this. That's only one aspect of running a server. People can find out for themselves if they want to anyways. Some people have already explained why it's bogus, IIS was heavily tweaked and Veritest basically only compares 3DES+SHA1 with RC4+MD5.

      --

      I'm not anti-microsoft. I'm anti-bullshit. Which means I'm anti-microsoft.
    28. Re:"...the test was commisioned by Microsoft" by 1u3hr · · Score: 1
      As far as the traliing / is concerned, I took the example on the Post Comment page as they way it should be entered :D

      They wrote "URL:http://example.com/", which will load the default page at that domain, usually index.html. When you specify an actual page (such as one ending in htm or html, and other suffixes) DON'T add a final /. In fact, a final / will be assumed in most cases when needed, so if in doubt, omit it; and use the preview and click on the link ther to see if it works (either in a new window or go back to your submission after checking).

    29. Re:"...the test was commisioned by Microsoft" by prisoner-of-enigma · · Score: 1

      a) they use a slower kind of encryption on the apache side, which makes apache seem slower.

      This is a problem and has been noted as such.

      b) they use a 2003 version of Red Hat with a 2.6 kernal whereas Linux is now up to a newer version.

      There's a reason the test used RHEL instead of a something like FC3, namely one of support. If you're going to compare apples to apples in the enterprise space, no company is going to deploy an unsupported (yes, unsupported, as in "there's no support desk to call if you have problems") Linux distro. Right now, RHEL is the most widespread, best supported Linux distro out there, and it's still on the 2.4 tree. If you don't like the comparison, lobby RH to hurry up and move RHEL to the 2.6 tree, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with comparing the most modern supported Linux distribution against Microsoft's most modern supported OS.

      c) they make other tuning decisions for the RH they do use in order to slow it down, and to speed Microsoft up.

      You're implying a conspiracy here that I don't think exists. While it may be true that Windows was heavily tweaked for performance, it is not necessarily true that Apache was "slowed down." I don't see anything done to purposefully hurt Apache performance except for the encryption issue above. It is possible, however, that many Apache tweaks were not done, tweaks that might've helped Apache's score. This is not sabotaging Apache as you suggest, it is neglect. Even if it's intentional neglect, it's not sabotage.

      --
      In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  6. *ahem* by SynapseLapse · · Score: 2, Informative

    Veritest used webbench to do their testing.

    1. Re:*ahem* by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, "Veritest used webbench to do that there testing."

    2. Re:*ahem* by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, informative. I love it. This is english class folks, letS all wastez our mods pointes modding up grammar corrections.

    3. Re:*ahem* by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If this is an english class, it's in grade two.

      By the way you're a goddamn idiot

    4. Re:*ahem* by Mr.+Bad+Example · · Score: 1

      > Veritest used webbench to do their testing.

      There wolf.
      There castle.
      There Veritest testing.

      Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you wanted to talk that way.

  7. Ahem... from the Article by Evro · · Score: 5, Informative
    Microsoft Windows Server 2003 vs. Linux
    Competitive File Server Performance
    Comparison


    Test report prepared under contract from Microsoft

    Executive summary
    Microsoft commissioned VeriTest, a
    division of Lionbridge Technologies,
    Inc., to conduct a series of tests
    comparing the File serving
    performance of the following server
    operating system configurations
    running on a variety of server
    hardware and processor
    configurations:


    At least they're up-front about it these days.

    Other Veritest-Microsoft fun:

    http://www.veritest.com/clients/reports/microsoft/
    http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/facts /analyses/default.mspx
    http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/compare/veritest.asp x - .NET versus Java

    In short, this is a company paid by Microsoft to make reports/whitepapers that make Microsoft look good. Nothing wrong with that as long as everyone's aware

    --
    rooooar
    1. Re:Ahem... from the Article by team99parody · · Score: 2, Insightful
      At least they're up-front about it these days.

      I think they realized that the CXOs and other execs who make the big decisions never read the fine print anyway; and such disclaimers will never make the headline or a large-font pull-quote in any such marketing literature, so there's no harm in being up-front about it.

      Even fake grass-roots efforts (astroturfing) can be done openly these days.

      Oh, and to get on the Team99-bloggers-good side, I just wanted to say that Longhorn is so stunningly awesomely good that Microsoft won't have to resort to this kind of silly FUD once longhorn is released.

  8. Hmmm... by guaigean · · Score: 1

    "Since the test was commisioned by Microsoft, is this just more FUD from a company with a long history?" Did you expect anything less from our global propaganda machine?

    --
    Microsoft Sucks, F/OSS Rocks. I get mod points now right?
  9. Exactly what did the test CGI with? by bloodbob · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Notice the total lack of the CGI script?

  10. I run both at work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And the results are interesting. The Gentoo server doesn't perform nearly as fast as the Windows Server for most basic serving tasks. But software like Exchange Server is so badly written that it's much slower than postfix.

    It's sad. If the same people writing 2k3 were writing products like Exchange, we wouldn't have a need for the Linux server.

    1. Re:I run both at work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm sorry, but how do you compare postfix against exchange? one is a MTA, and the other is a fully featured collab setup.. shared calendars on postfix? public folders on postfix? I'm not trying to be a MS fanboy here.. but at least lets not stoop to their levels and come up with biased comparisons..

    2. Re:I run both at work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most Exchange customers only use it for e-mail. Group collab is NOT widely implemented. That being said, it's a far comparison.

    3. Re:I run both at work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, no its not. But done the fanboi glasses for a second and you will see it isn't.

    4. Re:I run both at work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But software like Exchange Server is so badly written that it's much slower than postfix.

      I'm sorry, did you just compare Exchange server to postfix? LOL.

    5. Re:I run both at work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What's the funny part? That Exchange is a security nightmare vs Postfix's long track record of extreme security? I agree Exchange is a joke; but the speed comparison still seems fair.

    6. Re:I run both at work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't you mean "If the people writing Apache/Samba/whatever-service-you're-using-Gentoo- for were writing products like Postfix we wouldn't have a need for the Windows server"? It sure seems a more practical way to go.

    7. Re:I run both at work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Extra window dressing has nothing to do with the efficiency of processing mail.

      Unless you're telling me that all email gets routed through some kind of Lotus-Notesish groupware stuff - in which case it's not just slow, it's broken architecturally.

    8. Re:I run both at work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That made no sense. Put the fanboy glasses on and you will see you are wrong? What?

      And it's don, not done.

    9. Re:I run both at work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Erm.

      You're comparing apples to oranges to pears to guavas.

      How the fuck did a comment like this get modded Insightful?

    10. Re:I run both at work by aztracker1 · · Score: 1

      Have to say, in my own experience IIS5 and 6 are pretty nice to use, and run pretty well for win2003. On the flip side, I haven't looked at exchange much at all since v5.5, and if you've ever seen exchange eat itself, it isn't pretty... IIS Good.. Exchange BAD... MS-SQL good if you have the need, and funding, otherwise postgres...

      --
      Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
    11. Re:I run both at work by AndrewRUK · · Score: 1
      The Gentoo server doesn't perform nearly as fast as the Windows Server...
      <blatent anti-gentooism>
      Well, of course, because the Windows system isn't spending half its time recompiling everything.
      </blatent anti-gentooism>
    12. Re:I run both at work by StormReaver · · Score: 0, Troll

      I also run both at work. Lets run down the list:

      1) Web serving.

      Windows required 4 people to maintain one server. 1-5 reboots per day, several leaked gigs of RAM per day. 100% load with 4 browser connections, continuous and massive disk usage after running for less than an hour. Dead upon the 5th connection.

      When we switch to Linux:

      Red Hat maintained by 1 person (me). 1 reboot whenever a new kernel is released, never at any other time. Insignificant load (barely measurable) with 50 simultaneous connections. Most RAM still listed as unused. Hard drive largely inactive during even peak usage.

      This is on the exact same machine.

      2) DHCP+DNS

      Windows routinely gives out conflicting addresses. A staff of 6 talented Windows admins couldn't get Dynamic DNS updates working in a pure Microsoft setup. Admin spent at least an hour a day forcing reissues and fixing conflicts. Time to issue addresses was 10-30 seconds each. DHCP server rebooted 2-3 times per week when it got hopelessly conflicted.

      When we switched to Linux:

      Linux DHCP server automatically detected IP conflicts and forced reissue of conficting addresses. Maintained by 1 person (me). Time to issue addresses is between 1-2 seconds each. Dynamic DNS updates configured in one hour (including time to research it since I'd never encountered it before). Rebooted only to physically relocate the machine (which required unplugging it). Never issues a conflicting dynamic address.

      We experience similar patterns with most of our other Windows and Linux machines.

      3) File+Print serving

      This is where Windows is at its least worst, and actually performs somewhat respectably. While print issues are common when compared to Samba, they are managable.

      In all cases, though, Samba does both much faster and more reliably. Unfortunately, Windows does this well enough that we haven't yet done any wholesale replacements.

      Fortunately, we getting a couple more Linux machines to host additional services we're offering, and we have limited rack space. Management is going to want to consolidate servers, and the spare cycles on one of our Linux machines is likely going to be used to replace both the Windows print servers and the file servers.

      It's completely laughable to suggest that Windows is faster than Linux. My experiences with fully patched and tweaked Windows installs versus mostly default installs of Linux (the main configuration being to disable unneeded services) is that Windows doesn't even come close. Linux usually outperforms Windows by a factor of 10.

    13. Re:I run both at work by antiMStroll · · Score: 1

      How did this get marked troll while the grandparent, an obvious and funny example of the real thing (love the Gentoo touch!) gets modded up? Balmer, quit surfing and get back to your desk!

    14. Re:I run both at work by Master+of+Transhuman · · Score: 1


      The Windows trolls moderators are at work again today, I see. No time to take the weekend off, eh?

      This guy reports what is obviously his experience at a given company, and he gets modded "troll"?

      Gimme a break.

      I'm learning Windows 2003 Server this semester at City College of San Francisco. My teacher in a LAB SETTING can't keep the product from doing weird shit - and he's an experienced Windows sys admin who does consulting as his primary job. (He and I like to go round and round, to the class's amusement, about which is better - Windows or Linux. He's a good guy - just doesn't know Linux.)

      --
      Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
  11. IIS is always faster. by Bug-Y2K · · Score: 5, Funny

    Faster to get infected.
    Faster to get rooted.
    Faster to get used as a warez server.

    Nothing new here.

    1. Re:IIS is always faster. by vcv · · Score: 2, Funny

      I assume you've never used IIS 6.0 which has been out for 2 years. Very very secure, easily arguable moreso than apache.

      But why would you believe that? I mean it's not like it's easy to find out..

    2. Re:IIS is always faster. by stewwy · · Score: 1

      I agree that the first two points are a negative for M$
      but surely the last is a positive point?
      at least M$ is getting their software to their marketplace

    3. Re:IIS is always faster. by team99parody · · Score: 5, Informative
      "I assume you've never used IIS 6.0 .... Very very secure, easily arguable moreso than apache."

      You're shooting for a Funny mod, right? The biggest "advancement" in IIS 6 is that instead of IIS 5.X that that ran 100% in user-mode, IIS 6.X runs as a kernel module

      With IIS 6, everything changes. To start with, there's a new piece of kernel mode software: Http.sys. This driver, written by Microsoft, is responsible for receiving all IIS-bound TCP/IP traffic from the TCP/IP stack. Running in kernel mode gives the new driver a huge speed advantage
      Which is a cute trick for gaining performance at the expense of security (kinda like the various Linux kernel-web-servers like khttpd).

      "But why would you believe that? I mean it's not like it's easy to find out.."

      Indeed you are correct that it's not easy to find out. Leading security sites all report that it is NOT more secure as you allege. For example, the current rating of IIS 6report from Secunia, (one of the top couple security companies as opposed to merely your anecdotal rumor:

      "Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 6 with all vendor patches installed and all vendor workarounds applied, is currently affected by one or more Secunia advisories rated Moderately critical
      "
      In contrast, Apache 2.X has the much better rating: "Apache 2.0.x with all vendor patches installed and all vendor workarounds applied, is currently affected by one or more Secunia advisories rated Less critical"
    4. Re:IIS is always faster. by Trepalium · · Score: 2
      It's also easily arguable that it's lessso than apache. The new kernel mode http.sys could give attackers unparalleled access to the server if vulnerabilities are found in it. w3svc still runs as SYSTEM so it's still possible to get full system access from an exploit of that (although I understand some of the privledges are dropped somewhat so most attackers would be left a guest account that is allowed to impersonate). And last, the relative number of security advisories are just as useless as when Linux proponents posted them against MS products in the past. Exploits of apache will get nobody (or httpd or whatever) privledge, and a second vulnerability (local root) will be required to take full control of the machine.

      Let's be honest here, Microsoft does not like having a large number of advisories to their name, so they are unlikely to disclose vulnerabilities they found and fixed themselves. On the other hand, Windows tends to be a much bigger target (why build a botnet where you'll have to search forever to find UNIX or Linux based hosts when you can make use of the plentiful, poorly administered MS Windows machines out there). Or the prestige of finding security vulns in a product in which you could not merely search the source code for common errors but rather had to use blackbox analysis or object code disassembly.

      Do you know how many security and bug fixes Microsoft engineered when building IIS 6 for Windows 2003 from 5.0/5.1? I'm guessing far more than the security advisories and knowledgebase articles would suggest. Microsoft's bug tracking database (I assume they have one) is not public and likely never will be, so we will never know the answer. In comparison, EVERYTHING the Apache Software Foundation does is public. On the other hand, I'm glad Microsoft finally stopped bragging about how many lines of code their All New Windows version has. It was just silly.

      --
      I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
    5. Re:IIS is always faster. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Incredible FUD. If you go to that Secunia page and compare, you'll see 2 graphs. While the graph for Apache has tons of security bugs, the IIS one is almost spartan. And if you scroll down, while you'll see Apache having to fix way more vulnerabilities, you'll see that the only unpatched vulnerability is a cross site scripting in the admin tool - so all you have to do is to turn off this tool and you're home free.

      Right now, it looks as if IIS *6* has a way better security track record than Apache.

    6. Re:IIS is always faster. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Boy, that wouldn't have anythng to do with IIS 6 being young and Apache 2.x having been deployed for.. uhm.. years?

    7. Re:IIS is always faster. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But if you read the alerts (http://secunia.com/product/1173/)--which are really for Windows 2003 NOT IIS6--you will notice that the vulnerabilities generally require one to be doing something like surfing the internet. If you are surfing the net, nevermind visiting untrusted sites, on a production webserver then you deserve to get rooted on general principle.

    8. Re:IIS is always faster. by Gigs · · Score: 2, Informative

      Prehaps you should look at the correct report http://secunia.com/product/1438/ which shows 33% of Vulnerabilities are UNPATCHED and another 33% that you have to properly configure a workaround to fix... so ya I'd rather use the one that has all those patches that fix 86% of the issues.

      See so theres more to securing your box than turning off one tool, you have to know how to look up the issues which you can do easly on Apache's site right here: http://httpd.apache.org/bug_report.html and its linked right off the front pages of the web servers site.

      Then theres Microsoft's site for iis who's security link, links to this wonderful page http://www.microsoft.com/security/guidance/prodtec h/IIS.mspx. But whats that all you see is this message: "We're sorry, but there is no Microsoft.com Web page that matches your entry."

      Yup that gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling all over!

    9. Re:IIS is always faster. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The kernel component is just a queuing engine. Nothing user designed can execute within that component. It acts to capture and buffer requests to the user mode applications, primarily for the purposes of reliability as if the application side, written by you, crashes or becomes unresponsive, the kernel component can queue up requests and restart the application.

      Unless you're serving only static pages, the kernel component has really very little affect on the performance of IIS6.

      As for the vulnerabilities, Secunia only lists three vulnerabilities under IIS6. However, none of these three are related to IIS6, and none of them affect a default install of IIS6.

      The first involves WebDAV, which is not installed by default.
      The second involves ASP, which is not installed by default and requires an errant ASP application.
      The third involves an administrative tool for Small Business server, which has nothing to do with IIS6 other than that it is an application that can run on to of IIS6, and again is not installed by default.

      So, even Secunia does not list any vulnerabilities in the engine of IIS6, nor it's default running status (after installed, which it also isn't by default). Of these three vulnerabilities, none of which allows a hakcer to gain access to the machine itself. One is a DOS, one involves cross-site scripting and one involves information disclosure of a cookie. There are especially no mentions of any vulnerabilities within the kernel queuing and static caching modules.

      So, there are 3 listed vulnerabilities for IIS6. 1 of which, the one impacting the administrative application, which isn't a component of IIS6, has not been patched.

      What does Secunia say about Apache 2.0.x? I see 24 vulnerabilities, 2 remaining unpatched.

      So, in the process of trying to hand someone their ass, how did your foot taste?

    10. Re:IIS is always faster. by daern · · Score: 1

      Prehaps you should look at the correct report http://secunia.com/product/1438/ which shows 33% of Vulnerabilities are UNPATCHED and another 33% that you have to properly configure a workaround to fix... so ya I'd rather use the one that has all those patches that fix 86% of the issues.

      Perhaps *you* should read the rest of the article. Yes, 33% of the current critical flaws are unpatched but this is (listening now?) *one* patch for an admin console that can be (and should be) disabled on a production server.

      So, I reckon that's *zero* actually explotable critical flaws outstanding in IIS6. Perhaps you should RTA that you are posting before quoting it...especially when the parent already pointed this out for you ;-)

      Anyway, if you don't want to, here's the "solution" from the secunia site:

      Solution:

      Administration of sensitive web based systems should always be done from a system which you do not use to read email or browse untrusted sites. This limits the attack vectors. If you do not need the Remote Administration Tool it should be disabled.

      http://secunia.com/advisories/9334/

    11. Re:IIS is always faster. by Gigs · · Score: 1

      Thanks for pointing out my mistake, its good to know that any service running in Kernel Space with Admin privileges is secure!

      I must have been distracted while I was trying to find microsoft's iis security page that explains how to fix that issue.

    12. Re:IIS is always faster. by vcv · · Score: 1

      Actually they came out around the same time shithead.

  12. Fair testing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Reminds me of this editorial on the G5's testing by Veritest. http://spl.haxial.net/apple-powermac-G5/

    1. Re:Fair testing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Awww. Don't post articles critical of Apple as an AC. It'll make everybody feel like their wasting their mod point when they shamelessly pour their points into "flamebait" and "troll.

    2. Re:Fair testing... by Master+of+Transhuman · · Score: 1


      Nice. It does PROVE that Veritest is definitely into skewing benchmarks for their clients (or at least that their clients are always going to quote the tests in a skewed way.)

      That alone is enough to remove this Windows test from consideration.

      --
      Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
  13. Swings and roundabouts by ricky-road-flats · · Score: 5, Funny

    So does that make SMS on Windows faster than morse code on Linux?

    1. Re:Swings and roundabouts by stirlingneg · · Score: 0

      No, but MS will be funding a second study with morse code on W2K3 and SMS on linux.

    2. Re:Swings and roundabouts by marcuspl · · Score: 1

      It depends on if they're using 3DES+SHA1 or RC4+MD5.

  14. One question... by guaigean · · Score: 2, Funny

    I wonder if Bill Gates actually believes his own bullshit...

    --
    Microsoft Sucks, F/OSS Rocks. I get mod points now right?
    1. Re:One question... by Nos. · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Of course not, but that's not the point. Typically the guys who make the money decisions will read the headlines, and glaze over the rest, probably missing details like this study was paid for by Microsoft. Ever have to hand in a project proposal or such? I've done many, rarely does anything other than the Executive Summary get read. The rest is just there to make the document look good. Microsoft has a very big marketing department. They know this kind of stuff. Do you really think Microsoft would pay for these "studies" if they didn't show a positive return on investment?

    2. Re:One question... by guaigean · · Score: 1

      That's entirely true. I'm sure it has been quite successful for them in the past. However, sometimes you have to wonder just how much the people on top begin to believe their own marketing machine. Studies like this only lead to long term credibility loss, which Microsoft definitely doesn't need more of right now.

      --
      Microsoft Sucks, F/OSS Rocks. I get mod points now right?
    3. Re:One question... by Master+of+Transhuman · · Score: 1

      No.

      He's an asshole but he's not (technically speaking) stupid.

      Ballmer, OTOH, I'm not so sure about. I think HE believes Gates' bullshit.

      --
      Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
  15. Not surprising by hoka · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If they were running heavily restricted SELinux on RedHat it wouldn't be surprising to witness a massive slowdown on certain applications, and will likely be infinitely more secure than a Windows box probably could ever be. Beyond that Apache can be very slow out of the box, on my hardened gentoo test system (please withhold funroll loops jokes) Apache2 with hardened PHP + MySQL I would be lucky to handle 2 requests a second happily, it was amazingly slow. I've yet to fully tune it but some even basic tuning was able to improve speeds dramatically. It wouldn't surprise me if similar techniques were used by this "benchmark".

    1. Re:Not surprising by codeguy007 · · Score: 1

      Yeah I don't think RedHat 2.1 supported SELinux. You could patch it to support it but not out of the box.

      In April 2003, this study compared a version of RedHat Enterprise Linux soon to be replaced with a brand new release from Microsoft. And still they had to tweak windows.

  16. Why did they bother? by Umbral+Blot · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What possibly possessed them to publish these results. No one in their right mind is going to believe 300% is an accurate figure under fair testing conditions.

    1. Re:Why did they bother? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sadly, the world is chock FULL of blithering IDIOTS who DO believe things like the 300% and who, despite their complete lack of technical skills, also have the power to make decisions about what server OS to buy, etc.

    2. Re:Why did they bother? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're assuming very many people are in their right mind...

    3. Re:Why did they bother? by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 1
      You might want to look up PHB in Wikipedia.

      (HINT: Its not a mis-spelling of PHP)

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
  17. Windows 2003? Just wait to see LongHorn by team99parody · · Score: 1
    And as a loyal Team99 hopeful, I must point out that Longhorn will be zillions of times faster than Debian Potato and Windows 2003 and windows 98 combined!

    PS: Darnut, are these Veritest guys going to get a better team99 bonus than me?

  18. RH and Apache Versions by affinity · · Score: 1

    Did anyone else notice the versions of RH they were using? So does this mean that Win2k3 is equiv to RH AS2.1 and IIS6 is equiv to Apache 1.3.23.

    --
    no sig yet
  19. again? by everettpf3 · · Score: 0

    how many times are we going to hear about how cheaper/faster/better windows is and from how many different companies? no, i'm not implying they're right, and even if they were, is it news everytime it's claimed?

  20. Their v. There by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    "Veritest used webbench to do there testing."

    Disgusting.

    It might just be me that is a nitpicky person, but there is a difference between "there," "their," and "they're." This is not only simple grammar, it's basic grammar.

