OSS Web Stacks Outperformed by .Net?

Gimble writes "eWeek has an article up that looks at the performance of portals using open source stacks and comparing them to their MS equivalents. The article's conclusion is that .Net outperforms the open source stacks, mainly because of its tighter integration, but also notes that running the open source stacks on Windows (WAMP) delivered strong performance." From the article: "Based on our forays into user forums for many top open-source enterprise applications, there are many IT managers attempting to run open-source products on Windows servers--attracted, no doubt, to the benefits and efficiencies of using open source without having to become Linux administrators. The results of our WAMP stack tests indicate that these folks might be on to something."

Comments

Left out?

[meburke]

From the article: "The criticism we expect to hear most is of the stacks we left out--including commercial J2EE platforms, such as those available from BEA Systems, IBM, Oracle and Sun Microsystems, as well as the many other database and server platform permutations." I can't believe they came to this conclusion on such little data. They did, however, create a blog to disparate results can be shared.

Re:Left out?

[Penguinisto]

I have no idea as to why they think these results are applicable for enterprise applications, but left out enterprise J2EE solutions. We run both Oracle and WebLogic (the latter being not entirely our fault, honest!) here in various implementations. We wouldn't even think of using, oh ferinstance, MySQL* for the multi-million object DB's that Oracle (in a RAC config, so it gets to sync everything on-the-fly w/ its partners for HA) chews away at on a daily basis.

*MySQL fans can kindly keep your flames to yourselves, plz - I know Google uses it and whatnot, but they also have a large staff just to maintain and modify it, not to mention the large cluster farms to run it - we don't have those luxuries here. If it's any consolation, MSSQL would be an even worse solution due to the ungodly underlying resource demand that it carries.

Tangents aside, if the "e" in "eWeek" is supposed to stand for "enterprise" (IIRC), then fer hell's sake they shouldn't exclude the mainline enterprise stacks in their benchmarks.

/P

Re:Left out?

[happyemoticon]

They seem to have a generalized poverty of data. Their charts seem absurd to the point of being straw men. I mean, come on - I don't think there's anything seriously wrong enough with Linux that WAMP would have a score of 12 transactions/sec, competing with Windows, whereas LAMP would have a performance of 2. My experience with Windows vs. Linux has always been that they are similar in terms of speed from pure processing tasks to 3d games. Sometimes Windows does a little better, sometimes Linux is better. But they're usually in the same ballpark. The numbers are just too neat. It's like they put up a chart saying that Republicans, Germans, Koreans and Canadians have sex once a month, whereas Democrats, Brazilians, and the British have sex five million times per second.

Moreover, the whole rest of the article is morass of poetic circumlocution. My gut feeling as somebody who works with words a lot is that they're trying to obfuscate something with a giant wall of banal text. I don't know exactly what that is, because I don't feel like reading all of it, but if I had to guess I'd say that the real thing to take away from this article is that anybody can set up .NET and a Windows box, but that it requires a little bit of patience and research to make Linux work properly - research that these people were not willing to do.

Re:Left out?

[eno2001]

Actually... I thought that the British DO have more sex than the 'Muricuhns because, well... British women are hotter.

Re:Left out?

[happyemoticon]

Brazil and Britain are both up there. In Britain I don't think it's that the women are hotter, but that they're less inhibited. Every British person i've met, male or female, claims that American women play those crazy games defined in "The Rules" - i.e., the ultimate women's guide to never having or enjoying sex - a hundred times more than British women, who are more receptive to open advances.

British women are more likely to be cute because they're less likely to be obese, but I find smoking pretty disgusting. Can't have your cake and eat it too, I suppose. But I think I'd prefer living in a place where people acknowledge that everybody wants to copulate, including women, and that this is not a bad thing. Of course, there are countries that are worse than America. I know a woman from Peru who was educated at a Catholic school.

Re:Left out?

[eno2001]

Wow. Weird that you posted this considering my recent post in a friend's JE. Check out my post history and see the one in the "anti-abortionist" journal entry. It's a bit "radical" but says something similar.

Re:Left out?

[BalanceOfJudgement]

Every British person i've met, male or female, claims that American women play those crazy games defined in "The Rules" - i.e., the ultimate women's guide to never having or enjoying sex - a hundred times more than British women, who are more receptive to open advances.

At some point I recognized those 'games' for what they were and now simply refuse to play them. By telling people I know they're bullshitting, I usually get them to simply be honest. Life is so much easier that way.

And anyway, I want to move to Britain. ;)

Re:Left out?

[a.d.trick]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure something is messed up with those stats. Django on linux with lighthttpd and postgres can do about 200/sec for a regular dynamic page. In know Django is really fast, but I don't think it's that fast.

I can't remember where I read those stats, there's a link to somewhere on the Django website.

Re:Left out?

[woolio]

It's like they put up a chart saying that Republicans, Germans, Koreans and Canadians have sex once a month, whereas Democrats, Brazilians, and the British have sex five million times per second.

That would be a grave error.

The British don't have sex, they have hot water bottles.

WAMP vs LAMP

[Poromenos1]

I'm no system administrator, but I have a home box running WAMP (XAMPP on 2003) and it's good enough for my needs. Recently I tried out Ubuntu Server to see what it's about, and I'm tempted to buy a new pc just to run that. When I tried to run mod_python under WAMP it took a whole lot of debugging and configuration (apparently it didn't like the already installed python 2.4), but with Ubuntu it was as simple as apt-getting it.

I would very much like it if I could continue using Windows (because I run other programs that are not available on Linux) but it can't match the simplicity of Ubuntu.

Re:WAMP vs LAMP

[mrnuxi]

I would very much like it if I could continue using Windows (because I run other programs that are not available on Linux) but it can't match the simplicity of Ubuntu.

Have you considered using virtualization (ala VMWare) to run your Windows install as a guest OS? That's what I'm planning on a new high-end PC I'm getting. It will use VMWare Workstation (http://www.vmware.com/download/ws/eval.html) and run CentOs 4 (http://www.centos.org/) as the host OS, with various linux and Windows guests.

Re:WAMP vs LAMP

[wild_pointer]

You could just run the Ubuntu Server as a VMWare client on your Windows machine (or vice versa).
I do that all the time for development and it works great if you have enough RAM.

Re:WAMP vs LAMP

[josath]

You should take a look at colinux. It takes a little bit to get it set up, but it's not too bad. And once you do, you can stay in windows, but have a fast linux server run in the background -- it's not virtualized at all, but it runs directly as a separate process under windows. For me, it is actually much much faster to run colinux than even cygwin! And they have a debian image, so you have the advantage of apt-get there. You can 'bridge' it to your network, so from your perspective, it just appears as a separate PC on the network, with it's own IP address, etc etc.

Check it out: http://colinux.org/

Re:WAMP vs LAMP

[damirl]

Just to reiterate what others have said. I'm running Ubuntu as a host os and Windows 2000 as a guest under VMWare and it works great. With a gig of ram in total both operating systems run flawlessly.

Re:WAMP vs LAMP

[Poromenos1]

I've taken a look at that, but they don't support Ubuntu Server (that I know of) and it would take quite a bit of vile hackery to get it to work :/ I'll be keeping an eye on it though, since if it worked it would be the best solution.

Re:WAMP vs LAMP

[commanderfoxtrot]

I ran colinux for a while on my Windows laptop. It really didn't like being hibernated (or whatever Windows calls the sleep thing).

Also, it doesn't seem to have been updated for a while now.

While some great programming, it's probably being superceded by newer and cheaper VMWare/Xen solutions.

I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[Clockwurk]

If Linux wins, its a fact.

If M$ wins, its fud and was paid for.

If apple wins, its because of Steve Jobs.

If OS/2 wins, we're trapped in a parallel universe.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[tomstdenis]

If M$ wins, its fud and was paid for.

It isn't as if they haven't been caught buying studies before. So the distrust is well justified.

Plain and simple fact is if Microsoft could compete with the usefulness of a solid Linux distro their product would speak for itself. In some cases this is true but in essentially all technical senses Microsoft is just a plain loser.

Most of Microsofts problems is that they don't listen to the customers. I mean sure they listen to Dell, RIAA, MPAA, maybe even IBM and other big wigs. But what about us users? What does WGA give me in terms of a useful feature? What does the bloat that is WMP give me over a simpler mplayer? Why must they invent their own file formats [e.g. Office files, WMV, WMA] that are proprietary instead of using or establishing more open standards? etc, etc, etc.

Everything MSFT does is to benefit the stock holders through locking the "customers" into their system. Use our OS, use our office suite, use our media tools, use our development tools. All the while they ignore any sense of established standards [ISO C99 anyone?] which make interoperability a bitch for Windows users. There is simply no reason why MSFT uses these awful platform dependent libraries. Take DirectX for instance. On any OTHER platform you combine Allegro with OpenGL and have essentially the same thing [just 1/10th the size and in C]. But no, we must use the DX "experience" because somehow the hype makes it shinier!

I know what I'm saying is "no duh", but you seemed to be hinting that MSFT hatred is not warranted. Us "OSS" users don't hate MSFT because it's better. We hate it because it lulls people into a sense of superiority when all it does is move to separate them from their money. It creates nightmares for us who chose to chose.

I mean I can save an OpenOffice document on my Gentoo box and my friend can open it in FreeBSD with OpenOffice [or whatever]. Why can't I save an Office document and open it in Linux? Why can't Office work in Linux anyways? Seems Linux distros have GUIs, widgets, networking, fonts, etc. There really is no technical reason why Office can't work in Windows, oh I know, because MSFT uses it as a reason to buy Windows. /rant

Tom

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[db32]

Listen to Dell, RIAA, MPAA, etc etc....uhm... no they don't. They just don't beat them as mercilessly as the home consumer, because they COULD swing back and do some damage over time.

To Dell/HP/Etc - You must not sell naked or Linux systems or your the price of OEM Windows gets larger. RIAA/MPAA - If you don't do what we like...we won't play with your DRM schemes. Government - If you stop pressuring us we will donate to campaign funds and let you keep using Office.

Go look at MS campaign fund history...right up until the antitrust thing they really didn't give anyone any money, once the antitrust thing kicked off....big dollars to everyone running.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[stuckinarut]

Everything MSFT does is to benefit the stock holders through locking the "customers" into their system.

Isn't this what buisness is about? Don't get me wrong I abhore some of M$'s tactics but they are in buisness to make money not necessarily please customers. In an ideal world the two go hand in hand but for the vast majority of the non-techie users out there M$ does please them. They can send their gran a birthday letter in word and she can open it on her PC because she has Windows/Office too.

Their lack of standards support is atrocious but it does benefit them or they wouldn't persist in doing it. The technically savvy amongst users all know it's wrong but they'll do it anyway as the remaining majority of users just don't care.

I mean I can save an OpenOffice document on my Gentoo box and my friend can open it in FreeBSD with OpenOffice [or whatever].

That's exactly what we should all be able to do but cui bono? Who benefits from this ability? You as a user of non-M$ products and anyone else you know that doesn't use them. Why does M$ care about you if you don't use their products? You're not making them money so why bother allowing you this ease of use?

Please don't think this is an attack on your point of view, I agree with the sentiment whole heartedly but what your asking for is that M$ be altruistic in it's approach to developing apps and I think Bill saves his altruism for the Gates Foundation. The one hope is that governments are beginning to insist on having open document formats and the goverment IT market is something M$ wants a big slice of. You may just get what you desire but only once it becomes profitable for M$ to do so.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[buddyglass]

It isn't as if they haven't been caught buying studies before. So the distrust is well justified.

The difference being: Linux zealots post cooked results for free, because they just hate Microsoft that much.

Plain and simple fact is if Microsoft could compete with the usefulness of a solid Linux distro their product would speak for itself. In some cases this is true but in essentially all technical senses Microsoft is just a plain loser.

Unfortunately, posting it slashdot doesn't make it true. I've seen multiple shootouts where MS products outperform competing OSS products. In a very technical sense.

What does WGA give me in terms of a useful feature?

If it decreases Windows piracy then it decreases the cost of Windows for everyone who purchases it legally. So not a feature per se, but a price discount.

What does the bloat that is WMP give me over a simpler mplayer?

It (arguably) integrates better with IE than mplayer does with Firefox. At least, judging by the last time I ran mplayer/Firefox on Linux. It also comes installed out-of-the-box on Windows systems. That's a feature you may not value, but lots of novice Windows users do.

Why must they invent their own file formats [e.g. Office files, WMV, WMA] that are proprietary instead of using or establishing more open standards?

Because the standard lacks something they want included. Or, because they don't want to lock themselves in to supporting future aspects of the standard that their customers don't value.

Everything MSFT does is to benefit the stock holders through locking the "customers" into their system.

Newsflash: Everything every publically held company does should be to benefit the stock holders.

Why can't Office work in Linux anyways?

It could, if there was any advantage to Microsoft in porting it. There isn't.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[Anonymous Coward]

"Everything MSFT does is to benefit the stock holders through locking the "customers" into their system.

Isn't this what buisness is about? Don't get me wrong I abhore some of M$'s tactics but they are in buisness to make money not necessarily please customers. In an ideal world the two go hand in hand but for the vast majority of the non-techie users out there M$ does please them. They can send their gran a birthday letter in word and she can open it on her PC because she has Windows/Office too."

