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Microsoft Challenges Linux's Legacy Claims
Michael writes "Microsoft Corp.'s Linux and open-source lab on the Redmond campus has been running some interesting tests of late, one of which was looking at how well the latest Windows client software runs on legacy hardware in comparison to its Linux competitors. The tests, which found that Windows performed as well as Linux on legacy hardware when installed and run out-of-the-box, were done in part to give Microsoft the data it needed to effectively 'put to rest the myth that Linux can run on anything.'"
Come back when Windows can run on non-x86-hardware and toasters.
So Windows can run on telephone exchanges, PBXs, Sun workstations, IBM mainframes, Cisco routers... w00t!
Oh well, what the hell...
So yes, Windows95 will INSTALL on a 486SX-25 with 16 MB of RAM, but can you do anything? I think WinXP probably WONT even install on that. Is a P2-350 with 64MB of RAM a decent Win2003 box? Not on your life. Welcome to swapville.
This is the dumbest, most shill-like "benchmark" I've read about in a while. Come back when they do webserver benchmarks on the legacy HW. How many of the tests will read "No results for Windows because the OS won't install on this platform" ?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
While I can run the "client software" on legacy hardware (whatever they define that as), I still can't run, with any decent performance, a fresh install of Windows XP Pro SP2 on my 386, whereas I can pop in my FreeSCO CD and use the machine as a router (or Slackware and use it as a terminal/IRC/MUD/Bugzilla/CVS/Whatever server).
It's not what I can display on a monitor with my old hardware, it's what I can get that damn machine to do.
The study merely proved that Microsoft's current operatings systems can run on the smae hardware. It didn't prove a single thing about the ability of linux to "run on anything." It was entirely limited in scope - they just installed straight out of the box linux distros and Microsoft's OS on old hardware. The myth they were actually trying to disprove is that Windows doesn't run on old hardware.
Thalasar
The tests, which found that Windows performed as well as Linux on legacy hardware when installed and run out-of-the-box, were done in part to give Microsoft the data it needed to effectively "put to rest the myth that Linux can run on anything.
In other words: None of these devices were actually connected to the Internet.
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Run WindowMaker instead of KDE or Gnome. It'll work just fine, and likely better than Windows.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I believe Microsoft's article is reasonable, to a certain extent. They haven't been comparing apples with oranges, but instead are showing that computers running similar application suites behave similarly, whether running on Linux or NT.
The problem with the article isn't that they aren't comparing apples with apples, but that they're ignoring the fact that the oranges exist. If you aren't running desktop apps Linux will run well on small amounts of RAM - even less than the 64MB they quote as the minimum limit - and that similar apps aren't as readily available under the Windows OS.
They're also neglecting to mention that you'd need to spend hundreds to obtain a licensed copy of XP for your legacy hardware, as opposed to downloading a Linux CD image.
Microsoft thus decided to test this premise by installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Pro 9.2, Mandrake 10, Linspire 4.5, Xandros Desktop 3.0, Fedora Core 3, Slackware 10.1, Knoppix 3.7; Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 out-of-the-box on older hardware to see what happened.
The real story here is how revealing this "Comparison" is about attitudes at Microsoft. They weren't interested in doing a valid test which might have been of some use in improving their product. All they were interested in doing was showing a competitor in a bad light, even if it meant blatantly rigging the test. This is an ostrich "head in the sand" trick.
It's because they refuse to accept fair comparison and competition, and to improve as a result of that competition that they continue to expose users to constant security risks.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Instead of comparing a present-day Linux distro on that hardware to Win95, compare a 1995 distro and see how it looks. I'll bet you not only have a GUI, it'll be faster than the GatesWare.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
From TFA: "The fact of the matter is that if you look at popular desktop Linux distributions from Red Hat or Novell's SUSE, they match or exceed the system requirements of Windows XP. For example, Novell Linux Desktop 9 requires a minimum of 128MB physical RAM, which is identical to the requirements of Windows XP. If you compare OpenOffice 2.0 to the system requirements of Microsoft Office and again they are identical," he said.
