Windows Servers Beat Linux Servers

RobbeR49 writes "Windows Server 2003 was recently compared against Linux and Unix variants in a survey by the Yankee Group, with Windows having a higher annual uptime than Linux. Unix was the big winner, however, beating both Windows and Linux in annual uptime. From the article: 'Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and Linux distributions from "niche" open source vendors, are offline more and longer than either Windows or Unix competitors, the survey said. The reason: the scarcity of Linux and open source documentation.' Yankee Group is claiming no bias in the survey as they were not sponsored by any particular OS vendor."

Comments

Same as last year.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Lets look at last years survey being debunked in a business week analysis. ('cause I'm sure not a damn thing's changed since last year's study).

The biggest criticism of the study is this:

Only people running w2k3 AND linux were allowed to respond. Hmmmmmn, so how many MS shops with an evaluation linux server (installed by their clueless MSCE) were included in this "survey"

Yankee group can claim no bias all they like - but I am sick of Laura DiDio fud being posted here (Oh she of 'SCO's claims are justified after looking at the source' fame).

Call this ad-hominem if you like, but if someone pushes a POV year in, year out, you tend to dismiss them.

Re:Same as last year.

[grub]

It was by Laura DiDio. They may as well have had Steve Ballmer make the judgement.

Re:Same as last year.

[semifamous]

Another tech site has an editorial article on this report.

From the editorial:
I administrate both Windows and Linux servers and was interested to see this report. However, reading into the article a bit more makes me question the validity of their assessment.

The Yankee Group states that Windows 2003 Server led Red Hat Enterprise Linux with nearly 20% more annual up time.

I had to do a double take when I saw that. 20% more!? Assume for a moment that you have two servers, one running Windows Server 2003 and one running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4. Assume that your Windows box ran non-stop, without rebooting (which means you probably are not loading any Microsoft security updates) for 365 days. For your Linux box to have 20% more downtime it'd have to only be up for 292 days. If that is the case, your machine is no longer a server and is nothing more than a space heater.

Re:Same as last year.

[mrchaotica]

Call this ad-hominem if you like, but if someone pushes a POV year in, year out, you tend to dismiss them.

You shouldn't dismiss them just because they're consistent; they could in fact be consistently right (e.g. RMS).

Did you perhaps mean that if someone continues to push a POV after their reasoning has already shown to be flawed once you tend to dismiss them because the situation (and their flawed reasoning) is not likely to have changed?

Re:Same as last year.

[grasshoppa]

Only people running w2k3 AND linux were allowed to respond.

Shame they didn't ask me. While my win2k3 server is up and has been for a while, that's a far cry from saying it's trouble free. More than that, my linux boxes have been up without complaint for far longer AND are more trouble free AND are running apps that don't run on windows.

So, were they to ask me, the headlines might have read something like, "Linux more versatile and trouble free than windows counterpart".

I'll grant you, the win2k3 server is acting in a role that wouldn't be done nearly as well as the linux boxes.

Re:Same as last year.

[Crashmarik]

Documentation for linux is bad. Theres no arguing the point

I just switched a box from fedora core 4 to core 5 and was real pleased nobody had bothered to document the changes to the default install of Apache. I also can't count the times I have looked for things on the LDP or the HOWTO's and found yes this is a very good howto but the distribution is entirely freaking different.

Now I'm not saying microsfts documentation is any better, but they make up for it with consistency in the setup. Pretty much once things are set with M$ they are there. By example, You may not like the registry but its pretty consistent in how it works from win95 to win 2003.

That said once a server is setup and in production why the heck will a lack of documentation bring it down ? I have had Novell servers up for 4+ years at customer sites and they don't even get the docs.

Re:Same as last year.

[peragrin]

Go back and carefully read the study. Windows doesn't have 20% more uptime, Windows has increased their uptime by 20% while Linux was increased by (insert some random number here)

So if windows servers were available 90% of the time htey have now hit 95% but the linux servers were already at 97-99% uptime so they could only increase by a small margin.

Whenever didio writes you have to learn to read in between the sentences. She throws fud around(finding Linux documentation online, when you could simply call Red Hat and ask???? especially for RHEL 4.)

What she wrote was while techincally true, was so twisted as to be a lie. Notice how she refuses to post hard numbers,or other hard data so you can judge for yourself.

Re:Same as last year.

[Cl1mh4224rd]

That said once a server is setup and in production why the heck will a lack of documentation bring it down ?

It won't bring it down, but it might keep it down.

Re:Same as last year.

[Jon Peterson]

Only people running w2k3 AND linux were allowed to respond. Hmmmmmn, so how many MS shops with an evaluation linux server (installed by their clueless MSCE) were included in this "survey"

Err, that works both ways, doesn't it. Think of all the Linux shops with one little windows server they had to have because some app they needed didn't run on *nix. And IME *nix admins will happily reboot a windows box claiming "it's the only solution" rather than spend 30 minutes actually learning something about how windows works.

*nix admins seem to consider learning windows to be somehow beneath them, while windows admins usually consider learning *nix to be either worthwhile but hard, or simply irrelevant.

Re:Same as last year.

[kthejoker]

The parent strikes exactly at what the GP was complaining about: "poor documentation/changed install" = "free to create your own" in the Linux world. If instead it translated to "improve documentation, have valid and constructive changelogs", how much better off would OSS be?