But, to get back on topic, this is WHY we distrust any benchmark about Windows winning over Linux. MS has a monetary need to make it look good. Linux has a monetary preference (some preference, but not to the level of MS).

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[mausmalone]

Yeah... I love whoever decided to tag this "fud" (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) when in it's actually claiming that performance is good. If you're happy with the performance you get under Linux, then there should be no FUD for you... your set up is fine and runs well. But if you'd like to use Windows, but still AMP, I guess you have a little less to fear on the performance tip.

I use WAMP for development and LAMP for production. The main reason is that the server admins want Linux, but can't provide me with a testing server, so my workstation has to pull double-duty. My workstation is often times much much faster than the production server, but it's almost entirely due to the fact that there's no load on it. I've had no portability or migration issues, save for some weird stuff in GD.

I'd say that overall, with my experiences and the text of the article, I can develop confidently knowing that as long as we stay in an AMP environment my code will function well on either platform. That definitely aleviates a lot of FUD from my day-to-day programming.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[JacksBrokenCode]

It isn't as if they haven't been caught buying studies before. So the distrust is well justified.

Justified perhaps, but automatically accurate... not necessarily.

Plain and simple fact is if Microsoft could compete with the usefulness of a solid Linux distro their product would speak for itself. In some cases this is true but in essentially all technical senses Microsoft is just a plain loser.

Ok, fanboy.

Most of Microsofts problems is that they don't listen to the customers. I mean sure they listen to Dell, RIAA, MPAA, maybe even IBM and other big wigs. But what about us users? What does WGA give me in terms of a useful feature? What does the bloat that is WMP give me over a simpler mplayer?

So when MS doesn't add new features they are slammed for not innovating enough, and when they do add new features they are slammed for contributing to bloat that you don't want. People bitched about IE6 not having tabs, etc. Firefox came out and MS finally realized it had to update IE so it added a lot of features people were asking for and the most-heard comment on Slashdot after IE7b2 was released was "it's ugly". Face it: Microsoft just can't win.

Why must they invent their own file formats [e.g. Office files, WMV, WMA] that are proprietary instead of using or establishing more open standards? etc, etc, etc. Everything MSFT does is to benefit the stock holders through locking the "customers" into their system. Use our OS, use our office suite, use our media tools, use our development tools. All the while they ignore any sense of established standards [ISO C99 anyone?] which make interoperability a bitch for Windows users. There is simply no reason why MSFT uses these awful platform dependent libraries.

You sorta' answered yourself there.

Take DirectX for instance. On any OTHER platform you combine Allegro with OpenGL and have essentially the same thing [just 1/10th the size and in C]. But no, we must use the DX "experience" because somehow the hype makes it shinier!

Not every product is a winner. MS historically doesn't release every single product as a beta and quietly stop promoting the ones that suck. Instead they release final versions and some fall on their face. No company has a perfect record.

I know what I'm saying is "no duh", but you seemed to be hinting that MSFT hatred is not warranted. Us "OSS" users don't hate MSFT because it's better. We hate it because it lulls people into a sense of superiority when all it does is move to separate them from their money. It creates nightmares for us who chose to chose.

The problem is not that criticism isn't warranted, it's that MS can't win no matter what. If they release a weak or buggy product they get slammed, but if they take too long to release they get slammed. If they don't add new features they get slammed, but if they add new features it's called bloat. If an MS product gets bad reviews the reviewers are being honest, but if they get good reviews the reviewers are obviously being paid. For years MS got slammed for security issues, and they beefed up SP2 and suddenly there were waves of "but it broke my application" complaints. The list goes on.

Microsoft has gotten so big that they are in the impossible position of trying to keep everyone happy. I'm not particularly a Microsoft "fan", but I hate this wanton "Micro$oft is teh suxors!1!" b.s. OSS fanboys need to grow up and realize that Microsoft can't go back in time and correct the sins of the past, and since it is a monopoly it can't just genuinely screw its customers and break every file/application by releasing a new version of Windows that corrects all the problems of the old versions but offers no legacy support. They have a tough balancing act to do and, while they're not perfect, they're getting better.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[plague3106]

To Dell/HP/Etc - You must not sell naked or Linux systems or your the price of OEM Windows gets larger.

To my knowledge, Dell does sell naked or Linux systems.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[stuckinarut]

Well said, if only I'd kept quite I could have given you some of my moderator points but then, would you have been able to make the comment? Oh the paradox ;o)

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[buddyglass]

Customer only. I've never owned Microsoft stock.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[everett]

Plain and simple fact is if Microsoft could compete with the usefulness of a solid Linux distro their product would speak for itself.

Show me an FOSS replacement for Active Directory that intergates well across the enteroprise and then I'll believe you know what it is you're talking about.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[BecomingLumberg]

You don't *have* to buy from them. They *have* to serve the stock holders.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[BrentRBrian]

It wasn't a WIN it was a slaughter.

I would have been just as suspicious of a slaughter in favor of Linux.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[tomstdenis]

Here's a tip, they serve their shareholders by serving their customers. It's short sighted and ignorant to assume that a strangle hold will last forever [hint: it won't]. They got greedy and instead of developing more universal products they decided to do what all good crooks do, screw their customers.

Think of how many Office users they'd have if it ran in Linux and BSD?

Similar for Visual Studio (which is a very good tool even though it's coupled to a non-standard C compiler).

How about Direct X?

Or even the Windows Media tools?

Look at how many people use ipods. Do they work only in MacOS? Didn't think so.

Tom

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[tomstdenis]

What would it take? A lot more than a couple benchmark figures. The tools would have to be portable [like OSS tools are]. The tools would have to be competitively priced, etc, etc, etc.

I don't care if C#.NET is 10% faster than Java if it locks me into using Windows. There is more developing web applications than the OS it runs on. Java would let me choose a different OS [avoiding license cost]. Would let me have source code [e.g. to the kernel, tools, etc] so I can fix things as required [yeah I'm one of those nutballs that builds things from sources], etc.

There is more to computing than vendor lockin and shiny GUIs.

Tom

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[tomstdenis]

LDAP [or NIS] and home directories over NFS. Wow, that's hard.

Only been doing that for the last decade or so...

Tom

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[tomstdenis]

The price of Windows has been climbing since it was first released. License keys as introduced in Win95 didn't make it cheaper. More stringent keying in 98 and XP didn't make it cheaper. WGA with SP2 didn't make it cheaper, etc. It isn't like MSFT hasn't been raking in billions in profits.

If anything WGA and the like only piss off PAYING CUSTOMERS since it seems "the evil pirates" always get around it [hence the excuse for higher prices].

Tom

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[fredclown]

.NET is a good platform. In fact the folks at MySpace have converted their site to use .NET because in doing so they were able to cut their server farm in half. I think that is significant. And I don't think you can make the argument that they just had their old system set up incorrectly since they happen to be the largest social networkign site out there. I would be willing to bet they know what they are doing.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[Don853]

The sad part is, if you had said Microsoft instead of M$ and not thrown in the irrelevant-to-this-article Apple & OS/2 bits, you probably would have been flamed for being a MS fanboy.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Vista come with an Office suite? Development Tools? Research tools? etc...

and if they did, they would be done for 'abusing their monopoly in the OS market to enter other markets' etc..

Perhaps the phrase "they cant do anything right" is true?

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[tomstdenis]

The problem is if you piss off enough people by stupid lockin tricks you lose customers.

The only big reason I like Linux distros [in particular Gentoo] is because *I* have control of what goes on. I don't have to install bloaty software if I don't want. I can backup my OS as I choose. I can tweak my kernel [and I have actually done that on occasion].

Whenever I install windows, it takes 2-3 hours [to go from SP1 to fully patched], have to deal with license keys which may or may not work [even though I buy shrink wrapped copies], don't get any development tools, research tools and the thing still takes more than 2GB.

I mean really think about it. In your install of XP what do you have that makes you able to work as any sort of professional? There are no office tools, no development tools, no media tools [other than the shitty WMP which you have to download anyways], no research tools, nothing but solitaire and WGA. Hell even the shell [cmd.exe] is total shit.

It's only a matter of time until more and more professionals wake up and make the move. And what does MSFT have to answer that with? Oh look, an Aero like GUI in Vista! Please...

I'd be totally willing to stick with Windows for my desktops [the ones I control at least] if they took their field seriously.

Let's see, do I want a cross-platform Office suite, or another Clippy update?

Do I want a competent shell? Or a.... well nothing.

Do I want a standards compliant compiler? Or C# which has limited support anywhere but on Windows.

Do I want etc...

Even people who ONLY say do office work can appreciate the benefits of OSS tools. Not just in the sense you're not paying huge license fees but in the sense that your documents are not locked into some tool chain. In 10 years your OpenOffice files will be just as free to be opened and moved around as they are today. Can you say the same about your WinXP files? You think Windows Vista2010 will let you install Office97?

hehehehe, cute.

Tom

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[tomstdenis]

My point wasn't that they SHOULD bundle. It's that Vista is 8GB and DOESN'T COME WITH THEM.

As in, what the F!@# is taking up 8GB of my disk?

My Gentoo install with all those tools takes around 2GB [2GB to 3GB is a good estimate, right now I have loads of other stuff that isn't Gentoo specific so it's hard to be exact without doing an indepth du scan].

So if I can have all those tools in 1/4 the space what is MSFT doing to service me, the customer?

Tom

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[db32]

SOME systems I hear they do now, mostly server stuff. When I bought my laptop from them I spent 2 hours on the phone speaking with indians trying to explain that I don't want Windows...eventually gave up and just decided to suck it up and have a valid license for "Windows Media Center Edition" sitting around unused.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[Quince alPillan]

So when MS doesn't add new features they are slammed for not innovating enough, and when they do add new features they are slammed for contributing to bloat that you don't want.

New features that are wanted or improve a product are innovative. New features that are of questionable use or aren't going to be used are bloat.

To someone who just wants to fix toast in their toaster, the All New Juicy Juicer eXTREME Juice maker and Egg Fryer Super Deluxe Ultra Platinum Edition are bloat. To someone who wants eggs and juice with their toast, they are innovative features.

I personally don't use WMP because I just want to play music or a video. I don't want to know the detailed life story of the artist or who Britney is having sex with this week. I don't have an MP3 player so I don't need to automatically sync WMP with something that doesn't exist and I don't listen to CDs (they go into the closet after being ripped) so the burning feature is of questionable use. I do use the library feature (not in WMP because the last time I used WMP to try to organize my music, it decided to screw up all my ID3 tags). To me, all these nifty "features" are bloat. To Jill the teeny-bopper with an iPod who has to know all the latest nsync songs or else she'll just die, WMP is what she wants.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[mpe]

My point wasn't that they SHOULD bundle. It's that Vista is 8GB and DOESN'T COME WITH THEM.
My Gentoo install with all those tools takes around 2GB [2GB to 3GB is a good estimate, right now I have loads of other stuff that isn't Gentoo specific so it's hard to be exact without doing an indepth du scan].

Even Windows XP and MS Office takes up less space.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[Dog-Cow]

AD supports much more than just NIS and LDAP, plus it can be replicated and cached to handle temporary network failures. It allows for setting and propogating authentication, authorization and machine policies. It allows for query and updates through LDAP, but also through several other protocols. Third-party tools can integrate into it to provide and manage data that takes full advantage of replication for free.

I'm not an AD admin, so I'm probably not doing a good job of explaining why it's not just LDAP+NIS. Also, AD can provide kerberos authentication for Unix clients. How many Windows clients can be configured to use NIS? How many Windows clients exist versus Unix clients?

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[tomstdenis]

You can rsync a NFS mounted volume and you can have multiple NIS providers [probably with LDAP too]

In short... you can have roll-over and redundancy in the UNIX world. I think they worked that out a while ago. k thx bye.

Tom

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[Don_dumb]

The problem is if you piss off enough people by stupid lockin tricks you lose customers.

The idea is to lock in customers so they can't go anywhere else, pissed off or not. The way it fails is if it isn't done well enough, early enough. It could be argued that they should have locked in customers earlier (c1998), when disgruntled customers had less well placed rivals to jump ship to.

It's only a matter of time until more and more professionals wake up and make the move. And what does MSFT have to answer that with? Oh look, an Aero like GUI in Vista! Please...

My gut feeling is that it doesn't matter what professionals think, if their employers only know M$ then that is what the employees will have to work with.
My employers are rolling out a huge infrastructure program that includes better security, obviously one of the most important tools will be the browser and they have chosen IE, I dont think they even considered any alternatives.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[tomstdenis]

Not less than Gentoo though. I have an XP+Word2003 image that I use for writing and the disk space usage is about 5.1GB. Mind you I have firefox, adobe reader, AVG, putty and gaim on there ... so maybe it's about 4.8GB or so.

That's a LOT OF CODE for just a kernel, WM, bug ridden web browser and crappy shell. I mean think about it. That's about 4.8 BILLION bytes of code to let me run concurrent tasks with privileges, show me a fairly standard GUI, present me with a shell that can't do much, etc.

Now think, QNX had a demo that had full networking, browser, shell, a REAL TIME MULTI-USER MULTI TASKING KERNEL and other tools in 1.44MB.

