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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."
Windows : migrate or die
*nix : oh, I've not touched that server for 3 years, bulletproof, see : 1 year uptime
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I know! I just read about it!
You can even ask the author about it!
So windows comes with no applications that need patching, and look of all the security patches required for JUST the OS! Linux on the other hand comes with hundreds of applications not related to the OS. You get a complete server in a box with all the tools needed, mysql, php, etc. THESE ARE WHAT NEED PATCHES IN MOST CASES! Microsoft provides you nothing with windows.
We all know Microsoft ain't gonna say anything bad about their product, so why even bother?
I'm sure Windows has it's uses, but you simply can't compare a system like Windows to a system like SLES they way that they do. They're vastly different systems, built with different things in mind.
Apples and pears, my friends. Apples and pears...
Blog -
microsoft has better .exe files that linux.
MSCEs dress better than *nix sysadmins, too!
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Microsoft just doesn't understand that one's Linux distro doesn't need to be on the cutting edge to be functional. Case and point:
Windows 98 (latest patches) running Apache = Big security risk.
Red Hat 5 (latest patches) running Apache = Solid
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.
"The study compared the experiences of three expert administrators on each side, a number that Security Innovation itself admitted was "too small to provide conclusive statistical comparisons."
Conclusive statistical comparisons?!?!? How about any statistical comparisons? Why, I could find 3 "expert" linux administrators who'd say just about anything I wanted them to say. Anecdotes do not evidence make, but they do strike that folksy note so beloved of advertisers.
-Brendan
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).
> Please give me something else to beleive in !
SCO licensing
-- "If A equals success, then the formula is A=X+Y+Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut." - Einstein
I am sick and tired of your shady and misinformed "studies". Instead of trying to convince people that you have a better operating system, why don't you get off your lazy ass and MAKE A BETTER OPERATING SYSTEM!? I swear to god, my image of this company has been reduced to a 5 year old girl kicking and screaming because another girl in her class has a bigger lollipop. [/rant]
Hero of Allacrost, a FOSS RPG for *NIX/*BSD/OS X/Win
I doubt it too
``Come on now, people. Don't we all know not to trust simple advertising?''
Maybe we do know better than that. Still, I think even advertising shouldn't be a blanket license for lies and deception. If the advertisement presents provably incorrect information, I say sue the advertiser.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Microsoft Corp's "Get the Facts" campaign appears to have been confused with a voicemail to instruct certain employees that a fax has arrived on their fax machines. It is not clear how this happened, but Microsoft will be releasing a correction on the second Tuesday of the month.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I am very impressed by MS' strategy here. As an IT professional, I've never been crazy about working under the same roof as sales & marketing people. I think this move shows that MS corporate is being sensitive to their developers by relocating the Mar/Comm function to the offices of Security Innovation, Inc. If they want to be coy and call it 3rd party research, well- that's just semantics.
In a non-blinded, non-randomized, anecdotal study, one user (who is a certified Microsoft Shill) found that installing Windows XP Home Edition on a non-networked computer was easier than installing Fedora Core 4 and setting it up as a server using Samba and configuring it to act as a firewall. "We found that in 100% of the cases, Microsoft products came out ahead. Looking at our experience here, why would somebody want to use anything else?" Wow. I think I'm going to go wipe my server and jump right on the Microsoft bandwagon!
Novell says Microsoft is wrong.
What part of this is exactly news?
If you go to Microsoft's Get The Facts website, you pretty much know you'll be bombarded with Windows-praising propaganda anyways. Or did you honestly expect them to just stand there and say "We suck at these workloads, and would prefer you to run $NON_MS_OS instead"?
As an 'expert' system administrator (albeit unpaid) I have four servers. One is running Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003, one is running Microsoft Window Server 2003, one is running Ubuntu Linux 5.10 (Server), and the other is running Apple OS X Server (10.4).
I can tell you now that when I first started my company, although I was a major advocate of Linux, I soon found that I did not have the time to maintain a then Gentoo or custom LFS distribution, Debian was far too heavy to pick up, and Slackware felt a little dated. So I took a look at Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003, liked what I saw, and bought a Dell PowerEdge 400SC with an OEM install.
At first Small Business Server was a breath of fresh air. It was easy to maintain, with a full complement of features, having been bundled with Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL Server, and Window Sharepoint Services. I actually enjoyed - yes, enjoyed - using it.
Until backup stated to fail. Until my tape drive disappeared. Until the sharepoint website database got corrupted. Until exchange monitoring failed. Until the POP connector started to thrash the CPU. Until the Windows Update website failed to check for updates.
These things happened. I'm not saying that they wouldn't happed with another system, but that is not the point, since they happened to me, and that caused me grief, and time, and money to resolve. I ended up trying to build a new system based on Microsoft Windows Server 2003, since I already had Microsoft specific data (files and tables), but this proved even more difficult to maintain.
I struggled for eighteen months, and then decided to build an Ubuntu 5.10 server. I use Ubuntu on one of my laptop, and had gently learnt the apt- way, and liked it. I set up a server with similar features to the Small Business Server, using Postfix, MySQL, and Plone, and even went some ways to transferring my sharepoint data. It works. It hasn't failed yet.