..
I winced at the bolded section. 128 megs? Windows XP? Are they bloody serious? We don't want a computer that just boots up - we want productivity. And for productivity, XP needs more than 128 megs, unless by "productivity" you mean "wordpad"
The sea changes color, but the sea does not change.
It took a long time for Windows to be able to run well on low cost hardware. Nowadays, everyone has 256 or 512MB even on budget systems, and so the requirements aren't much different because EVERYONE will run X.
Basically, the test was stupid and missed the point of being able to run Linux on older hardware - by lowering the requirements through a choice of what you want to install (namely the GUI).
Which is why, looking at the list, they picked the distros that they did. I'd be curious to know if they turned off all the extras that come turned on in most distros. It's not a fair comparison, for example, to install a stock Mandrake that comes with OpenOffice turned on when Windows doesn't ship with Office installed.
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
I think when most people say Linux runs on anything, they don't mean Fedora Core, or any particular distro. Microsoft's tests are flawed because they assume we mean that Fedora Core 4, or Ubuntu with a nice full GUI desktop setup will run on anything. When I think about Linux running on anything I think about Linux running on my Linksys WRT54GS router, or Linux running on cell phones. We're talking the full linux kernel, with a stripped down environment. I doubt Windows XP (even without the GUI) would run on a cell phone. The XP-embedded kernel might, but not the normal kernel. Linux's strengths lie in it's modularity; the kernel can be stripped down and run in minimal environments, all using the exact same code base, with the same kernel APIs used everywhere.
So it seems that Microsoft is deliberately confusing the issues here. A modern Gnome or KDE desktop on Linux no better or worse than Windows XP on 10 year old hardware with a full GUI desktop. But can Windows XP run on a 20-year-old 386 at all? Linux can. And while a Gnome desktop might now, X11 with a GUI of some kind certainly can. That's what we mean when we say linux can run on older hardware. Furthermore, much about Linux that enables compatibility stretching back 30 years doesn't really have anything to do with Linux itself either. For example, I can connect a Gnome desktop remotely to a 30-year old Unix mainframe and run X11 programs completely seamlessly. I could even fire up a 20-year old unix workstation running X11 and connect to a brand-new gnome desktop running on FC4 somewhere and expect it to work at least.
Further, Linux seems to be able to adapt much quicker to new platforms than Microsoft. The 32-bit to 64-bit jump was made years ago with Linux, with no major kernel API changes. Compare this to Windows which has Win16, Win32, and now Win64, with major changes in between, requiring some interesting hacks to preserve backwards compatibility. Linux, thanks to its Unix heritage, has always thought about things like making x-bit clean (where x is 32, 64, or whatever) and dealing with things like endianness. Linux isn't perfect; if there are issues with moving between 32 and 64 bits, or moving between little and big endian, they are bugs that need to be fixed. Microsoft has never expended much effort to think about such issues, as near as I can tell, since they thrive on the Wintel monopoly. Getting Windows endian-clean, for example, just isn't a priority.
There is a huge content-free lead-in to the article. Here is the meat.
But first, my comment:
Judge for yourself whether or not the minimal configuration is really the minimal one. I personally am inclined to think 2GB is way too big of a disk. If you just want a webserver, DNS box, firewall, etc. you don't need a bigger disk than 32MB, if you are using a BSD. I would guess it is the same or better with Linux. But Windows includes so much unnecessary stuff in the basic install, you need 2GB. This actually does matter -- if you need 32MB, that is a cheap flash disk. If you need 2GB, that's a lot.
"In the tests run in its lab, Microsoft found that most modern commercial Linux distributions could be installed successfully on systems with a Pentium processor, with 64MB of RAM and a minimum of 2GB of hard disk space.