There is no reason why a barebones install of Windows is anything more than 50MB other than bloatware and "let's throw everything under the kitchen sink in [except useful end user programs]". Like do I care if there is MS JET or DirectX support? Hell no. Do I need ACPI support? No. Do I need device drivers for every device on the planet [except the ones I buy of course]? etc...

Tom

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[Dark_MadMax666]

Oh yeah and it has group policies (together with ACL) for anything and everything in a nice unified way with a simple interface? LDAP is just a directory protocol .AD is a unified management tool for a lot of things in enterprise (including authenticaion ,audit, security, environment settings) .I saw so called "ldap " tools for Linux -which basically make you write your own LDAP queries and create schema by yourself for anything semi complicated (and yeah I can do that in windows too - just I never have to resort to it).

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[Sillygates]

Dell tried selling Redhat 7.2 to home users several years ago, and gave up quickly. They still sell one discount system with freedos and a blank HD to consumers, but its on the very low end, and is not a very good deal compared to buying the equivalent system with windows and coupon codes.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[Anonymous Coward]

they happen to be the largest social networkign site out there. I would be willing to bet they know what they are doing.

It's the largest not because of superior techies or web developers, but because it was very thoughtfully designed in the "pen and paper" phase. All the automatic "friends" linking up, the easy-interface page personalization... it's hugely popular for the exact same reasons Google became popular. And also because all the glam rock (and emo) bands happened to make it their hangout -- that was one of the main snowball effects in the whole story -- it became a trendy place to be, not just convenient.

Actually... overall the site works pretty smoothly (and yeah I have a homepage there, purely for fun and practical sociology), but at least once a week (and I don't visit every day) some of the functionalities are either dead dog slow or won't respond at all (which I don't mind at all). (Okay, enough excusing.)

Well yeah it would be strange if they didn't know what they are doing -- but what you pointed out isn't really evidence either way.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[tomstdenis]

Yeah I know the feeling. In my previous job we used whatever got the job done. A few used Windows because they liked the feel and got work done and the most used some Linux distro [I of course used Gentoo but there were debian and redhat boxes]. Point is we were productive because we had a CHOICE.

My current job pretty much mandates I use Windows. We're [apparently] big enthiastic fans of Windows and can't wait to use the next abomination of a tool. This feeling of course is [sarcasm] perfectly well shared amongst all employees emphatically and univerally. Needless to say we wrestle Windows annoyances on a frequently [too frequent] enough basis. And even my own box has had viruses [like the DWL one] despite the fact I use a anti virus scanner [it wasn't picked up by the common scanners until much later]. :-(

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[chthon]

Maybe hate is too strong a word. I think detest sums it up better.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[tomstdenis]

Your argument lacks any sort of technical merit though and that's the trouble.

It's like asking why people drive such horribly inefficient cars. It's just the way things are. Yeah, ok, but that doesn't answer the question. Efficient cars are just as practical to build and accomplish the same goals.

Same thing in the OS world. A good Linux distro like Fedora, Ubuntu, Knoppix or Gentoo can do all the same desktop tasks the vast majority of windows users seek but does it with less memory, less cpu power, less cash out of pocket and more choice. People don't use windows because it's the better choice, they use it because they think they have NO CHOICE. They honestly believe that if it weren't for Microsoft the world as we know it would crumble and that absolutely no alternatives exist.

Put it another way, if Windows was so good then Microsoft could put front page ads for Linux on every paper on the planet for a week and still not lose any market share. The truth is for the vast majority of computer users they're just held in a nice bubble of ignorance supported by a lot of other players. Like Dell, HP, Compaq [the same now I guess], Sony, Acer, Asus, etc...

If people had Linux thrown at them as much as Windows you'd start seeing way more people waking up to the choice they already have.

Tom

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[CagedBear]

Like do I care if there is MS JET or DirectX support?

Purely speculation here, but I'm guessing there are more people who would rather it all be there than those who wouldn't. Not because they understand what any of it is, but because they want new software and devices to just work without having to insert a CD or download something.

It would be nice to have a Windows Ultra-Lite(TM) install option. But it would probably backfire for MSFT anyway. People would use it then end up calling support (or wish they bought a Mac) when their new widget doesn't work.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[Dark_MadMax666]

I said group policies , not groups. group policies are very powerful management tool in AD (you can use practically for anything -from audit levels on servers ,to controllling ms office setting on user desktops). Oh and I have to use Selinux even to just use group based acl's?

  And webmin is just basic stuff (accounts/groups) - it does not let you do half of what AD tools do.

I did try very hard to find a comparable tool in OSS world to AD, and the closest thing I found was Novell directory ,bu sadly it neither OSS ,neither free and require licensing per client (to heck with it we already own anything neccesary for AD). Trhow in MS exchange integration with AD and you have no real alternative in todays real world to MS AD.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[buddyglass]

I somehow doubt you're in a position to state on Microsoft's behalf that they will freeze or slow the growth rate of product prices once they get a grip on piracy.

Of course not. Piracy is only one "cost" that gets rolled into what Microsoft eventually charges for their product. As Operating systems continue to become more complex, and as the Windows team becomes larger and larger (and harder to manage) all that cost will also make its way into the eventual "off the shelf" price.

I'm of the opinion that they will continue to get as much money out of the marketplace as they possibly can...

I agree. And I have no problem with that. That doesn't necessarily imply, however, that a decrease in piracy wouldn't bring about a corresponding decrease in cost to the end user. It's all about supply and demand. If the base cost decreases, then Microsoft maximizes its profit by moving "down" the curve: lowering the price and selling more product.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[dilvish_the_damned]

Face it: Microsoft just can't win.

Hey, whats the first rule of Spite Club? We don't talk about Spite Club, damnit.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[tomstdenis]

They could just have a disclaimer "You waive tech support if you CHOOSE to install WinLite" or make a diff support contract for it. Make sure you label it on the box so they know beforehand and boom.

Also what's so hard about putting your windows CD in to install new hardware [or software].

Tom

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[impleri]

So when MS doesn't add new features they are slammed for not innovating enough, and when they do add new features they are slammed for contributing to bloat that you don't want. People bitched about IE6 not having tabs, etc. Firefox came out and MS finally realized it had to update IE so it added a lot of features people were asking for and the most-heard comment on Slashdot after IE7b2 was released was "it's ugly". Face it: Microsoft just can't win.

That's not it. MSFT is already bloated. It's just that there are other problems with it as well (features, release time, etc). Ugliness can be cured; bad coding can't. It's nice that MSFT decided to keep up with the Joneses, but with it's current track record for releases, Vista will be outdated by its competition by the end of this year (yes, i know it's not being released until early next year). For people who like new and shiny things, that's not fast eough. In addition to that, though, MSFT has a track record of being buggy (maybe a factor comorbid with its bloatedness). It's not like when MSFT pushes a "final" release that it won't crash under normal operations. Even when I had XP Pro with Office 2003 Pro running and completely up-to-date, Word crashed on me--regardless of what else i was running (e.g. nothing else, not even an antivirus). I don't see that with the (whatever is the latest release of) OpenOffice 2 running on Debian "unstable."

Not every product is a winner. MS historically doesn't release every single product as a beta and quietly stop promoting the ones that suck. Instead they release final versions and some fall on their face. No company has a perfect record.

Yet they keep updating and releasing new versions of the failed ventures. Sure, they're not perfect, but they do tend to make their own program as opposed to let someone else make one. When is MSFT Antivirus coming out? MSFT Spyware Remover?

The problem is not that criticism isn't warranted, it's that MS can't win no matter what. If they release a weak or buggy product they get slammed, but if they take too long to release they get slammed. If they don't add new features they get slammed, but if they add new features it's called bloat. If an MS product gets bad reviews the reviewers are being honest, but if they get good reviews the reviewers are obviously being paid. For years MS got slammed for security issues, and they beefed up SP2 and suddenly there were waves of "but it broke my application" complaints. The list goes on.

I think the problem with MSFT is that with the time they "invest" into making a new program, these "final" releases should be less buggy and more secure. How many people work 40 hours a week on Firefox? How many are on the IE dev team working 40 hours a week on IE? (I don't have the numbers, but I think it'd be interesting to see)

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[killjoe]

"Microsoft has gotten so big that they are in the impossible position of trying to keep everyone happy. I'm not particularly a Microsoft "fan", but I hate this wanton "Micro$oft is teh suxors!1!" b.s. OSS"

Why? How come people making fun of this corporation makes you so upset? Do you feel this way about all corporations or only Ms?

I am honestly interested in knowing why anybody would waste three nanoseconds coming to the defense of any corporation when other people state their dislike. It seems like a bizaare thing. I know I would never do such a thing. If somebody told me nissan cars suck I don't think I would waste time trying to change their minds. If somebody said "I bought rockport shoes but they were not comfortable and they sucked" I wouldn't call them zealots.

How come you felt the need to post such a long post defending poor little defenseless Ms agains the all mighty powerful hordes of /.? Are you worried the corporations feelings will get hurt? I can assure you that it has no feelings, it's not a human being, it has no soul or feelings.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[Nutria]

To Dell/HP/Etc - You must not sell naked or Linux systems or your the price of OEM Windows gets larger.

To my knowledge, Dell does sell naked or Linux systems.

Look harder. In 45 seconds, I found the PowerEdge 850, which comes naked by default, and has options for Win2k3, RHES and NetWare 6.5.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[methuselah]

That's all nice and junk. However, I have been interested in and have used unix type systems since before windows 3.0 came out. Microsoft was arbitrary and capricious back in the DOS 2.11 days. Before you call me fanboy I point to the mighty and stupid "\" backslash. This company has spent decades redefining standard computer science terms and nomenclature using mumbo jumbo banana patch gibberish. It is their modus operandi. It is no wonder a Microsft user looks at a Linux system with utter confusion. Apologizing for this intentional cluttering and obfuscation of computer science by a company that preys on the ignorant is just silly. They want to define the terms, patent and copyright the file storage standards, and convince the poor masses that what they are doing is for the betterment of mankind. They are getting better? I don't think so I think that the knowledgable user base is growing and they are being forced to reel in their nonsense. That being said I can do just about anything with a windows box. Mostly Windows works for the average end user's needs. I have spent the better part of the last ten years playing with Linux and I like it. I also understand the utter contempt that the Microsoft detractors have. Their "Fanboy" attacks maybe immature but, defending Microsoft just shows ignorance plain and simple.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[Achromatic1978]

Another tip: multiple NIS/LDAP providers != 'resilient to network failure' - if your endpoint's net connection is fubar, how is it going to get to any of your ns[0-9] servers?

Rsync is not mirroring. It has to be scheduled or initiated, and is subject to manual conflict resolution.

Unix is great. I like it. I'm not even necessarily a Windows fan. But your "answer" (response, rather) is the very definition of supercilious. You were in such a rush to stomp on the n00b that your answers aren't even all that relevant.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[Achromatic1978]

If you're even contemplating doing a benchmark of any system, you have an inherent bias, unavoidable. It doesn't have to be a malicious bias, but if you're sitting down trying to determine such, you have an interest in the result.

You need to look at yourself - your interests, motivations, desires, how much effort you've put into a product / cause - can you really claim a lack of bias?

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[snuf23]

You do realize that OS X also bundles tons of drivers for third party hardware (such as printers) so that things "just work" when you plug them in? The reason is the same in Windows. People want it to work with the least amount of hassle. Support likes it this way too.
Hell if you told an average person that Windows XP was 2GB and Vista was 8GB they'd probably say "Wow! 8gigglybytes so it's 4 times faster?" It simply doesn't matter. What matters is they plug their camera in and the pictures of their kids pop on the screen.

Given how cheap hard drive space is now, I really would rather have the convenience of having the drivers on disk anyway. Windows used to require putting the OS disk in during new hardware installs. I would imagine they 9and OEMs) have saved a ton of money on support just by putting the install files on the HD. Most of the idiots I know throw out or lose the CDs that came with their PCs.

And if you don't want it on your HD you can take it out. There are also tools like Nlite for creating stripped down Windows XP installs. Additionally you can turn of a ton of services that are on by default if you don't have a use for them. If you are comfortable tweaking Linux it isn't any harder to make a stripped down Windows system.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[evgen88]

Ok, fanboy.

Ok, paid MS poster.
How much do you get paid anyway? I could use some extra dough and ignoring facts, coming up with poor arguements is pretty easy work.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[mwvdlee]

Though I don't agree with everything the grandparent posted, I do agree with his basic statement that "no matter what MS does, people will bash them for it". /. public typically paint off MS in black and Linux in white. It sure would be an easy world to live in if the matter was simply black & white. In reality, matters are more inbetween; not everything MS does is aimed at world domination and not everything that happens with Linux enlightens society.

One can idly stand by and wait for the whole world to believe half-truths and biased, unbased opinions or one can choose to react and try to give people a more balenced view of reality in hope of actually enabling them to make choices based on facts instead of mere FUD.

I guess it's the eternal struggle against ignorance.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[killjoe]

"I do agree with his basic statement that "no matter what MS does, people will bash them for it". /. public typically paint off MS in black and Linux in white. "

OK. So what? Why is this so offensive to you? Linux is a community effort and it's normal for people to rally around their communities, whether it's yoru neighborhood, school, state, club or whatever. It's not normal to rally around a corporation. In fact I think it's kind of sick.