Re:Same as last year.

[nikoftime]

Windows has increased their uptime by 20% [...] So if windows servers were available 90% of the time htey have now hit 95% [...]

This doesn't seem correct to me - if Windows "increased its uptime by 20%" from an original uptime of 90% then it would have 90% + (.2 * .9) = 108% uptime (or read a different way, 110% uptime). Clearly, you didn't mean either of these. But even if we were to read the statement as "decreased its downtime by 20%" we would still have 10% downtime - (20% of original downtime, or 2%) = 8% downtime. So we'd have 92% uptime, not 95% as you have stated.

Re:Same as last year.

[Illbay]

Isn't comparing Fedora to Red Hat Enterprise inappropriate here?

Fedora is "bleeding edge." Major changes are incoporated from one release to the other, with the time between releases only six or nine months.

RHEL is extremely stable and well-tested, and the time between major releases is long. Therefore, documentation for RHEL will be "true" for a long time.

Not the case with Fedora (I use Fedora, btw).

Re:Same as last year.

[Kadin2048]

Yep, I think you hit the nail on the head.

Saying that one has 20% more or less downtime than the other doesn't say anything about the absolute value of either one's up/down-time. Both of them could be terrible servers or both of them could be pulling four and five nines, we'd never know from that statement alone.

Re:Same as last year.

[sharkey]

Windows doesn't have 20% more uptime, Windows has increased their uptime by 20% while Linux was increased by (insert some random number here)

Well, the article states "Windows 2003 Server, in fact, led the popular Red Hat Enterprise Linux with nearly 20 percent more annual uptime."

That certainly sounds like a claim that Windows has 20 percent more annual uptime than RHEL, expecially since the article doesn't state anywhere that the 20 percent figure was an increase over last year. The only improvement statement made was that "...the major server operating systems all have a 'high degree of reliability,' and have showed marked improvement in the last 3 to 5 years."

Re:Same as last year.

[ketamine-bp]

please, if you'd think that somebody who would complain that installing apache is difficult would be able to write their own installation script, i have nothing to say but to stamp the "ignorant" sign on your head.

be realistic.

Re:Same as last year.

[rbochan]

...It's no secret that Windows admins have a harder time with Linux and I agree something needs to be done to help them (us) take the plunge with confidence...

You know what?
There is something that's been done.
You can actually download just about every Linux distro... for free ... and educate yourself instead of bitching and whining "It's too hard! I can't do it!". It doesn't cost you umpteen thousands of dollars to purchase the server OS, just takes an hour or 3 on a decent pipe and blank cd or 3.
Most competant linux admins have done so, even if it's to set up a server situation on some age-old hardware they have lying around to learn how to do things. Also, doing so on older hardware usually forces them to learn how to make the installed server OS more streamlined and efficient so that they can do more with the hardware they have on hand.

I for one, have single-handedly set up a local library with a 500MHz Pentium/256 meg ram that handles all their database and file server needs. I did a testbed on a 233 I had sitting in a closet and had everything down to the tweaked config files ready to go over a month before the project came into fruition. The cost to the library was a 128 meg stick of ram and a 100G hard drive, since I donated my time to them, and they already had the other hardware.
I'd never set up a system exactly like that, and it's worked perfectly for them for the last 6 months, with zero downtime. Took me about 3 days to figure out packages and tweaks for their particular needs. Onsite, it took me about an hour from blank hard drive to them being in full production. They put about $200 into it, and it replaced an aging "server" some salesmen had sold the county for about $3000 that they'd never been able to keep up and running for more than a week on their own.

Can't do Linux? Download it and learn yourself. Anything less is just excuses.

Re:Same as last year.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that those of us that work for a living are required to stay current with Windows, Cisco, HP, and Mitel, etc.; and then learn Linux on the side. Oh, and spend time with my wife & kids.

Yeah. I play with Fedora Core on a home machine, and I'm working on a virtual ISP box for another client ... but your attack is unwelcome and unwarranted. Pretty much what I'd expect from a Slashbot Fanboi.

Re:Same as last year.

[FireFury03]

That certainly sounds like a claim that Windows has 20 percent more annual uptime than RHEL, expecially since the article doesn't state anywhere that the 20 percent figure was an increase over last year.

The article is rather contradictory because after they say Windows has 20% more uptime than Linux they then say:

On average, individual enterprise Windows, Linux, and Unix servers experienced 3 to 5 failures per server per year in 2005, generating 10 to 19.5 hours of annual downtime for each server.

So, lets assume (for the sake of argument), worst case figures for Linux - 19.5 hours of downtime a year - lets make it 20 hours for ease of calculation. And best case figures for Windows of no downtime.

1 year = 365 days = 8760 hours
So for Linux that's 8760-20 = 8740 hours of uptime per year.

Windows is alledgedly 20% better than this, so we get 8740*1.2 = 10488 Hours of uptime. Which is 437 days.

So to summarise, they've said that Linux gets just over 364 days of uptime per 365 days whilest Windows gets 437 days of uptime per 365 days. I want one of those windows servers that can accumulate well over a year's worth of uptime in a year.

Re:Same as last year.