I bet the guys who took part in the survey only set up a server, installed some applications, and patched it. I bet they didn't try running a business for 18-months, just to see what it was really like.
I must say that we recently purchased an Apple PowerMac, and were so impressed we are now looking at completely switching, hence the OS X Server. It is a dream to install and configure, but we are going to run it for several months until we are satisfied that it can do the job.
Any fool can talk, but it takes a wise man to listen.
Does Novell have horses in this race?
What team colors are they wearing?
Cogito Ergo Sum
Yes, that's right, if you want unbiased reporting on the facts and a strict comparison done under rigorous conditions, then the only place to turn is Consumer Reports. Unfortunately a peek at their site shows nothing about comparing Linux to Windows. Anyone for a letter-writing campaign?
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
I have suddenly lost interest in the opposite sex... Please give me something else to beleive in !
If you've lost interest in the opposite sex, I suggest the Apple Mac ;)
.... Sony Rootkits Won't Run.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
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 my opinion, anyone considering Microsoft operating sytems should consider this: Self-destruction is a "feature".
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.
...I have to say that I am glad to see that the truth eventually prevails. I've been hearing my employees whining "linux this" and "linux that" for the past six year. But they never have anything to back themselves up when they are faced with a challenge. Just because Linux is the buzzword of the decade doesn't make it a viable business technology. Anytime the dirty L word ever comes up in meetings I smash it down the the heel of my boot by instantly asking the person who uttered it the following question: "You don't like your job here. Do you"? That usually silences them. But I always follow up with, "If Linux is so good. Then show me where the *working* alternatives to important development applications like PowerPoint, Photoshop and Macromedia Flash are". The response is usually a visibly annoyed grumble. And do you want to know why? BECAUSE THERE AREN'T ANY VIABLE ALTERNATIVES.
.Net shop now because that's all the rage with code cooks) They *might* be able to watch my PowerPoint stuff in OpenOffice.org but probably not considering that they don't have enough RAM to hold that bulky app and my presentations (which top out at about 600 megs typically. Per UI screen.). They *could* view my Flash presentation in their web browsers with the Flash player for Linux but they wouldn't be able to see the intricate timings that I coded into the presentation. And Photoshop? Don't make me laugh with your Gimp thing. I can't work with an application that refuses to use normal menus and plain English for filters. Not to mention there aren't enough filters for the kind of work I do. Where is Bryce for Linux? How am I supposed to make award winning UIs when I can't render a complex texture with a few button clicks? How am I supposed to make grand looking buttons when I don't have any kind of lighting control that is realistically flexible?
We produce an award winning database with a truly intuitive user interface that goes lightyears beyond anything that Linux's GUI has to offer. And I'm the one who draws up the mockups and gets things ready for the code monkeys to sling their stupid poo at. My typical devel/design cycle:
1. Watch The Matrix, Hackers, Virtuosity, The Minority Report and a few hours of the SciFi channel to spot new but unimplemented UI features
2. Fire up Photoshop and create mockups for each UI screen
3. Pull the mockup into PowerPoint and add the sound effects and MPEG1 videos (That's what wins awards in the DB world folks. Good special FX. Just felt the need to school you.)
4. Do a little more work in Flash to indicate what the pointer should look like in various parts of the UI at various times.
5. Turn it all over to the code jockeys so they can make the pointless stuff happen.
If my coders were using Linux they wouldn't be able to dissect my work and convert it to their pointless language. (We're a Visual Studio
So your beloved Linux has nothing to offer this Fortune 1000 developer. It seems to be moored in the backwater ages when everything was CLI (which is dying out in case you didn't notce) and the world was encumbered by the albatross of elitist intellectuals who called themselves "programmers". What's so special about being able to type cryptic Unix and C commands and just to get 1+1=2? It's 2005 people! I shouldn't even NEED a keyboard anymore! I get so annoyed when an application makes me reach for the keyboard that I curse anyone who thinks it's a decent textual input device. Give me a 3d gyro mouse and a Dasher-like interface any day. But better yet, give me complete and total voice recognition. As a developer all I should have to do is tell my computer to build me an award winning DB app in Excel and then rake in the cash. Then I can finally cut the losses that I employ called "programmers".
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I don't understand the arguments in these comments. We run more Linux AND Windows servers than ever before. Both platforms are more solid and more useful than ever (RHL9, RHEL3/4 and Windows Server 2003 Enterprise). Microsoft's policies and treatment of its customers isn't great. The Linux distro vendors do much better, IMO. But, Windows Server is actually quite useful today. This being said, it's far easier to do many network-related things on Linux (open source application servers, primarily), and Microsoft licensing costs keep creeping up, so we tend to do it in Linux first. But if there's an application we need that runs on Windows, I'm not afraid. We know how to skin that puppy, too.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Why would anyone try to use Gentoo or LFS for production server use is completely beyond me. That's as wrong as trying to use Windows 98 on a production server (although Gentoo/LFS and Windows 98 don't share many characteristics, I was merely pointing out that the writer picked a clearly wrong tool for the job, to represent "Linux".)