    1. Re:Their v. There by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh, I agree completely. You're certainly not a nitpicky person. You're simply a person who can spell at at least - what is it, maybe 4th grade level? - surrounded by people who cannot (and whose depth of thought is often on par with their spelling).

  21. Let's be reasonable by PaulQuinn · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why couldn't IIS be faster than Apache?
    Is Apache/Linux the "end-all-be-all, there is nothing that can be better so let's stop trying" type of quality?
    Are the guys who work at Microsoft a bunch of idiots that anyone can out-program?

    I'm sure IIS is better at some things, maybe more things, maybe less.

    Who cares! I don't think stats like these are why anyone chooses Apache/Linux over IIS/Windows.

    1. Re:Let's be reasonable by guaigean · · Score: 1

      "Are the guys who work at Microsoft a bunch of idiots that anyone can out-program?"

      Yes.

      --
      Microsoft Sucks, F/OSS Rocks. I get mod points now right?
    2. Re:Let's be reasonable by HairyCanary · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It very well could be. However, let's try 1) an indepedent test, paid for by neither competitor, and 2) the most recent version of IIS against the most recent version of Apache, and 3) the most recent version of Windows against the most recent version of Linux. I can guarantee a win in any test so long as I am allowed to dictate all of the conditions. I wonder how many combinations they tried before they found one that IIS6 could beat?

    3. Re:Let's be reasonable by chocsforu · · Score: 1

      I don't mind being reasonable but I would love to be realistic and posting a figure like 300% all M$ has asked for is criticism.

      And moreover such an outrageous claim (they call it test) only shows how DESPERATE they are about loosing ground.

      Good luck with this one !

    4. Re:Let's be reasonable by ArbitraryConstant · · Score: 3, Informative

      300% is pretty hard to believe.

      Apache was never optimized for serving lots of small, static files so I can easily believe it falling behind in some benchmarks, but not 300%.

      It doesn't take much computer to saturate a lot of bandwidth, which is why most people don't care, but big sites will often have a Zeus (or similar) server set up for serving images precisely because Apache isn't as good for that. But you've got to be huge before you get to that point.

      Dynamic content put Apache where it is. It has the support, the tools, the libraries, and the widespread expertise to do dynamic content pretty damn well. It's not better than everyone at everything there either, but it's a very good solution for most cases.

      --
      I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
    5. Re:Let's be reasonable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wait, wait, wait... we might have some trouble getting the "most recent version of Linux." Even if you got the latest distro, by the time you installed it and ran the test there would be a new one (though likely in a completely different flavor), which would beat M$ even more. We'd never know just how much better Linux is.

    6. Re:Let's be reasonable by w42w42 · · Score: 1
      Who cares! I don't think stats like these are why anyone chooses Apache/Linux over IIS/Windows.
      Microsoft doesn't agree, they paid for the study.
    7. Re:Let's be reasonable by julesh · · Score: 3, Informative

      Why couldn't IIS be faster than Apache?

      It could be. However, this test is severely flawed in that they performed registry level optimisations to the Windows setup, yet equivalent optimisations that are well documented for Linux were not performed. Therefore, we don't know.

    8. Re:Let's be reasonable by Arimus · · Score: 2, Insightful

      We'll be reasonable when companies carrying out these kind of performance sutdies compare apples with apples (and ideally with no hint of GM involved):

      1. Use identical hardware...
      2. Use the default un-optimized settings...
      3. Hand tune using experts on the software under test...
      4. Rerun the identical tests...
      5. Ensure that clients used to test server software are identically configured.

      That would be being reasonable...

      --
      --- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
    9. Re:Let's be reasonable by incabulos · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Why couldn't IIS be faster than Apache?

      No reason. However going by historical benchmark precedents, and with the assumption that open-source applications improve at a faster rate than their proprietry competition, I find the claim to be rather improbable.

      Is Apache/Linux the "end-all-be-all, there is nothing that can be better so let's stop trying" type of quality?

      Nope. Its merely the best we have right now, there is always room for improvement.

      Are the guys who work at Microsoft a bunch of idiots that anyone can out-program?


      No, but they are coders forced to work with antiquated interfaces and inbred development tools in secrecy using a clunky weak OS with a decade of accumulated garbage under the hood. An OS that has evolved due to marketing and legal impervatives ( gosh we had better make IE an essential part of the OS just like we claimed in court! ) rather than technical, performance, or security goals.

      I'm sure IIS is better at some things, maybe more things, maybe less.

      Yeah, it runs .ASP and ActiveX better than Linux/Apache, or any other OS/webserver combination! *Golf clap for IIS*

    10. Re:Let's be reasonable by Deviate_X · · Score: 1

      Why couldn't IIS be faster than Apache?

      No reason. However going by historical benchmark precedents, and with the assumption that open-source applications improve at a faster rate than their proprietry competition, I find the claim to be rather improbable.


      I'd be very interested in this precedent refered to? Do you have links?

    11. Re:Let's be reasonable by incabulos · · Score: 1

      Its more a historical summary than a precise review.

      Apache was slammed in a ( soon to be infamous ) review done by Mindcraft back in 1999 ( some post-incident slashdot coverage here ) as being slower than IIS at serving static content ; though much faster at content generated on the fly via php/perl/python and the like. The tests were biased heavily in favour of IIS, but after the BS was filtered out and the report distilled down to the bare facts, it was admitted that IIS did indeed have the edge in serving some specific content types. After a bit of grumbling, a few side projects like the tux webserver & kernel httpd were born, then the best ideas and strengths of each were rolled out with apache 2.x, and it has never looked back.

      Incidentally, its a perfect example of the strengths of opensource development: critiques even if intended as flamebait or non-constructive criticism might point out legitimate weaknesses -> community is galvanised into action -> weaknesses are repaired -> project is stronger -> profit!

      spec.org should have fairly impartial albeit dry results, or you can dig up old apache articles on /. like this or this.

      Google is also your friend, post Mindcraft articles and mailing-lists generated a lot of 'how do we speed up apache' type discussion.

    12. Re:Let's be reasonable by marcosdumay · · Score: 1

      "Are the guys who work at Microsoft a bunch of idiots that anyone can out-program?"

      Seems so, if not out-program, at least out project. MS semms to have several concerns about anticompetitive actions and bureocracy for doing good software decision nowadays (but sometimes they get it right).

  22. Paid Witnesses by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There's a reason why it's not legal in most of the civilized world for witnesses to be paid to testistify.

    I've never been a Microsoft fan but if they would pay me the kind of money this company received, I'd probably say whatever they fucking wanted me to say.

  23. Heavy Sigh by big_groo · · Score: 1

    Hey slashtwats...when the 'study' is found at MIT or Berkely, or Waterloo or that would be unbiased (or has some semblance of credibility for that matter)...wake me up, m'kay?

    1. Re:Heavy Sigh by big_groo · · Score: 1

      Where's the goddamn foot icon!!

    2. Re:Heavy Sigh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      in yo ass

    3. Re:Heavy Sigh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I agree - everytime a test comes out, that shows Linux is not as efficient or slower? The penguins begin spreading THEIR version of "F.U.D."... about all they appear to be good at, because their Operating System will always be, 2nd best.

      Applications? What are those?? Which platform has more of them & of higher quality???

      (All I see the Penguins do, is bitch about things, but very few get out there and build applications for Linux... which IS what it needs!)

  24. Apache is a bloated hog by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    This is why really high traffic websites run simple httpds like thttpd which is very small and very efficent, unlike Apache.

  25. Recent test? by jay-be-em · · Score: 1

    In TFA: Published: May 5, 2004

    Who wants to bet this is a year old dupe?

    --
    "Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
    1. Re:Recent test? by jay-be-em · · Score: 1

      Not only this, but the .pdf is dated april 2003.

      --
      "Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
  26. I, For one... by TurboBling · · Score: 0

    ... do not welcome our new Micro$oft overlords.

  27. And now, ladies and gentlemen... by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'll test the amazing Linux versus the ultra-slow windows NT.

    Config:
    Linux: Latest Redhat running on Opteron 4GHz
    Windows: Windows 3.1 running on a Pentium 100.

    And the winner is...?[/sarcasm]

    1. Re:And now, ladies and gentlemen... by TurboBling · · Score: 1

      Can windows 3.1 even be considered a network capable OS? I seem to remember it being deploreable.

    2. Re:And now, ladies and gentlemen... by ninboy · · Score: 1

      windows 3.1 did not have a tcp/ip stack , you needed a 3rd party one, but im sure it would suck donkey nuts if it did

    3. Re:And now, ladies and gentlemen... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Can windows even be considered a network capable OS? I seem to remember it being deploreable.

    4. Re:And now, ladies and gentlemen... by theTerribleRobbo · · Score: 1

      Nope, not without 3rd-party stuff like another poster pointed out. 3.11 supported it, however.

    5. Re:And now, ladies and gentlemen... by TeknoHog · · Score: 1
      You had to install a third-party TCP/IP stack.

      Back in 1998 I served my first homepages from a 486 laptop running Windows 3.1 with Trumpet Winsock, and the WSPlug httpd.

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
    6. Re:And now, ladies and gentlemen... by HangingChad · · Score: 1
      Holy crap, you can still download Trumpet Winsock for Windows 3.1. Which they've finally updated for NT. Woooweeee.

      ROFL! Wow, that brings back memories.

      --
      That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
  28. To para(dy)-phrase by FidelCatsro · · Score: 4, Funny

    Windows 2003 server running on skynet is 300% Faster than Ye-oldie redhat -12 edition from 1723 running on an abacus.
    This reliable Expensive test paid for by Microsoft to show how much better windows 2003 server is(the payment came with a clause stating such).

    --
    The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
    1. Re:To para(dy)-phrase by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Then, get out there, run a test yourself... one you consider fair, ok?

      Sheesh!

    2. Re:To para(dy)-phrase by FidelCatsro · · Score: 1

      Fair enough . If you would be willing to supply with me a copy of 2003 server and a machine to run it on , well two machines one for redhat(I will also require a copy of redhat).
      identical hardware(hardware must be fully supported under both OSs).
      The tweaks will be applied evenly and both OSs will be fully patched.
      The setups will use php (modphp not cgi).
      As opposed to having an insanly stupid set-up on redhat and having windows 2003 server contain every tweak under the sun bar painting go-faster stripes on the box.

      --
      The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
  29. News? by tempest303 · · Score: 1

    Right at the top of the PDF it says "April 2003". How is this benchmark "news"? (And nevermind the fact that as always, as an MS sponsered benchmark, the MS machine was probably hand-tuned, and RH + Apache was probably run in a stock configuration.)

    While sheer performance isn't really what sells RHEL boxes, I'd be very interested to see a proper test of Win2k3 vs RHEL 4 on identical hardware...

  30. Not just faster, lower cost of 0wnersh1p too. by team99parody · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And remember, that the TC0 (0 for 0wnersh1p) is lower for Windows as well (""Immunity's findings clearly show that the best platform for your targets to be running is Microsoft Windows, allowing YOU unparalleled value for THEIR dollar."). For anyone who missed it, /. had a lot of great discussion on that one from people who couldn't detect a troll.

  31. This is new? by louarnkoz · · Score: 5, Informative

    The web page says it was published May 5, 2004, i.e. a year ago. The report itself is dated from April 2003. The test was done using RH advanced server 2 and Windows 2003 RC2, i.e. a pre-release version. Since then, both RH and Microsoft have published new releases, for example the service pack 1 of Windows 2003. Why is this posted now?

    1. Re:This is new? by Legion303 · · Score: 1

      "Why is this posted now?"

      Welcome to Slashdot!

      Be prepared to ask this question again when the story is duped in a couple of days.

    2. Re:This is new? by dtfinch · · Score: 1

      The poster might have mistaken it as having been released on May 5, 2005.

    3. Re:This is new? by 51mon · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The answer to "why now" is on the Veritest web page.

      The paper is hilarious if you actually read it.

      Key points...

      They looked for tips on optimising Apache on the Redhat website ?!(guys next time try httpd.apache.org).

      They found that Apache 2 was 50% faster than Apache 1 (without any tuning, Apache 2 offers a selection of threading models so a fair comparion would have tried each in turn, with or without tuning), so presumably didn't do any further tests with that in case it made MS look bad.

      They tuned Windows for the server but effectively plead ignorance of how to tune Redhat for the server.

      My guess is even then, on this hardware, sensible tuning of the kind they did to Windows would have made Apache comparable or better.

      There were issues with this hardware selection at the time. Driving Gigabit ethernet is pretty demanding stuff, and you need drivers that can handle interrupt load.

      However anyone who actually needs an 8 CPU machine to serve gigabit websites will probably do their own benchmarking and tuning, in the unlikely event their application software gives them a free choice of platform.

      When my employers online business is big enough to need gigabit hosting, we'll probably still have SQUID on Linux with shed loads of memory accelerating the static content, because hardware is cheaper than rewriting the corporate applications.

    4. Re:This is new? by dbIII · · Score: 1
      My guess is even then, on this hardware, sensible tuning of the kind they did to Windows would have made Apache comparable or better.
      This study compares apples to aardvarks - unless you are actually running the same app on the two systems you can't compare the OS's, and unless you are running the same OS you can't compare the two apps - there are a lot of variables here so it's not a rigorous test that could be used for anything but hand waving marketing purposes. Apache vs IIS on server2003 would be a good test to see - they probably both do well in different areas.
    5. Re:This is new? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They had severe performance problems while uploading it to their IIS webserver, so it got lagged for 2 years.

    6. Re:This is new? by Vengeance · · Score: 1

      Microsoft is scared right now, they've got a new form of competition which outmaneuvers them at every turn. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to Marketing Studies.

      --
      It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
    7. Re:This is new? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Microsoft is scared right now

      MS is so scared that it causes Slashdot to link to a two year old report? That is some disturbance in the force.

  32. MORE ads? by SamMichaels · · Score: 1

    Not only do we get MS ads at the top claiming the same stuff as the article...now we get articles promoting it.

    If it helps keep slashdot online...fine...but this better be a rare thing.

  33. Yester-year's News Today! by Percy_Blakeney · · Score: 4, Funny
    Not only does the linked page say it was published in mid-2004, but the study itself is from early 2003. How does this qualify as a 'recent' study? Just because someone read it for the first time today doesn't mean it was created today...

    Sheesh -- with such outdated news, I almost felt like I was reading the newspaper or something.

  34. Not just performance... by KrisCowboy · · Score: 1

    ...but what about reliability? Is a Windows Server reliable enough? Can I sleep peacefully if my server is running Windows? Can it give me uptime of 364/24? I bet Microsoft won't be answering these questions.

    1. Re:Not just performance... by PhreakinPenguin · · Score: 1

      Linux will not give 24x7x365 either if you've ever upgraded your kernel. And if you did, it happened in less than a years span.

      --


      My sig of choice is Marlboro
    2. Re:Not just performance... by hritcu · · Score: 1

      Can I sleep peacefully if my server is running Windows? If you afford to sue every cracker, spammer and virus writer on the planet than the answer is YES. Microsoft does ;)

      --
      If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. (Alan Kay)
    3. Re:Not just performance... by dtfinch · · Score: 1

      In my life I haven't encountered reliability problems on win2k server or later. If a server has problems, you tend to notice them right away. Once it's all working, with no memory leaks or the like, a server is likely not to crash before the hardware fails, regardless of if it's Windows or Linux.

      There is the issue of patches. I'm pretty certain that I could upgrade apache with less than 2 seconds of downtime. I've yet to see Windows achieve this. The default file locking semantics in Linux vs Windows seem to have a great deal to do with it.

    4. Re:Not just performance... by Daengbo · · Score: 1

      I'm curious if you were joking or know something that I don't.
      http://dwh-sc.necsoft.com was running Microsoft-IIS on BSD/OS when last queried at 1-May-2005 11:22:16 GMT
      How does IIS run on BSD? I think that some reporting must be fudged, but I'm no expert.

    5. Re:Not just performance... by numark · · Score: 1

      I've seen comments on this before. What I've usually seen as the explanation is that the site is using a firewall/proxy running on BSD in front of a server using IIS on NT. Therefore, the server will report itself as being IIS, but when you try to determine what the OS is, based on the response, it will look like BSD since the data's actually being sent by the BSD box.

      --
      Want Slashdot headlines on your site? Try SlashHead
    6. Re:Not just performance... by Daengbo · · Score: 1

      Interesting. I thought they might just be faking one of the two to report falsely.

    7. Re:Not just performance... by Master+of+Transhuman · · Score: 1


      And servers tend not to upgrade kernels for no reason.

      If it ain't broke, don't fix it - which especially applies to a lot of servers. (I don't necessarily agree with that, but it's what a lot of sys admins do.)

      --
      Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
  35. "there testing" by cshay · · Score: 1

    their

  36. Old test by veritest was flawed. Linuxworld by zymano · · Score: 4, Interesting
  37. Damn... by johansalk · · Score: 1

    Google should switch then.

    1. Re:Damn... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're stupid. Google doesn't run Apache.

  38. What about Norton? by qualico · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Wonder what that benchmark would be if you installed the FULL Norton package on it?

    This bull reminds me of those advertisements for weight loss.

    BEFORE................AFTER
    Stick stomach out....Suck stomach in
    White......................Tanned
    No cosmetics..........New facial
    Front shot...............Side shot
    Grubby clothes........New fashions

  39. MOD ABUSE! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The parent is not a troll, thttpd is actually a faster httpd than Apache while running Linux.

    Please fix, mods.

  40. How about a fairer test, MS people? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You MS dorks set up your super-Solitaire computer, and let me and some Linux-heads set up the linux computer, and submit them for competition.

  41. 2k3 has the same kind of optimisations as Tux w/s by NekoXP · · Score: 2, Interesting


    2003 has kernel-level webserver acceleration and offloads a lot of the processing
    there, the same was as the Tux webserver (also RedHat?) beat the shit out of
    Apache. It's essentially zero-copy-networking with zero-copy-webserving too.

    http://www1.us.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx /power/en/ps1q01_redhat?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz

    There may be some truth in it, therefore. Aren't there some patches these days to
    hook Apache directly into the Linux kernel too, since Tux is obselete? I doubt
    they ship with RedHat's stock system though even if they exist.

  42. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by schnikies79 · · Score: 1

    This guy is jackass and I'm not going to waste mod points on him but a lot of stuff he says is true. As soon as I see M$, Microsucks, Microsnot, Microshaft, etc., I quit reading. It just makes you look like an ignorant twelve year-old. Just my opinion.

    --
    Gone!
  43. I remember back in the day... by bahwi · · Score: 1

    I remember back in the day a 486 with enough ram could fill a T1 pipe with apache, while the windows guy would still be trying to coax the installer to run(being well below the minimum requirements). Now it's never that simply, static HTML is a dinosaur that doesn't exist, and how many pages do you visit regularly that are static html? There are some out there, but which are regular(daily/weekly) visits? Yeah, there are the few exceptions, but 99% of what you see needs a CPU and Ram. Windows could have a chance here, but I'll stick with my PHP/Apache/MySQL with eAccelerator.

    It's a different world and benchmarks like this just don't give a good picture, not yet anyways.

    1. Re:I remember back in the day... by aztracker1 · · Score: 1

      would love to see a "real-world" benchmark similar to this, for some more typical setups... 2 servers, with a gigabit crossover between them (one for db services, the other for web), with the "client/test" on another gigabit adapter.. all three a single p4@3ghz in hyperthread mode, with 2gb ram.

      first set Apache2 (latest) on a fedora core, rhel, suse, or centos install (since this is more typical of commercial use) with a click-through setup on linux (mostly defaults)... the db server on the same OS, with either Postgres 8, or MySQL 5, maybe test each...

      The windows setup would be 2003 web edition for the web server (clickthrough setup) ... and 2003 standard with ms-sql backend, also and/or postgres8, or mysql5 under windows.

      for linux, a predefined set of db tasks, and user interfaces, with a php, or jsp web end.. on the iis box, add in asp (classic) and asp.net in addition to php (isapi) ...

      Defining the application parameters to a certain extent, with only environment code (not making system calls from the web-app) .. only the html-side of the front end is established, form/field names, css, etc .. so that the test can be pretty much exact.

      --
      Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
  44. Hotmail Vs. Gmail Vs Yahoo by ooh456 · · Score: 1

    I find it odd that if Windows is so fast that the performance of Hotmail is so atrocious when compared to Gmail or Yahoo which both run off of Unix based systems.

    I mean Hotmail page loads often quit right in the middle!

    Riddle me that one.

    Knowing MS they probably optimized the OS for the benchtest in favor of providing their customers some real world performance.

    1. Re:Hotmail Vs. Gmail Vs Yahoo by paranoidgeek · · Score: 1

      Knowing MS they probably optimized the OS for the benchtest in favor of providing their customers some real world performance err are you meaning real world performance or real world tests ? The first Microsoft does a good job of ensurring this is good .. but for the second part MS only does it if linux doesnt do well ... so no tests at all.

      --
      Lima India November Uniform X-ray
  45. Accelerating Apache by green+pizza · · Score: 1

    Replying to my own post, sad...

    Does anyone know if any of the bits of the Silicon Graphics accelerating apache project were ever rolled into Apache 1.3.x or 2.x?
    http://aap.sourceforge.net/

    1. Re:Accelerating Apache by bundaegi · · Score: 2, Informative
      Does anyone know if any of the bits of the Silicon Graphics accelerating apache project were ever rolled into Apache 1.3.x or 2.x?

      Reading you link...

      Unfortunately the ASF rejected the work presented here and SGI terminated the project. It has a new home now on SourceForge, courtesy of SGI, and it seeks a new owner and a fresh start. Want Apache to run faster? Want to take a different approach to appealing to the ASF? Perhaps simply presenting the ASF with a different spokesperson would improve the odds of adoption. Apply to the current owner for project ownership or to sponsor me to revive the project.

      Nonetheless, this project's aggressive optimizations make Apache/1.3 up to ten times faster and Apache/2.0 up to four times faster on the SPECweb96 benchmark.

      And in the FAQ:

      12. Will the ASF adopt the patches?
      We contributed the patches to the Apache Software Foundation but the ASF has refused to include the patches in future releases of Apache/1.3 or 2.0, citing "unnecessary" typecasts and complication associated with the warning-free 64-bit port, and incompatible license terms with the state-threaded MPM.

      So I presume... no :-) Thanks for the link anyway.
      --
      bundaegi is good for you
  46. Don't forget the GUIs! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    KDE and Gnome are laughable at best

  47. HTTP 1.0 by whh3 · · Score: 1

    I thought it was a little odd that the test setup included the HTTP 1.0 protocol. Without 1.1, you don't get the benefit of persistent connections. While both 2k3 and Apache could take advantage of these persistent connections, I thought I remember a rumour that IIS used (basically) hacked persistent connections between IE clients and an IIS webserver. Therefore, running HTTP 1.0 limited Apache's ability to limit the overhead of setting up and tearing down tcp/http connections repeatedly. However, 2k3/IIS limited this overhead by using techniques not allowed by the official protocol. It seems like Apache is being punished for following the rules. Just one opinion.