[FireFury03]

How does the average failure generate 2-4 hours of downtime? In our environment, the number is closer to 10 miutes

They also blame lack of Linux documentation for the downtime. I'm failing to see how that argument works though:
1. Only an idiot admin would take the server down for maintenance until they have the documentation needed to do the job.
2. In my experience, documentation for Linux systems is a lot more readilly accessible than the docs for Windows systems. Yeah, it may not come in a big printed book, but there's plenty of it on the web and searching the web is usually easier than finding the right page in a book. Documentation does of course include searching mailing lists, which will often turn up people having the same problem as yourself, along with the solutions they've found (this sort of thing is not generally published in the vendor's paperbacks).

Obviously the admin needs to be well versed in the OS being used. You can't hire a Windows admin and expect them to immediately know how to fix problems on a Linux system. But the converse applies as well - I'm very experienced with Linux but put me infront of a Windows machine and I wouldn't have a clue where to start.

Blaming increased downtime on the OS when it's simply the fact that you employed people who had unsuitable skills for the job is a big cop-out.

Re:Same as last year.

[FireFury03]

Documentation for linux is bad. Theres no arguing the point

I just switched a box from fedora core 4 to core 5 and was real pleased nobody had bothered to document the changes to the default install of Apache.

Whilest I love Fedora Core, I have many years of Linux experience under my belt. I think it is worth pointing out that Fedora Core is really intended as a testing ground for RedHat and not as an enterprise grade system. If you want things to Just Work and be documented you need to switch to something like RHEL - what you're doing is equivalent to playing with a bleeding edge beta version of Windows and complaining that Microsoft didn't bother to document some brand new feature.

Re:Same as last year.

[misleb]

Can't do Linux? Download it and learn yourself. Anything less is just excuses.

That is easy to say, but I'm not so sure it is fair. Just installing a Linux desktop or mock server is nothing compared to actually running an maintaining a production system. Sure, you can learn the basics, but you're not going to be proficient (and get good uptimes) until you've had real world problems/issues to deal with. Especially if the Windows admin is too young to have much DOS/CLI experience.

It helps to have some minor function you can put your first Linux server in. I was fortunate enough to start my Linux "career" at a community college setting in 1997 where uptime was not a high priority. I originally got a Linux box running as a router between a token ring and ethernet networks. And i was able to install a semi-private Linux mail server. I also ran a MUD. Eventually I was confident enough to actually setup a real server... and the rest is history.

-matthew

Re:Same as last year.

[zootm]

Can't do Linux? Download it and learn yourself. Anything less is just excuses.

Easing self-teaching is useful, but it's hardly an excuse for poor or sparse documentation. Self-teaching inherently takes more time (and time is money).

It's easy to learn to do simple things (as in your library example), but where complex business needs are involved, things can get more complex extremely quickly. Documentation and tools help greatly at this point.

The fact that one can teach oneself for free is a great advantage of Linux. If one needs to do so, there's clearly a problem, in particular for business use. This is why supported, documented projects are generally the only ones that are touched by business. Now, I can't speak specifically for the quality of Red Hat et al's support or documentation — my *nix work at my work tends to be on Solaris — but if it's of poor quality, that's definately a huge problem for business use of the technology.

While your suggestion to "download and learn it yourself" is fine for building up experience, but if you're the IT technician lumped with a tight deadline to get a system you're unfamiliar with up and running, lack of documentation could lead to time being wasted, and mistakes being made, simply because there's not enough time to trawl through internet boards and the like looking for the "correct way" to do things.

There is, of course, the argument that *nix boxes should only ever be administered by experienced *nix admins, but (especially in small companies), this is not something that it is practical to ensure.

Re:Same as last year.

[jackspenn]

It is 20% better then the Linux downtime. So that would be that Windows is down about 16 hours a year using the 20 for Linux in your example.

Couple of points as an RHCE that does both Windows and Linux, I can say that the more I am called to fix Linux machines as an outside consultant the more it pisses me off that each system is configured to the personality of the admin who built it and left, rather then a proven and tested standard. That adds to the amount of time it takes to get a system fixed because there are various smtp, pop and imap servers and various ways to do things that could be the issue with e-mail on a Linux machine, that adds to longer discovery time and in turn longer time to final resolution. Counter that with Exchange 2003 that has published best practices and in most cases one or two ways do do something. This should be common sense to most /.ers. Exchange will not send mail. OK, check the mail queues and the services, look in the event logs. Linux system will not send mail, OK, first figure out what smtp deamon they are using, is it sendmail or not, if not, what. Is it running? Oh, I have two sendmail services, one was installed by RPM, the other was compiled from source, but they previous root user remove those configuration files. And on and on sometimes.

Personal experience has taught me two things:

1). Just because I like Linux, doesn't mean it is perfect. Support issues like undocumented server settings, admins who delete or move the source configs they used in building a package and admins who do things "just to be different" hurt Linux uptime. Also when a company has a Linux server and Windows techs, they will let the Windows techs beat on it like monkeys before calling an outside consultant who costs money; that leads to a large part of that 20%.

2). Your post about 437 days was retarded. No doubt retards everywhere will mod you up as insightful and informative, but that makes your comment no less annoying to people with brains.

- Eric

Another 'study' by the Yankee Group...

[TripMaster Monkey]

Why does Slashdot continue to even acknowledge 'studies' performed by the Yankee Group? You think we would have learned our lesson by now...