"One can idly stand by and wait for the whole world to believe half-truths and biased, unbased opinions or one can choose to react and try to give people a more balenced view of reality in hope of actually enabling them to make choices based on facts instead of mere FUD."

That's a fine statement to make in the abstract. When you make it in order to defend a corporation against it's customers it turns out to be creepy.

"I guess it's the eternal struggle against ignorance."

Only if you define ignorance as being "people who do not repeat our commercials word for word". Again quite creepy.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[mwvdlee]

So you should only be allowed to defend that which is not created by corporations?

How about backing Red Hat or other companies selling Open Source packages? Is that not just as sick? For instance; MySQL is both commercial and Open Source; is it wrong to back MySQL when it is attacked by Microsoft? According to your rules, neither should be supported.

I tend to defend those who are treated unfairly, and it really doesn't matter whether that organization is commercial or community in nature. Besides, I don't think the nature of an organization should be of any concern when trying to correct false information and half-truths. Surely companies deserve to be treated as honestly as communities?

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[jimmyharris]

Oh and I have to use Selinux even to just use group based acl's?

Ahm, no. You just need to specify your partition as an ACL partition. That has nothing to do with SELinux but nice try.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[Slithe]

Before you call me fanboy I point to the mighty and stupid "\" backslash.

Actually, Microsoft chose the backslash because it was the closest thing to slash. Originally, DOS did not support directories, and so the slash was used to signify command-line arguments (similar to the hyphen under Unix) because Microsoft wanted to be compatible with CP/M. When support for directories was added, Microsoft wanted to be compatible with Unix, but they wanted to maintain backwards compatibility with DOS 1.0, so they used the closest thing to the slash. It is still better than Apple using the colon.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[JacksBrokenCode]

It seems funny to me that a person so intent on telling everybody else they shouldn't waste their time posting opinions and "defending" corporation would take the time to post its opinion twice in defense of a community.

Are you worried the community's feelings will get hurt? I can assure you that it has no feelings, it's not a human being, it has no soul or feelings.

Nice thing about OSS

[ZachPruckowski]

This'll now be a high priority - beating .Net speed-wise - in the next few releases, such that by Christmas, we'll see *AMP performance picking up, whereas we have to wait on MS for .Net

Re:Nice thing about OSS

[drzhivago]

I don't understand how waiting for a performance release that may (or may not) happen in 6 months is any different than waiting for another release of the .Net framework (which may or may not happen in 6 months as well).

Apparently it's different if it's open source, huh?

Re:Nice thing about OSS

[ZachPruckowski]

If I cared to learn enough about it, I could do it myself. If it was that important to me, I could also offer small donations to speed that process along. It's great for a company that wants an improvement (speed here), is big enough to be willing to pay a bit for it, but isn't big enough to ask MS to do it.

Re:Nice thing about OSS

[RingDev]

Or you can just use *AMM (Windows/Linux, Apache, MySQL, Mono).

I use a full windows setups (Win 2k/2k3, IIS5/6, SQL Server, .Net) for a few web sites with great results.

I also use a WIMP setup for our inhouse documentation Wiki site (Media Wiki running on Windows/IIS5)

And I use LAMP for my personal web site, primarily because that's what the host offered.

I've never had a problem performance whys with any of them so long as they are properly configured and coded. A poorly coded site will have performance issues whether it's LAMP, WAMP, WIMP or anything else!

-Rick

Re:Nice thing about OSS

[ZachPruckowski]

I also use a WIMP setup

Someone needs to be fired in the marketing department...

Re:Nice thing about OSS

[RingDev]

Windows, IIS, MySQL, Php

Not that bad of combination for organizations that already maintain a Windows/IIS web configuration. Media Wiki is designed for LAMP, but if you poke it with a stick for a while, it'll run on WIMP.

-Rick

Re:Nice thing about OSS

[ZachPruckowski]

I know what it is. I was making a joke, since "wimp" in American English can mean a weak person, giving a bad implication to the software combination.

Re:Nice thing about OSS

[plague3106]

Personally, I'd like to see Mono kick things up a notch (feature-wise, not performance wise).

Re:Nice thing about OSS

[RingDev]

Yeah, it's not much better than using the GIMP for image modification, or PMS for management software, or running FU Reports. The joy of software development is that you get to use some entertaining acronyms. We were instructed to change one application's name because upper management could not pronounce the acronym with a straight face (La-tee-dah-til).

-Rick

Re:Nice thing about OSS

[Trifthen]

I also use a WIMP setup...

I prefer a LIMP setup myself.

Wait, no!

Hits per second ~20 ??

[Yiliar]

I am amazed that they got Windows 2003 to run on a wrist watch!

Running a web server over an RF port from the wrist watch to a phone scewed the results a bit, but its the only communication mode they had.

The smartphone was the only client they had handy to test with, since the test was carried out on a long flight.

Amazing stuff!

Worst... Benchmark.... Ever...

[ThinkFr33ly]

I'm still not exactly sure what they tested. They have vague terms like "Request per Second" and "Throughput", yet they don't actually say what each page that is being requested is actually doing.

For the .NET tests they say they used "Sharepoint". Huh? For what? Considering that Sharepoint is *extremely* complicated and has incredibly rich functionality they should be very clear as to what they used it for.

Not to mention the fact that using a portal application in your tests means that there is really very little way to isolate if it was a poorly written portal application or a crappy framework that the portal application was built on that's causing perf issues.

It is very difficult to test framework vs framework, but this is just about the worst way one could even attempt it.

At absolute best, this compares portal frameworks on various platforms. Even if they were trying to do that, they did a piss poor job.

Re:Worst... Benchmark.... Ever...

[mikesmind]

Benchmark studies can have some usefulness in helping you to come up with multiple, viable options. I prefer to pick the "two best" and set up a sandbox in our operating environment to see which alternative works for us. There are so many variables involved that if you can set up a couple pilot projects and compare results, you will be able to determine which alternative is right for your situation. Most companies have a defined system architecture, whether this is intentional or not, that they run their applications under. This alone, will prejudice them toward a few solutions. Changing basic infrastructure takes a certain leap of faith.

Re:Worst... Benchmark.... Ever...

[ThinkFr33ly]

I added a little... plus, my nick is the same on both sites, so I'm not trying to hide anything! :)

I figure if Slashdot can steal stories from Digg, I can copy my responses back and forth in the forums. :)

Re:Worst... Benchmark.... Ever...

[gravyface]

You're absolutely right. It's extremely if not impossible to compare something as complex and configurable as a "portal" (which is just as complicated to define, mind you) in a generic "performance analysis". A better comparison would've been a case study whereas objectives for the portal were defined ("we wanted to make an HR portal for a company of 200 employees...") and measured, including some "scientific" and anecdotal performance statistics ("It took Nancy on average 6 minutes to upload and describe each new HR form..."). Sure, it wouldn't be perfect, but at least it would put the testing into context, and give us some metrics that people can actually use, even if only to contribute to the decision-making process.

Test components too variable

[IflyRC]

How can you test the performance of a stack and compare it to others when the back end database servers, portal software and web server software is different?

How is the statement that .NET stacks are faster true when it could be the implementation of SQL being faster than MySQL? This test just doesn't make sense to me.

Re:Test components too variable

[DoofusOfDeath]

I think you're worried about the opposite effect of what actually happened:

Suppose you have two stacks built of different components, and they benchmark the performance of the stack. (Which is what happened, apparently.)

What they CANNOT say is, "The difference in the stacks' performances is attributable to their different database engines". Because for all we know, it was some other component of the stack that really caused the difference in performance. However, the article didn't make this mistake.

What the article DID say is, "There's a difference in the stacks' performances. We know because we measured it." That IS valid reasoning.

Re:Test components too variable

[popeyethesailor]

Well, that's basically the point - their claim is that the higher integration among MS products gives them a greater score, compared to an random selection of OSS components.

Sharepoint however has got a sizeable portion of native code - hence equating Sharepoint performance with .NET's is a bit misleading, IMO. The throughput could also be due to IIS 6's kernel hooks and other assorted tricks.

Re:Test components too variable

[Phillup]

What the article DID say is, "There's a difference in the stacks' performances. We know because we measured it." That IS valid reasoning.

Their methodology certainly wasn't valid. That makes the measurements invalid, which makes the reasoning little more than hard worked for conjecture.

At the very least they should have written software that did the same task for each stack.

Instead, they threw in an unknown variable with the portal software... each doing it's "own thing" and god only knows what that thing is.

And how much different that "thing" is from package to package.

They could have easily created a design spec and put it out via an RFP for submissions to run under each stack if the didn't have the requisite skills in house.

What's more... they should have dedicated the space needed to explain what made the tests valid (what they tested and how) or not run the article.

As it is, the article serves little purpose beyond having a place to stick an advertisement.

Retarded

[Anonymous Coward]

The .NET CLR runs compiled bytecode and IIS runs in kernelspace, the only httpd I know running in kernel space on nix is tux (redhat content accelerator) and nobody in their right mind is going to serve dynamic content with that. Did they test PHP with an opcode cache and the CLR running a dynamic language? This isn't even apples and oranges, it's apples and teapots. If I wanted performance, I wouldn't be running either Apache or PHP!

Re:Retarded

[LO0G]

IIS runs in kernel space? Since when?

The HTTP server component (http.sys) runs in the kernel, but IIS (everything that isn't involved with the HTTP protocol exchange)is in user mode, and has been for a long while.

Re:Retarded

[Phillup]

Maybe they should have included a graph depicting how much the system gets hosed if something is wrong in the portal software... along with a graph depicting how long it will take a hacker to find the problem code.

Re:Retarded

[Gospodin]

Sure, everything runs in kernel space on Windows. It's a performance feature! [insert smiley of choice here]

Re:Retarded

[dbIII]

IIS runs in kernel space? Since when?

Since "operating system" was redefined to include the solitaire game it appears that "kernel" is the next word in line.

This is yet another article heading that makes it look to me that Zonk is here for a bit of flamebait. If this site was to expound the coolness of MS Windows without substantiation it would have been called \. - perhaps Zonk is here to balance and change it into |.

Girly man coder

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're getting your ass kicked by .net, you are one girly man coder.

ASP.Net is pretty nice...

[aztracker1]

Not to start a war here, but ASP.Net is a pretty damned nice environment to work under... I've used a lot of PHP, Cold Fusion, some JSP, and Classic ASP in the past. ASP.Net is my favorite.. I've been peeking in with Ruby/Rails but just haven't had the time to dive in much. of the above Ruby/Rails is probably the closest competitor on an ease of development/functionality level.

Re:ASP.Net is pretty nice...

[beavis88]

It really is - especially v2.0. Master pages, membership API, navigation API, ease of deployment, etc are all seriously excellent features that have saved me quite a bit of time. I don't have time for platform evangelization anymore...I have too much "real work" to get done. I think MS has done a great job understanding this, and stepped up to the plate with some really nice tools to assist. There are always tradeoffs to make, but hey...

Re:ASP.Net is pretty nice...

[IflyRC]

I have always liked the ease with which you could write components to sit within the ASP.NET pipeline. I believe they changed the name over to Http pipeline now in 2.0. Implement IHttpModule, some config file stuff and you're good. Also, the ease with which you could work with soap extensions was nice also!!

Lets not forget about remoting sinks. Very nice how they used a chain of responsibility pattern.

Re:ASP.Net is pretty nice...

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

Too true... i came off of struts and tag libraries to .net and it was/is a much better environment. I am not sure what the state of the art is in Java any more but I am glad I switched.

Classic ASP is a horror from hell and I think soured many from using MS web solutions.

Re:ASP.Net is pretty nice...

[Screwy1138]

I too have to agree. ASP.Net 1.1 should never have been compared to ASP, they're greatly different things (thank the maker). ASP.Net is a great productivity tool. As a developer who is responsible for putting out web applications quickly, that have extremely low maintenance costs (ASP.Net excels here), as well as maintaining a set of global class libraries that align with business processes, ASP.Net is tops.

Now to talk about 2.0, well, MS really focused on productivity with this release. I'm really happy with the changes and the Atlas toolkit.

Re:ASP.Net is pretty nice...

[plague3106]

Classic ASP is a horror from hell and I think soured many from using MS web solutions.

Ugh, I couldn't agree more. Classic ASP should have been replaced long ago. Once you do Asp.Net, the thought of having to work in classic Asp is enough to make you weep.

Re:ASP.Net is pretty nice...

[Atzanteol]

as well as maintaining a set of global class libraries that align with business processes

Who let the marketing guy in here?

Linux still wins

[Ryan Amos]

Because I don't feel like paying $1500 per machine for Windows 2003 server on every server in my web farm. Shit, that's twice as much as the servers I'd run it on! Grid computing and server farms are very poorly suited to a commercial operating system.

Re:Linux still wins

[jam244]

Basic Support for RHEL AS is $1500 too, you know, and that's anually. Not taking sides here, but it's simply not true to say "Linux is free" in a commercial environment.