    --
    remove nospam. to email!
    1. Re:HTTP 1.0 by aztracker1 · · Score: 1

      dynamic content won't maintain a persistant connection, because the size of the content isn't predetermined.

      --
      Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
  48. I could easily belive it by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 1

    Different environments are good at different things. Now I'm no expert in web servers, but I don't have a hard time believing that you could find a scenario where IIS stomps Apache. If I were going to look, it would be a scenario that used some kind of scripts with lots of DB access. IIS allegedly features wonderfully fast intergration with .NET and MSSQL. I know that with IIS 6 .NET code can run in the server process, eliminating a context switch. Thus I find it perfectly feasable that one could find a scenario where IIS is much faster.

    The real question is how relivant to the real world is it, and under what circumstances. It is, perhaps, something that is rarely, if ever, done in the real world. Or if used, something such that the expense of server hardware is trivial to other costs and doesn't really matter.

    However to simply dismiss it becayse you feel that it's too big a difference is silly. That kind of thing happens in real life. A personal anecdote:

    My roomate, several years ago, was hired to do web work for a small startup. Their immediate problem was their website was sloooooow. Client querys took forever. He took the first logical step and upgraded their very underpowred hardware to something top of the line. While this helped, the system still lagged, and avereged about 10 load. He then turned to the software, a PERL script accessing a Postgres DB. There were further problems with data loss, etc.

    Finally, one weekend he got fed up and recoded teh whole thing to move over to MySQL and ModPERL and brought it back up. The load average then dropped to about 0.01. That's a speedup of 4 orders of magnitude.

    1. Re:I could easily belive it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      but I don't have a hard time believing that you could find a scenario where IIS stomps Apache. If I were going to look, it would be a scenario that used some kind of scripts with lots of DB access.

      Ha! And if you found such a scenario, what would you put on it: goatse or tubgirl?

  49. A two-year old study... by idris33 · · Score: 1

    Why is this news now? Wasn't Linux still on the 2.4 kernel then?

  50. Recent? May 2003 is not recent by CCW · · Score: 1

    Don't see how you can call this "News" for nerds or anybody else. The editors are asleep at the wheel again.

  51. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by thaig · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Every time you mention a company's name you are giving it free advertising. It seems that for commercial entities it is better to be well known than well liked.

    So why shouldn't people deny that freebie by refusing to use the exact name?

    Regards,

    Tim

    --
    This is all just my personal opinion.
  52. My personal imperical data..... by pg110404 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I've been around on the net for a while now and if there is one thing I can say that is universal it's that servers that implement ASP are generally more flaky than other types of servers.

    I use tvlistings2.zap2it.com which has ASP, and while I think they've gotten far better in the recent past, even 4 or 5 months ago, it would routinely lose my channel line up and if I'd try to log in to reset the cookie it would claim my login account doesn't exist. I'd follow their suggestion and try recreating the account and it said it was already in use. But I can't log in because it doesn't exist, but I can't recreate it because it already exists, but I can't log in because it doesn't exist.......

    Anyway, I notice time and time again how sites that churn out ASP pages have typically slower response times compared to ones that have PHP or straight static HTML. For anyone who wonders how I determine that, I go to load a web page, and I wait for it to load. If it starts taking a while and I mean a really long while, I look at the URL and more often than not, I'll see it has a reference to an ASP. Maybe the "oh it's another one of those stupid IIS servers" makes it stick out in my mind more than "wait, this one is slow. I don't really know what's running it but it's crap", but if I had to put money on it, I'd say the IIS servers are generally slower.

    I don't run a web server, I could, but I don't. Managing web servers would not be a job I'd want to do. Almost all of my web server experience is on the visitor side and without any kind of overtly blatant bias from any sources (like the kind of "windows crashes therefore windows is evil and anything dealing with windows is also evil") to affect my opinion, I'd have to say that I personally experience a more significant lack of performance and reliability visiting web sites that run IIS than other sites that don't appear to run it. So to me, a report like this is microsoft's ever so polite way of trying to stick an uncomfortably large tube up my ass and then proceeding to blow smoke through the opening.

    1. Re:My personal imperical data..... by suresk · · Score: 1

      Huh?

      ASP and its relatives may have their problems, but this 'imperical' data of yours makes no sense. The account management portion of the site wasn't working properly, so it must be ASPs fault? It is called shitty code. I could cause the exact same thing to happen using Java or PHP, probably several different ways.

      Shitty code in any language is going to get you shitty results. If we are looking for anecdotal reports of various types of scripts not working, I'm sure I could find more examples of weird things happening in PHP scripts than you could in ASP scripts.

    2. Re:My personal imperical data..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So to me, a report like this is microsoft's ever so polite way of trying to stick an uncomfortably large tube up my ass and then proceeding to blow smoke through the opening.

      How about one of those skinny coffee stir straws then?

    3. Re:My personal imperical data..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is not a Microsoft vs. Linux thing. This is just a case of sheer web monkey stupidity. There are a surprising number of web sites for very big companies that have to be restarted on a weekly basis, if not more. The code is poorly written, and there is hardly any checking on conditions like when the server starts running out of resources.

      Hint: if you have to disable a load balancer (sw, hw, doesn't matter which type) temporarily to let the cluster restart, you have a real problem.

      I've seen far too much of this from the "other side", and it's scary to think how much money is being thrown at people who have no business running these things.

      It happens no matter the back end details: Windows or Linux, IIS or Apache or Tomcat, MSSQL or MySQL, PHP or Cold Fusion, and so on. The technology is only as good as the people who rely on it.

      With that said, there are some people who are handling staggering amounts of traffic with tiny configurations. I salute them, since they truly know what they are doing.

  53. What would it cost for Google to do this. by team99parody · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Parent wrote: Google should switch then.

    Anyone do the math to see what that would cost.

    It's conventional wisdom that Google has about 100,000 servers. If google went with Windows 2003 Server Enterprise Edition (which costs $3999 ) That would cost google about half a billion dollars.

    Extending the logic to use SQL Server Enterprise Edition as their search database, at $25000/server the price would go up to about $2.5 Billion.

    Every CEO likes to be like Google and likes talking about numbers like billions of dollars; so this is a fun set of numbers to throw around when your're discussing microsoft partnerships with the CEO.

    (Note, however, that in the true spirit of Team99, I must say that Longhorn will make it well worth the price, though, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Google switch)

  54. and anyway... by flacco · · Score: 1

    ...it's the license, stupid.

    --
    pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
  55. Let's settle this for once and for all by grcumb · · Score: 4, Insightful

    People keep saying, 'When are we going to get a real benchmark?" Well, why don't we roll our own? Seriously.

    Here's my idea:

    Slashdot has strong zealot^H^H^H^H^H^Hsupporters for both Microsoft and Linux. Let's have a contest to select the best qualified from each side, have them work in teams on identical hardware. Let them make any changes, tweaks or optimisations they can dream up. Then, let 'em rip.

    I'm dead serious about this, by the way. Let's get off this endless roundabout and for once make a clear comparison.

    For bonus points, once the first contest is finished, we should take the two servers, leave them exposed to the Internet and see which one gets 0wned first. 8^)

    --
    Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
    1. Re:Let's settle this for once and for all by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Trouble is that web server performance is mostly immaterial now todays anyways... except for response time.

      Any server running on a 700mhz pentium system and plenty of RAM can easily flood a 10MB/s internet pipe with static HTML. No amount of ./'ing will bring that to it's knees.

      What matters much more is how fast the web server generates dynamic webpages.. and that would depend much more on the sort of database being used and the programming language and how it interfaces with the web server software.

      So you'd be testing the entire verticle stack of software..

      what do you compare?
      Apache + Zope + Python + MySQL?
      Apache + Java + Firebird?
      Apache + javascripting?
      Apache + PHP + MySQL?
      Apache + C + PostgreSQL?
      IIS 6 + .NET + MS SQL?
      IIS 6 + PHP + MySQL?
      etc. etc.

      What you gonna do?

      And then you have simply the quality of the code and what sort of requirements your going to have? How dynamic of a page should it end up being? Should it be a forums? or a front end to a store? or what?

      there a hundred billion variations and the 'best' one probably isn't going to be close to the fastest.

    2. Re:Let's settle this for once and for all by patches · · Score: 1

      That decision should be the easiest to make. You choose Apache+PHP+MySQL versus IIS+PHP+MySQL and then you can run the exact same PHP files on each setup so that there isn't an advantage to the side that know some shortcuts in any language...

      --
      The worst part of being athiest.... You don't have anyone to talk to during orgasm!
    3. Re:Let's settle this for once and for all by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Agreed... Should even bring some PR and $$ to Shlashdot. Do it pleeeeeze.

    4. Re:Let's settle this for once and for all by Cycloid+Torus · · Score: 0

      Great idea.

      Needs a rule setting and arbitration group. Could a Server Olympics Committee ("SOC") be formed? Who would you like to see on SOC? Who might have the statesmanship AND independence? Mark Cuban? Jeff Bezos?

      --
      Lost in space at an early age. Survived the vacuum. Now rebuilding castle in air.
    5. Re:Let's settle this for once and for all by wasabii · · Score: 1

      That's also a pretty dumb comparison. What you should be comparing is the complete software stack from all angles: speed, reliability, maintainability, and development time.

      This means taking Windows + IIS6 + ASP.Net + MsSQL and comparing it with Linux + Apache + PHP + MySQL.

      MS's stack vs LAMP.

      Personally I think MS's stack will win on all points, including price.

    6. Re:Let's settle this for once and for all by ScrewMaster · · Score: 1

      No, because Bezos would try to patent the thing. "Application for a one-click business process method for comparison of multiple operating systems and performance metrics."

      --
      The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
    7. Re:Let's settle this for once and for all by Master+of+Transhuman · · Score: 1

      "MS's stack vs LAMP."

      Since companies buy stacks, comparing entire stacks seems reasonable (if not easy) to me.

      "Personally I think MS's stack will win on all points, including price."

      Oh, I see, this was a joke, right?

      --
      Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
    8. Re:Let's settle this for once and for all by archen · · Score: 1

      Why stop there? If we're going to do benchmarks on IIS on Windows and Apache on Linux on the same hardware, I say also benchmark:

      Apache on Windows
      Apache on FreeBSD
      lighttpd on Linux/Whatever

      Yes there are other very powerful webservers OTHER than Apache

    9. Re:Let's settle this for once and for all by dodobh · · Score: 1

      Identical budgets, rather than hardware. Makes for more fun.

      --
      I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
    10. Re:Let's settle this for once and for all by khujifig · · Score: 3, Funny

      And then submit the results of the test to slashdot, linking to each machine, and see which dies first?

  56. Re:Yester-year's News Today! by Scorillo47 · · Score: 1

    From the original Microsoft link, you can see that the release date for this April 2003 study was 5 May 2004.

    My guess is that the Slashdot editors confused this with 5 May 2005, which was yesterday.

    --
    Don't try to use the force. Do or do not, there is no try.
  57. Unfair comparison, CGI vs. ISAPI by Trejkaz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Microsoft argue that Apache is slower because CGI is slower. They say that it needs to spawn a new process for each request, which is correct.

    But how many years have mod_perl and mod_php been around now? Does anyone actually use CGI on Apache this decade?

    Perhaps a more fair comparison would have compared CGI on IIS with CGI on Apache. And I'm pretty sure that for various reasons (spawning processes is slower on Win32 than on Linux) IIS would lose horribly.

    --
    Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
    1. Re:Unfair comparison, CGI vs. ISAPI by GISGEOLOGYGEEK · · Score: 1

      Its not so clean cut.

      Take the great open source program MapServer for example, which generates maps for websites, and can be run as a CGI or through php (or a few other ways), on just about any OS.

      Maybe MapServer's developers are just better programmers, but they've found that CGI really isn't significantly slower in this application.

      For mapserver users, there may be reasons to develop websites using php for certain types of data pre-processing during the dynamic generation of a map, although I've never encountered anything that required php mapscript that couldn't be done with CGI and a little asp/javascript on the side,... but avoiding the overhead of CGI really isn't a valid reason for this application.

      The mapserver developers have however recently added support for fastCGI to placate the paranoid, which does not need to spawn a new process for each request ... and then reminded everyone a few times that there's no reason at all to run out and re-write our websites to utilize it.

      In fact in the MapServer example using CGI makes for much simpler applications, where I don't have to program every single little step required for the map to be created, but i still have the full ability to create the website and map however I like.

      Just because php is available doesnt mean its logical to use it and abandon the other ways that are simpler and have no significant drawbacks.

      --
      George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
    2. Re:Unfair comparison, CGI vs. ISAPI by Trejkaz · · Score: 1

      Well, I've never much been one for PHP itself, but mod_perl certainly derived huge benefits over CGI Perl.

      Maybe a more interesting benchmark would pit Apache/Win32 against Apache/Linux... but even then, nobody would probably care. :-/

      --
      Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
    3. Re:Unfair comparison, CGI vs. ISAPI by dbIII · · Score: 1
      But how many years have mod_perl and mod_php been around now? Does anyone actually use CGI on Apache this decade?
      Yes, but it's a quiet site, and the only scripting handles the football tips for only sixty people. It still has a use in low volumes.
    4. Re:Unfair comparison, CGI vs. ISAPI by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Microsoft argue that Apache is slower because CGI is slower. They say that it needs to spawn a new process for each request, which is correct.

      This is correct only when using CGI, which is also true for IIS.

      But how many years have mod_perl and mod_php been around now? Does anyone actually use CGI on Apache this decade?

      with CGI and suEXEC you can run your script with a defined user id (different for each vhost for example) which means increased security. moreover, every web app does not have an apache module version.

    5. Re:Unfair comparison, CGI vs. ISAPI by omb · · Score: 1

      Use CGI, yes, often before migrating to Apache::Registry, and can also show bugs
      hidden in Registry scripts, so I always design
      for stand-alone/CGI/Fast-XXX.

      where Fast-XXX is mod-perl, -php ...

    6. Re:Unfair comparison, CGI vs. ISAPI by Trejkaz · · Score: 1

      Every webapp doesn't need to... only the ones which aren't written in Perl, PHP, Ruby, or any of the other dozen languages where modules already exist and work without the webapp having to do anything at all.

      --
      Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
  58. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by jvollmer · · Score: 1
    So why shouldn't people deny that freebie by refusing to use the exact name?

    I don't know why anyone would brag about
    being either Micro or Soft!

    If it's not Consolidated Lint, it's just fuzz!

  59. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "10. You cannot admit that no one in their right mind would do professional video editing in Linux."

    Except, you know, lots of hollywood studios.

  60. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    34. You constantly throw around the fact that linux is free. So is windows if you just pirate it :P

  61. This is old news and Apples & Oranges by Tangential · · Score: 1

    This 'study' has been around a while. Here's the premise, take the latest greatest windows bits and compare them to 4-5 yr old linux stuff. RH 2.1, 2.4 kernel and Apache 1.3. When this study was done, the 2.6 kernel and Apache 2.0 were well established.

    --
    Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
  62. objectively? by Infonaut · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I'll even grant that because it was commisioned by MS a little extra scrutiny is certainly due; but summarily discarding the study simply for this reason is the intellectual equivalent of sticking our fingers in our ears and screaming "lalalalalala" at the top of our lungs.

    Actually, it's learned behavior. We've seen so many fact-warping MS-sponsored studies, astroturfing campaigns, dissembling regarding the nature of their monopoly, and other aggressive PR that it's no wonder people are more than a little skeptical.

    This reminds me of something someone told me about graphic card benchmarks. He is a 3d graphics professional, and he was called in by a rather large chip company to help them in a test against another large chip maker's video card. The arrangement was that he would work with the representative from the other company to come up with a "fair" set tests to which both sides could agree.

    As the more experienced guy, he was able to get his counterpart to agree to tests that worked squarely in favor of his company's card. This is in a scenario where it is supposed to be evenhanded, since both companies agreed to the test methodology.

    So it's bad enough already. Compare a situation like that to one in which Microsoft is commissioning a study, and you can imagine why people react with such profound skepticism.

    --
    Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
  63. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by NixLuver · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So, for that piece of crap, you say "a *lot* of stuff he says is 'true'" (emphasis mine), and the best you offer is that people using appellations like "Micro$oft" burns your ass? Come on. Maybe it's the "penis envy" part? Or the part about "Setting up a server in Windows takes a couple of minutes"? Sorry, I see a bunch of wanking and sour-graping, combined with outright lies, and a few pointed pokes at the Linux Zealot community - which I don't credit with any 'hit points' because this is obviously from someone who would like to be a Windows Zealot, but isn't competent... or maybe it's a Linux Zealot making Windows Zealots look like idiots?

  64. May not be FUD by Sivar · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I actually thought that this was common knowledge--that Windows Server 2003 with ASPX was faster than Linux/Apache with PHP, or that Server 2003 was generally faster with static content. (I admit, I only glanced over the article, and Adobe Acrobat's search tool is the worst of crap, so sue me if it didn't mention ASPX).

    1)ASP (not ASPX) are fairly flaky and recent versions are roughly comparable to, but slower than, PHP4 (not sure about 5), in general.

    2) Windows is not very good at creating new processes quickly. This is why CGI (not fastCGI) in the platform is so glacially slow.
    Let's have an example. Let's say that you make a dynamic webpage in which all content is generated by a C++ CGI program. Ignoring database access for the time being, since that dilutes the example, on Windows, the website would be MUCH slower than the same website written in ASPX, even though the actual execution time of the C++ program is shorter (assuming a competent C++ coder).
    This is because for each request, Windows must create a new process (the CGI program), and destroy the process when the request is complete.
    While the execution time is low, the process management overhead dwarfs the actual page runtime, because Windows doesn't do that sort of thing quickly. This is why CGI has long been blacklistedon Windows systems by good web devs, and this is one reason that Apache 1.x was such a dog on Windows. Apache 1.x creates a new Apache process for each request.

    Now Linux, on the other hand, creates processes about as fast as it creates threads, which is to say, really damn fast. Apache 1 has always worked just fine on Linux (and indeed most Unix systems) because the overhead of creating a process, while significant, isn't slower than a dead slug stuck in frozen molasses like it is on Windows.
    Apache 2.x allows requests to be served by a thread or a process, or a number of processes that each create several threads (any Apache gurus please correct me if any of this is off).
    It follows that this isn't a big deal on Linux (because process creation isn't really much slower than thread creation), but is a very big deal on Windows.

    Windows has ASPX, which is Microsoft's marketing term for the use of the .NET framework for web content delivery (get it--the 'X' makes it sound cool. Or something). .NET is compiled, and ASPX needs neither process nor thread creation. Like any .NET application, ASPX can run sort of close to native speeds (native + lots of wrapper overhead + generic memory management overhead and such.)

    Yet Apache is still back here creating a process or thread for each and every request (note that there are some ways to speed things up. FastCGI comes to mind, but I don't want to get into the gory details that I don't know enough about). This is not the brightest way to do it in terms of performance, but then, Apache appears to have been designed for universality and configurability over raw throughput.

    It is unwise to hold the attitude that Apache can't be beaten by IIS, especially when IIS is optimized for one platform--by the vendor of that platform. Apache isn't even the fastest on Linux. Take a look at Zeus webserver. It serves circles around Apache on any platform it supports--including Penguin land.
    In fact, Zeus uses a technique called SendFile() which, oddly enough, is strikingly similar Microsoft's own TransmitFile() API. Hmm.

    Think of it this way: Apache is to IIS as GCC is to ICC, at least in terms of performance and generality.
    Intel's compiler (ICC) consistantly blows away GCC in terms of the performance and size of the compiled code, but GCC runs on just about anything with a CPU, can cross-compile, is free, doesn't pull any PHB evil tricks, and actually compiles things like the Linux kernel without pat

    --
    Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
    1. Re:May not be FUD by _defiant_ · · Score: 5, Informative

      You are mistaken on some Apache concepts and how threads (?used to?) work on Linux.

      This is because for each request, Windows must create a new process (the CGI program), and destroy the process when the request is complete. While the execution time is low, the process management overhead dwarfs the actual page runtime, because Windows doesn't do that sort of thing quickly. This is why CGI has long been blacklistedon Windows systems by good web devs, and this is one reason that Apache 1.x was such a dog on Windows. Apache 1.x creates a new Apache process for each request.

      No.

      Now Linux, on the other hand, creates processes about as fast as it creates threads, which is to say, really damn fast.

      Yes, but only because pthreads does this by creating a new process (that just happens to share some things with its parents, like address space). Ergo, creating threads is just as fast as creating processes because they are nearly the same thing.

      The NPTL in 2.6 might have changed this, but I have not read the docs yet.

      Yet Apache is still back here creating a process or thread for each and every request (note that there are some ways to speed things up. FastCGI comes to mind, but I don't want to get into the gory details that I don't know enough about). This is not the brightest way to do it in terms of performance, but then, Apache appears to have been designed for universality and configurability over raw throughput.

      No, Apache does not create a new process for each request. It creates a pool of child processes which sit waiting for requests. The parent monitors this pool and creates new spare children when too many child processes are busy. This way, most of the time a request comes in there is already a child process sitting idle waiting for work.

      CGI does indeed require forking a new process, but there are already great ways to handle this. mod_perl, mod_php, mod_python all do it by embeding the interpreter inside the server. FastCGI keeps a version of the program running (much like apache does with its spares).

      You are correct in that your description isn't the brightest way to do things. That's why operating system designers solved these problems years ago.

      For static content, again, Apache creates a new process or thread for every request (with some exceptions). If you'll forgive a bit of an oversimplification, it's like writing a program that prints text to the screen. One program calls printf() in a loop. The other program executes a second program which itself displays just one line, and runs that in a loop.

      Again, no. Apache will usually not need to create a new process or thread for every connection. The correct analogy would be the other program spawning the required number of children, and then asking them to all printf at the same time.

    2. Re:May not be FUD by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      couple of factual errors in that post

      (unless otherwise stated apache here reffers to 1.x)

      1: apache on unix doesn't use a new process for each request. True each child only serves one request at a time but children lasted for many requests one after another.

      2: apache 1.x on win32 WAS multithreaded (iirc it used a single parent and a single child) unlike the unix versions

      ofc if you use cgi then it has to start a new process for each cgi request and that is going to be slow on windows

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    3. Re:May not be FUD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Think of it this way: Apache is to IIS as GCC is to ICC, at least in terms of performance and generality.
      Intel's compiler (ICC) consistantly blows away GCC in terms of the performance and size of the compiled code, but GCC runs on just about anything with a CPU, can cross-compile,


      You also have to understand that for 95+% of the code out there, the difference between GCC and ICC compiled output isn't measurable. It's only a handful of specialized cases where there is much difference.