"Memory prevented the successful installation on a typical 1997 system, as 32MB of memory is not enough to install most Linux distributions or to run desktop applications with acceptable performance. A memory upgrade could prolong the life of such hardware, but the cost and effort of locating old memory and installing it onto all corporate clients significantly reduces the potential savings," Hilf said.
Minimum requirements for office productivity performance on a Linux system were any Pentium II (PII) system with at least 64MB of RAM, he said, adding that playback of sound and video would typically require a PII 400 or better.
"This corresponds to an average PC issued between 1998 and 1999," Hilf said.
If Linux was installed on an older system, such as an average PC of 1997, then the desktop performance falls below what is typically acceptable for a common user, he said."
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
First and foremost I love studies that compare the system requirements on the label. This seems like an obvious ploy to convince developing countries to use Windows on hand-me-down hardware. This article is not going to convice anyone that even if XP can run on a Pentium 1 it is worth paying more in software licensing fees than they paid for the hardware.
The only way Windows will convince people that Windows is good for legacy hardware will be if they either restart support for Windows 95 and Windows 98 or write a service pack that will remove or downgrade many system components. This of course presents a major problem for them since they also have to please the OEM's desire for software that forces you to upgrade.
This much aside I beleive all this article shows is that Microsoft recognizes they might lose market share in developing countries and that is a huge compliment and inspiration to open source companies.
One problem with Linux vs. Windows comparisons is that Linux is just a kernel, whereas Windows is a kernel + desktop environment + userland + web browser + more. Linux can run on legacy hardware; even the latest Linux kernel will run decently even on an old 386 with 8MB RAM, along with the latest versions of the GNU userland, X, a text editor like vim or emacs, and maybe even lynx. (Just don't think about doing anything more complex, such as use a graphical web browser, Java, GTK or QT application, fancy desktops, etc.) On the flipside, can Windows XP even install on an 386? You'll have to revert to DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 if you want a decently-performing Windows config with those specs. And who'd use that in 2006? (You'd have to pay me to use DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11, and give me copies of WordPerfect 5.1 and Lotus 1-2-3 2.4, as well ;).) Windows 95 can technically run on that machine, but you'll be in swap city....
If you are a hardcore Unix user, you can be very comfortable with a 386 or 486 with 8-16MB RAM, as long as you love the command line (and are not even considering any intensive GUI applications). Heck, 386 and 486 users got it much better than Thompson and Ritchie did ;). However, once you start adding GUI toolkits, multimedia applications, quality web browsers like Firefox and Konqueror, full-blown desktops, office suites, VMs for all of these languages supported by the developers (like Java, Python, Ruby, Perl, ...), libraries for oodles of functions, transparent graphics, and all of those other features, Linux, just like any other OS, needs much more processor speed and much more memory. You'll need at least a 233MHz processor with a minimum of 256MB RAM in order to avoid much of Swap City, and you'll need 500MHz and at least 384MB RAM to completely avoid all of it (unless your work is truly computer-intensive). Windows XP works the same way.
All that I'm saying with these comparisons is that many people quickly forget that all Linux is is a kernel. Linux, along with the GNU tools, can be ran from specifications as little as a 386SX with 4MB RAM to 96-node Beowulf clusters each featuring the fastest chips on the market, along with tens of gigabytes of RAM. Just don't come crying when your OpenOffice takes a year to compile on your 386, and a day to open ;).
People don't choose Linux over Windows because they want to run it on an old 486. Hell, you can buy a 600Mhz Pentium III that'll run any Linux distro on Earth for about 150 bucks on Ebay. Who cares about old hardware?
People buy Linux because:
1. It's much cheaper than Windows, with a much more liberal license which lets you do whatever you want without a huge, complex, draconian EULA;
2. It comes with a full set of development tools out of the box, and for most people offers all the software they will EVER need, so you don't have to blow hundreds of bucks on additional software packages;
3. Most of the additional tools people want can be had for free or very little money (like Java's SDK, which can be downloaded for nothing, or Oracle Express, which is also free).
4. It has better default driver support than Windows, without having to go out to a vendor site and hope they still offer downloads; In fact, most hardware is detected right off the bat nowadays.