Re:Linux still wins

[squidguy]

Because I don't feel like paying $1500 per machine for Windows 2003 server on every server in my web farm

I understand (and agree) with your consternation, but your price is 50% more than actual retail for 2003 Standard R2... averages at just over $1000 retail with software assurance if you aren't a volume buyer. Volume buys take this down to around $600-700. If you want Enterprise, then you are paying more like $1400-2200.

Heck, even RHEL costs $$$. Circa $4500 for ES.

If you can run a free distro and get everything needed, than do so. I do for about 15 percent of my systems, but have to host Windows, HPUX & Solaris platforms too.

Re:Linux still wins

[ThinkFr33ly]

Ya, I wouldn't want to pay that either. Luckily, Windows doesn't cost that much money.

Windows Server 2003 Web Edition, 32-bit version - $399 Open NL
Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition - $999 (5 CALS)
Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition - $1,199 (10 CALS)
Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition - $3,999 (25 CALS)

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/howtobu y/licensing/pricing.mspx

You can also get licenses for a lot less than retail on eBay, and it's perfectly legal. I've purchased Web Edition for as little as $200, and Enterprise for $1200. There are lots of companies who buy these things in bulk and end up not using them.

In addition, if you're not hosting an external site (customer facing) you can get an Action Pack subscription for about $300 that gives you access to up to 5 licenses for each of these OS's.

See: https://partner.microsoft.com/40016470

Re:Linux still wins

[adolfojp]

You don't have to.

You can get the web edition server for less than $400 USD.

I can usually buy two or three of those with the money that I save in development time. Your results might vary, everybody likes something different. If I had to buy 50 of those then I might consider using something like JBOSS or LAMP.

Re:Linux still wins

[corren]

It's actually much worse than $1500 a box. And I'm a windows guy, I admit it, however licensing for windows products REALLY sucks for a small business that wants to run legit.

Here's the price breakdown for a SINGLE webserver that allows external connections to authenticate (non-domain, say a e-commerce site with user accounts) against a SINGLE SQL 2005 Database. Sql Express is free, however it's not licensed for unlimited users in a production environment.

Web Server (Prices from CDW.com):

• 1 Copy Windows 2003 R2 (5 CALs): $959.99
• 1 External Connector License for Windows: $1,969.99
• Total: $2,929.98

SQL Server:

• 1 Copy Windows 2003 R2 (5 CALs): $959.99
• 1 Copy SQL Server 2005 Workgroup Edition 1 Processor License: $3,819.99
• Total: $4,779.98

Grand Total for a single web and sql box: $7,709.96.

And don't forget that you'll need SOME hardware to run that OS. Even barebones boxes with no data protection will run you $500 a box.

So, to start a basic e-commerce site on the legit, you're talking roughly $9,000 for windows and $1,000 for Linux/OSS.

TOUGH sell for Microsoft for the little guy.

Re:Linux still wins

[Phillup]

Because I don't feel like paying $1500 per machine for Windows 2003 server on every server in my web farm.

I noticed that there wasn't a graph comparing the cost to run each system as tested, including software costs.

Especially something like... what would it cost to deploy an OSS solution with the same performance as the wamp solution?

What is the cost per transactions per second?

Must be something enterprise customers don't care about...

Re:Linux still wins

[walt-sjc]

And CentOS, which is nearly an exact clone of RHEL is free. Debian is free. So are most linux distros. So you pick ONE distro out of HUNDREDS and claim that linux is not free????? Do you somehow believe that the ONLY way you can run Linux in a commercial environment is if you run RHEL or other commercial pay distro?

Re:Linux still wins

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

We run 50+ applications on our server instance with no problems. ASP.net is nowhere near as fragile as the old asp.

Re:Linux still wins

[Ryan Amos]

RHEL is probably not the best distro for web farms. Something free would be much easier both from a licensing and a bugetary standpoint.

Re:Linux still wins

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

Wouldn't a small business just have it hosted somewhere? Having your own server is so 2000.....

Re:Linux still wins

[adolfojp]

For a web server you use the Web Server edition for less than $400. For the web you don't need client access licences $0. For a small to medium database you can always use Postgresql on a debian server for $0. That is the combination that I normally use and the time that I save developing the apps is worth a lot more than the $400 that I spent on the .net web server.

Re:Linux still wins

[nuzak]

RHEL's license lets you use one machine for updates and distribute them to the rest of the unregistered installs. It'd be insane to purchase individual licenses for a farm of identical boxen.

Re:Linux still wins

[plague3106]

Because I don't feel like paying $1500 per machine for Windows 2003 server on every server in my web farm. Shit, that's twice as much as the servers I'd run it on! Grid computing and server farms are very poorly suited to a commercial operating system.

Ugh, what a load of FUD if I ever heard it. Mod this ignorant moron down, as anyone setting up a Windows web farm would buy Windows Server 2003, Web Edition for $400. Its likely cheaper with volume licensing.

Re:Linux still wins

[plague3106]

If you're supposed to be a windows expert, quit now. You are clueless.

First, you'd be the Web Edition of server 2003 for your webserver, no connector needed.

Second, your costs for Sql are not acuate; we are what you'd consider a small business, and Sql 2005 Standard cost us $2,999. Opps, wrong again. (FWIW, the server hardware cost $7,000)

Finally, please cite your refence that you can't use Sql Express for 'unlimted connections in a production environment.' I've failed to find such a statement from MS.

Re:Linux still wins

[sevinkey]

Unless you're wanting a zero-second-buffering video stream, I'm not sure why you would want the Enterprise version of Windows 2003. Web edition works just fine for $399.

Re:Linux still wins

[corren]

Actually, I'm speaking specifically about authenticated users that are not part of your domain. This is a common scenario for an e-commerce site, or any site that users can create accounts on. A bulletin board is another example.

In this scenario, you must use an external connector license because those users are not authenticated, and the Web Edition of Windows 2003 does not have an applicable External Connector License.

You can read more here:

http://www.microsoftvolumelicensing.com/userights/ Pur%20Archive/MicrosoftProductUseRights(Worldwide) (English)(July2006).doc#_Toc127699990

Pages 43 cover Web Edition of 2003 Server. Page 19 talks about External Connector License.

Re:Linux still wins

[corren]

See my previous post about authenticating users, as opposed to Anonymous. Secondly, I said Sql 2005 Workgroup 1 Processor. Please show me a link to a Authorized Reseller of SQL 2005 Standard 1 Processor for $2999. You wouldn't use CAL model for unlimited connections to SQL unless of course you have unlimited CALs. That's why you use the Processor license model. Check your facts before chewing me out. My best friend is in corporate licensing sales at MS. http://www.microsoftvolumelicensing.com/userights/ Pur%20Archive/MicrosoftProductUseRights(Worldwide) (English)(July2006).doc#_Toc127699990

Re:Linux still wins

[plague3106]

See my previous post about authenticating users, as opposed to Anonymous.

It doesn't matter when using Web edition if the users need to be authenticated or not. Sql Server processor licenses also don't matter when authenticating users.

Secondly, I said Sql 2005 Workgroup 1 Processor. Please show me a link to a Authorized Reseller of SQL 2005 Standard 1 Processor for $2999.

I don't have a link, because like most companies, we have a representive at CDW that quotes us. I do have the order printed and sitting on my desk though, so I do know how much we paid (since I was involved in helping spec out what we need).

You wouldn't use CAL model for unlimited connections to SQL unless of course you have unlimited CALs. That's why you use the Processor license model.

We did use the processor license model.

Check your facts before chewing me out.

Again, I have the order confirmation sitting on my desk.

From MS:
Client access licenses (CALs) do not apply to Windows Server 2003 Web Edition. However, Windows Server 2003 Web Edition, can be used as the scale-out front end for applications such as Windows SharePoint Services and Windows Rights Management Services. In these scale-out configurations, Windows Server CALs and/or Exchange CALs may still be required.

And Organizations cannot use Windows Server 2003 Web Edition, to deploy Microsoft SQL Server, other than SQL Server 2005 Express Edition.

Please tell me which facts I got wrong.

Re:Linux still wins

[Doctor Memory]

Most small businesses I've worked with have a hosting company for power, network and monitoring, but it's their own box there in the rack. That way they get guaranteed performance, instead of sharing a mid-size box with four or six other sites. And if your site doesn't perform, you just upgrade your own hardware for a one-time charge, instead of moving to a higher-priced service agreement. I did run into a place once that had their own box for the app server, but used the ISP's database server, but they were pretty strange in other ways too...

Re:Linux still wins

[Anonymous Coward]

You are throwing away money on SQL server (you don't need it for a website) and CAL for Windows (you don't need them for a website), plus you are buying the wrong version of Windows (R2's new features are for domains).

Re:Linux still wins

[adolfojp]

I might be wrong. Correct me if I am.

You don't need connector licenses to use web hosted applications like web apps and web services. You use SSL to protect the data flow that needs to be encrypted, like passwords, credit card info, or anything confidential. You don't need connector licenses to connect to SQL servers like Postgresql or MySQL either.

This is a common scenario for an e-commerce site, or any site that users can create accounts on. A bulletin board is another example.

If you are using Integrated Windows Authentication for that kind of apps you are limiting yourself to clients that run IE. Use SSL instead and make your app cross browser compatible, the way it should be.

Re:Linux still wins

[corren]

God I hate Microsoft licensing. You're right, you can use Web edition of Windows Server. I've been searching this for hours.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/howtobu y/licensing/priclicfaq.mspx

Here's an exerpt from the preceding page:

The End User License Agreement states that CALs are required for access or use of the server software and goes on to list usage examples. If I am using the server in a way that is not listed (e.g., as an application server), do I still need CALs?

A. Yes. The list of examples in the End User License Agreement is not exhaustive but is instead meant to illustrate some common uses of the server software. If a device or user is accessing or using the server software, a CAL is required, unless:

  access is through the Internet and is unauthenticated, or

  access is to a server running Windows Server 2003 Web Edition, or

  access or use is by an External User and External Connector licenses are acquired instead of CALs.

Re:Linux still wins

[adolfojp]

You wouldn't use CAL model for unlimited connections to SQL unless of course you have unlimited CALs

The SQL server NEVER connects with the client (browser) in a web app environment. It connects ONLY with the web server/servers. You can have 1000 anonymous SSL connections (this is how it is done) connecting with the web server and the web server connects with the SQL server. What is the number of connections for the unlimited users? ONE. Only one connection to the SQL Server.

My best friend is in corporate licensing sales at MS

Does he know how web apps work? Did he explain the licensing scheme to you correctly? What you are describing are intranet apps that connect directly to the SQL server using Windows Authentication. Web apps or Rich Client apps that use web services do not need or use or like or promote the use of Windows authentication and they do not connect to the SQL Server directly. There is one connection to the SQL server for each Web Server and it doesn't have to be authenticated. SSL works great.

This is the process whether it is web browsers or rich clients with web services.
Unlimited anonymous users connect with one or more Web Servers through SSL. The web server connects with the SQL Server. The number of connections to the SQL server is one for each Web Server. Windows authentication is not used. There is no need for CALs or external connectors.

Re:Linux still wins

[plague3106]

God I hate Microsoft licensing. You're right, you can use Web edition of Windows Server. I've been searching this for hours.

On this point, I will agree with you whole-heartedly. I will give them this though; it appears they are trying to make licensing clearer.. obviously they still have a ways to go, however.

Re:Linux still wins

[jam244]

And CentOS, which is nearly an exact clone of RHEL is free. Debian is free. So are most linux distros. So you pick ONE distro out of HUNDREDS and claim that linux is not free????? Do you somehow believe that the ONLY way you can run Linux in a commercial environment is if you run RHEL or other commercial pay distro?

No, no, no. You didn't read. Yes of course RHEL is free to download and use. Basic SUPPORT is $1500 for 1 year. Perhaps you've never worked somewhere where developer-grade Linux support was critical... I can understand your confusion in that case.

Re:Linux still wins

[T-Ranger]

The lines in question are:

You do not need CALs for: (1)any user or device that accesses your instances of the server software only through the Internet without being authenticated or otherwise individually identified by the server software or through any other means, .....

I diddn't know that myself, but the wording seems to go out of its way to make it clear that MS can try and charge you for CALs for anything that uses even the most basic authentication methods.

Re:Linux still wins

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry mate, but I hope you don't advise anyone in business about Windows or you're costing them lots of money.

What they need are the Web Edition of Windows Server 2003 (not R2, which doesn't give you any benefit over the base 2003 with Service Pack 1 in a web hosting scenario) which costs $400 and SQL Server 2005 Express Edition (allows unlimited connections but is restricted in the amount of CPUs and RAM it supports) which is free.

Re:Linux still wins

[Silver Gryphon]

"God I hate Microsoft licensing. You're right, you can use Web edition of Windows Server. "

And that, ladies and gents, is why Linux wins the licensing battle. Microsoft and Business Objects (Crystal Decisions) have some of the most screwed up, confusing licensing models I've seen. It takes serious analysis and reading through legal agreements (EULAs) for hours just to compare editions of one software product. Then you get MS/CDW sales involved and somebody always rounds up "just in case", hence perpetuating a myth that you have to spend $25k per server.

There are reasons to spend that much, but not always and rarely for a small business website with just a few hits now and then. But if your small business is running several thousand database transactions per minute as part of a service... you'll benefit from higher-end software like the $25k+ Enterprise editions for clustering. Of course, you're probably spending six figures on the hardware by then.