Hard evidence of collusion may be lacking, but it's still patently obvious that Laura DiDio is a Microsoft shill.

Past experience should be enough to show this, but just in case it's not clear enough yet, here's a snippet of TFA:

But standard Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and Linux distributions from "niche" open source vendors, are offline more and longer than either Windows or Unix competitors, the survey said. The reason: the scarcity of Linux and open source documentation.

Translation: "We don't know how to support Linux, so it's Linux's fault."

Also from TFA:

The Yankee Group made a point of stressing that the survey was not sponsored or supported by any server OS maker.

I'll bet they did...when you turn out such a ridiculously skewed 'study', you pretty much have to make certain everyone knows how 'unbiased' it is.

Defensiveness

[Overly Critical Guy]

We'll see lots of defensiveness over this study in the comments, although if the conclusions were different, it would be cheered. Why not accept it and fix the documentation issue?

Re:Defensiveness

[RevDobbs]

Are you serious?

What documentation comes with Windows? The help system is shit, there is little usefull logging or debugging available in many of their services.

I haven't used a Linux distro in the past several years, but I'm sure that their documentation is worlds better than what comes with Win2k/2003. And I can tell you that OpenBSD's documentation is superb. (Not to mention that the *BSDs trace a direct lineage to AT&T UNIX; does that suddenly make them as good as HP/UX? I have never done 3D modeling on OpenBSD, but if the needed application is available for OpenBSD I would pick it over the comercial unixes any day of the week..)

Re:Defensiveness

[digidave]

The defensiveness comes from the fact that Yankee analyst Laura DiDio repeatedly makes ridiculous claims against Linux. She's the one that said Linux definitely stole SCO's code.

I don't have access to the full report, but I wonder how the "lack of documentation" came into play. Was a certified admin working each system? Did the admin call vendor support for help resolving any of the incidents? Was the particular problem experienced by each server the same? Hardware or software problems? Were all the servers configured in the same role? These differences play a role in how each of the operating systems scored.

Re:Defensiveness

[Kadin2048]

I think there are other issues as well, namely that it's actually easier in a lot of cases to contribute to a project's code, than it is to its documentation.

If I want to modify the software itself, I can grab the latest version from CVS, make my changes, create a patch, and then submit that patch. Maybe it gets taken into the main tree, maybe it doesn't, but in either case there's a known workflow for contributing to the project.

With documentation, it's not so clear. Let's say I wanted to work on the documentation for my favorite project. What do I do? If there hasn't been anything created during development, it can be a pretty daunting task. I think this is why you see a lot of HOWTOs and FAQs, but no real solid documentation: it's very difficult for somebody, especially someone who doesn't read code, to walk into an OSS project and start writing docs. And even then, it's perceived by many as being a really thankless job, even compared to submitting patches into CVS.

I think the adoption of Wikis in some cases have improved the situation somewhat, because they let somebody go in and make a few changes or update the documentation, without feeling like they have to completely rewrite it (though they can), and it also makes the results widely accessible. However, there aren't that many projects with wikis, at least that I've seen so far.

There are a lot of people out there who are interested in OSS and want to make a contribution, but aren't programmers themselves. But there are a lot of people involved in OSS who seem to not really see a need for documentation, or appreciate the effort that's required in making it really good. As long as that's the dominant philosophy, I think you're going to be stuck with the status quo.

What I'd like to see is an agreement at least in principle that documentation is important, and for Wiki-like CMSes to be maintained alongside CVSes, from planning stages on forwards. I know that's a lot to ask of OSS programmers who are used to just sitting down in EMACS and whipping out some code, but I think the results would be worth the effort. There's a reason why commercial projects sometimes have more people working on documentation and specifications than they do on code, and it's not because they need the extra warm bodies to heat the building. It's because good specifications produce good software (in theory), and good documentation produces happy users.

Downtime?

[Alioth]

Three to five down events per year totaling 10 to 19 hours of downtime per year? I'm not SuperAdmin, but NONE of my servers are ever down for that long or that often. Who are they letting run these boxes? What are they doing? Taking the machine into single user mode and recompiling the kernel before rebooting them or something?

Total Bullshit

[mabu]

First and foremost, the whole nature of the design of Unix/Linux provides a means by which software systems can be updated without any service outage. You cannot do this with any version of Windows. Most Windows-based patches and upgrades require a system reboot, which is downtime. Most unix-based upgrades merely require a quick stop/start/HUP of the services. If their main claim is that updating system components is the basis for downtime, they're smoking crack. Maybe their methodology for testing involved taking the entire system down while they upgraded? Unix doesn't require such drastic measures - Windows probably does, as you probably can't update a running service. By design, Windows is exponentially more prone to downtime in the process of patches and upgrades. It's virtually impossible for them to compare the two OSes on this issue and not be dramatically manipulating the test methods to create bogus results that are in no way reflective of how sysadmins patch and manage their server resources. I call BULLSHIT.

I have unix servers right now with uptime measured in YEARS. There are no Windows boxes that can make that claim. Period. I've had outages on occasion due to DDOS or system probes that caused a process to terminate over the years, but I've never had any type of wholesale outage that you'd typically get with most Windows installations. Does anyone have any details on the methodology of the testing? It's obviously bogus.