      Look at the details here, this is just a FUD. Most of the public isn't that stupid either, that's why apache still powers the internet and IIS does what it does.

    4. Re:May not be FUD by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 1

      You hit upon a key point. No crack monkey web designer in their right mind these days uses binary .cgi. They use things like PHP or Tomcat or, if they need a very powerful scriptiing language, Python and Perl to do the server side as part of their setups (with appropriate security settings). In other cases, they use these tools to access back end data bases.

      Given that so little heavy duty web content is done via binary .cgi's now, basing a performance review on speed of .cgi performance them is like basing a restaurant review on the crunchiness of the breadsticks. The cheap place has crunchier breadsticks because they've been sitting out all day....

    5. Re:May not be FUD by diegocgteleline.es · · Score: 1

      Yes, but only because pthreads does this by creating a new process (that just happens to share some things with its parents, like address space). Ergo, creating threads is just as fast as creating processes because they are nearly the same thing.

      It's still the same in 2.6 with NTPL. They started with M:N but they found that 1:1 solved all problems in a much easier way with much less complexity

    6. Re:May not be FUD by treat · · Score: 1
      CGI does indeed require forking a new process, but there are already great ways to handle this. mod_perl, mod_php, mod_python all do it by embeding the interpreter inside the server.

      mod_perl is really hard to get set up, really hard to code for, really poorly documented, and has no example code out there. It is fair to test CGI against whatever IIS has to offer that is as easy to use as CGI.

      Saying "just use mod_perl" doesn't make sense unless it can be shown that it is possible to use mod_perl with a reasonable effort.

    7. Re:May not be FUD by VGPowerlord · · Score: 1
      You can use normal CGI scripts with mod_perl, with a few cavaets:

      1. They have to be in a specific directory. A sample setup is

      PerlModule Apache::Registry
      PerlRequire /path/to/startup.pl
      <Location /perl>
      SetHandler perl-script
      PerlHandler Apache::Registry
      Options +ExecCGI
      PerlSendHeader On
      </Location>

      2. mod_perl has problems with named subroutines. Put them in a module instead. Since your application will most likely have multiple perl scripts, put all your commonly used subroutines in a single module.

      3. Preload the module you created, and any others you plan to use. This puts them in the Apache Shared Memory pool, which is accessable by all Apache children. I tend to do this using a PerlRequire /path/to/startup.pl and having it load every module I plan to use. Mine looks something like the following:

      use lib '/path/to/custom/modules';
      use File::Spec (); # Cross platform directory name building
      use Carp ();
      use CGI::Carp ();
      use CGI qw(-compile :cgi :form); # Compile CGI and Form commands instead of Autoloading
      use Apache::Session ();
      use Template ();
      use DBI ();
      DBI->install_driver('mysql'); # mysql is an example, works with any DBD:: module.
      use MyModule (); # Custom Module
      1;

      4. You can also preload perl scripts. However, you shouldn't do this until after you finish testing your scripts and put them into a production environment, as Apache would have to be restarted to see new versions of them.

      --
      GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
  65. A recent study (only 2 years old) by MoonChildCY · · Score: 1

    Just look at the cover page. The report is dated April 2003. Why is this news once again please?

  66. That's just silly... by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    the overhead from running 3 OSs combined would slow things up too much. I guess Win98 crashing early on would help though....

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  67. Verisign Veritest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Veritest or Verisign? Which one pisses me off more.

    AAAH! I just say an MS "Get the Facts" advertisement on the top of slashdot!??

    supposedly...
    "Windows was far more cost-effective than Red Hat Linux." -J.E. Henrey, CIO, Regal Entertainment Group

    OK. Was. And why would I take the word of a CIO of some company that isn't even in IT?

  68. Consequences by hritcu · · Score: 1

    Will the 70% (happy) Apache users switch to IIS+Windows2003 after reading such a lame old piece of junk?

    --
    If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. (Alan Kay)
  69. Antivirus? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If they don't run those tests with antivirus protection on in the Wintel server, it is not anywhere close to the real use case performance.

  70. Stop whining and help speed up Apache! by Fefe · · Score: 5, Insightful
    It's ridiculous how the Slashdot crowd is falling victim to Pavlov again.

    If someone publishes a benchmark about your software, and finds out your software does not perform well, don't whine, don't behave like a child, don't start kicking and screaming, don't tear his hair out. Behave professionally.

    Good starting points:

    • Does their test setup matter?
    • Can their number possibly be true?
    • What weak spots about the competition does their test reveal?
    • What can we do to improve the results?


    Let me summarize what I think about their test. First of all, I believe their numbers. Apache sucks performance-wise, in particular if you run a busy site with dynamic content. That's why people are using squid in local accelerator mode before Apache. This is a good indication that some performance tuning is in order. But no, people rather wait for Microsoft to find out and then they start thinking about fixing it.

    If this test was meant to be unfair FUD, they would not have tested TUX, just Apache.

    But now to my questions above:

    Question 1: is their setup relevant?

    No. Sites who answer more than 5000 requests per second are not using a single web server, they are using a load balancer and a cluster.

    Question 2: Can their numbers possibly be true?

    The point I find least believable is that IIS had better CGI performance than Apache. Creating a process is really slow on Windows. Their result should be independently verified.

    Question 3: What weak spots about the competition does their test reveal?

    They did not test a single-CPU webserver (which is what almost everyone is using).

    They did not test FastCGI or APAPI dynamic web pages.

    So if we wanted to do a more balanced review, we would look at these.

    Question 4: What can we do to improve the results.

    Document APAPI better, I'd say. Almost nobody is writing their dynamic web page modules with APAPI.
    Everyone is using PHP or mod_perl. Benchmark Apache in real-world scenarios. Document best practices.
    1. Re:Stop whining and help speed up Apache! by julesh · · Score: 1

      Good starting points:

      You missed this one: is their test methodology fair? It seems not to be. They disabled file access time collection on Windows, but did not do the same under Linux. For most web serving applications, access time collection is a significant drag.

    2. Re:Stop whining and help speed up Apache! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      The whole procession creation argument has been moot for years as I understand it, since both webservers have various caching mechanisms and so forth, even for CGIs.

  71. Damn good point... by msimm · · Score: 1

    Thats all there really is to say. Skewed, yes.

    --
    Quack, quack.
  72. Missing Link by hritcu · · Score: 2, Interesting
    http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2005/05/01/may_2 005_web_server_survey.html

    Allowed HTML: ... <a> ...
    Can anyone tell me how do I use that?
    <a href="...">...</a> does not work.

    --
    If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. (Alan Kay)
  73. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by ribo-bailey · · Score: 1

    This must be an old resused troll... I've been able to burn dvds in linux for years.

  74. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by seneces · · Score: 1

    How to tell if you are stereotyping:
    1. You posted something like that.
    For me, most of those points are untrue. I know linux can crash (I have caused kernel panics before), I burn dvds constantly, I admit plenty of facts, cdrecord and its many frontends are fine.

  75. Id like to see the $500 dollar test by bxbaser · · Score: 1

    Spend $500 on each machine.
    Instead of $30,000 dollar machines.
    Remember this is FREE software they are testing against.
    Wow microsoft says they can beat free software.

  76. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Some responses and gripes about Windows, in no particular order w.r.t. your original numbering:

    1) Adding full virus/spam/spyware protection to a Windows system slows it down way too much (for me at least).

    2) Windows registry corrupt? You're screwed. Yay for centralized configuration databases with a completely un-user-friendly recovery method.

    3) The command line interface in Windows is the worst of any modern operating system.

    4) I'd very much consider TeX/LaTeX to be professional desktop publishing, as I've never seen a thesis, conference publication or journal publication produced with anything but. And printing those PS files is pretty easy.

    5) Education in at least CS/CompE is facilitated by a) a free development environment (gcc, gdb, vim/emacs, gprof), b) publicly- and freely-available source code for the kernel.

    6) K3b is pretty nice CD/DVD burning software.

    7) I'm not sure what I'd use Access for that I couldn't get with either a spreadsheet or PostgreSQL.

    Yep, I haven't responded to all of them, most notably the flaws one. That's a topic for a whole other post that hopefully someone else will make.

  77. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 5, Insightful

    > 1. You rejuvenate and dance when you hear a windows flaw exposed, but you conveniently ignore the thousands of security flaws exposed in linux.

    "Rejuvenate" means "renew, appear to grow younger". Did you mean "become jubilant"?

    I don't become jubilant when anybody's security flaw is exposed. In the case of Open Source apps, patches are generally available in a couple of days.

    > 2. You yell loudly TROLL! at any person's post or at any person you see posting facts that you do not want to hear about your oh so cool linux.

    No, just the ones that misstate the facts or are attempts at FUD.

    > 3. You know it's a classic case of penis envy, you don't have all the support, software and hardware available for linux and you have to let that anger out somewhere, but you don't have the brains to admit it.

    Um, Linux supports all my hardware just great.

    > 4. You hate windows, hate Microsoft, but race to emulate windows, have programs to run office from within linux, and spend a $300 on a Windows emulator, only Windows fools.

    > I run Linux, Windows, and Solaris machines. I use OpenOffice.org and so have no need for Microsoft Office. But if I did, I could run it using WINE, which I can get for free. Unlike MS Office.

    > 5. You cannot admit that you don't have professional usage of Linux outside server markets.

    I use Linux *professionally* on the desktop.

    > 6. You cannot admit that most of the joe user out there when told that there is linux will respond, what is that?

    Sounds like there's a need for some consciousness-raising, then. Alothugh I've noticed that more and more people -- even Joe Sixpack types -- don't go glassy-eyed when Linux is mentioned these days.

    > 7. You cannot admit that there is no professional printing capabilities in linux.

    I don't have any problems printing from Linux.

    > 8. You cannot admit that you are a masochist (otherwise why would someone spend hours playing with scripts, and recompiling programs that are available for Windows?)

    Well, it did take me about 30 seconds to learn how to type "./configure - make - make install - make clean". Or if I'm feeling lazy, I can just double-click an RPM file icon in Konqueror.

    > 9. You cannot admit that there is no professional desktop publishing done on Linux.

    Sorry, mate, you're talking to someone who does just that for a living.

    > 10. You cannot admit that no one in their right mind would do professional video editing in Linux.

    I honestly don't know about that. But I do know that lots of movies' special effects are being generated these days using Linux-powered render farms.

    > 11. You cannot admit that linux sucks when it comes for gaming/home entertainment or education.

    There are tonnes of educational apps available for Linux -- many of them come with commercial distros. There are still more on the Net. As for games -- if I want to play games, I'll buy an X-Box.

    > 12. You have problems in understanding Windows, and you will blame your own incompetence on Microsoft.

    Over the years, I've used and administered Windows 3.1/95/98/Me/2000 and have no problems doing so. But after just 6 months, I can install, configure, and administer a Linux machine faster and more reliably.

    > 13. You have problems in pointing a clicking, but have no problems in wading through cryptic scripts written by lunatics.

    Pointing and clicking has its place. But there are lots of things that are actually easier via a command line. For instance, I'd much rather run a MySQL server that way than use the GUI tools. Nice thing about Linux and Open Source apps in general is that you've a choice in the matter. If you don't like the command line, don't use the bloody thing.

    > 14. Nothing will get past that shit that fills your head, you will not admit to any facts.

    Can't respond to an assertion that's semantically nil, sorry.

    > 15. Yo

    --
    Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  78. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wow... What a waste of space.

    13. You have problems in pointing a clicking, but have no problems in wading through cryptic scripts written by lunatics.
    (Yes, they're lunatics because you don't understand their scripts... Good point.)

    17. You feel inferior deep inside but unable to admit it, you don't have a database as easy and powerful as Access.
    (Access is a joke. When a client says they want to do an Access application I [and coincidentally, also the multi-million dollar application development company I used to work for] laugh and shake our heads.)

    19. You don't know that your CD recorder software sucks.
    (Actually, Windows didn't recognize the last CD burner I had... I had to switch to Linux just to use it.)

    23. You don't know commercial support in Linux is almost non existent.
    (Actually, Two out of three of the projects I'm contracted for right now are being done in Linux... For commercial companies.)

    Honestly, you obviously don't have a clue. Some of what you say is correct, but then Linux is still "growing up". And if the creators and coders of Linux are as immature and stupid as you seem to think, then the success of the operating system is even more applaudable.

  79. Don't care by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't really care if Microsoft has managed to change their settings around so that their server goes faster than apache on linux?

    Microsoft through they are for the most part formidible businessmen, has lost my trust to such an extent that I don't give a damn about their products. In the news...the way Google is making revenue is sketchy, but I trust them so I use their services anyway.

  80. Paid Bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Now lets look at this. If RedHat were to pay someone to test thier (the communities) software would you say: It was paid for by RedHat so the results can't be trusted?

    To put this to rest RedHat and Microsoft should get together and hirer two companies to test thier software, both agreeing on what to use. I know this will never happen because BOTH companies are too fearful of the results.

    I have been a Linux user for many years (since late '94) but I am getting tiered of all the extra configuration that I must do to get it working the way I want. I hate to say it but more and more I'm using windows.

    I still use Linux and will continue but (and there is always a big BUT) Linux has its place.

    There is one undeniable fact, Linux make Microsoft software better as Microsoft make Linux software better.

    One last thing: Where are the tests compairing MacOS with Linux and Windows???

  81. Re: whoa, WHOA by The+Nipponese · · Score: 1
    OK, I'm not even a Linux hardcore, but I can you a few things:

    As MAC OS X USER (already you hate me) -where the hell do you get off talking about video editing, printing, desktop publishing and, OF ALL THINGS HOLY, UI (I think this covers the lot of it)?! Oh wait! The part about hacking is good too!

    If I may be granted the graciousness of smoothly transitioning into the subject: The big three pro-sumer OSs (Windows, OS X, and Linux) form the symbiosis between business, creative, and cutting edge tech -respectively. Don't dis'!

    Shizzz, 'talk about being a "looser"

  82. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by aztracker1 · · Score: 1

    So much I wish I could say in this and to the grandparent post... My $.02 is that linux really isn't ready for the average user, and windows has been pretty stable since win2k.

    As for other posts (not this one) that mysql is good enough, I prefer postgresql or ms-sql myself, access is good for smaller things, prototyping, and use for offline data, it has it's place, but isn't the end all be all... (yeah, I said ms-sql above)

    For hardware, windows support is vastly more comprehensive and complete than linux... though linux has better support of hardware more than a year old, as things improve... would like to see more effort towards binary compatability in the kernel to support binary drivers a bit more consistantly though.

    IMHO BSD is probably a better OS option than Linux is in a lot of ways (free/open/net)... though linux has the fame, glory, and fanatic following. I like windows, I use windows... I also use non-ms technologies when they make sense. And yeah, ms's politics and pricing sucks in a lot of ways, but in others is pretty decent, especially compared to other commercial software vendors...

    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
  83. IIS? Windows? Linux? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Even if IIS were faster, it's a no brainer to use Apache just for its shere scalability and powerful features.

    One would have to be an AMATEUR to go and run a proprietary IIS web server that will only run on Windows.

    And, as long as I'm going to be implementing Apache, I'll be implementing it on Solaris SPARC/x86/x64, HP-UX and SGI IRIX, not some AMATEUR-LOSER OPERATING SYSTEM like Linux.

  84. We need a new section by FidelCatsro · · Score: 1

    Called the FUD section with a nice new icon of Elmer .
    having this artical under the linux section just dosn't sit right with me as its really about windows and MS bull-turd bias studys.
    Hm a new Gates icon with an Elmer F.U.D hat on would work well

    --
    The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
  85. Not communicating by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes, I agreee. What is the world coming to when people get a little upset over a few idiots who take the worlds greatest communications medium ever created by mankind and then totally fail to communicate properly with it?

    Seriously, it's like using a wrench to drive a nail. It makes you a fucking idiot because you're abusing your tools.

  86. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by bxbaser · · Score: 1

    you forgot a couple
    34. you feel left of when others at the office talk of how the latest worm destroyed their hard drive data.

    35. you spend hours trying to figure out what those thousands of funny lines in the http logs are when your best friend found who runs a windows server got rooted on the first line.

    36. you have nobody to do stuff with on a saturday cause they are reinstalling windows on thier mother ,brother wifes etc... computer

    37.you feel like an idiot cause everyone has spyware and you dont (you goto the same sites as they do) does the spyware just not like you ?

    38.You wonder why some people reinstall thier os 3 times a year when you havent even rebooted yours in 3 months

    39.people laugh at you cause when they ask you how to do something you tell the the 2 lines to type in the shell.Then they say I have windows and you say sorry you just need to goto the store and buy this for 79.99.

    40. and lastly you always get to work late from playing all those great games...Ummm disreguard number 40

  87. more benchmarks, apache really is slow by j1m+5n0w · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Googling around, I found these benchmarks published by litespeed (who apparently put out their own web server, which (big surprise) they found to beat most of the competitors in most of the tests). Interesting numbers. According to their results, apache really is slow. IIS did a bit better. TUX was extremely fast serving small static files. In one test, they have apache 2.0.52 serving 4673 files per second, compared to 33025 for IIS 6.0 and 53304 per second for TUX.

    I don't know if these numbers are trustworthy, but at least its another datapoint.

  88. You are exactly right !! by ishmalius · · Score: 1
    I have started to really believe in the cliche "your mileage may vary." All of these tests, done in vacuo of the semantics of the application at hand, are really not very indicative.

    Maybe a real-world comparison would be more meaningful, like Slashware on Apache vs. IIS, with a real load.

    1. Re:You are exactly right !! by mattyrobinson69 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      that'd be cool - have a load balancing firewall to pass every other connection to the apache box, see if the iis box sets on fire

    2. Re:You are exactly right !! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Even so, imagine a meeting at a company about to buy some web servers:

      Right person: We should use Apache because its faster, easier to manage and to install, more secure, less costly. Furthermore, our technical department has a long experience with this server.

      Clown (pulls the benchmark out of his pants): Hey! See this benchmark here! It says IIS is 300% faster. What do you have to say?

      Other persons (seeing the pretty pictures and nodding).

      Right person (stunned and mumbling): But, they are comparing ISAPI with CGI, and its 3 years old, I don't think its valid.

      Other persons (looking confused and restless): I want to go home, lets buy Microsoft and get this nonsense done with already.

      So, this totally biased benchmark has served a purpose, by steering yet another clueless customer to IIS.

    3. Re:You are exactly right !! by turbidostato · · Score: 1

      "Maybe a real-world comparison would be more meaningful, like Slashware on Apache vs. IIS, with a real load."

      Then, ask yourself. What does Slashdot uses? What does Google uses? Who uses IIS on Windows 2000 for heavy loaded web sites?

    4. Re:You are exactly right !! by dtfinch · · Score: 1

      Microsoft uses IIS on most of their sites. No more Apache on FreeBSD and Solaris like old times. They probably have more server hardware than Google though.

  89. Whu is this even news? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Anyone who has actually used both knows that W2003 is light years ahead on anything else out there...so is this really news to anyone?

    And with "anyone" I mean "anyone who actually knows anything", not the rdf -people or puta (pinguin up their ass) -people.

    Oh well.

  90. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    24. You miss the fact that companies are leaving linux because of the chaos, and the cheap linux losers who are unwilling to pay and support hard work, Corel, gaming companies,...etc.

    I'd agree to this...the differences between distros and versions within distros is terrible. It's a moving target and you can get screwed when one vendors decides you have to use RedHat 7.3 and another vender says they only support RHEL3 etc... Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, multiple package formats... I dunno, I've put orders of magnitude more time into maintaining a linux box than a windows box. Not saying windows is perfect, by any means.

    But after so many years of linux, and things improve but it doesn't ever seem to get any easier... Get's old when you hope something will just work. Sometimes I'm pleasently suprised, but I'd say in Windows that happens a lot more often.

  91. reproducibility by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What is that one thing about the scientific process that is hammered into every k-12 students head? Reproducibility based on recorded procedures so that others can varify you results. So if you will are uncertain about this gem of marketing/benching reproduce and see what realy happens.

  92. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by MarkByers · · Score: 1

    17. You feel inferior deep inside but unable to admit it, you don't have a database as easy and powerful as Access.

    Funny!

    --
    I'll probably be modded down for this...
  93. tired of this same humdrum by scronline · · Score: 1

    Time and time again slashdot reports about a Microsoft commissioned look into Redhat or Suse running Apache vs. Windows with IIS. These are a waste of people's time. Plain and simple. Speaking from an ISP/Webhost that switched from Win2k3 to Linux (notice no redhat and suse mentionting) and apache I get much higher performance from linux and apache than windows/IIS could ever provide.

    On that note, /. wasting front page space for something like this is literally insulting to those of us (and I think you know who you are) that know the truth.

    I mean...IF, god forbid, windows with IIS was able to out perform linux/apache it's either because of....

    A) poor configuration on the linux admin(s) part
    b) using nothing BUT MS proprietary stuff that runs all through "integrated" programs and thus becomes kernel level which is unsafe as hell
    c) Jaded results looking at ONLY what IIS does better than apache.

    I'm tired of this "debate" and having seen both sides of it, I know the truth. Which is why I'll stick with my linux servers running apache....

  94. Reasons for an alternative solution by Stephan+Seidt · · Score: 1

    There's a reason why I'd not use IIS (again). First of all, I really love the freedom of open source software. And to get back to the benchmark, well, I just think that the apache server could have had some better circumstances. To be honest, I think if I set up an apache webserver it would not run slower than the IIS (hey, it's just god damn paradox). But, apart from the apache-vs-iis-war, I can only recommend using http://www.lighttpd.net/. It's really fast, simple and secure, unlike others.

  95. Microsoft - vendors of low quality bug ridden crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Given Microsofts record as a vendor supplying expensive low quility bug ridden crap, I find it hard to believe any survey which claims that their products are any good.

    I don't believe I'm alone here.

  96. Looking Over There!! FUD!! by chiok · · Score: 0

    How about next time we just skip the dated biased benchmarking report and post "Somewhere, at some point, there possibly might be some pro-Microsoft anti-linux FUD"?

  97. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by dbIII · · Score: 2, Informative
    Flamebait? No, there are valid points as well as misconception. Being fanatical gets you laughed at for good reason. Some points are just ignorance which many people share, like this:

    7. You cannot admit that there is no professional printing capabilities in linux.

    I have a choice of Larson, SDI, Zeh and Easycopy as linux vendors to print to the 42 inch non-postscript printers in my workplace - very much a niche market but still covered.

