Slashdot Mirror
Ask the Author of the Latest MS-Funded Windows vs. Linux Study
Last week on Slashdot you saw a (Microsoft-funded) research
study on Windows vs. (Novell) Linux reliability by Dr.Herbert
Thompson. Novell disagreed
with the study's conclusions. So did most Slashdot readers.
Thompson's work been mentioned on Slashdot before, especially his
famous five-line
script that could change electronic voting machine results
and his novel, The
Mezonic Agenda: Hacking the Presidency. He's a real,
genuine-article computer security expert (and regular Slashdot reader)
who is happy to put on his flame-resistant
suit and discuss his Microsoft vs. Linux study with you. So
ask whatever you like, one question per post. We'll send him 10 of the highest-moderated questions and publish his
answers next Monday. He'll jump into the discussion then, which ought
to make it rather lively.
how much ?
Doolittle :
Bomb no.20 : To explode of course.
Why would you open yourself to this? There's going to be about three thoughtful questions and three hundred variations on "Why did you sell your soul?" It just makes no sense to try and provoke intelligent discussion on slashdot. This site is just a feedback loop for left-leaning techno-weenies.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Hey, I'd sell out too, if anybody was buying.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
I'm considering cashing in my credibility. How much do you think I should settle for? The current offers are around $100,000 - do you think I could get much higher? Is $200,000 realistic? Because of course nobody will be able to take me seriously after I've done the deal.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
Most Slashdaughters have their heads up their ass most of the time too.
Blame the user, not the software.
Very clever, by comp sci intellectual standards, anyway. Of course one couldn't imagine any value from discussing anything with the comp sci intellectuals on slashdot.
I agree. I always use the best tool for the job. Linux certainly has its advantages, I find it to be a great server. But Windows also has better tools, like the WinDBG and SoftICE kernel debuggers, it is far far superior to gdb in linux. I also find it interesting that many people talk about how Linux is better than Windows in the absolute sense when they have no idea the internal workings of the O/S. What they see on the outside, meaning the UI, has nothing to do with how it works inside or its design. For example, core boot mode drivers for Linux cannot be loaded on demand, as in it has to be linked to the kernel image itself. That means if you update the driver code you have to recompile the kernel itself. Whereas NT kernel loads them on demand, that you can update your boot mode drivers with OUT recompiling the kernel itself. It is more modular and more portable than the Linux kernel. For the same reason, the HAL.DLL module makes the NT kernel portable in the sense that you do not need to recompile your kernel every time you use a different chipset because the kernel is separated from platform dependent code. You can easily verify the truth of this paragraph by simply looking in your Linux kernel source tree and type make config, you will find that your boot mode drivers, like ext3 or xfs, or whatever you use for your root fs is linked into the kernel. In fact, if you compile that driver as a module, you'll see a kernel panic when you restart with the new kernel. Another design issue I tend to favor Windows is the ability to run subsystem environments. Granted only the Win32 subsystem ships with Windows, you could nevertheless run the POSIX subsystem on Windows if you wish. Unix apps can run on Windows natively, without emulation, whereas Windows apps can never run natively on Linux/Unix, you always need emulation. The Unix services for Windows is NOT an emulator, it contains the updated Posix subsystem server for Windows. So in theory you can have different flavors of environments with radically different APIs for each environment with one common O/S core. To the end user, it would be like having different O/S in a single package. An argument could be made to say that the Posix subsystem acts like a virtual machine, which in that case the Win32 subsystem is also a virtual machine. What many people don't seem to realize is Win32 is not the native system API for Windows NT! Like if a Posix app calls fork() and a Win32 app calls CreateProcess(), both of these actually calls NtCreateProcess(), a native NT API, to do the actual work. Posix apps on Windows do NOT call Win32 functions like an emulator would**. The native NT API is the system service, or a common language for NT O/S, not Win32 like it was on Win 9X based system. (**Although the GUI stuff in Posix does call Win32k.sys so that Microsoft don't have to write separate drivers for different environments. But that is a design choice and doesn't have to be that way) The point about NT's environment subsystems is that you can write many custom subsystems. You can make the system behave like a Windows box, or you can make the system behave like a Unix box, or an OS X box. The default Windows distribution cannot run without the csrss.exe, the Win32 subsystem because Microsoft made it so you can't run without Win32, but that is a choice they made because they want us to use Win32. But in theory, if you have the Windows Source code, you can make it so that your NT box run whatever subsystem you want without the Win32 subsystem running. I want to say here don't confuse implementation with design. The reason Windows still crashes a lot is because of poor implementation, not because of poor design. I'm not saying Linux has bad design or anything, far from it. In fact, the Linux monolithic design has a definite speed advantage over NT's modular design any day. Linux also has a better implementation than that of Windows. In large server environments, Linux wins anyday because in theory, Linux design has the higher end on performance. NT design