Linux is probably easier to license, although I don't know for sure because I'm deep in the Windows world (developer, DBA, admin, etc). Still, to run an application on Linux with enterprise-class performance, you'll need people. More of them or with better training, and usually more expensive. Even if Linux were to come out in an apple-to-apple benchmark with 50% better performance, Windows might still be cheaper to maintain. It all depends on the application.

Re:Linux still wins

[julesh]

You've misread the license for Web Server Edition, which includes the following term:

No Client Access Licenses (CALs) Required for Access. You do not need CALs for other devices to access your instances of the server software.

There's no external connector available for it because you don't need one.

Unfortunately, the other terms and conditions on Web Server Edition are pretty restrictive:

You may use the software only to deploy web pages, sites, applications and services, and to serve POP3 mail. You may run instances of the server software with the following types of software in the same physical or virtual operating system environment on the licensed server:
Web serving software, such as Microsoft Internet Information Services;
non-enterprise database engine software, such as Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine, licensed to support not more than 25 users at one time, and
Web availability management software, such as Microsoft Application Center.
The software above may access data from the following software on any of your servers:
database software, such as Microsoft SQL Server; and
business application software (for example, enterprise email, enterprise resource planning, and customer relationship management).
No other use of the software is permitted.

Particularly concerning is the requirement that database engines aren't licensed for more than 25 users at a time. MySQL and PostgreSQL are both licensed for unlimited users, so probably cannot be used under these terms. Also note that this appears to be a blanket restriction on running any other kind of software than what's specifically mentioned, so there's no SMTP mail servers, IMAP mail servers, VNC remote access software (although presumably the Remote Desktop software included with the OS is acceptable), development software, etc. I'd be concerned about running a streaming media server under these terms, as it isn't explicitly mentioned and isn't technically a web site, application or service (although most users would probably categorise it as one).

Re:Linux still wins

[walt-sjc]

And support for MS is how much??? It's not free, and does not come bundled with the license. You can't compare apples to apples because the software / support is offered under different terms.

But to respond to your other comment, yes, your right. At some point, personal knowledge is vast enough that commercial support for open source software is not needed. Hire good people and they ARE the support. The larger the company, the more likely this is. A well known example is Google. They have top notch admins and even roll their own distro. You don't have to be a google to have that level of competance however, but if you insist on hiring MCSE's, then most likely you are NOT going to get that level of competance (hence the FA.)

Integration vs. Cost effectiveness

[Macthorpe]

I'm actually wondering how the wonderful non-biased folk here at /. are going to interpret these results.

I don't know a damn thing about any of this but it says to me from a layman's point of view that invidually maintained and installed components are just not as efficient as a completely integrated suite of applications, and this is exactly how the ignorant bosses of knowledgeable admins will see it. Though I was interested to see the rise in the use of OSS in the workplace.

I could have gone down the whole "OSS SUX" route but that's a flamewar I'm not starting.

(Today.)

Re:Integration vs. Cost effectiveness

[Paladin128]

Actually, I have a preference to individually installed and maintained components.

For instance, if I write my code to run on PHP and MySQL, I can swap out the underlying OS and web server. I could run it on a Linux box, Sun blade server, Dell running Windows, Xserve running OS X server... it's kinda nice.

If I go with .Net 2.0, I'm stuck with Windows 2003 running on x86.

Plus, if each piece is seperate, it's less likely that any one piece will bring the whole OS down. I like being able to SSH to a box and just restart httpd (I'm assuming you can do similar under a Win32 server, just don't have much experience.)

Plus, it's also nice for development. At work, our servers are Red Hat Linux running apache, PHP, and MySQL. My workstation runs XP. I installed Apache, MySQL, and PHP on my XP box to test new versions as I develop them. It's kinda nice having the flexibility of using the very portable OSS stack on Windows (or anything else, for that matter). We've used old Win98 machines, an old G3 towers running OS X.1, laptops running Linux, etc. as test servers.

Re:Integration vs. Cost effectiveness

[jelle]

"I'm actually wondering how the wonderful non-biased folk here at /. are going to interpret these results."

You know "we" are not non-biased...

Anyway, I'll just say that my linksys router running Linux can do more than 1 transaction per second on web apps with Python. How these guys can pull off showing that that's the speed they get for an actual server is beyond me...

Actually, it's not... it's e-week... They have always been very MS-centered.

Re:Integration vs. Cost effectiveness

[Macthorpe]

Fair enough, flexibility is a concern too for a lot of people. I also agree about reliability. Windows with .net is all very well, good that it came out on top in speed, but I like Windows (cue idiocy) and even I would say it's not exactly something I would be happy to leave on for 6 months straight.

I can only see .net having the advantage purely on speed, but that's something that people also need. No point taking a Skoda to an F1 race, even if it will make it around without failing.

I will admit to a lot of that going right over my head though, interesting as it was.

Re:Integration vs. Cost effectiveness

[Phillup]

I'm actually wondering how the wonderful non-biased folk here at /. are going to interpret these results.

They would probably tell you that the article lacks so much detail as to even care about trying to determine if it means anything.

Re:Integration vs. Cost effectiveness

[Paladin128]

I'm not convinced .Net has the advantage on speed. The test compared dissimillar codebases, and was light on details. It may be right, but may not.

Where .Net has the advantage is a great IDE and developer tools. Many programmers like this kind of thing. I don't. I'm an old-school emacs guy, but I understand why other people like things all integrated and such.

Re:Integration vs. Cost effectiveness

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I don't know a damn thing about any of this but it says to me from a layman's point of view that invidually maintained and installed components are just not as efficient as a completely integrated suite of applications...

What are you basing this belief upon? Is there some logic and data to back up your belief or is it just what you believe because the Bible says so somewhere?

I'm being a little facetious here, but it is pretty obvious to any critical thinker that no one aspect of any software will determine efficiency. For example, much of the software MS creates is very inefficient simply because they can more easily make money by using their monopoly than by making better software. Just look at multitasking on a Windows server versus a Linux one. That said, if you rely upon a single suite of integrated applications, then if any one component of that suite is inferior you are screwed. If, however, you rely upon open standards between components then you can pick the best of breed for each application and you don't have to worry about one being a bottleneck, because you can always replace it. Logically, if not empirically then, the latter seems a better choice.

Now I'm not an efficiency expert, but even a cursory look at this study reveals that they have published some very vague numbers, with little detail into what they are even claiming. Further they compared one commercial solution against one particular combination of noncommercial solutions ignoring all other, both commercial and not. From most administers' experience a combination of commercial and free software is what results in both the most commonly used and most efficient solution. Why not compare the integrated Windows suite against the most common alternative? Why not specify an exact task and then publish how well both did at accomplishing that task, rather than artificial benchmarks with dozens of non-normalized variables?

As I said, I'm not an efficiency expert, but I am a scientist and I believe in using the scientific method to make logical decisions, rather than emotive ones. Whatever else this is, it is very poor science and useless for making predictive statements. It is, however, a talking point for those interested in public relations or trying to sway opinions without providing hard facts.

Re:Integration vs. Cost effectiveness

[Macthorpe]

What are you basing this belief upon?

On the perceived results. If you think that the world is run by people who know absolutely everything you're naive. If you think the world is run by people who know what they're running, etc. People who don't know will see this and pretend they do (which I wasn't doing, by the way, hence my disclaimer "I don't know a damn thing about any of this".)

The world runs on vague numbers and hyperbole, especially in management.

Also see my response above. I am not pretending to know anything about this. All I see is a face of better performance, and although I am not so idiotic as to think that is the whole story (contrary to your opinion) there are many people who do.

Re:Integration vs. Cost effectiveness

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

On the perceived results.

So you have formed the opinion that integrated suites are more efficient than disparate components based upon a sample size of one? Even though having read the article in question you see the test results were very close even while the testers admitted that they misused some software by applying it incorrectly in a way the documentation told them not to and in which no one in their right mind would do?

I think you might need to rethink your decision making process.

I am not pretending to know anything about this. All I see is a face of better performance, and although I am not so idiotic as to think that is the whole story (contrary to your opinion) there are many people who do.

So you formed a belief without real evidence and you contend others will also. Okay, I think we all knew that. Why is that of any interest to anyone? Why do we care if you and others will form beliefs without any scientific of logical basis?

Re:Integration vs. Cost effectiveness

[mantar]

"I like Windows (cue idiocy)"

Don't worry, admitting your idiocy is a good first step to quitting. :-)

- Your friendly Windows Rehab Counselor

Re:Integration vs. Cost effectiveness

[Macthorpe]

Wow, you are absolutely, one-hundred percent full of yourself.

Congrats.

Re:Integration vs. Cost effectiveness

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Wow, you are absolutely, one-hundred percent full of yourself.

True. That says nothing, however, that invalidates my argument.

Re:Integration vs. Cost effectiveness

[Colin Smith]

Um, you don't know what they're measuring... THEY don't know what they're measuring. We have two sets of abitrary applications and one set is faster than the other... Does the other set have a bunch of sleep statements in the code somewhere? We don't know because the applications are different, doing different things.

We have absolutely no idea why one of the sets of applications runs faster doing... ehm, something... than the other set of applications.

Re:Integration vs. Cost effectiveness

[Daimaou]

I used Windows XP, Debian, Ubuntu, and OS X on a regular basis, so I don't consider myself biased. I interpret this article as utterly meaningless for two reasons:

1) The comparison is a farce. It lacks details and research to explain the results it claims.
2) People are going to use what they want to regardless. It's not as if an article on Slashdot will turn the die hard Windows user over to Linux and Linux users aren't going to read an article like this and abandon Linux for Windows and start writing all their apps in .NET. It isn't going to happen.

Re:Integration vs. Cost effectiveness

[Daimaou]

I forgot to mention the third reason in my "couple of reasons". 3) Things are not static. A study showing Windows faster than Linux, especially if it is true, will get a bunch of folk working and Linux will improve. Same with Windows (albeit the improvements will come slower). Either way, everybody improves and users win.

Choice is a wonderful thing.

Re:Integration vs. Cost effectiveness

[Macthorpe]

Actually, it does.

As shown by other posts on my same comment, just because you don't care doesn't mean everyone else doesn't care.

One would have imagined that if my point was something you found summarily disinteresting or completely pointless, you wouldn't have bothered trying to deny it. As it was, you did, and you gave it a point.

Next time, I'd ignore it instead of puffing up your chest and trying to make yourself sound important.

Re:Integration vs. Cost effectiveness

[Macthorpe]

Get me a foolproof way to run all the games I play (WoW, Dungeon Siege II, FEAR, etc.) on the PC working on Linux and I'm not exactly a tough sale :P

Re:Integration vs. Cost effectiveness

[mantar]

I know exactly what you mean... I keep a windows box around just for games (shame) :0)

Actually, when I was in college, the thing that attracted me the most to Linux (and why I made the switch) was my senior project. It was absolutely sweet to be able to grab the source for a Linux kernel, customize it, and build an entire distro from scratch. And the embedded branch (uCLinux) is really sweet too. I have to admit, though... at work, we developed a system from Windows CE, and their Platform Manager allowed you to customize the OS too... it was a cost effective little OS and worked like a charm.

I think you hit a good point too... if Linux is really ever to compete on the desktop market with Windows... they need to get their act together and attract some game developers!

"performance"?

[erroneus]

What was the set of measures? For me, "performance" has more to do with uptime, reliability and security. Those are the performance standards I care about.

Re:"performance"?

[Emetophobe]

For me, "performance" has more to do with uptime, reliability and security.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. (see stability)

Holy Throughput!

[blazerw11]

I'm wondering if the high throughput numbers for the .Net stack were caused by it deliving huge binary files to the client. Ya know, 17MB Active X controls. Anyway, I didn't randomly come up with this conclusion, the article didn't mention the transactions per second for .Net. So, I conclude from ALL of the data that it did one transaction of 17MB*.

*No math was done to come up with the 17MB figure.
Also, no animals were harmed during the writing of this comment.

Re:Holy Throughput!

[blazerw11]

Replying to myself.

The do provide the other numbers that show the numbers in pretty graphs.

Re:Holy Throughput!

[Phillup]

I didn't randomly come up with this conclusion, the article didn't mention the transactions per second for .Net.

The article also didn't mention that each portal was tested on a system using their minimum specs.

So, the lamp portal ran everything... including the db... on a 386 with 16MB of ram and a modem.

While the wamp stack required three quad processor servers with 16GB RAM and 10K SCSI RAIDS with 4 gig E network cards each.

Point is... the article doesn't mention a lot... hyperbole not withstanding.

With the glaringly obvious differences in the software applications that were being used to test the stacks... one has to wonder what else was different in the test systems.

The article is NOT that conclusive

[MK_CSGuy]

I've read the article before it hit /. and their conclusion is that there is no clear winner. .Net outperforms OSS solutions on some tests and vice-versa. The surprising(*) results are how good WAMP performed in some of the tests (if you really want specifics RTFA). Here is a direct link to the tests.

* - I've seen similar results in benchmarks of Mono & .Net, i.e. Mono apps with .Net framework vs pure .Net and pure Mono, so although there is no connection between JIT compilers and web servers performance, the trend is there.
Too bad the article haven't touched Mono.