    5. You cannot admit that you don't have professional usage of Linux outside server markets.

    Microsoft never entirely took over the workstation market, and linux boxes have been used as cheap unix workstations for years.

    13. You have problems in pointing a clicking, but have no problems in wading through cryptic scripts written by lunatics.

    Visual memory vs other kinds - some people find mousing through a lot of menus or the registry easier than flat config files, while I'm the other kind - valid point taken.

    23. You don't know commercial support in Linux is almost non existent.

    I run commercial software on 24 dual Xeon linux machines that costs almost as much each year as it did to buy the machines, but it is used to do things which make money for the company. It runs on solaris and AIX machines in the place as well. If I have a problem with it in the middle of the night there are people I can call to solve the problem - but normally emails with a one day lag due to time zones are good enough. As far as the company that sells the software is concerned we are a small operation - there are people with very big clusters out there.

    26. You are unaware that setting up servers on Windows takes couple of minutes while on linux, good luck playing with configuration scripts.

    Even from a disk image it take more than "a couple of minutes" to set up a windows server, even on something small like NT4.

    21. While the rest of the world moves on, you're stuck in a stone age technology that needs third party software to boot into GUI.

    It's unix - I know this!

    Third party software is everywhere, and it gave MS Windows the ability to get onto the net. Why re-invent the wheel when you already have something decent in the same group?

    25. You are unaware that linux has no terminal services (there is a lame one that no one uses), and commercial support for it is not happening.

    X is old news and VNC has been around for a few years too - in a wide variety of different situations both appear to still be a better solution than windows terminal services.

    29. You spend countless hours flaming people because

    Yes, but I'm doing it from work! However, Im doing it on a Saturday night while rebuilding a disk array - must be a masochist as specified above :(

    33. You keep ignoring the fact that thousands of linux servers get hacked every year

    Good point - all it took was one idiot giving all mail users shell access, turning on telnet and another idiot using "coffee" as a password and I had to rebuild a hacked box. You can set up an insecure system with just about any OS if you don't have a clue - there are plenty of people who use linux who don't have a clue, we all have to start somewhere - the learning curve is there, so if you don't know what to do you have to follow the docs or find out.

    17. You feel inferior deep inside but unable to admit it, you don't have a database as easy and powerful as Access.

    Have you ever seen other databases? MS Access vs most other databases is a similar comparison to MS Notepad vs most word processing software. Similarly you can still do decent work in MS Notepad, and sometimes that's all you need. MS Access doesn't even have a stable scripting language - I've learned two seperate scrip

  98. The real problem... by Thondermonst · · Score: 1

    The real problem with reports like this, is that they are directed at IT managers, not techies. Everybody with some webhosting knowledge sees through this bias. But most managers (like I have one at work... he used to work for MS) don't know shit about it, and probably never touched a webserver. But still those retards are the ones who got to make decisions.

    Something else... why didn't they include a Win2003 running Apache in their test?

  99. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by paranoidgeek · · Score: 1

    It is more that funny in is just .. sad.
    Who ever first though of using access as a web database needs to be ...... put in a room full of pengiuns dressed as Bill Gates.

    --
    Lima India November Uniform X-ray
  100. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by Xabraxas · · Score: 2, Insightful
    For hardware, windows support is vastly more comprehensive and complete than linux... though linux has better support of hardware more than a year old, as things improve...

    Hardware support maybe more complete on the x86 platform but that's it. Linux has far superior hardware support over all.

    would like to see more effort towards binary compatability in the kernel to support binary drivers a bit more consistantly though.

    There is a reason that binary compatibility doesn't exist in proprietary drivers. Linux is a free system and was never intended to support 3rd party, proprietary drivers.

    IMHO BSD is probably a better OS option than Linux is in a lot of ways (free/open/net)... though linux has the fame, glory, and fanatic following. I like windows, I use windows...

    I see this posted all the time but It just leads me to beleive the poster has never used Linux or BSD. It seems like people are using this line to try and ward of criticism by saying "look, I like free software, just not Linux", or "I like Unix, just not Linux".

    --
    Time makes more converts than reason
  101. Not surprising by OrangeTide · · Score: 1

    Red Hat and Apache both have been poor performers. There are other web servers out there if you prefer performance over support and modularity. And other distros if you prefer speed. although just building a new kernel instead of using the stock Red Hat kernels generally makes Red Hat as fast as any other Linux distro.

    2.6.11.8 has been out for 7 days, why aren't you running that? People might start thinking you're obsolete if you don't upgrade. :)

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  102. one of /.'s flamebait articles again by l3v1 · · Score: 1

    Or am I alone when I say I couldn't care less about yet another MS-founded Linux-bashing tests ? For some reason they always pop up on /.'s front. Maybe you like'em so much, well, I have nothing against that, it's your right to like whatever you want. I just feel these "news" are not worthy of more than a sidenote on some last page among the worst ads.

    --
    I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
  103. Why don't you DO something? by Flatline_hun · · Score: 0

    I see a lot of complaints here, most of them valid. But why noone does anything about it? I mean do your own test on a hardware of your choice, send an invitation to microsoft to tune their OS, you tune yours, and both parties should choose half of the tests. And then publish the results. (GetTheRealFacts.com would be nice) I'd like to see them, probably others too. If you let microsoft publish only their goodfacts, sooner or later they will win non-professional (executive) minds, which is their goal, i suppose.
    That's all I have to say...

    --
    Yeah, free Ipod! He is innocent!
  104. is it true? by calyptos · · Score: 1

    Is it true? Does Microsoft's server products actually force you to run a graphical desktop environment? Is this desktop environment even more bloated than the standard Windows XP one with extra tools everywhere? Is it true you can't turn off the desktop environment and work through either a web based control panel or a command line? I'm just wondering. If a company does these things, it's pretty unbelievable that it'd run better than a real server.

    --
    http://illhostit.com/ - Webhosting
    1. Re:is it true? by Master+of+Transhuman · · Score: 1


      Yes, it's true. Bill Gates has no dick.

      Well, that's what I heard!

      Seriously, Windows 2003 Server is actually more bloated, has more incomprehensible "features", menus, dialog boxes, and other graffitti than even Windows XP Professional or 2000 Server.

      There is a command line but only for another load of incomprehensible (and according to my teacher, poorly documented and unreliable) command line utilities that don't do everything the GUI does.

      In other words, it's a nightmare.

      AND even in a college LAB SETTING, it does weird stuff. Try to follow the examples in the textbook - some of them work, some don't. And the ones that don't - good luck trying to find out why. Multiply this for a production environment and I can easily see why it takes four sys admins to run one Microsoft server...

      --
      Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
  105. Re:2k3 has the same kind of optimisations as Tux w by cocotoni · · Score: 1

    TUX is still being developed and it's shipped with even the latest version of Red Hat (no surprise if you consider that TUX started as Red Hat Content Accelerator).

    It is installed by default if you select Web server as the installation package, but it is not started or configured. You have to tweak the things a bit to run it, but when it runs, it runs great, thank you very much, with TUX serving static pages, and using Apache for stuff it doesn't understand.

    I'm only not sure how it is integrated with newer Red Hats (RHEL3U3 and RHEL4) since SELinux was introduced.

  106. No wonder why.. www.microsoft.com by xtracto · · Score: 1

    Just before clicking in the "here" link... I saw that the URL was from Microsoft... come one!, they surely won't say that the RedHat box was better!!

    Now, It would be interesting to see a benchmark commisioned by RedHat... would it be all the contrary?? (RedHat beats by 300% to IIS) or would it be more /real/. Can anyone point to a page with a benchmark done by a third party company??

    --
    Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
  107. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by petermgreen · · Score: 1

    the great thing about access is the self contained nature of the mdb you can put it on a network drive a floppy or whatever and its a single file that you can use it on any machine that has access with no special setup needed.

    most of the good databases for linux seem to be database servers. Whilst theese certainly are better for many applications i would not consider them a replacement for access.

    --
    note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
  108. You know what i'd like to see? by Chicane-UK · · Score: 1

    If Microsoft are so goddamn confident of their product, and so keen to rubbish the Linux community, they should challenge the Linux community to a server benchmark shootout.

    Get equal representatives from each side to devise a set of tests, and agree on a standardised hardware specification. Then each side is allowed to hand pick the engineers that work on the builds of each OS and all the fine tuning and tweaks, and run it as some kind of well publicised event.

    If Windows Server 2003 is so fucking good Microsoft would have nothing to lose.. the cost of marketing an event like that would be nothing compared to the good press and extra business it would give them. But quite honestly I feel Windows 2003 WOULD get screwed over by Linux and the negative publicity would sound the death knoll for Microsoft. And thats why they'd never do it.

    Maybe the Linux community could formally offer such a challenge to Microsoft, and bloody publicise the fact that they are trying to do it.. if the press leapt on it, Microsoft would have to have some spectacular excuse to back out of such an event?

    --
    "Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
  109. A more useful study might allow... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A team of "experts" with each OS to tweak identical machines in advance of the test. That way, it's more like F1 racing where the cars have more or less identical performance and you're seeing differences in the software (or driver) choices.

    Yes? No?

    Cheers,

  110. Where's the ongoing list? by 3seas · · Score: 1

    Is anyone keeping an online List of these research projects that MS has fundes? Like teh Halloween Documents found at OSI

    Or in other words has there been any honest research on MS research?

    Its becomming Important, as this shows persistant intent to deceive the consumer. Isn't consumer deception Against the Law?

  111. insert by voudras · · Score: 1

    insert fark tag here

  112. Veritest? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Veritest? Don't tell me, Kilroy Silk did the test?

    Hmmm.. might explain it then!

  113. Meaningful test? by pk2000 · · Score: 1

    Give both systems limited amount of time and money. X dollars to buy hardware (and maybe software). Y hours to set up and tune the systems. After that run the benchmarks. The system that wins has pretty much the best bang for the buck.

  114. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Can you do that with a Windows machine? No, you can't -- when the Windows GUI hangs, your only alternative is the power button.


    ever hear of killing explorer from task manager and restarting it from task manager? natch!

  115. Microsoft should know better... by vhogemann · · Score: 1

    I mean, 200% to 300% !?

    Can't they tell a lie? If IIS won by 20% to 30% less geeks would be outraged and they would stand a chace of not being exposed...

    Its the biggest software company in the world we're talking about, they sure can hire the best team to produce a fake study!

    I really hope they can learn from their mistakes, and can produce a better and more beliaveble faked study showing how Longhorn is more innovative than MacOSX Tiger.

    --
    ---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
  116. Zonk it! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Zonk posts always crap.

  117. Re:Bad, bad Microsoft.... no cookie for you! by Lonewolf666 · · Score: 1

    If you're looking for a webserver and webserver only, this sort of comparison makes sense.
    BTW, the german C't magazine did a test like this once, with IIS on the newly released Windows 2000 versus Apache on Linux with a beta release of Kernel 2.4.
    They did quite a variety of tests, with Apache/Linux looking slightly better in the overall result. But the difference in performance was not large, so other considerations like price, support and security should have decided your choice if you wanted a web server back then.

    --
    C - the footgun of programming languages
  118. This was published last year by HangingChad · · Score: 1
    Did we just fall into a time warp? The link in the article points to a story published last year:

    Published: May 5, 2004

    Correct me if I'm wrong but I think the majority of us have moved into 05. This article is part of the aborted Get The (MSFT Financed) Facts.

    Either that of I've suddenly been transported into last year, sort of longer version of Ground Hog Day. That could be kind of cool. I can keep living 2004 over and over.

    If this is really 2004 again, then I'm not going to spoil the surprise of what happens in 05.

    --
    That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
  119. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    It is more that funny in is just .. sad.
    Who ever first though of using access as a web database needs to be ...... put in a room full of pengiuns dressed as Bill Gates


    Access is easy and works just fine for personal web sites whose webmasters want to have a little bit of dynamic content.

  120. At spec.org by jarek · · Score: 1

    you have to go back to 2nd quarter 2003 to find a hardware vendor using IIS. Intrestingly, that vendor was Dell showing off a PowerEdge 2650 running IIS5 as well as Rehat Linux 8 (link http://www.spec.org/web99/results/res2003q2/). On this hardware, IIS perfomed 3% better than RHCA (TUX) on Redhat Linux. So, if speed is what you want, hardwave vendors have given up on IIS about two years ago. If features is what you need, then it seems Apache is the choice. Seems to me, IIS has no role to play any more. There's always a better and cheaper choise elsewhere.

  121. With all these surveys..... by mormop · · Score: 1

    Showing how much better Windows is than Linux it would be interesting to have the following stats to make sense of it all:

    1) How many surveys did Microsoft commission on this subject?

    2) What percentage went through the shredder because they didn't say what MS wanted?

    Microsoft sees a marketplace with Linux in it as a battlefield and as the sayings go, all's fair in Love and war and the first casualty of war is the truth.

    --
    Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
  122. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by cheaphomemadeacid · · Score: 1

    At first sight most of these 'points' seem quite uninformed and sometimes blatantly stupid, and all too easy to rebuke, however how many people in the world hold these views? How many businesses are beeing held back in the windows enviroment because of these views? ... Just wondering...

  123. The red flag by jav1231 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The red flag here is "300%." I don't think anyone can take it seriously with such a large desparity. That's like two hybrid car makers competing and the salesman tells a customer "Yeah, they get 50mpg but ours gets a bagillion-zillion!"

    1. Re:The red flag by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well it all depends.

      300% is very believable - IF:

      1. a) You are using aspx on IIS
      b) You have gobs and gobs of RAM installed
      c) asp.net caching is enabled

      and

      2) a) you are running mono on apache (slow, immature, unstable) for asp.net support
      or
      a) you are running php
      b) you did not stack the deck with ram
      c) either caching is enabled, causing it to hit swap
      or
      c) caching is disabled, causing repeated identical php requests to be reparsed/reinterpreted

      . . . not that I'm implying Microsoft would stack the deck or anything. After all, they don't have anything to lose and they're not afraid of li'l ol' Linux.

      Oh wait. . .

    2. Re:The red flag by jav1231 · · Score: 1

      Another thing that has to be factored is the interoperability of IE with Windows OS's. I don't know how they tested, but If I'm testing speed with IE on XP against Apache and IIS I might expect IE to operate better pulling from IIS. Maybe I'm being conspiracle, but I notice Firefox seems to have strange behavior occassionally on Windows. I certainly wouldn't put it past M$ to stack the deck on the browser side.
      I just don't trust Microsoft, period.

  124. oh, come on by noamsml · · Score: 1

    They tested it agains redhat 8! (yes, redhat 8 was one of their test cases)

  125. Of course its biased... by jromz03 · · Score: 1

    Since its MS commissioned. What do you expect? A fair comparison? MS, fair? HAHAHA!

    Seems like Bill is everywhere lately. From bashing Linux, spreading FUD, bashing Nintendo...

  126. Who knows? by t_allardyce · · Score: 1

    I know this is off topic and im going to get shot down like a kite over Bagdad, but the Windows GUI/environment is faster than many X setups ive seen, im not saying its Linux, im not saying its X, im not even saying its KDE (ok maybe i am), but my point remains valid, Windows might be expensive, crash-prone, bug-ridden, lacking of features and full of security holes, but it can still hold its own on speed in some arenas and im just saying _maybe_ its possible that Apache or Linux or someone in that chain is not pulling their weight.

    --
    This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
    1. Re:Who knows? by Master+of+Transhuman · · Score: 1


      Well, you MIGHT be right about SOME aspects.

      The other night I was downloading babe pictures from the Net using Firefox on Mandrake 10.1 and it was taking 15-20 seconds to save a freakin' image file.

      In irritation, I rebooted back to Windows XP Pro and ran Firefox on the same site, downloading the same pictures - they saved in 1 or 2 seconds.

      I don't know if it was Firefox, KDE, the widget library or just something slowing my Mandrake system down for a bit, but the same scenario was faster on Windows.

      I have also noticed that Windows directory open dialogs work faster than KDE's - I have a lot of directories with >200 files or subdirectories in them, and Windows seems to open them faster than KDE. Although once KDE has opened them, they're cached just like Windows and the different seems to be less or even faster on KDE.

      --
      Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
  127. Test shows weakness of Microsoft by aciermetier · · Score: 1

    Don't bother about this 'test'. The webpage at MS is one year old, the study more than two years. If MS IIS would have beaten Apache 2 on Redhat Enterprise Linux 3 by now, they would for certain have published those results with relish. They didn't. Instead those marketing people at MS just let the same nonsense stand without apparently being able to do better. I feel rather sorry for them...

  128. Recent? Yeah right by chowells · · Score: 1

    The article linked to states "Published: May 5, 2004".

    In case you hadn't noticed, it is now 2005. Not 2004. What kind of moron editor doesn't even catch these basic errors?

  129. I've had enough of these unfair tests by dheltzel · · Score: 1

    From now on, let's insist that they connect the Linux server to the network while they are running the benchmark.

  130. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    He is talking about the Window manager, not the File manager. Touchdown!

  131. Veritest isn't good at testing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    My company has purchased testing through Veritest, and I can tell you they suck to an extortionate degree. Read on.

    They were hired to measure web server performance using our hardware. Unfortunately for us, the only testing tool they can use is WebBench which contains serious bugs that prevent it from measuring full speed correctly. I only know this because I experienced the same problems in my lab as they eventually blamed on our product. When we developed our own test tools, we discovered it's not that easy to make the benchmarking code perform well enough to handle the load our product carries. But we had to figure it out in order to push full to our product and we know it's robust because of that.

    We tried to take it up as a defect in their WebBench but they were unwilling to consider their own fault. They wanted to charge us $engineering time even if the fault turned out to be their own.

    Lessons learned: 1, caveat emptor. 2, Veritest sucks.

  132. Almost by Eternally+optimistic · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If you require identical hardware, some might complain that it's more suited to a particular system. Give them a fixed amount of money for the server. Or a fixed amount of other resources that might be the bottleneck (power, floorspace, maintenance time/month,...)

    --
    What keeps me going is my inertia.
    1. Re:Almost by Fez · · Score: 1

      If you require identical hardware, some might complain that it's more suited to a particular system. Give them a fixed amount of money for the server. Or a fixed amount of other resources that might be the bottleneck (power, floorspace, maintenance time/month,...)

      ... And then turn it into a reality competition TV show! Sounds like something for The Discovery Channel. (I'd say for G4, but G4 sucks.)

    2. Re:Almost by gmack · · Score: 1

      TCP Benchmarks are almost done this way. They have a price/performance metric. Unfortunatly the vendors all use discounts on the hardware used for the test that are near impossible for anyone else to get.

      Make a new rule to level the playing field and they will find a new way to cheat.

    3. Re:Almost by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Iron sysadmin!

  133. Veritest is like Dvorak by PenguinBoyDave · · Score: 1

    Not worth squart when it comes to anything objective.

    --
    I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
  134. Re:How to tell if you are a ms/windows fanatic. by sad_ · · Score: 1

    1.you make stupied lists against linux on forums
    2.none of your points are true

    --
    On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
  135. Holy crap batman! by harris+s+newman · · Score: 0

    What's that author been smokin?

  136. FUD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When have you seen a study funded by Microsoft that didn't show that Microsoft was better?

  137. Re:fp kekelar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    so, what you are saying is that linux sucks a tiny little bit.

  138. haha. awesome post. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    All i have to say is.. rock the fuck on. Thank you for a funny/good read this morning (it's 8am on sat. morning).

  139. Identical budgets, not hardware hardware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Of course, the budget has to buy both software and hardware.

    After all, we want to count TCO and performance, right? :-)

    1. Re:Identical budgets, not hardware hardware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      also consultants at market rates.

  140. MOD PARENT UP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Good LORD, this should have been the first reply to the article. I can't believe how STUPID these geeks can be sometimes - get a BRAIN, MORANS.
    Holy Christ, how did you guys NOT pick this up.

  141. Even if it is true who really cares. by jellomizer · · Score: 1

    If IIS is really 4x faster then Apache. In most cases it really doesn't matter. Rarily people who are connecting to your side across the internet will reach the bottleneck of Apache. and most cases with the except of an occasional slashdotting threw put is rarely past 100 connection a minute. If they really do have that sort of load where IIS speed performance is needed. They should actually rethink their strategy with having multiple servers. In the simple case if it is that popular that if one system crashed due to OS or hardware there will be a lot of trouble and profits loss. Guess what if you IT guys well need to stop thinking that Speed is the only way to improve IT. While I have seem some places with IT shops running slower equipment having better performance then ones with the fastest of everything because they were smart enough to set it up and to avoid bottlenecks. A 1 lane road going at 65 MPH for 10 miles vs. a 2 lane road going at 30 mph. Depending on the traffic the 2 lanes will allow a person to go the distance quicker then 1 lane.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  142. Doesn't matter by jbplou · · Score: 1

    Too many variables to say which one performs better, lets face it most people run IIS for ASP or ASP.NET while APACHE is used for PHP, Perl CGI, and jsp with the right modules. You really need to compare dynamic pages that look identical but are written in the relevant langs. Also performance isn't the end all on most web servers. Sure for google or amazon it is, but for an internal intranet server that is used by 500 employees I would think speed of developer deployment is more important as either server could handle the load.

  143. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Don't forget:

    34. Profit!

  144. I like it. by hey! · · Score: 2, Funny

    Kind of like the ultimate fighting championship -- no holds barred compentition between alpha geeks to see who can webbench more.

    Of course this is completely irrelevant to real world usage scenarios. What we need is another data point from the other end of the spectrum. It can be like one of those reality shows. You rope four teams of ordinary folk right of the street, hand each team identical base (no OS) servers, only each team gets a different operating system :Windows, RHEL, FreeBSD and MacOS (Of course, the Mac group will have to work with the closest apprixmation we can manage to the x86 box going by paper specs). Their task will be to build an ecommerce site and successfully run it without getting hacked for four successive weeks, armed only the documentation provided with the operating system.

    We can call it SURV1V0R.

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    1. Re:I like it. by barneyfoo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually the ultimate test would be for an independant party to Sponsor a challenge.

      Each would team would get(windows and linux):

      $5,000 in cash with which to buy hardware and software. All purchases must carry a receipt and all parts must run to spec. No overclocking.

      Garunteed 5 9's power.

      Each Team's computer will be housed in the same independant facility maintained by Sponsor.

      The contest can last no longer than a year. Each team will be able to maintain their own server throughout the competition.

      The scoring will be simple. You won't lose points for having down time. Your score is simply the number server pages(the kind to be determined) you've properly served before your first moment of downtime. So if your server crashes before the year is over, the number of pages served up to that point is your score.

      Maybe someone has an idea for what a good server is to run.

