Slashdot Mirror
Novell Doubts Microsoft Latest "Linux Facts"
Robert writes "Microsoft Corp's "Get the Facts" campaign comparing Windows with Linux
continues to prove controversial, with Novell Inc describing the latest set of facts
offered up by Microsoft as "misdirection." The latest report offered up by
Microsoft as evidence that Windows is a better bet than Linux is a white paper from
Security Innovation Inc that compares maintenance, patch application, and system failures
related to a migration from Windows Server 2000 to 2003, and Novell's SUSE Linux
Enterprise Server 8 to SLES 9. The report found that there were more system failures
experienced by Linux systems administrators, and that more patches needed to be applied to
the
Linux systems, while more time was required to complete the Linux migration."
I know! I just read about it!
You can even ask the author about it!
The funniest thing I see, is that they actually compare Windows "one patch fits all" to Linux vast number of programs and software, each managing their own updates. OF COURSE Linux demands more updates, there's simply more software to patch!
Blog -
Security Innovation Inc - aren't they owned or at least funded by Microsoft? Move along please ... nothing new to see here .....
Evil Overlord Rule #86. I will make sure that my doomsday device is up to code and properly grounded.
I run a Samba 3 / OpenLDAP network that spans fifty branches in twelve states, and I am here to tell you that once we got rid of Microsoft, our (systems) support problems went through the floor. The Microsoft clients still suck just as bad, though. By the way, all of our routers are Linux based (Freeswan, netfilter/IP2Route, Snort), as well, and for wireless we run Sveasoft's Linux based software on Linksys (Cisco) Wrt54gs's and Wap54g's. I could not be more happy (or late night phone-call free).
Windows is easy to maintain for the week required to set up a test system. After a while though, the system gets clogged, something ends up thrashing the CPU, all the icons start to jump from their applications to something else they fancy (hello Windows 2000?!), and you WILL require a reboot, which causes costly downtime - and some poor admin to come in on his weekend. This is NOT good in a situation where even 5 minutes of downtime on the weekend is NOT a good thing.
Sure, I've had monster planning and installs of Linux and FreeBSD - but those servers just don't go down. I almost forget that they are there. We built all the monitoring scripts ourselves so they let us know by email if they are experiencing trouble. A Solaris box we have has been running since 2000 without rebooting, surviving several software upgrades in the process.
Meanwhile my Windows 2000 desktop icons have decided to have an icon swapping party, and my laptop seems to get slower every year... not to mention the number of viruses it can get.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
In general, you are correct.
In the specific case of this specific "study", the criteria were such that the SuSE sysadmins were required to download and install code from the mysql site and back-port patches from SLES 9 to their SLES 8 systems, themselves.
Without being allocated the time to correctly test those systems.
Meanwhile, no non-Microsoft patches were installed on the Windows boxes.
It isn't the number of patches, it is the patches themselves. I can apply a hundred patches (or more) to my Ubuntu box quickly and easily. And because 99.9% of them do not require a system reboot, I can easily test them.
This "study" was setup so that SuSE would fail. That's all there is to it.