Re:Total Bullshit

[metamatic]

I'm not sure if you're going to believe me, but I have a Windows 2000 Server running for about 2.5 years now, serving as a small ASP-driven web server.

So you're saying you haven't installed a service patch to your Windows 2003 box that required a reboot in 2.5 years? Care to post the web server address? I'm betting you won't dare.

Re:I'm just not seeing it

[MSFanBoi2]

I, on the other hand, see just the opposite.

For years the Linux mantra was that Windows cannot do enterprise, wasn't secure, and on and on... however with a good, well trained administrator behind the console of ANY operating system, it can be made secure, it can do enterprise.

here, because of the "shoot first, ask questions later" attitudes of the Linux support team, the Linux environment (limited to some Web server farms, SMTP servers and a few SAMBA servers), the uptime is around 99.0%. The Windows environment, which is a lot larger, over 1000 servers in total (a mix of 2000 and 2003 but mostly 2003) has a current uptime of 99.95%.
No viruses internally, no spyware/malware internally, inexpensive (compared to what IBM wanted to charge us for Linux support across three years), and reliable.

Yes, sometimes Windows works quite well. For some of us it's cheaper and easier than any Linux distro. People sometimes seem to forget while a linux distro may be free, support for it, from both the admin side, and the overall support at higher levels, is far from it.

Windows Server is nice.....

[ShyGuy91284]

I don't know about uptime, but I used to be a Linux-Only person when it came to servers. After recently falling into a job where I have had to administer Windows servers, I'll admit they are slick...... I picked up workiing with them a hell of a lot easier then I would have a Linux server (if I was new to it). Good LAN support features, ISA, Exchange, license management, fairly easy remote user/computer maintenance..... I'm probably going to give it a shot for my next home server once I get the parts. Although the software is costly if you want to learn it as a hobby (I'm getting it for my home server through MSDNAA).

Re:Windows Server is nice.....

[pl1ght]

I'm glad you admitted it first. I work with about 300 Linux(slackware, redhat flavor) webservers. Which are great, no problems for the most part, but we also run about 45 Win2k/2k3 IIS/MSSQL/AD/Exchange servers for our Intranet apps and i must also admit that we have no problems with these guys. They are very very easy to manage and setup and ive yet to have a "crashing" problem that wasnt hardware related on either OS. To each his own. Both have their strengths.

Re:Same as last year = more BS

[moeinvt]

What the hell kind of shops/businesses/people are they surveying? People that have their servers running for a couple of days a year??

"According to the Yankee Group's annual server reliability survey . . . Windows 2003 Server, in fact, led the popular Red Hat Enterprise Linux with nearly 20 percent more annual uptime."

I would think that most businesses want to have their servers up 24/7/365 minus a few hours of scheduled reboots and upgrades, and unless something breaks or crashes. So, assume a Windows 2003 server had PERFECT uptime record for the year.

365/1.2 = 304.17. So, in order for Windows to beat Linux with 20% more uptime, they're trying to say that a server running RHEL is down more than SIXTY DAYS a year? My BS meter just crashed.

The thing is, it SOUNDS plausible.

[Theovon]

See, I know far too little about system administration. If I were to try to run a Linux server without help, it would be down all the time. If _I_ wanted a server, I'd pay someone a service feel to maintain it for me, and it would be up all the time.

So, it seems to me that ON AVERAGE, Linux servers would be down more than others, because so many people would be trying to admin themselves. The lack of documentation would definitely be a problem. (Actually, there's plenty of documentation. FINDING it is the problem. I don't know enough to come up with the right Google search terms! And posting to usenet is hit or miss.)

The question is what the uptime is like for Linux distros where you're paying out the ass for support (like you would for Windows or UNIX anyway). That's got to be such a small portion of Linux servers that it's not dragging the percentages up.

The real metric should be UPTIME / ($$ spent on support).

Be careful about those divides by zero.

Re:WxP Pro

[Anonymous Coward]

If your windows box has been up for 1 and almost 2 years, respectively, it means that they haven't had security updates applied (which require a reboot). And if your 911 center doesn't keep it's servers patched, you should all be fired.

If it is a doc issue....

[bblazer]

I am not surprised. Documentation of many open source projects (including linux) is often very poorly written and/or not maintained. Being a good code writer does not necessarily translate into being a good documentation writer. Major software companies hire whole teams of doc writers, and the results are (many times) much better than those that come with OS projects. This has been one of my fundamental points in the never ending discussion of things that are hindering wide spread adoption of OS solutions.

Just a few reasons I don't trust this

[martinultima]

I happen to be a Linux developer myself, and other than my own inherent bias towards my own system, I'd have to say that there are a few good reasons I never believe this junk:

Uptime isn't everything, especially as far as security patches are concerned. Sure, the site can run for years on end, but does it have the latest security fixes, especially for low-level kernel and other system stuff that often requires a reboot to finish?

The distribution does matter, at least in my own opinion. Red Hat might be one of the big names, but it's only one of many distributions – and a lot of them, especially ones based on Slackware Linux such as my own, tend to be considerably more stable and reliable (I may be wrong here, but I've used both systems, so I have at least some experience). So don't blame every Linux system just for Red Hat's problems.