    2. Re:I like it. by fireboy1919 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      No, that's still no good.

      Then you could be dealing with luck. You happen to get a bad batch of RAM and your server crashes? Sucks for you. The other guy wins. Somebody decides to get the other team to win via DDOS? Sucks. Other team wins. Random lightening strike? You see the problem?

      Plus it makes stability the ultimate concern rather than (possibly) throughput, which is clearly a benchmark in favor of Linux, since the OS itself is simply better designed (if for no other reason than because they replace the worn-out parts more often). If you go down for a minute every day, but only for a minute, will anyone care?

      Most likely not. Incidentally, thats about the length of time it takes for me to restart my apache install. Heck, I could run apache with xinetd without too much problem, which to me is kind of cheating.

      A better idea would be to separate these into two separate scores: one for uptime characteristics (including recovery time), and one for throughput.

      --
      Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
    3. Re:I like it. by mdfst13 · · Score: 1

      "If you go down for a minute every day, but only for a minute, will anyone care?"

      Depends what you are doing. However, point taken in that stability in those cases where it is actually important is usually provided by failover setups (server farms, etc.). Anyone can have a single server go down. People who care use more than one server.

      $5000 isn't enough of a prize for a stability test. It would be a reasonable prize for a throughput test that lasted a week or so. Can't be too much longer than that; otherwise, it won't be a good bet to compete. I.e. if there are ten teams putting in a year of server time, the expected value of the competition is only $500 (prize divided by number of teams). $500 might barely cover the setup cost for the server. It won't provide anything for the year of server time lost. The only way the contest works is if you can take your server and go use it after the contest. After a year, your finally tuned server will be out of date.

    4. Re:I like it. by Wdomburg · · Score: 1

      If you go down for a minute every day, but only for a minute, will anyone care?

      For those of us with service level agreements? YES. HELL YES.

    5. Re:I like it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The 5,000 isn't a prize. Its an allowance to purchase hardware. RTFP.

    6. Re:I like it. by lappy512 · · Score: 0

      But, this is rigged too, it's rigged to be on Linux's side since we all know that Linux is more stable. Something better would be like: identical servers, identical parts, and a test run to make sure there aren't any broken parts.

      Then we will run for 2 weeks, and how many pages served for the 2 weeks (or any other amount of time) would be the benchmark.

    7. Re:I like it. by zobier · · Score: 1
      I was just posting off-the-cuff about a web server showdown earlier.

      Taking the replies into consideration and having thought about it some I think that a good metric would be to give the two teams a budget and let them buy their own hardware and hire sysadmins and developers.

      Give them a specification for a simple database driven content management system or a wiki or something like that and once it's up and running we give them a good Slashdotting.

      We can then basically compare $/page. Someone cleverer than me can come up with some formula that accounts for server responsiveness, the number of "pages" served, the average size of a page, downtime, etc. Obviously a well designed system will use less markup to produce the required result so higher KB/$ is not a good metric.

      I imagine the two of the competing technologies would be ASP.Net & MS SQL Server vs. PHP & MySQL but I don't see a reason to limit the competition to two teams or restrict the technologies they can use.

      --
      Me lost me cookie at the disco.
  145. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by colinrichardday · · Score: 1

    And how does one do this when the keyboard and mouse are frozen? On Linux, one uses telnet or SSH (or whatever) to access the errant machine. Does Windows have a telnet/SSH server?

  146. My Experience by 7311587 · · Score: 1

    I work for a software company that sells a suite of server products that run on Windows/Solaris/AIX/HPUX and Red Hat Linux. We have very extensive QA where there is a team that focusses solely on performance testing. The Linux version is significantly faster than the Windows version. There is a caveat though, this applied only to Red Hat Advanced server 8. They updated the threading model or something for that one. For earlier versions of Red Hat the performance sucked for a server product.

  147. like noatime by diegocgteleline.es · · Score: 3, Informative

    Surprise, they enabled DisableLastAccesS on windows but did not mounted linux filesystems with noatime

    noatime disables the update of the "last accesS" field of files, and improves the performance a lot for some workloads. If you check the latest article about the kernel.org servers, they found that they reduced the system load to the half by just using this option

    This analisys is biased. Who cares, anyway?

    1. Re:like noatime by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've noticed the same thing, mostly all the 'Windows vs. Linux' performance benchmarks conducted by 'unbiased' research labs funded by Microsoft forget to turn on noatime on the Linux FS and always remember to insert NtfsDisableLastAccess into the registry. It seems pretty obvious that just serving a file that's cached in RAM is faster than both serving a file that's cached in RAM and performing a disk write.

      I think this lack of basic knowledge of filesystems is a display of the level of technical competence of the authors of these papers, as well as that of Microsoft (as they give their approval to these reports by publishing them on their website).

    2. Re:like noatime by Not+The+Real+Me · · Score: 1

      It's very clear (page 36 of 40) in their report that W2K3 was heavily tweaked (with obvious help from Microsoft) while the RedHat/Apache config was almost vanilla. Most Microsoft admins probably wouldn't even try editing the registry on a production machine since doing so may very well void any service contract they have with Microsoft.

      It's also clear on page 5 of the report that on cgi performance the difference between M$ and RH is very minor, almost negligible. The 300% difference is the worst case scenario on static content. Last time I checked, PHP and perl on Apache were quite popular, and I've seen JSP running on quite a few high volume commercial news/media sites. Pure static content on Apache is more the exception than the rule.

      From the webbench.pdf, page 36:

      Web server performance testing under Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition consisted of making the following registry modifications to the server systems under test:

      Set HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\InetInfo\Pa rameters\MaxCachedFileSize to 1048576 bytes.
      Set HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\HTTP\Parame ters\UriMaxUriBytes to 1048576 bytes.
      Set HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem\N tfsDisableLastAccess to 1.
      Set HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\tcpip\Param eters\MaxHashTableSize to 65535.

      We made the following changes to the default configuration of Internet Information Server (IIS) 6.0 for use with testing that involved non-secure static and CGI-based content:
      Set the CentralBinaryLoggingEnabled option to "TRUE" in the IIS Metabase.
      Using the Microsoft Management Console, removed script and execute access from the document root directory that contained only static content.
      Using the Microsoft Management Console, disabled the "Index This Resource" property for the main Web server.
      Using the Microsoft Management Console, disabled access logging for the web server.
      Created a virtual directory called "cgi-bin" to store the WebBench ISAPI and CGI based dynamic content for all tests.
      Set the Application Protection property to "Low (IIS Process)" for the "cgi-bin" virtual directory.

      We made the following changes to the default configuration of Internet Information Server (IIS) 6.0 for use with all tests:
      Set the CentralBinaryLoggingEnabled option to "TRUE" in the IIS Metabase.
      Using the Microsoft Management Console, removed script and execute access from the document root directory that contained only static content.
      Using the Microsoft Management Console, disabled the "Index This Resource" property for the main Web server.
      Using the Microsoft Management Console, disabled access logging for the web server.
      Created a virtual directory called "cgi-bin" to store the WebBench ISAPI and CGI based dynamic content for all tests.
      Set the Application Protection property to "Low (IIS Process)" for the "cgi-bin" virtual directory.
      Using IIS 6.0, created a certificate request using a 1024-bit key. Submitted this certificate request to a system configured with Windows Server 2003 Certificate Services and generated a digital certificate. Installed the resulting certificate into IIS 6.0 for use with SSL/CGI-based testing.

      Red Hat Linux Advanced Server 2.1 ships with version 1.3.23 of the Apache Web server. As a result of our investigation, we made the following changes to the default Red Hat Linux Advanced Server 2.1 Apache Web server configuration when testing the performance of the Apache Web server using only non-secure static data:
      Enabled the mmap_static_module in the Apache configuration file httpd.conf. This allowed us to directly map the static content used by WebBench directly into system memory.
      Set MaxRequestsPerChild to zero in the httpd.conf file
      Set the document root directory to point to a directory on a fast RAID 0 volume.
      Disabled Access Logging
      Cut and pasted the URL's for over 6000 static WebB

  148. Some Numbers From My P3850Mhz T21 Thinkpad 256megs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    orwell~> openssl speed rc4 md5 des-ede3 sha1
    Doing md5 for 3s on 16 size blocks: 907943 md5's in 2.94s
    Doing md5 for 3s on 64 size blocks: 807181 md5's in 2.95s
    Doing md5 for 3s on 256 size blocks: 584161 md5's in 2.95s
    Doing md5 for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 279567 md5's in 2.96s
    Doing md5 for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 47094 md5's in 2.96s
    Doing sha1 for 3s on 16 size blocks: 829742 sha1's in 2.94s
    Doing sha1 for 3s on 64 size blocks: 660291 sha1's in 2.95s
    Doing sha1 for 3s on 256 size blocks: 395302 sha1's in 2.92s
    Doing sha1 for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 155759 sha1's in 2.96s
    Doing sha1 for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 23185 sha1's in 2.96s
    Doing rc4 for 3s on 16 size blocks: 13655185 rc4's in 2.92s
    Doing rc4 for 3s on 64 size blocks: 4064584 rc4's in 2.93s
    Doing rc4 for 3s on 256 size blocks: 1062317 rc4's in 2.93s
    Doing rc4 for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 267395 rc4's in 2.93s
    Doing rc4 for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 33578 rc4's in 2.94s
    Doing des ede3 for 3s on 16 size blocks: 1156225 des ede3's in 2.93s
    Doing des ede3 for 3s on 64 size blocks: 295752 des ede3's in 2.91s
    Doing des ede3 for 3s on 256 size blocks: 75390 des ede3's in 2.95s
    Doing des ede3 for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 18898 des ede3's in 2.94s
    Doing des ede3 for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 2341 des ede3's in 2.92s
    OpenSSL 0.9.7a Feb 19 2003
    built on: Tue Oct 5 08:55:24 EDT 2004
    options:bn(64,32) md2(int) rc4(idx,int) des(ptr,risc1,16,long) aes(partial) blow fish(idx)
    compiler: gcc -fPIC -DZLIB -DOPENSSL_THREADS -D_REENTRANT -DDSO_DLFCN -DHAVE_DLF CN_H -DKRB5_MIT -DOPENSSL_NO_IDEA -DOPENSSL_NO_MDC2 -DOPENSSL_NO_RC5 -DOPENSSL_N O_EC -I/usr/kerberos/include -DL_ENDIAN -DTERMIO -Wall -O2 -g -pipe -m32 -march= i686 -mtune=pentium4 -Wa,--noexecstack -DSHA1_ASM -DMD5_ASM -DRMD160_ASM
    available timing options: TIMES TIMEB HZ=100 [sysconf value]
    timing function used: times
    The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
    type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes
    md5 4941.19k 17511.72k 50693.29k 96715.07k 130335.83k
    sha1 4515.60k 14324.96k 34656.61k 53884.19k 64166.05k
    rc4 74822.93k 88782.72k 92816.78k 93451.36k 93561.56k
    des ede3 6313.86k 6504.51k 6542.32k 6582.16k 6567.63k
    orwell~>

  149. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by SirPavlova · · Score: 1

    Windows does have a TELNET server; it's disabled by default in Windows XP Pro SP2, & I can't speak for any other version, or XP Home (I'm not sure whether that really counts as another version - it's just Pro without some stuff). No inbuilt SSH etc. though.

    It does have a secure connection protocol, Remote Assistance (or it's supposed to be secure, dunno if it's buggy), but by default you have to send an invitation from the requesting one & even then it requires input. So that's really all it's good for, assistance. No good as a replacement for SSH.

    --
    Yar.
  150. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    >17. You feel inferior deep inside but unable to admit it, you don't have a database as easy and powerful as Access.

    One word - Oracle.

  151. How these tests work by cimetmc · · Score: 1

    Before coming to the actual topic of my message, I just wanted to point out that this is a 2 year old test from April 2003. So the age of the test alone should make the results of limited value today.

    However I would like to comment on how these kind of tests are performed in general.
    Maybe this will outrage you, but I make the bold claim that Veritest is not to blame for the test being biased. In fact, tests like these work like follows:
    - Microsoft has its own labs where they continuesly test their own products and competing products for performance and they try to find special scenarios where indeed their product is indeed better than the competition.
    Once they have developped such a scenario, they pay some testing company to do the tests according to the scenario devised by Microsoft.
    The testing company then just does the job its payed for and performed the tests accodring to the scenario imposed to them. Of course, they get the same results as Micrsoft and they can in all good conscience certify that in the giving scenario, the MS product is indeed faster than the competing product. So in the end, the testing company just did their job, e.g. run a Benchmark in a very particular scenario which was imposed to them. The testing company did in now way favour MS in the results. They didn't have to because the testing conditions were already biased.

    Just to show how this has always been common practice, take the case of (I think it was) Netcraft a couple of years ago. They were commissioned by MS to do a benchmark which proved that Active Direcotry was faster than Novell's eDirectory. At about the same time, Novell commissioned the same company to do a benchmark that proved eDirectory to be faster than Active Directory. Of course, the testing scenarios for both cases were different.
    The testing company faithfully published the 2 results. E.g. they published that their benchmark proved Active Directory to be faster than eDirectory, and the published the results proving eDirectory to be faster than Active Directory.

    Marcel

  152. Windows on a ferarri by dashersey · · Score: 1

    Windows on a ferrari will always be faster than apache on a scooter in an unbiased timed trial.

    --
    You are in a maze of twisty little passages; all alike.
  153. Verisoft's Client List by westlake · · Score: 1
    In short, this is a company paid by Microsoft to make reports/whitepapers that make Microsoft look good. Nothing wrong with that as long as everyone's aware.

    Verisoft's client list reads like a global Who's Who of the industry. AMD, Apple, Cisco, Dell, Google, Intel, IBM. Google, Nokia, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Philips, Sony, Sun. Hundreds of others. Veritest Clients. This is not a company whose reports will be casually ignored or dismissed at the enterprise level.

  154. There is only one way to get a fair test.... by wowbagger · · Score: 2, Interesting
    There is only one way you can get a "fair" test in a situation like this:

    1. Let Microsoft come up with a set of tests to be applied.
    2. Let RedHat come up with a set of tests to be applied.
    3. Compute the union of the two sets of tests.
    4. Let Microsoft specify the target cost of the hardware they want to benchmark on (C1).
    5. Let Redhat specify the target cost of the hardware they want to benchmark on (C2).
    6. Take the geometric mean of the two hardware costs (C=sqrt(C1*C2))
    7. Given C, let Microsoft determine the hardware to be benchmarked on, given the assumption that the purchaser of the hardware will be a third party buying from standard sources (e.g. NewEgg, Dell, IBM, whatever - but not eBay or the like - new hardware only).
    8. Again, given C, let RedHat determine the hardware to be purchased - new hardware only from recognized sources.
    9. Third party buys both sets of hardware and delivers it to RedHat and Microsoft.
    10. Microsoft provides detailed setup and configuration instructions for the test. Microsoft may have access to the hardware for the purposes of determining these settings. Setups are NOT allowed to use non-publicly available code (i.e. applying released service packs is OK, applying custom service packs is NOT allowed).
    11. RedHat provides detailed setup and configuration instructions. RedHat may have access to the hardware for the purposes of determining these settings. Setups are NOT allowed to use non-publicly available code (i.e. released updates via up2date are allowed, but custom code is NOT allowed.)
    12. Both sides return the hardware to the third party, who then verifies the hardware had not been modified (alternatively, the third party purchases 2 sets of hardware for each side, keeping one set.)
    13. Third party performs the installs as per the instructions for both sides.
    14. Third party performs the tests.
    15. Test results, hardware spec, and setup instructions are posted.


    This way, each side may tweak their setup to the max, using all specialized knowledge, to get maximum performance. Since each side may run the optimal hardware configuration (given price restrictions), the practice of hobbling the other side by picking ill-supported hardware is prevented.

    This test best conforms to the sort of thing an end user would do - pick the best bang for the buck for the budget and task at hand.

    Now, this might result in a dual Itanium server (Windows) being benchmarked against a dual Power server (Linux) (or some other comparison), but that is "fair" in that both sides are running on the same COST hardware.

    True, each side might "release" a new (service pack|set of RPMs) for the purposes of the test, but as long as those releases are publicly available, who cares? We all benefit from the improvement of the code.
  155. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Quick answer: stupidity is a human disease which no one can escape. But, some people manage to diminish its symptoms, while others just suffer violent attacks over and over again.

    Sadly, there are still lots of people in this latter category.

  156. Who cares? by borud · · Score: 1
    Seriously, who cares?

    Ask yourself why you chose the webserver you chose and the particular platform it runs on. Was it because of speed alone? Most likely not. And if you do need more speed than standard Apache on Linux gives you, what would you do? Buy more servers? Perhaps. It probably costs less to have 3x the number of Linux servers measured in licence cost, in time spent developing for them and keeping them running.

    Of course, like everything else: it depends.

    Besides, if you need more performance: design better web apps. Seriously. Most web apps have bottlenecks that are due to bad design and do not reflect the performance potential of the underlying technology at all. I am constantly amazed at the sub-optimal solutions developers pick when solving a particular problem. Scaling up systems isn't really all that magic. It is mainly about knowing what problem you are trying to solve.

    I'm not really interested in these benchmarks anymore. I was perhaps 10 years ago, when webservers weren't that good and there were some real performance gains available through relatively simple tricks. But now most any webserver will do because web sites are usually constrained by other factors. Like bandwith and the running times of their web apps.

    Microsoft lost this round of web server platform wars. Perhaps Longhorn will put a dent in the market, but you'll never know. Microsoft have this fantastic way of creating a lot of buzz for their OS releases, and when they finally materialize it isn't really that much of a quantum leap.

    1. Re:Who cares? by magadass · · Score: 0

      Personally I think IIS is easier to scale and setup than a cluster of Apache servers, but that observation is obviously from lack of experience in doing the latter, I wish I could do both for the EXACT same project and then be able to measure, but thats never the case, someone will always have more experience in one thing than the other, and its unlikely you would be able to do two seperate solutions on the exact same project, would be interesting though.

      --
      "If I was smarter I could rule the world!"
  157. Better Criteria by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    While using identical hardware seems like a reasonable level playing field, I think it would be better to give both teams an equal budget for hardware. Most companies trying to make a decison are going to look at their budget and see how much web server they can get as a system. Not I'm going to buy X hardware and Y software, which might not play particularly well together.

    If you want a more realistic test, and to tilt the field in favor of open source, make the budget for hardware and software.

    You also need to factor in the test clients. IE still has the biggest market share, so the test clients should behave like IE a proportional amount of time. But it should also behave like FF/Moz/Op/lynx a proportional amount of time.

  158. The original version... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The unedited text of the study:

    Windows 2003 web server performs up to 300% higher DDoS throughput than Red Hat Linux running with Apache

  159. SURV1VOR - Re:I like it. by Cycloid+Torus · · Score: 0

    Knowing my 2 cents amounts to nothing, I think an international committee could be formed to oversee a challenge match.

    Isn't it time for server Olympics?

    --
    Lost in space at an early age. Survived the vacuum. Now rebuilding castle in air.
  160. copy/paste works pretty well on windows?? but but by 6800 · · Score: 1
    Well, if you accept works as 'pretty well', I'll grant you that.

    The cut and paste in a plain ol'timey X window, though is far superior for my heavy use. It is almost as effecient (operator wise) as 'drag and drop', just one more mouse click. Now the MS rip variation of cut and paste takes much more interaction per cut and paste operation multiplying out to much more and slower work for the user.

  161. Does the test setup matter? by NickFortune · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Does the test setup matter? Apparently Veritest thought so. They spent some time tweaking both machines. It seems like the tweaks sped up windows and slowed down linux.

    I have to applaud the way you take a positive stance and look at how apache can be improved. I expect efforts in that direction form an ongoing part of apache development, but the positive attitude is appreciated. It's just a bit sad that your post reads as an endorsemnt of a blatant piece of paid-for propaganda

    --
    Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
  162. Binary cgi by Hecatonchires · · Score: 1

    Some people still do - the ones that aren't working with open source, and want to sell a product without giving away their source code. There are also people who want to obfuscate their web code to protect their job. Hard to be indispensible when they can fire you and bring in a monkey to make minor layout changes after you did all the initial hard yards.

    --

    Yay me!

  163. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by Nomikos · · Score: 1

    Good point - all it took was one idiot giving all mail users shell access, turning on telnet and another idiot using "coffee" as a password and I had to rebuild a hacked box.

    o_O

    *changes password*

  164. Got it here... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny
    #!/bin/bash

    echo "Content-type: text/html"
    echo

    sleep 300

    echo "CGI script complete"
  165. Figures by kelzer · · Score: 2, Informative

    They shut off access logging in IIS. As far as I could see, they left logging on for Red Hat. This means that lots of disk writes were being generated on Linux but not on Windows. As http request volume goes up in their tests, the RAID write-cache could eventually fill up (only under Linux), at which point the webserver starts blocking while waiting for disk I/O to complete.

    Figures that right after submitting this I see that they turned off access logging in Apache. Doh!

    --

    ---------------------------------------------
    SERENITY NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  166. As someone who tunes web servers... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    the problem with web server benchmarks is that tuning of the web server will change them immensely. Apache, for instance, can be tuned to cache all data served out of memory, making it extremely fast. Furthermore, you can use kernel mods under linux to further accelerate static page serving. So once it amounts to reading data from memory and writing it to a socket, you're looking at TCP stack tunings and scheduler tunings in the OS.

    Unless one OS has a fatal flaw in its TCP Stack or Scheduler, they should be able to approximate eachothers performance with similar tuning parameters. So what you are really testing is TCP performance, no?

    1. Re:As someone who tunes web servers... by magadass · · Score: 0, Insightful

      Usually unless they otherwise state so, benchmarks are done with the out-of-box settings, you can also do several things to enhance IIS performance, so I am not sure if your analysis is really valid. Although I do have to say IIS 6 and IIS 5.1 are nearly completely different, microsoft really took a leap forward when they designed IIS 6, so its interesting.

      As to the Microsoft sponsored benchmark, Im not 100% convinced that if you pay for a benchmark its going to be biased, unless you black-mail the company doing the benchmark, I would like to think that the company holding the benchmark would be lookin out for there name also, and not skew results to make them look bad.

      But thats what I would like to think, to much past with how microsoft has handled these things, but of course microsoft isnt the only one guilty of this, intel is just as guilty as well as AMD, Nvidia, ATI, etc.

      If you had a business would you like your benchmarks skewed a bit to benefit your company? I'm not sure if I would or not, money is tempting but technology doesnt advance for money it advances for competition.

      --
      "If I was smarter I could rule the world!"
  167. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I hate most of the linux releases, they come with too much "stuff" thats "enabled-by-default" in the default install. I hate having to *de*select stuff in my install...

    my little server here runs samba (for my win2k boxes to share) and apache (for my website), on a P3/450 with mirrored 200GB disks (mostly for the share). I run NetBSD, the one linux box I have will eventually get nuked to NetBSD, I only installed linux on it to play with some stuff for work, where I'm forced to support RedHat (and Solaris, and Windows - presuming I like having an income at any rate).