5. YES, Linux is more secure than Windows, and offers better and more diverse tools for locking down your system. Also it tends to be more stable, and has much more gentle memory and disk requirements.
6. This one's esoteric, but what the hell: I can use Reiser FS on Linux; Windows didn't offer a journaling ANYTHING up until their latest greatest (does that even offer journals???). Under Windows, if you lose power suddenly, the next time you power up you could have a garbled registry (reinstall time!). Under Linux with Reiser, when you reboot, the system politely tells you it's going to check the journal, and it fixes itself. This alone is a good reason to prefer Linux.
Overall, Linux is better than Windows in almost every conceivable way. The only other operating systems that come close are Mac OS/X and the *BSDs.
But I guess, if I was Bill Gates, I'd want to divert everyone's attention away from the "Linux is better" problem, too. Hey, kids! Look over here! Windows installed on a 486! Don't pay any attention to that nasty Novell guy over there, with his nasty Kontact information manager, and all his talk of "security" and "stability" -- you don't want those, they're not good for you! Come have some Outlook and IE!
Feh.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Did you install all of the extras? Did you disable the things you didn't want? Windows comes with a minimal set of tools, and no word processor, spread sheet, data base, etc. Most Linux distros cram every extra in existence onto your drive. While I detest this practice, and and only install what I need, Windows doesn't even give you the option.
In short, Linux is a kernel and drivers. Everything else is GNU, Apache, Mozilla, etc. The distros bundle that all together in different ways. Most people forget that fact most of the time, and it makes it easy for the unscrupulous and the incompetent to compare apples to oranges.
The tests, which found that Windows performed as well as Linux
So it's not better, just more expensive.
That depends what distro you use. Red Hat Enterprise certainly isn't designed to run on a low-end computer out of the box, but Vector Linux is and I can guarantee you that Vector will outperform any Windows OS (incl. 95 and 98) on older hardware.
The main difference is that with Windows what you get out of the box is largely what you will end up using. With Linux you can take a RHEL system running a fat desktop and put a light-weight desktop environment or window manager in place of Gnome and you've got yourself a fast machine. Trim down some unneeded services and you're pretty much where Vector Linux takes you by default.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
Keep in mind that this whole thing is aimed at organizations, rather than the mom's basement crowd.
IT Manager: Can I extend the life of this old Win98 hardware with Linux?
Answer: Absolutely! You just need to run some weird distro with no commercial support, use some wacky window manager, and live without anything like MS Office!
IT Manager: Aaaaah. OK. (Slowly backs away and starts perusing $300 Dell Celerons).
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Exactly, and that's what makes the whole thing stupid.
Microsoft doesn't know how to attack Linux, since it comes in so many shapes and sizes. So, they pick a specific point where they know the results will be favorable - or at least not negative in their direction.
It's a dumb argument. The point of Linux is that you can do whatever you want with it, anyone can. And I can get a distribution (or make my own!) that will run happily on a 486 with limited memory, complete with a GUI and some software such as a web browser, less full-featured word processors/etc (over OpenOffice), great mail clients, etc. If you have a new PC, you'll want a prettier desktop with lots of bling, and apps that take advantage of your hardware. I tend to remember doing just this with Linux, with my 486, when I still used one as my primary PC. It wasn't as long ago as it seems.
If they say CE will run on old hardware, well, good for them. But it doesn't mean anything (we can't get it) and it proves as much as this 'test'. Nothing.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
From TFA:
Also, more importantly, would the applications and software those users need be available and run on these machines? And would they not cost more than the hardware itself and thus blow the benefits of cheaper hardware out of the water? Asked about this, Hilf would only say that "this is precisely the challenge Microsoft is working with the industry to address."