History repeats itself, as a lot of previous posts have shown – they always make these extraordinary claims about Windows vs. Linux, but it's always the same people, and they're always proved wrong in the end. Since everyone else has already made this point, I'm just going to leave this one alone, and continue to the next:

UPTIME ISN'T EVERYTHING! I've already said it once, but uptime is only one of many different statistics as far as this type of thing's concerned. Sure, it's important that servers stay running as long as possible, but honestly, there are other important factors to consider as well – I'd rather have a Linux system that's occassionally offline than a Windows one that's always on, because (a) the Linux system would likely do what I need it to with far less work, at least in my opinion; (b) the Linux system would likely be much more secure against outside threats than the Windows one; and (c) face it, I'm biased, and so's everyone else who does this type of thing.

Just remember, there are three types of lies: Lies, damn lies, and statistics. I don't think we really need to say anything else. Q.E.D.

Linux Documentation issue? For MCSEs?

[Skapare]

It's probably more a case of MCSEs that don't grok the concepts of Linux and how it is documented. The survey was supposedly limited to just shops that run both Windows and Linux. That means you are likely dealing with a bunch of MCSEs that have been working with Windows for over a decade and have only in the past couple years been given Linux to also administer. If such a survey were limited to shops that had been running both systems for an equal period of time and have people on staff who are specialists in each system and have equivalent levels of experience (for example the Windows admin has 10 years Windows experience and the Linux admin has 10 years Linux experience and both have been working at this particular shop for 4 years, which has been running both Windows and Linux for the past 6 years), then I think it might be able to show the true differences and similarities. But I don't think this is anything Ms. Didio is capable of doing.

Really a non-issue

[MarkLewis]

I know that zealots from both sides will indulge in the opportunity for some bashing and grandstanding, which is fun and I enjoy a good smack-down as much as the next Slashdotter, but I just wanted to inject a little reality check. This study doesn't mean anything about OS quality. Numbers always lie, and even if you're not trying to make them lie, they're sometimes useless anyway, as in this case.

Linux has a different user base than Windows and UNIX. So the fact that 20% of the responses to the survey show higher Windows uptime doesn't mean that for the same usage patterns Windows is higher quality. To show that, you'd need to compare only sites with very narrowly targeted usage patterns which differ (as much as possible) only by their choice of operating system. This study didn't even attempt that, so making any claim whatsoever about the relative quality of operating systems based on this data is fallacious.

Instead, this study CAN shed some insight on the type of people running different OS's, and their type of usage.

Since UNIX had the highest uptimes, you might conjecture that conservative people run UNIX. Or you might guess that since UNIX market share is currently eroding in favor of Linux and Windows servers, UNIX servers are more heavily weighted towards older, established systems that aren't in early development stages as much as the up-and-coming OS's.

Conversely, since Linux had the lowest uptime, you might guess that Linux has a higher percentage of fresh new applications running on it.

(Note that I'm not saying that there's conclusive evidence of these guesses here. I'm just saying that when considered together with other data, these are the kinds of conclusions you'd be able to draw from this sort of statistic).

True, and I think eventually OSS docs will shine

[blueZ3]

Google is where we all go for answers these days.

I think it's interesting that MS sells a lot of software (Office, for example) that has less-than-great documentation, and that this is also a complaint people have with OSS. Currently there's a market for commercial documentation for both types of software--my local Borders has lots of books on both Linux and Windows Server. But eventually I expect that OSS documentation will improve to the point where it's better than what is provided in proprietary software, since there are people both willing and able to contribute to the documentation effort in OSS.

True story: I was once offered a full-time job where the owner of the company essentially told me he was looking to hire a Microsoft Office expert to provide office suite "consulting" to his staff. I didn't take it (as a technical writer, I want to actually write) but it said a lot about the state of usability and documentation for Office.

Re:They cannot beat my uptime.

[plague3106]

Because individually those bugs might not allow remote root, but in clever combination they would? Or perhaps there's also a hidden issue which wasn't widely known that the patch also fixes?

Also, you don't need to reboot Windows as much; often times you are told to because of a file lock, but you could easily unlock the file by stopping services which are using it at the time.

There are very very few servers in the world that need 100% uptime; if your server is that critical, why isn't there a fallback server you can rely on to bring the orginal down?

There really isn't any excuse not to patch, unless you want to leave yourself open.

I notice you never answered the question though; perhaps there is a security patch which you've not applied?

Re:They cannot beat my uptime.

[Kadin2048]

I'd probably have uptime like that on an old home server I have sitting in a closet somewhere, unfortunately it reboots every time the power goes out and the UPS drains.

There ought to be some kind of metric for "software uptime," i.e. the delta between the uptime of your actual services (HTTP, SSH, whatever) and the uptime of the building's mains power / network connectivity, etc. I'm pretty sure quite a few servers I've worked on would be at 100%, or close to it.

Otherwise, any time I start seeing surveys like this, I start to wonder about how they've tried to normalize the variations in hardware setups, connection reliability, power service reliability, etc. I could probably get more uptime if I had a bigger UPS and paid for a better internet line, but it's not that important to me; I suspect even datacenter users eventually have to make a determination of how much they want to spend for that last "9" to the far right of the decimal place, and not everyone's decisions are going to be the same.

Wrong assumptions.

[alexfromspace]

If you carefully read the quote:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and Linux distributions from "niche" open source vendors, are offline more and longer than either Windows or Unix competitors, the survey said.