  168. not identical servers, identical BUDGETS by ChrisCampbell47 · · Score: 2, Insightful
    A real competition would give 2 (or more) teams identical budgets, not identical hardware. They would need to PAY all consultants at market rates. No free consultation from Microsoft (or Red Hat) R+D allowed, unless they are paid, and paid at market rates.

    The budget has to buy software, hardware and setup labor.

    This eliminates the problem of "that hardware favors Microsoft" or "that team had better engineers". It all comes down to money and value.

    Of course the competition would need to state up front exactly how performance would be measured and how the various different tasks (static pages, cgi, etc.) would be weighted to come up with any overall scores. That would dictate the design choices made by each team.

    1. Re:not identical servers, identical BUDGETS by 4of12 · · Score: 1

      The budget has to buy software, hardware and setup labor.

      Damn. That kind of benchmark starts to sound eerily like real life!

      Next thing you know you'll be asking not just about performance for price, but things like maintenance, uptime, 3am remote maintenance!

      If you keep up, you'll put a lot of hardworking marketers out of work who had been convincing us that using their product increased our virility.

      --
      "Provided by the management for your protection."
  169. Learn from experience by baomike · · Score: 1

    I think it is somewhat justifiable to discount this study on it face. How many times do you stick your finger in the flame, before you learn that it is not a good idea. Same thing with MSFT sponsored studies,
    They have been found wanting so many times, that most people don't bother with any investigation.

  170. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    33. You keep ignoring the fact that thousands of linux servers get hacked every year

    Good point - all it took was one idiot giving all mail users shell access, turning on telnet and another idiot using "coffee" as a password and I had to rebuild a hacked box. You can set up an insecure system with just about any OS if you don't have a clue - there are plenty of people who use linux who don't have a clue, we all have to start somewhere - the learning curve is there, so if you don't know what to do you have to follow the docs or find out.


    You mean like the guy I work with, who's neighbor's wireless was accessable from his house, and who FTP'd to his server as "Administrator" with no password? No admin password??? I thought my suggestion of giving him a host file with common sites like google, yahoo, etc. given the IP's of some good porn sites was fun.

    Given that our Solaris/Linux boxes at work get patched, very rarely, and our Windows boxes get patched at least bi-monthly for some "critical" security hole, I'd greatly argue the security of Windows in any way, shape, or form. Sure, there's some holes in our linux setup's, that I inherited from the severe lack of security knowledge that was there previously. Lack of having a *clue* about security is the primary cause of having security holes in *any* OS. Not the OS.

  171. Re:copy/paste works pretty well on windows?? but b by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm more a fan of the keyboard than the mouse, so the MS way is just as good for me, and Windows applications are typically a lot better overall in terms of keyboard accessibility than X applications.

    However, I was referring more to the meaningful translation of complex data when copying/pasting, dynamic updating of linked data, etc. I can do the same thing with command-line UNIX software by using a makefile to regenerate the final output after changing source data, but X applications, in my experience, can't compare to Windows applications here (and on Windows, MS applications are typically better in this respect than non-MS ones).

  172. Wire saturated? Everything else is ether by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Apache can saturate your 100MB ethernet (what you will get in most colos) quite easily. All other traffic is queued. So most of this talk is pointless drivel. The world's most visited sites use Apache, so clearly it works.

  173. Gee, their site sure is slow... by dragon_imp · · Score: 1

    I wonder if they're running Linux. You'd think by now they'd have read their own study and found that Windows 2003 Server is faster. ;)

  174. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

    > as we all know, the point-by-point rebuttals are
    > what drive back the 'satanic' M$ monopoly. I
    > salute you sir for clearly showing the type of
    > person that you are.

    I'm not particularly religious, and I don't regard Microsoft as particularly 'satanic', just as an entity that would have us believe there aren't any alternatives. I have a Window 2000 Server box on my LAN. I have found that I prefer running a Linux desktop (KDE, to be precise, which so far I like better than Gnome, FVWM, or FluxBox). I also have a Solaris/Intel machine. As of a couple of hours ago, I now have one running FreeBSD as well (my first-ever BSD install, woohoo).

    I like FOSS in general because it's about choices, and I like to think I'm the type of person who recognises that there are alternatives and isn't afraid to try a few of them out.

    --
    Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  175. Come on by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Give it a rest.

  176. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by tomhudson · · Score: 1
    you don't have a database as easy and powerful as Access.
    I think we're being trolled by some 13-year-old PFY :-)

    Good rebuttal, BTW.

  177. Sound good enough by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We're switching to Microsoft WIndow 2003 tomorrow!!!

  178. OT: Sun Tzu's book by Glonoinha · · Score: 1

    Hey - totally off topic, but that IS a great book. If you find an online version that is unedited (more importantly, unannotated) - please share. Reading the annotated version is tantamount to trying to eat a nice dinner and having the phone ring every 10 minutes.

    As for the Linux vs Windows performance debate - sounds like a paid shill that intentionally tweaked the comparison so Linux would lose - but at least they are being honest about it.

    --
    Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
    1. Re:OT: Sun Tzu's book by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
  179. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by tomhudson · · Score: 1
    cryptic scripts written by lunatics.
    oops, guess he's seen perl. No apologies that it doesn't look like vb (veggie-brain basic).

    WRT cd burning - one of my boxes has an older (16x) burner - would only burn reliably under Windows at 8x, burns at 24-32x under linux. Talk about a cheap hardware upgrade ...

    You don't know commercial support in Linux is almost non existent. (Actually, Two out of three of the projects I'm contracted for right now are being done in Linux... For commercial companies.)
    Its better to work on non-MS projects - you don't have Bills' hand in your pockets collecting a toll every time you deploy/upgrade something. That's something the bosses tend to appreciate. Same with less down-time.
  180. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by tomhudson · · Score: 1
    put in a room full of pengiuns dressed as Bill Gates.
    cross-dressing penguinistas - is this some new form of geek pr0n?
  181. Why Linux? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Microsoft is trying to test apache 2 running on linux. Large isps and yahoo use FreeBSD. Why not prove its faster than apache2 on freebsd. That would impress me.

    As others have pointed out, Redhat is not the best Linux platform for a test of this nature. How about using a custom compiled (or even stock) 2.6.x kernel with and without an apache module. ( i think you guys have one in the linux camp) IIS uses a kernel module so that is fair. Hell why not use Gentoo, Debian or Suse with a recent kernel?

    I personally think FreeBSD is the best for a webserver, but lets at least see a fair Linux benchmark. Why not do a real benchmark..

    Linux 2.6.10 (or .12)
    Linux 2.4.x
    FreeBSD 5.3 or 5.4 beta
    NetBSD 2.0
    Darwin or Mac OS X Server
    Solaris
    SCO UnixWare (just to laugh)
    Windows 2003 server
    Windows 2000 server

    Do several tests...
    static content
    php on all platforms
    asp on all platforms (chilisoft for linux/solaris and in emulation mode on bsd) .NET vs Mono on linux and windows (doesn't work right in BSD)
    Maybe java vs .NET using all the UNIX stuff for java.

    Now that would be an interesting benchmark. I could make a real purchasing decision then.

    Even if microsoft looses, they still have the fastest enterprise web app product for development time. PHP, Mono and java might compete some day.

    Obviously, single and multi cpu (or cores) should be used with and without hyperthreading. Also, to be fair the SCSI or SATA controller should be equally stable in the oses and preferably a network card that works ok in all (Intel chipset?)

  182. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by shadow255 · · Score: 1
    To be completely fair, Windows XP Professional (not Home!) comes with built-in support for RDP connections (RDP == Remote Desktop Protocol). But if the system is truly unresponsive at the console it's highly unlikely that a connection attempt would succeed. RDP connections are encrypted in transit, too, so while it's not SSH, it's also not unencrypted VNC either.

    I have employed Remote Assistance (which is not RDP) and I have to say that I would rather be raked over hot coals naked than have to use it every time I need to provide help for Windows users.

    --

    Logic is a wonderful thing but doesn't always beat actual thought. -Terry Pratchett

  183. Not necessarily anticonstitutional but by einhverfr · · Score: 1

    It is not necessarily anticonstitutional. I.e. an employer can fire you for what you say to customers. So commercial speech is not protected under the 1st ammendment. (IANAL, of course).

    What is disturbing, however, about these no benchmark clauses is that they are likely to be anti-consumer rights and anti-competitive. I.e. they are specifically designed to enforce a "buyer beware" marketplace where one can simply not get good data on reasonable performance of competing products. The ability of a company to regulate what another company says about their products as a condition just to use them seems to me to be dangerous to the idea of a free market.

    --

    LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
  184. It's BS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Apache on Linux can run on a 486 w/ 16MB RAM. Windows 2k3 can't. Why? Because it is a resource hog.

    Its not the only reason this report is BS but it is highly unlikely that a setup that can run on a really old system would run slower on modern hardware than windows 2003 on the same hardware.

  185. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by maird · · Score: 1

    ever hear of killing explorer from task manager and restarting it from task manager?

    Linux still has the edge over that I believe. AFAIK, killing Explorer will not kill "child processes" since they aren't really child processes and re-starting Explorer will not re-run some of the startup processes since those are a side-effect of a login, not of Explorer starting. As a result it is common to lose notification icons while the processes that owned them continue to run. MS provided a protocol for recovery from this (after it became obvious it was necessary I believe) but I've seen few examples that use it. It is probably more accurate to add a logout and login to the description of the recovery process since that will usually recover the proper quiescent process state. I have to concede that I side with the opinion that it is more likely that you will be able to recover from a UI lockup without a reboot on Linux than you would on Windows.

    NB: The following implies nothing in relation to your comments and is intended to reflect only my opinion of the whole set of replies to the story. FTR, I mostly use Windows, because I mostly like it. My employer deploys a Windows desktop internally, I have work that requires Windows and Linux workstations and use both daily, though the Linux hosts are nothing like the "policy Linux desktop". My impression, based on my experience, is that the Linux rebuttal to the Windows assertions in the replies to this story is largely accurate and balanced whereas the Windows assertions seem, well, paranoid, very defensive and somewhat desperate in tone.

  186. I have a different approach. by khasim · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The "big players" can contribute cash, but not hardware. It is too easy for them to contribute hardware specifically enhanced for their product.

    #1. Each team gets X dollars and no restrictions on what it can buy. After all, that should be how businesses run their shops. We aren't comparing hardware, but total systems.

    #2. Each team must purchase the software off the shelf.

    #3. No team is allowed to recompile anything or to use any drivers, etc not available from a public server for the past 12 months. This might sound like a bad deal for Linux, but it will also stop Microsoft from re-writing the drivers. Again, most companies do not have access to that level of expertise so that won't be allowed.

    #4. Each tweak or configuration setting must be documented and a reference for it shown on a public website or manual. Again, businesses only know what they can read.

    #5. At the end of the competition, the other teams will critique each team's configuration. We've all seen the "tests" where Windows is running on a RAID 0 array which is beyond stupid for real production work.

    That way, each team can deploy the best system they can think of for the test. I'm sure you all remember MindCraft and their massive single server "test" for webservers when anyone else would have run multiple cheaper servers and gotten higher throughput.

    So, a test in run and the Windows team buys the biggest single system they can afford for the money. While the Linux team fields a dozen boxes booting from CD and one storage box.

    Which system would be "better"?

    Which system would be faster? Would that be the same answer under different loads?

    Which system would be easier to maintain?

    Which system would have higher uptime?

    Which system would be easier to scale up?

    1. Re:I have a different approach. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      #5. At the end of the competition, the other teams will critique each team's configuration. We've all seen the "tests" where Windows is running on a RAID 0 array which is beyond stupid for real production work.

      There is absolutly nothing wrong with using RAID 0 for a web server.

      Assuming, of course, that you are running multiple web servers behind some kind of load balancer...

    2. Re:I have a different approach. by Shadowlore · · Score: 1

      No team is allowed to recompile anything or to use any drivers, etc not available from a public server for the past 12 months. This might sound like a bad deal for Linux, but it will also stop Microsoft from re-writing the drivers. Again, most companies do not have access to that level of expertise so that won't be allowed.

      This (and partially #2) is the only one I have any real contention over. I understand the intent, but believe it fails to deliver. I actually think this to be unfair to both sides. Perhaps 3 months, but certainly not a year. Bugfixes, etc. known and released in the last two/three monhs should be allowed. Most companies running Linux in high performance production environments do have access to peolpe who can add compiler flags, type make && make install, etc..

      #2 has a minor objection because much/most of the Linux software is not purchased. ;)

      --
      My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
  187. Bech on an Xserve by mjh2901 · · Score: 1

    I'd like to see them benchmark the 2003 IIS server against a stock OS X server. on equal machines, or as close to equal as possible. While sales people use stuff like this. A slightly slower but stable webserver will beat out whatever speed machine one can come up with. And we all know you can build multiple redundant unix servers for the cost of MS licensing.

  188. Just one point by Lifewish · · Score: 1

    And just an opinion -- I don't think Linux would have got so popular if it wasn't for its anti-microsoft/windows (replacement) approach.

    If that were the case, Apple would be very very happy right now. There are many affirmative reasons for liking Linux (openness, quality, average ethics). The only reason people make this mistake is that a lot of those are also affirmative reasons to loathe Microsoft.

    --
    For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
  189. Uh, no. by Some+Random+Username · · Score: 1

    Tune all you want, apache will not match the performance of fast web servers like zeus and lighttpd. And it can't handle as many concurrent connections either. This benchmark is not a big deal, and its not suprising. Apache is not meant to be high performing, it is increidbly flexible and configurable, and performs well enough for most tasks. If you need higher performance use a webserver designed just for high performance.

  190. George W. Bush, The Despicable Divider by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    "- -George W. Bush The Great Divider"

    George W. Bush, The Despicable Divider

  191. Apache is slower, but there are choices. by Some+Random+Username · · Score: 1

    Apache isn't meant to be the fastest webserver out there. Its a very flexible, configurable server with good enough performance. IIS is designed for high performance, and even speeds things up by using a kernel driver to do part of the request. If you want a more reasonable comparison, try comparing IIS to something designed to be fast like lighttpd.

  192. Where??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm guessing they don't factor in all the downtime while you patch the Windows OS for the latest worm or virus, or reinstall the OS when it gets infected.

  193. Stockholm Syndrome - Re:Three hundred percent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Then I compare them with offerings like Mac OS X, the BSD's and Linux and wonder, how on Earth someone can say, "I like Microsoft".

    They have been abused so long by their captors that they have actually grown to like them.

  194. take a shot m8... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    http://www.hackiis6.com/default.htm

    Shouldn't prove to be much of a problem then. Oh wait, nobody would ever waste their secret knowledge of vulnerabilities on a mere x-box... by.. bi.. bass... bias! there we go, I think that might have something to do with it.

  195. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by Master+of+Transhuman · · Score: 1


    Right, Windows XP is "stable"...

    The other night, I opened Winamp, started playing a video file, moved the slider to select another part of the video - and XP froze up...

    Sure, it was Winamp's fault. As it sucked up CPU cycles, even Task Manager was unable to come up.

    Once Task Manager did came up, I couldn't kill Winamp. No "kill -9 pid" here, folks.

    So I said, shutdown.

    Windows SLOWLY popped up every other running program and warned that if I shut it down, I'd lose data, blah, blah.

    It took nearly ten minutes to shut Windows down and restart.

    So, yes, while it was Winamp's fault (I ASSUME since I don't know what it was trying to do or with what part of Windows it was interacting), Windows XP did NOT handle this very well.

    In Linux, I could have killed X in a second and been back up in another second - no reboot needed.

    As for Windows 2000, back when I was running it, I caused it to crash dead to black screen a couple of times just doing ordinary crap.

    The other night in class, we were configuring some wireless cameras that use Java on Windows 2003 server. We got the Java installed, the Java Media Framework installed, got the camera wireless app configured, ran it, connected to the camera via IE - then IE crashed dead - repeatedly. (To be fair, the software apparently only "works" with IE, as Firefox wouldn't run it all.)

    I'm not impressed.

    --
    Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
  196. Well of course -- this is why... by Tavor · · Score: 1

    "Windows 2003 web server performs up to 300% higher throughput than Red Hat Linux running with Apache."
    They were testing for a real-world enviroment. Apache would be serving large pages with plenty of images. Windows Server would be serving a single line of text to it's thousands of visitors.

    "Hacked by Chinese!" =P

    --
    Windows has detected an undetectable error.
  197. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by Master+of+Transhuman · · Score: 1


    Ever hear of Task Manager not being to kill a program because the system is so hosed even Task Manager can't help?

    Happens very often.

    No "kill -9 pid" on Windows, homes. When I kill a job on Linux, it's GONE, baby. Not on Windows - Task Manager has to come up and ASK ME AGAIN "Do you want to terminate this process?" Yes, fucking MS piece of shit, that's why I clicked "KILL JOB"!

    --
    Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
  198. statistics and benchmarks by famouswhendead · · Score: 0

    stat jokes. Isn't it computer programmers use logic, physicists understand logic and statisticians cheat logic?

  199. Many things to consider. by Eminor · · Score: 1

    What it comes down to in the end, is that Apache on Linux performs to my liking. Let's not nit pick about which one is faster. From a security and administratability stand point, Apache on Linux blows IIS on Windows out of the water.

    This seems like Microsoft is advertising to the inexperienced or fly by night sys admins.

  200. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Honestly, you obviously don't have a clue.

    Obviously you don't either. You fed that troll like he was a starving child.

  201. Let's be serious about these comparisons by dascandy · · Score: 1

    Microsoft can't get a reasonable research done without paying for it, and if they pay for it the people they pay will pretty much say anything they want to. Microsoft has something to lose if the test tells anybody they are not the all-over winners, so the test will show that they are and thus be totally useless. Most, if not all, Microsoft-funded researchers I've seen reports from always report between 25 and 500% profit from using Microsoft software, with the top number being implied as the generic profit.

    On the other hand, Apache (and the other OSS guys) also have something to lose by showing a solely bad report. They don't have anything to fear from partly bad reports or good reports. They can be largely trusted, but keep in mind that there is a good chance that they're completely sucking in one or more departments. I've seen these papers include one or two benchmarks that show >100% profit but they can usually be claimed to a single obvious cause (say, the IIS server running an apache compatibility layer or Apache running some win32 dll to get something working, such as .NET). They then report the average of the better scores as probable profit, which isn't entirely unbiased but to be expected.

    Main conclusion I can draw from the system of capitalization is that you can not trust anybody. If somebody has ANYTHING to lose at a certain result, the result will never show and the test will not be reliable. The only people that are reliable are those that don't have anything to lose but their life. Yet, these people only work for public broadcasting corporations under a do-what-you-like agreement so they could be honest. And still you can't trust them entirely, since there is something to gain from a positive result...

    How to figure out which is better? Try them both (fsck illegal software, just friggin download it and try which is better, you are the only one that can be truly honest to you, not counting schizofrenics) and roll out the better performing one after paying for the licensing costs.
    Oh, and donate to the poor-Microsoft-fund because the GPL is a price-fixing scheme that's designed to make Microsoft run out of business (explanation: Microsoft does what everybody did 10 years ago. If RMS can give it away 3 years after they did it Microsoft has nothing to do anymore).

  202. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Get over yourself, Linux Sucks.

    Sheesh, just accept it.
    MS Windows has been a far superior desktop and (in many ways) a server since NT and 2000.

    >Linux is a free system and was never intended to
    > support 3rd party, proprietary drivers.

    LOL! What a crappy excuse.

    Windows was never designed for networking or multiple users, they moved on by following research.

    Linux simply copies Microsoft's innovations.

    Just accept it.

  203. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Lamer.

    You were probably running the WinAmp process in a higher priority. Or have configures playback to be 'realtime'.

    I've had an uptime of over 280 days and I don't think I've ever quit WinAmp on more than 3 occasions - due to logoff. Besides that, it's ALWAYS running, even now.

  204. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by SuperPunch · · Score: 1

    Explain who saying, "Windows sucks." Is any sort of free advertising...

    I spelled their name properly.

  205. Not sure if it was pointed out somewhere, but by ebrandsberg · · Score: 1

    1. They only used HTTP 1.0 requests, which isn't normal for high-end performance testing
    2. They completed testing on April 30th, 2003, a year before the report was published, and a year has since passed
    3. They used the 2.4 kernel instead of the 2.6 now available
    4. They used an early Apache 2.0 configuration which I believe was known to be somewhat slower than the apache 1.3 code at that time.

    Draw your own conclusions

  206. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by SuperPunch · · Score: 1

    I spelled, "microsoft" correctly, but spelled how wrong.

  207. hmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    quote from report..

    "
    When testing with eight processors, the static test results
    actually decreased approximately 23 percent compared to the results generated using TUX with Red Hat
    Linux Advanced Server 2.1 using four processors.
    We double checked the TUX and operating system configuration and ran additional tests to try and resolve
    this issue, but were ultimately unsuccessful. We submitted a formal support request with Red Hat Technical
    Support on April 8th, 2003 regarding this issue with TUX and provided problem and configuration details. On
    April 9th, 2003 we received an indication that out request had been escalated to the senior technical support
    staff. On April 30th we had still not received a response from Red Hat Technical Support that offered any
    options for resolving this issue. By this time, we were required to return the servers used during the testing to
    Hewlett-Packard. This meant that even if Red Hat Technical Support had responded with options for resolving
    this issue, we would no longer have the hardware necessary to conduct additional testing. Therefore, we
    published the existing numbers shown in this report.
    " ...so, basically, they couldn't figure out how to configure the system properly, sent in a support call, and didn't get a reply, so published anyway... maybe trying to make the point that support might not be so good with RH... be good to know what happened to that support call..

    but then, just maybe, they could have gotten a linux guy to have configured their systems for them ;)

  208. who cares? by SQLz · · Score: 1

    I don't care if Windows is faster, I won't use it. Just because its faster is some benchmark doesn't mean jack because I would still have to administrate the POS. I'd rather just buy a faster system.

  209. I like it too, but... by stedo · · Score: 1

    It is unfair to go until the first moment of downtime. Who knows, one server might last a month longer than the other before the first bit of downtime, but could still have more total downtime. It would be fairer to count the total amount of downtime for the one-year period. Especially if an important patch is released for one OS which requires a reboot.

  210. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wow. Typically I'd get a good chuckle out of such flamebait, but I have to say - I'm just aghast at the complete lack of balance or understanding the parent has. I understand stupid people, I understand bigots, but when stupid people react in a bigoted manner... Well, *this* is what happens.