I don't really understand what they are testing?

[WhiteWolf666]

Can someone explain it to me?

I don't think it is FUD, but I do get the impression that they are trying to invent a benchmark that really doesn't make any sense. Different PHP projects can have vastly different performance; and I'm not sure that Plone compares to Sharepoint server. I wouldn't know, though, because I don't use Sharepoint, and I have little/no idea what they did in the test.

Anyone have a closer hunch?

MindCraft would be the "worst" so far.

[khasim]

But this is a very close second place.

#1. NO tuning was done on the LAMP stuff. None at all. They ran the stuff "out of the box".

#2. They didn't write their own app. That means they didn't test the SAME processes on each system.

#3. They didn't bother to find WHERE the differences were. Is it in the IP stack? Is it in the OS? Is it in the scripting language? Is it in the app?

How bad can "research" be and still be published in "eWeek"? There wasn't any research done for that article.

Microsoft has, in the past, taken various short-cuts when IIS was the server and IE was the browser. Is that the case in this "study"? Are the other "stacks" "slower" because they follow the protocols?

You won't know because they'd didn't LOOK for the REASON behind their "results".

At least MindCraft was paid to do poor research.

Re:MindCraft would be the "worst" so far.

[conJunk]

exactly... the only way i can think to test something like this would be to line up the industry respected top devs for each framework at hand, guys who look at each other and say things like "yeah, if you need a good .net thing, he's your guy, sure, i could do it, but it wouldn't be as good as my java", and give them all a series of tasks to implement...

something like - an html form with 255 input fields, and then write all that data to your database, then serve it all up in another page performing x, y, and z on the data

then have their testing ap that hits all of those with the same data for a week

Re:MindCraft would be the "worst" so far.

[dumbo11]

"#3. They didn't bother to find WHERE the differences were. Is it in the IP stack? Is it in the OS? Is it in the scripting language? Is it in the app?" If there's a 7x difference in performance between linux and Win2k3, then the difference is almost certainly nothing to do with systems themselves, and everything to do with configuring it. LAMP is very susceptible to speed-ups by optimizing the configuration, and if they picked the right 'WAMP' stack it would come pre-optimized without their knowledge?

Re:MindCraft would be the "worst" so far.

[ArsonSmith]

Then have a set of freash CS degree "C" grade graduates do it as well. You know to get real worled results.

Re:MindCraft would be the "worst" so far.

[plague3106]

What difference does it make to the testing? You can't change the IP stack, OS bottlenecks or the scripting engine itself. That leaves the app as the only thing you really want to have a hand in coding.

Its funny how everyone here points out 'poor research' if the research favors MS, but when it favors Linux, mostly everyone goes 'see! told ya so!!!'

Re:MindCraft would be the "worst" so far.

[Trelane]

You can't change the IP stack, OS bottlenecks or the scripting engine itself.

Yes. Yes, you can. See also, /proc/sys/net/ipv4 and friends. Windows has its magic registry keys.

You can also tune your VM system as well as various things within PHP and .net as well.

Beyond that, under Linux, you can change anything, since you have the source code (though I'd not expect it for a simple benchmark).

Lies, dammned lies and benchmarks

[Mofaluna]

Different day, same old story Makes you wonder when people will finally stop taking these kind of 'studies' serious...

Short memories

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

MS also had the fastest java runtime back in the day. It isn't suprising that there .net compiler is also very fast.

Re:Short memories

[plague3106]

Please stop with the consipricy theories already. The fact that the AMP part of the stack runs very fast on Windows doesn't seem to matter to you at all, does it?

Re:Short memories

[plague3106]

Even if that was true I'd still rather have a proper UNIX environment anyways. Not to mention a real multi-user OS without shelling out huge dollars. Oh and the development tools and ...

Sorry, but with modern windows, what exactly is missing that dis-qualifies it from being a real multi-user OS? And FWIW, I've found VS2005 to be much better than any development studio I've tried for linux.

If you buy Windows to run AMP servers ... you're wasting your money.

So you think its better to have servers which don't integrate with your corporate network? $400 for Web edition isn't a whole lot to anyone running web farms.

Linux and BSD are more efficient to work with in server contexts

Your opinion, there's no fact to that. I replace my linux server at home with SBS 2003 because its easier to manage the network using SBS2003 than it was with Linux + SMB.

work better with 64-bit processors [Win64 is a huge compatibility joke atm]

I've heard quite differently; indeed, some people claim XP64 is the best desktop OS, even better than 32bit XP. I don't think the 64 bit servers are suffering huge problems either.

don't require you to call India each time your HD breaks and you need a re-install.

A bunch of FUD here; mearly replacing an HD doesn't require calling anyone, and alot of shops image the drives every night so that if there is a failure, they slap on the saved image and are up and running again in no time.

Heck, in BSD/Linux doing a ghost of your system is as simple as burning a tarball to a DVD.

You can easily save an image of a Windows installtion as well.

No need for 3rd party ghosting tools and praying that Windows lets you "get away with" using your OS...

Go ahead and spend hours and hours tarballing your server; the fact is that it would be faster to just create an image of the HD and burn that to a DVD. There's no praying involved; my former employer had great success doing such restores. And putting down a new image is faster than un-tarring a file to disk again.

Re:Short memories

[tomstdenis]

Windows is not a true multi-user OS unless you get the Pro editions. Other editions let you have users but not all logged in at the same time [even though the kernel would support it].

As for VS2005 ... why doesn't it work in Linux?

As for SMB ... um use NFS in Linux. It's a single line to setup [on either side] and handled natively in the kernel.

As for win64 ... if you have 64-bit drivers. Many proprietary [the standard for Windows] drivers are not yet ported to win64. The win32 thunking layer is barely functional.

If you ever have to re-install a copy of Windows [from the CD] you will likely have to call India to get a new product key. At least that's been my experience.

As for ghosting, yeah I never said you can't ghost in Windows, I said you had to pay for it. In OSS world you can just rsync your disk to filestore somewhere else. Free tools that are work perfectly ... hmm ...

Tom

Re:Short memories

[plague3106]

Windows is not a true multi-user OS unless you get the Pro editions. Other editions let you have users but not all logged in at the same time [even though the kernel would support it].

I was fairly certain the Home edition of XP lets more than one user log in at a time. It would seem odd that only Pro supports it, since usually Pro is part of a domain (and when it is, doesn't let more than one user at a time login.. but this makes sense).

As for VS2005 ... why doesn't it work in Linux?

Are you asking why MS doesn't port it to Linux? I'd think the answer to that is fairly obvious.

As for SMB ... um use NFS in Linux. It's a single line to setup [on either side] and handled natively in the kernel.

I did use NFS for filesharing in Linux; but that doesn't help when you also have Windows clients, does it? And its more than a one line configuration. I was using SMB as a full domain controller as well, not just for filesharing. It wasn't easy to manage windows workstations using SMB as the domain controller.

As for win64 ... if you have 64-bit drivers. Many proprietary [the standard for Windows] drivers are not yet ported to win64. The win32 thunking layer is barely functional.

How is this different to poor driver support with Linux? Doesn't the blame go to the hardware manufacturers? Isn't that who's always blamed when Linux doesn't support X device? This claim doesn't back up the '64bit windows is a joke' theory.

If you ever have to re-install a copy of Windows [from the CD] you will likely have to call India to get a new product key. At least that's been my experience.

For home users yes this is an issue. but in the business world, you typically have volume license keys, which don't require activation. Also, you're usually NOT restoring from the cd that windows ships on, you're much more likely restoring from your last system backup.

As for ghosting, yeah I never said you can't ghost in Windows, I said you had to pay for it. In OSS world you can just rsync your disk to filestore somewhere else. Free tools that are work perfectly ... hmm ...

rsync, you actually use that gaping security hole of a progam? I have to ask, when all is said and done, who cares if you have to pay for ghosting software? Really? Some poor college kid might, but I think for businesses ghosting software is the least of the cost of running.

Re:Short memories

[tomstdenis]

I was fairly certain the Home edition of XP lets more than one user log in at a time. It would seem odd that only Pro supports it, since usually Pro is part of a domain (and when it is, doesn't let more than one user at a time login.. but this makes sense).

You'd be wrong. When another user remotely logs in, it logs anyone sitting at the terminal off.

Are you asking why MS doesn't port it to Linux? I'd think the answer to that is fairly obvious.

Really? What is it? I thought the VS teams job was to promote the use [and purchase] of VS and not prop up Windows sales.

How is this different to poor driver support with Linux? Doesn't the blame go to the hardware manufacturers? Isn't that who's always blamed when Linux doesn't support X device? This claim doesn't back up the '64bit windows is a joke' theory.

Good point. However, to say that Win64 is better than Win32 would require you to say Linux is better too than win32 [for basically the same reasons].

As for the "costs". It creeps up. When you need site licenses for Windows, Office, VS, etc, etc, etc you end up paying millions of dollars a year.

Tom

Re:Short memories

[Cal Paterson]

Sorry, but with modern windows, what exactly is missing that dis-qualifies it from being a real multi-user OS? And FWIW, I've found VS2005 to be much better than any development studio I've tried for linux.

I think the grandparents point is that though it is technically a multi-user OS, it isn't a very good one. The kernel level schedulers on Windows give a really poor response under multiple sources of medium to heavy load.

I'm not aware of that many "development studios" for Unix. There's a couple, like eclipse and such, but many Unix writers tend to work a different way. In line with the Unix philosophy (rules 1, 3, 4, 5, 7 and 8 if you're interested) there's a lot of people who keep the editor, compiler, linker etc all seperate. If you're looking for a "development studio" for Unix, I think you're looking for the wrong thing. We don't have a Start Menu either. :)

So you think its better to have servers which don't integrate with your corporate network? $400 for Web edition isn't a whole lot to anyone running web farms.

Well, I'm sure anyone could have pointed out that large companies with large budgets can afford the $400 dollar cost. But that $400 dollars is a cost, and to a lot of companies, it's a big cost. It's an even bigger cost when many difference licences have to be purchased. (Obviously, Unixes have costs of their own, but the costs tend to increase in line with the use being made, or the complexity of the "solution" etc, and up-front licences payments (which are immoral, in my opinion) normally end up being a far less weildy solution than Free Unix is) And in my, and the grandparents opinion, it's an unjustified cost.

Your opinion, there's no fact to that. I replace my linux server at home with SBS 2003 because its easier to manage the network using SBS2003 than it was with Linux + SMB.

Of course it's opinion! The whole damn subject is opinion! As if a (very very poorly run) test on the speed of a server is the last word on the subject! There's little universal fact to your personal experience either. ;)

I've heard quite differently; indeed, some people claim XP64 is the best desktop OS, even better than 32bit XP. I don't think the 64 bit servers are suffering huge problems either.

Have you actually used it? WinXP 64bit really doesn't work very well at all. I wouldn't know about 64 bit servers, but 64 bit WinXP is really not something that works very well.

Go ahead and spend hours and hours tarballing your server; the fact is that it would be faster to just create an image of the HD and burn that to a DVD. There's no praying involved; my former employer had great success doing such restores. And putting down a new image is faster than un-tarring a file to disk again.

It's possible to use either image or tar with Unixes. Tar is useful because it's easy to use diffs and delta compression on backups then. Tar's also useful when you only want to backup a certain area; such as /etc or /var. It's not like you're stuck with tar either - disk imaging still works fine. When you can tarball up only the parts of the machine you need to keep, the idea of disk imaging seems redundant (for most cases).

Re:Short memories

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

Really? What is it? I thought the VS teams job was to promote the use [and purchase] of VS and not prop up Windows sales.

Ummm right. MS would make a ton of money porting VS to linux.

Re:Short memories

[cyber-vandal]

Why wouldn't they? Linux is the no.2 server OS last time I heard with a not-insubstantial slice of that very significant market.

Re:Short memories

[plague3106]

You'd be wrong. When another user remotely logs in, it logs anyone sitting at the terminal off.

Logs them off or supsends their session, which can be gotten back later? I seem to remember the latter, although 99% of my experience is with pro. Pro does this if not a domain member; your apps stay running but you can let someone else use the computer (they have to be at the console though). I have to say though, I agree with MS's decision. What use is there in letting someone else login to my workstation at work, and running programs which slow down my work? What reason is there at home (beyond letting someone else use the computer for a bit) for 2 users to simulatiously use the computer?

Really? What is it? I thought the VS teams job was to promote the use [and purchase] of VS and not prop up Windows sales.

One of the reasons is that MS does want you to develop on their platform. Another is that they don't see a good economic reason to develop .Net for Linux (although I happen to disagree, and would love an MS supported .Net framework + studio on linux). Finally, how many Linux users would develop on VS on linux? Probably not nearly enough to make it worth their while economically.

Good point. However, to say that Win64 is better than Win32 would require you to say Linux is better too than win32 [for basically the same reasons].

I don't know how much hardware is supported on Win64 vs. Linux. And its not just about drivers, availablity of software is an issue. As it is, VS2005 supports .Net development for x64 platforms and the .Net runtime is there too. Also, I've never used Win64; I've read other peoples comments that they thought it was better than WinXP32 (it sounded like there were features in WinXP64 not in 32, but I don't know one way or the other). The point is though that 64-bit windows isn't as much of a joke as you make it out to be.