It does not sound right. Every IT professinal I know (including myself) whose company runs both Windows and Linux agrees that Windows breaks all the time while Linux does not. But this statement is not based on the same assumptions as those under which most people operate under. Why this is so becomes apparent when you read the next part of the statement:

The reason: the scarcity of Linux and open source documentation.

It is apparent that the author considers any server designated to run Linux but not yet installed (whether partially or at all), to be a downtime server. In other words, this study can easily include hundreds of unused machines that should or could have been running Linux. This is completely laughable because only people on crack could possibly agree that a system that has not yet been setup causes downtime. This assumption would not agree with the definition of the word "downtime".

I generally find that whenever Linux is being attacked, it is only through a model with serious logical fallacies that are carefully covered over by seemingly innocent mistakes. In reality these are carefully engineered FUDs designed to sound valid to most common people but failing under any serious scrutiny.

I can conclude from these quotes that the author may feel that Window's point and click interface should somehow justify its inefficiencies compared to Linux. However, Linux's lack of point-and-click gui tools is very old news that got washed away several years ago when tools like Mandrake's free setup tools for Red Hat and SuSE's YAST came about. And besides, it is better to have to learn to setup systems using text config files and then have it run problem free for a year, than to point and click for a day and end up with a system that needs constant attention just to be kept running.

Agreed

[phorm]

For the record, I've been using linux on servers and for my desktop for years.

Documentation for big projects (apache, squid, etc) is usually easy to find. However, when you start running between versions and other isssues, suddenly the waters become a bit murky. Google is often friendly, but lately I've been lucky to find docs in english let along for the version(s) of software I'm using.

I've also been taking my LPI (my employer's idea). It's a freaking linux certification/exam and has no official documentation, other than a general overview of topics. That's right, no course materials, nothing. Even as an experienced linux user/admin I generally don't memorize the dozen different ways to do something, and then find that the one I didn't know is on the exam (which you can't study beforehand, because no documentation).

Sites like TLDP et al are very useful, but a more comprehensive set of documentation (and more up-to-date documentation coming with the software packages) would certainly be a useful thing.

Re:WxP Pro

[Mancat]

Why not?

Systems like these used in call centers often:

1) Have no route to the internet.
2) Have both external storage drives and USB ports disabled.
3) Do not allow users to log in with administrative accounts.
4) Have proper group policy restrictions in place.

More often then not, even without the latest patches from Microsoft, machines in this state are perfectly secure and stable. Argue if you'd like, but there are plenty of offices I've worked in where the Windows machines aren't even up to SP2, and because they are properly locked down, they're solid as a rock and still running.

Huh? Wha?

[QAPete]

It always amazes me that the FUD train never seems to get derailed. Much of that I blame squarely on the left-wing nutbag Linux purists (or Open/FreeBSD purists, for that matter) for their crappy documentation holier-than-thou attitudes when it comes to ENGAGING OTHERS and getting them excited about Linux/BSD. Some of it I blame on RedHat's remarkable inability to market their quite excellent RHEL Enterprise Linux. Much of the rest, IMHO, goes to people who suckle on MS's cash-engorged breast....

.... however, I digress. My personal experience here as a Director of IT running HP-UX, RHEL, Slackware and a variety of Windows servers is that Linux (firewall, fileserver, web & ftp servers) run neck and neck with our HP-UX boxes (ERP system) for uptime. My latest Nagios printout shows zero downtime for both this year, and only a .001% difference last year (meaningless).

On the Windows side of things, Win2k3 server performs the best, most outages due to forced reboots from patching/hot fixing. Win2k servers follow closely behind. Both are about .04% behind the Linux and HP-UX boxes for uptime, and much further behind when it comes to the CPU running at 100% for an extended period of time doing whatever Windows servers decide to do overnight (Nagios classified as 'unavailable').

This 'study' is utter dreck. It's flawed from the get-go, and people have to be careful believing what they read. If you are an IT professional, I highly recommend you speak with peers who have some serious experience with Linux before you proceed with any deployment/changeover/rollout. Depending on what your needs are, you might be pleasantly surprised!

Comparisons and secrecy and independence

[UnknowingFool]

There are always some study that says one OS is better than another. Most often the study is funded by one of the OS groups. That doesn't it necessarily make it useless. What makes them useless is when the details of the study are not released.

These studies present themselves as scientific but they are not. In true science, the data and the methodologies are presented for scrutiny. There could be issues with either or both that would harm the results. True science involves skepticism.

Remember a few years ago when some cult claimed that they cloned a human baby. The first reaction was "Can we see and test the baby's DNA?" When the answer was no, the majority of scientists dismissed their claims outright. The minority reserved judgement until there was actual proof.

Until I can look at the study, I'm not going to believe it. Since no one paid for the study, the Yankee Group does not have any restrictions unless they mean to profit by selling the study.

No Use

[wakejagr]

There is no use. With no real information, this study is crap. It is just throwing more FUD on the pile. One of my favorite bits: I love that Linux is refered to as a less mature operating system. "Yankee Group determined a significant portion of this outage time is attributed to the scarcity of Linux and open source documentation compared to the more mature, established operating systems."

In some ways (support for 3D graphics HW, sound), Linux is not as developed as Windows or MAC, mostly due to proprietary vs open driver issues. In many other ways (portability, support for older/slower HW, virtualization, load sharing across machines, security, customization), Linux has far greater maturity.