    Did I happen to drop my lovely little Gentoo IBM X31 on your toe one day?

  211. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by khujifig · · Score: 1

    "> 6. You cannot admit that most of the joe user out there when told that there is linux will respond, what is that?"

    Last time there was a virus outbreak on windows, my mother (who has little computer familiarity) wrote to me saying she thought it was time to give Linux a try, and asked for help to go about it.
    This isn't the only case I've come across. More people seem willing to try it, especially seen as more software is out there. The one thing that does tend to put off new people is the slightly risky dual-boot set up, as they often wish to keep windows around.

    Oh, as for 'ruining the net', I agree it's windows desktops, because they are being run under admin accounts.

  212. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by bro1 · · Score: 1

    In relation to the point 17 about the DB which is free as in speech and as in bear :) can you provide name/link?

  213. *O*L*D* news by rdean400 · · Score: 1

    First, look at the freaking date before submitting something as "News". The PDF is dated May 5, 2004 (not 2005).

    Here are some observations:

    - The Windows version tested was 2k3 pre-release. To be fair, VeriTest should have tested RHEL 3 and RHL 9. Otherwise, it should have tested against Windows 2k server.

    - The IIS version tested was 6.0. To be fair, VeriTest should have tested with the current Apache releases at the time (1.3.29 and 2.0.48/9) and the current Tux release included in RHEL 3.

    Other notes:

    - The Linux kernel rev for RHEL 2.1 is 2.4.9-e3. IBM benchmarked web serving performance for 2.6 vs. 2.4 and the results are huge performance gains by using a 2.6 kernel.

    - The filesystem used was ext3. ReiserFS is a faster filesystem for filesystem, although it uses more CPU.

    - There was minimal performance tuning to Linux or Apache. TUX was performance tuned. The testers attempted to reverse-engineer settings for Apache.

    Bottom line: This survey isn't much better than the Mindcraft survey done several years ago. It didn't tune Linux at all, and received tuning help and funding from Microsoft.

  214. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

    > about the DB which is free as in speech and as in
    > bear :) can you provide name/link?

    I'm not interested in starting YAFDF (Yet Another FOSS Database Flamewar) here, so I'll post links to my favourite and its chief competitor. Both have their proponents. Both are Open Source products.

    "The World's Most Popular Open Source Database"

    "The World's Most Advanced Open Source Database"

    I know which one I use, but what matters is which works best for you.

    --
    Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  215. Who really cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is one that much faster than the other that it causes the other server to become unuseable? Both work, and faster than their predecessors. Although you'll spend the majority of your time worrying over MS2003 security, both will work. Benchmark studies like this are just contests to see who has the bigger hard-on... is it better to have a 12-incher, or a 12 1/4-incher?

  216. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by paranoidgeek · · Score: 1

    Opps I meant "should be dressed as Bill Gates then put into the room full of penguins.

    --
    Lima India November Uniform X-ray
  217. Only Linux/Apache will run on a 64MB P133 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I haven't had to upgrade my email/web server hardware in 10 years, thanks to Linux/Apache.

    I can't imagine W2K3 even installing on such hardware.

  218. what kernel does RHEL 2.1 and redhat 8 run? by t35t0r · · Score: 1

    No where in the "review" does it mention what kernel version is used by RHEL 2.1 or RH8. I know RH9 came with a stock 2.4.9 or something like that so I'm assuming RH8 is probably even older like a 2.2 kernel and RHEL 2.1 is a 2.4 kernel. This is like comparing win98 performance to winxp performance. I would say that the only fair benchmark between IIS and apache (and not linux) would be to run the same tests on IIS and apache both on win2k3 server (yes apache is available for win). If you want to benchmark operating system performance then go bench the same programs on win2k3 and the same system running the latest kernel.

    1. Re:what kernel does RHEL 2.1 and redhat 8 run? by MrJerryNormandinSir · · Score: 1

      Redat AS 2.1 has some serious flaws. I hate it and have to run it because of the damn Oracle support matrix and EMC support matrix. The kernel is 2.4.9-e.49enterprise which is a 2.4.9 kernel with Redhat bastardizations. They totally screwed the pooch when it comes to vm on a system with lots of memory. You need to "tune" to get around the problem or you are going to find yourself swapping out even if you have plenty of ram available. Also I/O isn't optimum on AS 2.1 Here's the kernel tuning parameters I have to use with AS 2.1 are:
      # Disables packet forwarding
      net.ipv4.ip_forward = 0
      # Enables source route verification
      net.ipv4.conf.default.rp_filter = 1
      # Disables the magic-sysrq key
      kernel.sysrq = 0
      kernel.shmall = 2097152
      kernel.sysrq = 0
      kernel.sem=250 32000 100 128
      kernel.shmmax=2147483648
      kernel.shmmni=16000
      kernel.msgmax=16000
      kernel.msgmnb=262072
      kerne l.msgmni=1024
      fs.file-max=819200
      fs.aio-max-size =2147483648
      net.core.rmem_max = 262144
      net.core.wmem_max = 262144
      net.core.rmem_default = 262144
      net.core.wmem_default = 262144
      net.ipv4.tcp_sack = 0
      net.ipv4.tcp_timestamps = 0
      vm.pagecache=1 15 30
      vm.bdflush = 10 1000 500 5000 0 6000 100 0 0

      I bet Microsofties know that AS 2.1 isn't great, so they use that to benchamark against. I'd say use gentoo or suse, my gentoo servers are MUCH faster than AS 2.1.

      Redhat is giving Linux a bad name in the Enterprise

      A stock AS 2.1 installation on a Dell Poweredge 6600 drives the load average sky high with a simple dd of a 30GB image to the filesystem, or
      a simple cp as well.

  219. What is there to like about them? by Shub-Internet · · Score: 1

    Decent hardware (Mice)

    Excel (The spreadsheet, that is)

    Providing competition for the free operative systems.

    Providing inspiration for http://ubersoft.net/, among others.

    --
    fnord(gazonk, foo, bar, baz, bletch, thud, grunt)
  220. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by LadyLucky · · Score: 1
    Fuck off, eh? You're an idiot. Nobody wants you here.

    #1 reason why Linux/Unix/MacOSX is better than your favourite operating system:

    There are fewer people like you using them. No go back to your VB and your Word and be happy in your slum. Leave us alone that use something superior.

    --
    dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
  221. Re:2k3 has the same kind of optimisations as Tux w by NekoXP · · Score: 1

    Nice to see Tux is still developed, but these days does it do much more than
    khttpd now in the kernel?

    The content acceleration on 2K3 seems to work with dynamic content too and they
    SEEM to have some pretty decent caching (a bit like how we're stuck with Turck
    or Zend). All of this is stuff you need to go out and get on Linux, but just
    check a checkbox on 2K3 if it's not enabled by default. This is probably
    inflating the benchmarks a LOT on the 2K3 side too.

    Neko

  222. Default Apache config will suck... by Meetch · · Score: 1
    The real problem with a typical Apache install on a typical RedHat platform, is that the configuration is really badly tuned. The preforking is configured for a 486 class computer! The default config is suitable for being a serious webserver the same way as an old-fashioned musket is suitable for use as a machine gun. Spawning new processes takes time. If you take 1000 hits in the same second, then your box had better be configured to keep up with necessary fork and exec calls.

    The first thing you should do as a web administrator on your P4 class RH box running Apache is tune the following settings. Whether you use a tool, or edit directly depends on what kind of support you expect when you mess it up. The below is one of many possible solutions depending on available memory, processor speed, SMP capabilities/kernel version, and whether you anticipate a high rate of connections or a larger amount of CGI type work:

    • StartServers - typical default is 2. If you're half serious about your web server being able to respond to requests from the completion of startup, try 10. That's just to get the ball rolling.
    • MaxClients - 150 is a typical value. Try 1000 so you're prepared for incoming connections.
    • MinSpareThreads - 25 may be ok usually, but if you get a surge of benchmark style incoming connections, you're bound to be caught out not ready to accept some. Try 100, or 200 if you have a little memory to burn.
    • MaxSpareThreads - 75 might seem decent, your SMP box will be much more responsive with 200, perhaps a better idea being 500. Even 2000 if you can see memory usage isn't a problem.
    • ThreadsPerChild - 25 is ok in my book. You probably don't want each process responsible for too much, especially if they do uninterruptible things. But you may be able to up it for a purely static site.
    Remember, if you are running a web server, you should be tuning it to use all available resources, without thrashing your swap space. Look at the numbers and tune it. Expect any modern PC running Linux/Apache to take 5000 static hits per second sustained on an SMP box without breaking a sweat. If during a peak time you can see a resource underutilised, then tweak and tune it - any good admin should be able to squeeze orders of magnitude better performance out of it over the default config. Using half the memory and bugger all swap? Up the threads by 50% or more...

    Once you have your web serving building block optimised, virtual services can then be used to load-balance traffic for extreme peaks, and taking boxes down for essential maintenance without impacting on the users. That's the cool thing about

  223. ... clusters. by Meetch · · Score: 1

    (end of previous :)

  224. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by aztracker1 · · Score: 1

    I see this posted all the time but It just leads me to beleive the poster has never used Linux or BSD. It seems like people are using this line to try and ward of criticism by saying "look, I like free software, just not Linux", or "I like Unix, just not Linux".

    Sorry, you are mistaken here, I use Gentoo + PostgreSQL for the main DB server I setup for a client, as well as several other installs inside and outside the workplace... I *DO* in fact use it where it makes sense... I'm also involved in a few OSS projects, and follow several others closely, not that that would make any difference in your eyes (since it would seem you've already passed judgement on me as a "Windows only, never used Linux or BSD apologist".

    As far as not supporting 3rd party/proprietary drivers, this is one of the things that will always keep linux from reaching critical mass, in regards to desktop users. I like F/OSS, use it where it makes sense, and use commercial software where it makes sense... I also stated that "IMHO BSD is probably a better OS Option than Linux".. how you translate this to some of your response is beyond me...

    Yes, windows has its' flaws (mainly in the politics within Microsoft), but so does Linux.. the difference between you and I, is I can point out and accept them in either case.

    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
  225. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by aztracker1 · · Score: 1

    Okay, what's the point of this..? the fact is you were still able to control the system.. in regards to Win2K dying, couldn't say more without an instance of what was happening... For the cameras on win2003 server, hard to tell what the issue is, what version of JVM/Java was used on the server, and the client.. if the client wasn't using the Sun JVM, maybe the older MS JVM was the issue.

    I've had problems with media in linux before, the driver for my sound card at the time was buggy, and whenever I tried to run audio, it would panic in the middle of initializing the audio stream... I don't blam linux for this, just pointing out that similar problems aren't limited to Windows.

    My single biggest gripe is probably the lack of an LSB approved package manager/installer.. between Yast, red carpet, rpm (in various flavors), apt-get, yum, and emerge you can pretty much get any software you like, doesn't make it easy for an end user though....

    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
  226. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by aztracker1 · · Score: 1

    The first part of what you are saying is pretty true, but not completely.

    As for windows not beign designed for networking or multiple users, it's true that win9x was a single user os in conception, but the NT line of windows was designed to be multi-user and networked from the beginning... There are serious flaws in some of the software that comes with it, especially early on (IE and OE mostly, some issues with dcom/com+ security etc).

    Microsoft really doesn't innovate all that much.. they do copy other's ideas (as do linux/gnu developments). Same is true for pretty much anything computer related. Someone has an idea, another improves it, and so on... Sun had Java, out of a need for embedded resources (don't recall specifics of early dev here), MS took it to the next step combining some of the best of Java, Pascal, and other resources in creating .Net .. Sun took some of these ideas, and extended Java 5 (1.5jre) to include some of it, and extending further...

    That's how things get better... what pisses me off is how many people would just stick their heads in the sand on either side, with their fingers in their ears going "La la la la...". I would *really* like to see some narrowing of Linux as far as having some major distros rally behind a single installer standard, as well as creating a base of interfaces for better binary driver support.

    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
  227. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by Master+of+Transhuman · · Score: 1


    Wrong. No such adjustments to Winamp.

    Thank you for playing.

    --
    Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
  228. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by Master+of+Transhuman · · Score: 1


    JVM in use on the server (which IS the client in this case) was the (IIRC) 1.4.2 (not 1.5) downloaded that night and installed. Ditto the current Java Media Framework.

    I assume it was entirely due to the host OS being 2003 Server and not XP or 2000. The MS servers aren't exactly designed to be a consumer or media machine OS. Or possibly simply the camera client was poorly written (however, I still blame IE for crashing.)

    As for the point, the point is Windows is badly designed vis-a-vis task management vrs Linux. When I kill a job in Linux, it's history and it doesn't bug me about it after I've explicitly told it to kill a job. Even my Windows-centric teacher recognizes that as stupid.

    --
    Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
  229. Does an NDA cover that? by phorm · · Score: 1

    IANAL, but... aAn NDA would prevent you from disclosing the inner working of a piece of hardware/software/etc... but I don't think it limits you as far as the product's performance is concerned.

    I might sign an NDA saying that I won't give details about "Windows 2009 Ultra Secret Edition" and what features it has, but I could probably still make generic comments like "the current version crashes a lot or is slow on common tasks" just the same as I could say "wow, it' a lot faster and the new graphics options are incredible" (without actually saying what the options are).

  230. What!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What kind of testing is "there testing", I've never even heard of here testing.

    Oh maybe you wanted to say their testing. Go back to sixth grade and pay attention this time.

  231. openssl speed rc4 md5 des-ede3 sha1 by ekimminau · · Score: 1

    [eak@www ~]$ openssl speed rc4 md5 des-ede3 sha1
    Doing md5 for 3s on 16 size blocks: 501077 md5's in 3.00s
    Doing md5 for 3s on 64 size blocks: 447089 md5's in 3.00s
    Doing md5 for 3s on 256 size blocks: 328345 md5's in 3.00s
    Doing md5 for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 161911 md5's in 3.00s
    Doing md5 for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 28091 md5's in 3.00s
    Doing sha1 for 3s on 16 size blocks: 450041 sha1's in 3.00s
    Doing sha1 for 3s on 64 size blocks: 360994 sha1's in 3.00s
    Doing sha1 for 3s on 256 size blocks: 227294 sha1's in 3.00s
    Doing sha1 for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 92109 sha1's in 3.00s
    Doing sha1 for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 14104 sha1's in 3.00s
    Doing rc4 for 3s on 16 size blocks: 8473853 rc4's in 3.00s
    Doing rc4 for 3s on 64 size blocks: 2499745 rc4's in 3.01s
    Doing rc4 for 3s on 256 size blocks: 650560 rc4's in 3.00s
    Doing rc4 for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 163453 rc4's in 3.00s
    Doing rc4 for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 20386 rc4's in 3.00s
    Doing des ede3 for 3s on 16 size blocks: 711139 des ede3's in 3.00s
    Doing des ede3 for 3s on 64 size blocks: 183706 des ede3's in 3.00s
    Doing des ede3 for 3s on 256 size blocks: 46336 des ede3's in 3.00s
    Doing des ede3 for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 11549 des ede3's in 3.00s
    Doing des ede3 for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 1445 des ede3's in 3.00s
    OpenSSL 0.9.7a Feb 19 2003
    built on: Tue Oct 5 08:55:24 EDT 2004
    options:bn(64,32) md2(int) rc4(idx,int) des(ptr,risc1,16,long) aes(partial) blowfish(idx)
    compiler: gcc -fPIC -DZLIB -DOPENSSL_THREADS -D_REENTRANT -DDSO_DLFCN -DHAVE_DLFCN_H -DKRB5_MIT -DOPENSSL_NO_IDEA -DOPENSSL_NO_MDC2 -DOPENSSL_NO_RC5 -DOPENSSL_NO_EC -I/usr/kerberos/include -DL_ENDIAN -DTERMIO -Wall -O2 -g -pipe -m32 -march=i686 -mtune=pentium4 -Wa,--noexecstack -DSHA1_ASM -DMD5_ASM -DRMD160_ASM
    available timing options: TIMES TIMEB HZ=100 [sysconf value]
    timing function used: times
    The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
    type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes
    md5 2672.41k 9537.90k 28018.77k 55265.62k 76707.16k
    sha1 2400.22k 7701.21k 19395.75k 31439.87k 38513.32k
    rc4 45193.88k 53150.72k 55514.45k 55791.96k 55667.37k
    des ede3 3792.74k 3919.06k 3954.01k 3942.06k 3945.81k

    --
    Armaments, 2-9-21 And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade' N
  232. Hey IBM! Dell! HP! Listen Up! by ekimminau · · Score: 1

    I want to see one of these three vendors take their best team of Windows IIS Support and professional services engineers and their best team of Linux support and PS engineers and do a real head to head challenge.

    Give each team your best hardware. 2, 4 and 8 CPU systems. Fiberchannel storage arrays configured for maximum web server performance in a customer production configuration (Raid5, BCVs, massive spindle luns, 8K, 16K and 32K block size volumes.

    Leverage your partnership with LoadRunner. Build a massive load generation farm. Full GbE on generators and servers. Jumbo frames might be interesting. Fully document the tweaks from hell to eek out the maximum web and application server performance from each system.

    Use the latest and greatest version, fully patched of each OS. Leverage your Microsoft and Linux distribution partnerships. Hell lets make this really interesting and bring in X86 Solaris and Apple, too! Get Microsoft to send a team of 200 and the Linux distribution vendors to send 1 guy, a trunk of O'Reilley manuals and his buddy from the Apache team.

    1 week to prep the web server hardware. All tweaks, tunings and configuration changes must be documented and submitted to the other team on day 6. Either team can take advantage of tricks discovered by the other for tweaking hardware. Prepare your server for a 20 million hit load test.

    The exact same HTML, XML, PHP, java and javascript will be loaded on each server in as similar as possible directory structure. No vendor specific coding tricks or proprietary BS. If I can't properly view the page in 3 of 4 web browsers (Explorer, NetScape, Mozilla and Opera - or more if you feel its necessary) it gets removed.

    Then bring in Load Runner. Let them create the hairiest pounding load generator that hits every page, every CGI, every java applet concurrently from hundreds and thousands of clients.

    The first to do so will be the god of Linux. All those slunking down to hide behind their Microsoft coat tails just lost the race.

    I dare ya! I double dog dare ya!

    --
    Armaments, 2-9-21 And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade' N
  233. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by Xabraxas · · Score: 1
    I'm also involved in a few OSS projects, and follow several others closely, not that that would make any difference in your eyes (since it would seem you've already passed judgement on me as a "Windows only, never used Linux or BSD apologist".

    If that's true, more power to you, but it seems I see that exact comment repeated over and over again without any real reasons to back it up. It seems that Windows users tend to hate Linux but don't have a problem with BSD and I think it has more to do with competition than license since it seems most Windows users don't even understand the licences.

    As far as not supporting 3rd party/proprietary drivers, this is one of the things that will always keep linux from reaching critical mass, in regards to desktop users.

    That's an opinion, and an incorrect one in my opinion. The popularity and corporate backing of Linux will force a lot of hardware manufacturers to release their specs or release their code.

    Yes, windows has its' flaws (mainly in the politics within Microsoft), but so does Linux.. the difference between you and I, is I can point out and accept them in either case.

    How ever did you get that idea? Did you just make it up? I never said Linux was flawless. You have quite the imagination.

    --
    Time makes more converts than reason
  234. Didn't RTFA but.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If they did the tests with RHEL3, it might be right.
    We've been using a couple SunFire's (dual xeon 3.2ghz, 5gb memory, scsi disks) with gentoo and rhel3, and rhel was almost 3 times slower.
    Upgrading to RHEL4 changed things though, it's almost on par with Gentoo, but a lil wee bit slower.

    That's what you get with "enterprise certified bullshit".

  235. Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by aztracker1 · · Score: 1

    Okay, my opinion of BSD over linux is centered around BSD having at least some priority to binary compatability between versions... IMHO this is a flaw in the Linux culture... I beleive that commercial software *IS* important to the future of ANY OS... and that BSD is more friendly towards commercial/proprietary drivers and software.

    I think that there are plenty of commodity F/OSS softwares that it makes sense to have as open source, and even linux is a good thing in this regard, I only wish that they standardised a bit better on binary driver compatability, as well as an LSB supported standard for binary distributed applications. I can break out my older Adobe Photoshop disks that were created when win98 was the newest thing, and install on XP .. same can't be said for any significant software's older binaries for a newer linux distro... it *IS* a big deal, and imho a deal breaker for many.

    I like a lot of open source projects, but feel that linux as a whole isn't where it needs to be in terms of version compatability, and ease of package installation, things keep going the way they are now, you'll see 50 distros each averaging 2-3 DVD's for the distro within 5 years.. I don't think this is a good thing, yeah, choice is good, and having *some* software with the distro is nice.. but being able to install application X on distro Y would be nicer imo.

    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
  236. Windows is trash garbage junk rubbish by rice_burners_suck · · Score: 1
    The results are obviously false. I would be willing to put money that Microsoft did the test as follows:

    They put together the fastest computer possible with the most memory possible, the fastest hard drive possible, and all the fastest stuff possible. Then, they installed Windows 2003, and they had their programmers who know this thing inside and out remove all the parts of the OS that were not needed, along with configuring it for the maximum possible performance. Then they tested it and recorded the benchmark.

    Then, they got an 8086 computer and compiled Bochs to run on it. In Bochs, they set up an environment that looks like the identical computer they used to run Windows 2003. Because this 8086 has only a few kilobytes of memory, they actually stored the information on tape, and used the serial port to access that data. Then, they ran the test. Sure enough, Red Hat / Apache running on the Bochs running on the 8086 with no memory and all information being accessed through tape through the serial port, the Windows 2003 installation ran 300% the speed of the Red Hat. This isn't quite such bad news, though, because it shows not how slow Red Hat is running in such a screwed up scenerio, but rather how slow Windows is running on ideal hardware.

  237. Show me an NT4 Box with IIS4 in a comparison by bcarl314 · · Score: 1

    I mean come on. From the article the compared enviroments are:

    Windows Server 2003 (their latest)
    IIS 6.0 (the latest)

    vs.

    Apache 1.3.23 What is that, like 2 - 3 years old now?
    RedHat 2.1 . Last I checked, they were on 3.0. 2.1 is also 2-3 years old.

    Now, if they had RedHat3.0 with Apache 2, well, maybe I'd read further. But comparing a 2-3 year old configuration with the latest and greatest from your company seems to make the whole premise invalid.

  238. They more than likely didn't tune the Linux kernel by MrJerryNormandinSir · · Score: 1

    You know, to deliver apps effeciently you really need to tune the kernel.

  239. FUD by exemplari · · Score: 1

    This study runs a DL760 from HP. The DL760 ships with REdhat AS 4 or Windows Server 2003. Redhat 2.1 is not even an option.