In other words: "Please ignore the fact that even if we win, we lose." And I'd really like to see some DATA, on this, rather then "Oh really, it did just as well! (Course we installed full-blown Linux setups, and likely minimal Win installations...)". What did they use? GNOME? KDE? Something in the vein of a blackbox or fluxbox? Or no GUI at all? The ability to choose heavy, light, or no GUI is one of Linux's main strengths in itself, and one Win currently cannot match.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Some crazy fin writes an OS and I get a cheap desktop that doesn't blue screen and actually performs a lot better then certain commercial OS'es and does not costs me a sackfull of money to get the latest bugfixes.
The Internet has made a huge impact on the way the world works. No not because of internet shopping but in that communities can be build with a far larger catching area. It doesn't matter how obscure your interest are, with the global internet their are bound to be other weirdos out there who are intrested in the same things as you.
As someone who actually had an interest in anime/manga before the internet (yeah I am old so what?) I am still at times amazed by the huge change the internet has made. Previously you had to really seek out a club that probably had only 1-2 members per province and would have real trouble getting their message out. With the internet I can google and find hundreds of sites specializing in every type of manga/anime.
It would probably be quit hard to find enough people in your own town to build an OS. In fact linux shows this. Not that many other fins involved but because of the internet it doesn't matter. Weirdos allover can easily find each other.
So a knoppix live cd made by persons from all over the globe can be easily found by anyone else on the planet. Same with firewall on a floppy distro's. Just check distrowatch to see how many tiny little 1 man distro's there are that nevertheless manage to reach a global audience.
MS must really be getting desperate if now they are even trying to spread fud about the capacity for Linux to run on cheap hardware.
Linux is made by people for people. It does not have to be succesfull, it does not have to be worth it. There are countless people out there who are happy to spend all their free time producing special versions of Linux and give away their work for free.
This allows for Linux distro's to be easily available in the most obscure languages possible since all it requires is one(1) person with a passion and there is no need for a cost benefit study.
Linux runs on X because. Not because anything just because. Windows CE only runs on X when someone decides it is worth their time and effort and money.
Yes some companies have decided that they want to try making money from Linux. Good luck to them and they add valuable extra's to the effort but they are not Linux. They are a small subset of the global effort. Not a coordinated effort. Just hundreds of thousands of people who want software to do what they want and screw it being complex. That is part of the enjoyment. You don't think someone modding a GBA to run as a webserver has anyother motive then "Because"?
Linux is people who grow their own food, Linux is people that take 20 years to build their own plane, Linux is people who climb up a mountain nobody cares about, Linux is all these efforts being able to benefit all the others. Or not. because it don't matter. If all the effort to put Linux on PPC never ever generates a single bit of usefull code it don't matter because Linux does not ever have to make a profit to survive.
Even if Linux died, so what? Linux ain't Linux, Linux is an idea and BSD or god forbid Hurd could easily take over. because Linux is not new. It is in fact ancient. Linux is civilisation. Each generation building on the achievements of their elders and sharing their knowledge with the next generation.
The idea that you keep new ideas locked up is not how mankind has progressed.
I do not have to figure out how to pump water or filter it or store it or even figure out that I need it to survive. Others have done it before me and shared it with the world at large. I do not have to figure out h
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Clearly spoken by someone who didn't live through it...
Keep in mind that this whole thing is aimed at organizations, rather than the mom's basement crowd.
Keep in mind, that this article specifically mentioned "developing nations". $300 dell machines may be a drop in the bucket for a US corporation(though that may not last much longer), but that's a substantial amount of money for someone in say, Mexico, or in a really poor nation.
In the article, they even suggest using Windows CE and mention an amount of customization... I haven't played with wince in ages, but the last time I did, it was like Windows 3.1 brokeness revisited. I'm sure it's gotten better, but what are the odds that there will be more people in developing countries who can customize wince than who can customize linux? Especially with ridiculously easy configuration ability. Take DSL, that is a joke to install and configure.
some weird distro with no commercial support
If you're trying to use old Pentium 100s, something tells me you've already decided that support is not a huge issue anymore.
use some wacky window manager, and live without anything like MS Office
Yeah, here's the big joke about office... Very few people in my experience(fortune 500 corp, 2 smaller corps, a non-profit, and small business), use more than 5 percent of the features of Office. For most people, Office is a howitzer to combat the fly problem they have. And wacky window manager? What makes any window manager more whacky than another?