UNIX is a totally different issue, but the Linux vs UNIX comparison is moot as far as I am concerned. For the most part, the kernels are the only fixed-in-stone aspects of these OS's. Some things don't exist in the Linux kernel, others don't exist in proprietary UNIX kernels. Choose your poison based on what you need.

In the end, the list of features unavailable in Linux is short and inconsequential when compared to the list of features unavailable in Windows or Sun/AIX/etc. OpenMosix, Xen, and User Mode Linux alone should be enough to overwhelm the Linux downside of making sure you buy a video card from a manufacturer who isn't an ass.

Just to round out my arguement: the other measure of maturity is time-based. Windows NT (follow-on from ideas developed in other versions of windows) was first released in July 1993. Linux (follow-on from ideas developed in UNIX and minix) was first released in August 1991.

ridiculous assertions

[sloanster]

The assertions are ridiculous on the face of it, obviously prepared by someone with an agenda, and not even a bit subtle.

As an IT professional, I can tell you that if any of our linux servers were to go down, there would be people screaming bloody murder all over the place within a few moments. Downtime is unacceptable for infrastructure services, and linux has performed flawlessly for the fortune 100 company where I am employed.

I think as other posters have noted, the key piece of information that was unwittingly leaked, was that the survey was only open to windoze shops, and most likely included some mcse's linux test boxes in the downtime data figues. That's really the only thing that makes sense, as downtime simply wouldn't be tolerated in a normal production environment.

Anyone who is works with linux professionally and is aware of the fact that it's been running 24x7 for years at amazon.com and other firms such as my own employer, will find it quite odd to read about all this extended downtime and the nonsensical reasons given for it.

Linux Sys admins actually update their machines.

[johnnnyboy]

This is just pure FUD.

Uptime is something I see as completely meaningless, the longer the uptime just means the longer the machine wasn't rebooted that's all. Why would a sys admin reboot? After a major update or a new kernel or even after serious patches.
In the world of linux, there's constant improvements, enhancements and security patches in the kernel and in the server software. I think the gap is more to do with Linux Sys admins being more active in maintaining their boxes compared to the windows sys admins.

If windows 2K/2003 servers do have longer uptimes than that to me is just scary, it means those sys admins aren't applying security patches regularly.

My 2 cents.

Bad examples for a bad result.

[Oriumpor]

As far as TFM it's qualifications draw my suspision. Did they include "devices" running linux as well or just full blown rigs? I can tell you *nix based appliances (unless they're really bad) have very few problems, and don't typically require the constant reboots for system updates that drives down your 99.99..999999 uptime.

Whatever happened to limiting exploitable processes? Windows method of protecting the services is all based around their firewall. Ever try and configure a windows box to run slimmed down? It's a pain in the ass. How about hardened? Good luck, apply the NIST standard lockdown SecPol to a 2k3 box and you'll see what I mean.

Take a *BSD/Trustix(+SELINUX)/Debian(+SELINUX) box install with 3 services AND a firewall in a 100meg footprint, and call it a day. Windows can't compete with the kinda uptime you get out of a stripped down OS. Oh they try with XP-Embedded and the likes but it's certainly not within the same realm of ease to create and deploy the OS that the *nixes give you. Not to mention, how many times have you had to troubleshoot a problem in Windows that ended up being caused by some unrelated service? I can tell you from my experience, it doesn't happen very often on a machine running single digit numbers of services.

On top of which they nicely avoided shops smart enough not to run Windows devices in their nocs, who probably have much better trained staff on the unix hardware and would throw their numbers with nearly 0 downtime figures. How many untrained people new to unix reboot when they could have just restarted a service? etc. This whole thing smells fishy.

which is quicker: fixing Lin or reinstalling Win?

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason: the scarcity of Linux and open source documentation

I agree that Linux (and open source in general) suffers on the documentation front, and onerously suffers at that. Except it doesn't matter as much. Some parts of Linux are amazingly well documented while others are completely without documentation of any sort (short of reading the source.. which is sort of like trying to figure topography by looking at all the tree leaves in the forest).

Having fixed both Windows and Linux boxen when they went and did something stupid to themselves, I can say from experience that fixing Linux is easier and faster, even without the documents. For the sorts of problems I've fixed, it boiled down to the use of flat ASCII files to store configuration in. Even without docs, I can examine other Linux boxes or just plain experiment until I figure out what the system did to it's configuration files and how to fix it. With windows, it's the same thing, except it's all hidden in the registry, which is poorly documented, opaque and doesn't leave itself easily open to comparison and experimentation (read: backing up and restoring from the backup when some change made the system totally unuseable). Worst Lin problem I've fixed took me 2-3 evenings. Worst windows problem I've fixed took >5 evenings. Count of problems, about equal.

What do most people do when faced with the really hard to fix Windows problems? They do as MS suggests and reinstall Windows. For Linux? It seems they get on the net and ask around until they A) find and answer, and B) leave an electronic trail in the process for others with similar problems to find.

So this lack of docs stuff is total crap. Really what they've compared is the amount of time it takes to fix Linux without docs, to the amount of time it takes to reinstall Windows (and in the process, loose all your apps, configuration, etc). Take away the reinstall crutch and Windows is far worse than Linux.