RHEL, SLES or Debian Stable are the distributions I know of which have a change process geared to a corporate (or SMB) server environment. How someone could choose Gentoo as a representative of the Linux product family in this kind of comparison is totally beyond me. What were you thinking?
I imagine sometimes the integration that Windows offers can be convenient, but it's more of an inconvenience when you just need a new feature in one part of the system. With Windows, you need to upgrade the whole kit and caboodle!
Yes. I agree completely. Linux is not for everyone. However Linux is for those of us who want stability security and just plain fun. MSWindows annoys the hell out of me. I end up losing 40-50% of my total system speed to various problems, even with AV and AS installed. AS for server environments. LINUX KICKS THE WINDOW IN. Why just look through the window when you can have the whole house? We used to run our web services on windows and novell Netware. Now we use linux and dont have any problems. As for the .net thing. I'm sorry you program in such an annoying program as that. Mayhap you should spend some of that time that you get payed for to find a better solution. Oh and by the way. Linux kicks MS a$$ and there's nothing your ranting self can do about it.
In general, whenever you're doing a task with a GUI, and you're within the intended solution space of those tools, they will be faster. And easier. And probably less buggy... because at least in theory, the GUI tool will configure things correctly every time. (actual practice, of course, differs somewhat. :) )
An initial implementation of virtually ANYTHING in Linux/Unix has always taken longer than Windows. Getting off the ground in Unix is slow, because you're often writing your own tools to do what you need.
However, because those tools are written in, usually, fairly simple code, using simple and extremely robust utilities in novel combinations, they don't break much. And if your admins are good, your tools will be far more extensible than anything you could buy off the shelf, because they'll match your solution space almost precisely. Microsoft has to write stuff that's good for everyone, so their tools will rarely be a perfect match to your specific problem.
It's interesting that we're even having the discussion... it used to be completely taken for granted that Linux was way, WAY harder. The upfront cost was tremendous in comparison, but then your maintenance cost was very low.
Now Microsoft has to go out of its way to point this out. That is an ENORMOUS shift, a sea change. Microsoft wouldn't bother pointing this out if everyone already knew it. This implies that many administrators are finding the tools (GUI and otherwise) in Linux to be perfectly functional for what they need, and they're able to get things built fast enough that their bosses aren't pissed off.
It's probably a mix of free software getting better and administrators getting more skilled. Both are very good news.
<rant>Now if we could just get a stable kernel to put all of this cool infrastructure on..... </rant>
I work as a unix administrator in a mixed shop. The windows and unix guys are in the same group, so we get their email and go to the same team meeting. From everything I see, the bane of their existance is trying to keep everything patched. They have people in every weekend doing patching, and seem to be getting farther and farther behind. Every time a new "critical" windows patch is issued, you can hear the groans from over the cube wall. We run Solaris, and apply a patch cluster 4 times a year. When we need to patch to address a security vulnerability, we rarely have to reboot. Also, our uptime reports put theirs to shame. It boggles my mind that MS claims that maintaining their systems is less work.
http://cubemonkey.net/quotes -- fortune-mod quote generator
MOD PARENT SIDEWAYS
Yes, much like you have to reboot your computer from time to time, we're going to reboot our computer from time to time to make sure it doesn't happen again. - this is the last sentence found in this story. As you can see it is now a popular attitude - computers need to be rebooted time to time. Did this perception came out of GNU/Linux world? No. Not even Macs. It came from the MS/Windows world and I am not going to disagree with it. MS builds these so called OSs that create this perception in the peoples' minds. People don't even understand that computers/software built right do not need to be rebooted at all. Ever.
You can't handle the truth.
1. Choose hardware that has known difficulties with Linux.
2. Plan simulated study over a time period in which the number of patches favors Windows.
3. Compare minor version change - Win2000 to Win2003- against a more complex Linux migration. SLES 8.0 (2.4 Kernel) to SLES 9.0 (2.6 kernel)
4. Deny administrators use of test systems, which is a Linux cost advantage. Test system can be run on available hardware with free license.
5. Run Linux with all available services instead on the needed minimum. This reduces system performance and adds difficulty to patches and migration.
6. Deliver external data from third party in a Windows favorable format.
7. Require several feature changes that are pre-built into Windows but requires customization in Linux
With just a little planning, you can create and sell your very own Microsoft FUD.
Dear folks, I think Linux has a higher variance. 1) Windows works to a mediocre, acceptable level even if configured by someone of mediocre qualities. 2) Linux works amazingly good if configured by a real expert, a real hacker. 3) Linux works bad if configured by someone of mediocre qualities. Linux is not forgiving of incompetence. Do you agree? This question is similar to politics: the Left consists of people of mediocre intellectual qualities. The Right consist of a bunch of complete fascist assholes and some geniuses of exceptional qualities, like Simone Weil in The Need For Roots (L'Enracinement). Average folks use Windows. Geniuses use Linux. However, there is a bunch of 19-years old "wizards" who convice customers they can configure a system for them and they use Linux. Because it is free and and cool. Besides geniuses, Linux is the playground of many big losers. And then it does not work. Linux is not forgiving of incompetence.