If you're in a poor country, or in a poor school district, or just looking to cut the fat out of your IT budget, why not consider using older equipment and a distribution like DSL? If you're not professionally publishing anything, and just need standard Word processor, spreadsheet, email, etc..., why not look at it? If you don'tlike it, fine, but you won't know until you try.
I'll make the argument here the legacy machines don't matter. Cheapest new computers are now so cheap yet so powerful that the space and power requirements needed to run an old machine are just not worth it. Get a new machine, send yours to recycling. That said, last thing you need when you have an old clunker that's not worth keeping is to pay for a windows license for it. Microsoft must be on crack to make such irrelevant comparison, unless they intend to give free licenses. And even so, it requires an immense degree of cluelessness to prefer an old version of windows over a new version of a minimalist linux distro.
Is this really most interesting thing that happend in "Linux World" in last few hours? I doubt that and although I now that this kind of story causes a lot of comments on /. and probably is very good for your marketing purposes this article is not worth it.
Everyone on slashdot knows on what type of hw you can run linux and can not windoze, we don't need this kind of article to irritate us!
Shame on you slashdot.
Their main argument seemed to be "we'll install the defaults for the particular Linux distribution, because the users/sysadmins wouldn't have the knowledge to do anything else".
So they probably installed Gnome, KDE and god-knows what other bloatware. I'm surprised they even could get away with 400MHz/64MB.
Morale: if you expect to use your Linux system as a Windows clone, you will get Windows-like performance. I didn't need a Microsoft to tell me that.
So, what would be the difference exactly?
I will tell you what. With Linux you become owner of your infrastructure. Once you have the dosh to move to commercially supported versions the migration is far less painful, not to mention that you always know that your data is accessible and protected agianst the whims of a coporate concern.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
What is the credibility of MS's Linux Lab when benchmarking Linux vs Windows?
In a scale of 1 to 10 I would say -1.
Honestly guys, keep the results to yourselves, and all the best for you. To publish them is a no win situation. If you say Windows is better in any measure it will be pointed out, rightly, that you are an interested party. If you find that Linux is better, well, I would like to see the day you plublish that. Most likely that will be quietly ignored.
So what is the frigging point exactly?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
It gets even better.
"'[Pentium II with a minimum 64MB RAM] corresponds to an average PC issued between 1998 and 1999,' Hilf said."
In 1998, the latest Slackware distro ran fine on my 386DX40 with 8MB of RAM, though X was a bit choppy. Conversely, the newly-released Win98 required a 486DX66 and 16MB RAM.
Hilf should have just gone all-out and said that many modern distros which come on DVD won't even install on older boxes because they lack DVD drives. It would have been just as valid.
One question that I find is being missed is that of broaching Microsofts need to challenge 'Linux History' with some study or other.
If I were a military analyst I'd have to argue that
those who need to make pointless attacks tend to do
so out of desperation. One could be led to assume that
Microsoft's battle is already lost if they need to
expend resources on things like this rather than just
making a better product.
And, where the hell is the improved product?
How long do we have to wait for Microsoft's
*improved* operating systems to actually reach
the market. Have we seen one yet that we haven't
had to patch ad-nauseum to make or data safe?
The ultimate winner in the operating system race
will quietly continue to improve and promote
good technology rather than tearing down the
competition.
Propaganda is always a double edged sword. A small
part of the population will always fall for it. The
rest will maintain various degrees of scepticism.
Ultimately, if the story is incorrect or shown to
be biased, the propagandists tend to get cut by thier
own barbs.
One really has to wonder what the heck is going on
at Redmond when they pull circus acts like this.
Management from 'stupidville' I guess. I think I'll
sell my stock while it's still high.