As for the "costs". It creeps up. When you need site licenses for Windows, Office, VS, etc, etc, etc you end up paying millions of dollars a year.

Who said you need site licenses? You have to be careful when buying, to make sure you get the right licensing terms that fit your companies needs. Sometimes that's open licensing, sometimes select, sometimes its just buying retail. Its not millions of dollars a year as you say; if that were true, no company could afford to run MS software. Clearly lots of companies build their networks and software on MS servers, so this statement simply isn't true.

Re:Short memories

[tomstdenis]

Yeah, because having a tool work on more than just one platform would make it worth less than it already is.

I dunno about you but us OSS folk are professionals. I'd buy a copy of VS for Linux [provided it let me choose to use gcc over a MSFT compiler] mostly because the IDE is actually a decent piece of product. Look at other tools though. IBM ports DB2 to a variety of platforms [and not just their own UNIX] and imagine this, it does very well.

The problem is the various departments at MSFT that work on different tools [e.g. windows, office, devel] should be MORE independent. That would spark real innovation.

I mean as a VS developer your only job is to find ways to make Windows more prevalent. How sick is that?

Tom

Re:Short memories

[tomstdenis]

for 2 users to simulatiously use the computer?

You're kidding right? How about having one computer service the applications? Why should I install and run Office on my laptop when my overpowered, underutilized 300Wh desktop can run it [twice no less] without blinking an eye.

Or how about you're on the computer and I gotta get a file or something off it.

Or how about the other myriad of multi-user tasks [remote shells anyone?]

Finally, how many Linux users would develop on VS on linux?

Quite a few actually. when I say "VS" I mean the IDE and RAD tools and not the compiler. Look at kdevelop, it's largely attempting to clone VS. Seems there is enough draw for it.

Re:Short memories

[Tony-A]

Windows is not a true multi-user OS unless you get the Pro editions.

As I explain to my "not-so-sophisticated" users, Microsoft is incapable of walking and chewing gum at the same time. And that's for single user.
For multiple user, try different login credentials from computer A to computer B at the same time. Even DOS and Lantastic or Netware was more "multi-user".

Re:Short memories

[karolus]

Sorry, but with modern windows, what exactly is missing that dis-qualifies it from being a real multi-user OS? And FWIW, I've found VS2005 to be much better than any development studio I've tried for linux.

Well apparently you didnt try Intellij IDEA ... poor you

Re:Short memories

[killjoe]

"WIW, I've found VS2005 to be much better than any development studio I've tried for linux."

I havent used 2005 yet but 2003 was a piece of shit compared to eclipse, it was a piece of shit compared to Jedit for that matter. My guess is that 2005 probably closes the gap a bit. Too bad eclipse development isn't stopping though, it will leave it in the dust again soon enough.

"Sorry, but with modern windows, what exactly is missing that dis-qualifies it from being a real multi-user OS? And FWIW, I've found VS2005 to be much better than any development studio I've tried for linux."

The fact that it's not a multi user OS? How much extra do you have to spend to get terminal server? How many terminal server sessions can you run on one windows comfortably?

"So you think its better to have servers which don't integrate with your corporate network? $400 for Web edition isn't a whole lot to anyone running web farms."

Why are you comparing a crippled web server edition to a real operating system?

"Your opinion, there's no fact to that. I replace my linux server at home with SBS 2003 because its easier to manage the network using SBS2003 than it was with Linux + SMB."

ZDNET in Australia did a study in which they found that a typical unix sysadmin administered significaly more machines then a typical windows admin. If I can remember correctly it was something like a third more servers per admin. But I get your point. One windows server easier to admin for a monkey then unix server is.

"You can easily save an image of a Windows installtion as well."

Windows back up is a joke. Unless you are prepared to spend some serious money you can't have real practical bare metal recovery. Your choices are to shut down the machine once in a while to image it or spend tens of thousands of dollars for veritas. Everything else is lame and only half works.

Re:Short memories

[bheer]

> Logs them off or supsends their session, which can be gotten back later? I seem to remember the latter.

Locks them out really (not technically a suspend). The GP was wrong.

Re:Short memories

[fredrik70]

indeedm if there ever was a IDE that made me go 'pwoarrr!' that's intelliJ, sadly I'm now all in c# world, but not all it lost, resharper# (by the very same company who makes intelliJ) is there to help - a bit at least

Re:Short memories

[BiggyP]

So

I've never used Win64; I've read other peoples comments that they thought it was better than WinXP32 (it sounded like there were features in WinXP64 not in 32, but I don't know one way or the other)

coupled with

The point is though that 64-bit windows isn't as much of a joke as you make it out to be.

Doesn't exactly help your argument, does it?

Re:Short memories

[kz45]

I'm not aware of that many "development studios" for Unix. There's a couple, like eclipse and such, but many Unix writers tend to work a different way. In line with the Unix philosophy (rules 1, 3, 4, 5, 7 and 8 if you're interested) there's a lot of people who keep the editor, compiler, linker etc all seperate. If you're looking for a "development studio" for Unix, I think you're looking for the wrong thing. We don't have a Start Menu either. :)

mostly because there are no standardized guis for unix (unless you count KDE/GNOME). GUI development with an actual development studio (delphi,cbuilder,Visual Studio) can reduce the time to complete a project considerably.

Also, what is the point in keeping the compiler, linker, and editor separate?

up-front licences payments (which are immoral, in my opinion) normally end up being a far less weildy solution than Free Unix is) And in my, and the grandparents opinion, it's an unjustified cost.

up-front licensing costs are immoral? Redhat, Mysql, and many other companies based on open source projects require up-front licensing costs.

Re:Short memories

[Anonymous Coward]

So you think its better to have servers which don't integrate with your corporate network? $400 for Web edition isn't a whole lot to anyone running web farms.

WTF? What planet do you do business on? On my planet, Earth, adding THIRTY TO FIFTY PERCENT to the fixed cost of a rack unit is a pretty big deal. Have you ever compared prices on Windows and Linux hosting? That huge pricing difference is there for a reason.

No, I'm not a Linux fan, not at all. But talk sense. Windows is better and it costs more. The two are related IMO.

Re:Short memories

[plague3106]

You're kidding right? How about having one computer service the applications? Why should I install and run Office on my laptop when my overpowered, underutilized 300Wh desktop can run it [twice no less] without blinking an eye.

Because unless you're on the same network there is considerable lag for remote controlling system (Windows or Linux). You say your desktop is overpowered an underutilized, but if you turn your laptop into a dumb terminal, than you're laptop will be overpowered and underutilized, will it not? The fact is that most people don't WANT anyone else use the computer at the same time they are. Remember, you are the EXCEPTION not the rule.

Or how about you're on the computer and I gotta get a file or something off it.

That's what the quick user switch is for; I'm using it, I press Windows+L, you click your user and login, copy the file, logout and then I go back to what I was doing. Or there is this thing called filesharing, which doesn't require you to login to a console session.

Or how about the other myriad of multi-user tasks [remote shells anyone?]

Again, you're an exception case here. 99% of home user's DON'T CARE about remote shells.

Quite a few actually. when I say "VS" I mean the IDE and RAD tools and not the compiler. Look at kdevelop, it's largely attempting to clone VS. Seems there is enough draw for it.

I agree, quite a few probably, but probably not enough to make it economically viable; that is, sales wouldn't cover the cost to port, test, maintain and support the Linux version. I'm not sure how kdevelop is a clone of VS, as it didn't seem to function anything like VS. Kdevelop was one of those frustrations I talked about in another story.

Re:Short memories

[plague3106]

Doesn't exactly help your argument, does it?

Obviously, because you can't trust anyone, you must experience everything for yourself.

On that note, off to Iraq so that I can do my own news gathering.

Re:Short memories

[tomstdenis]

Because unless you're on the same network there is considerable lag for remote controlling system (Windows or Linux). You say your desktop is overpowered an underutilized, but if you turn your laptop into a dumb terminal, than you're laptop will be overpowered and underutilized, will it not? The fact is that most people don't WANT anyone else use the computer at the same time they are. Remember, you are the EXCEPTION not the rule.

It used to be quite the opposite. It's the exception now because DOS [and most of windows] was single-user and became so damn wide spread. If the IBM-PC shipped with UNIX instead of MS-DOS we'd be telling a different story today.

Most people don't even KNOW they can run multiple users at a time on their computer let alone are motivated enough to do it. This is because Windows culture breeds contempt for choice and ignorance all around. It's apparently "better" to be naive and controlled then knowledgeable and decisive.

Again, you're an exception case here. 99% of home user's DON'T CARE about remote shells.

Again people just don't know the power of it.

I agree, quite a few probably, but probably not enough to make it economically viable; that is, sales wouldn't cover the cost to port, test, maintain and support the Linux version. I'm not sure how kdevelop is a clone of VS, as it didn't seem to function anything like VS. Kdevelop was one of those frustrations I talked about in another story.

You'll never know unless they actually try. I think it would be sellable and there would be enough of a market. The trick is they actually have to make it and support it. Of course the irony of it is that the cost of porting it is higher because they use platform dependent GUI widgets and other elements [threads, etc].

So the very thing that locks customers into Windows, locks Microsoft into Windows as well. It hinders their ability to take their independent products and branch them out. VS shouldn't exist to prop windows up, it should exist to make software development easier.

Tom

Re:Short memories

[JavaIsGreat]

Thats great buddy. Please do not call India. Start a flamewar and change the directions of economy. Kindly Read The World is Flat.

Re:Short memories

[JavaIsGreat]

Sorry, but with modern windows, what exactly is missing that dis-qualifies it from being a real multi-user OS? And FWIW, I've found VS2005 to be much better than any development studio I've tried for linux. ---- Please try Sun Java Studio Enterprise Edition and Sun Java Studio Creator or IDEAJ --------- Currently I am not qualified enough to comment on rest of your comments.

Re:Short memories

[plague3106]

It used to be quite the opposite. It's the exception now because DOS [and most of windows] was single-user and became so damn wide spread. If the IBM-PC shipped with UNIX instead of MS-DOS we'd be telling a different story today.

Wow, you can see the future as it would have happened? Pretty impressive.

Most people don't even KNOW they can run multiple users at a time on their computer let alone are motivated enough to do it. This is because Windows culture breeds contempt for choice and ignorance all around. It's apparently "better" to be naive and controlled then knowledgeable and decisive.

Or most people don't know why they'd need to buy a $400 dumb terminal when they have have a full blown computer for the same price. Most people don't care if their computer can support multiple users because they only have one keyboard, mouse and monitor. Oh, and there's the chance you can keep working if the network goes down.

Again people just don't know the power of it.

Bull, most people don't care, for the reasons I've already given. What are you going to say when Johnny wants to play Doom 3 but isn't at the console?

You'll never know unless they actually try. I think it would be sellable and there would be enough of a market.

No, that's not true at all. You see, there are a lot of products when never get manufactured because research shows there simply isn't an interest. Given the attitude of the Linux crowd here, how many do you think would actualy buy VS2005 for Linux? I'm sure there will be some, but not many. Especially given that most people here hate MS just to hate MS.

It hinders their ability to take their independent products and branch them out. VS shouldn't exist to prop windows up, it should exist to make software development easier.

But if VS can do both (foster the creation of windows only applications) AND make software development easier, then it seems the logical choice to keep VS Windows only. Those facts, combined with the small market for VS on Linux, means it doesn't make sense to port VS.

Re:Short memories

[BiggyP]

Please do quote some sources then, or is there a need to keep their identity a secret?

Re:Short memories

[plague3106]

It was comments I read in passing, nothing I recorded. Perhaps you should try google? OTOH, you never quote any sources that say 64 bit windows is a joke either... so STFU.

Re:Short memories

[triffid_98]

Last I checked, VS depends heavily on Windows COM libraries. I mean, you could port the IDE, but without the libraries behind it why would anyone want to use it? And yeah, IntelliJ IDEA > Eclipse > VS.

Why wouldn't they? Linux is the no.2 server OS last time I heard with a not-insubstantial slice of that very significant market.

Re:Short memories

[Cal Paterson]

mostly because there are no standardized guis for unix (unless you count KDE/GNOME). GUI development with an actual development studio (delphi,cbuilder,Visual Studio) can reduce the time to complete a project considerably.

This statement does not make sense. Unless you count the Windows desktop, Windows XP has no standardised GUI either. We do have standardised "GUIs" (you even mentioned two of them!) Personally, I think that the competition between the desktop enviroments is probably beneficial to the overall standard of desktop enviroments on Free Unix. I don't use anything that could be called a "desktop enviroment", though (neither GNOME or KDE).

GUI development doesn't actually increase the speed of development any more than a GUI increases speed of file management. I can promise you that a skilled vim or emacs user is probably far more productive in their inviroment that you could ever be in theirs. It's not the bitmapped display which makes the difference - it's the design of the software.

Also, what is the point in keeping the compiler, linker, and editor separate?

It is understandable if you disagree with the point, but if you don't actually know the reasons for modularity, then you really need to read up more. It's not like it's a new concept, and it's not like I didn't reference the concept in my previous post. Unix was conceived over 35 years ago, and is still a well used, and high quality family of Operating Systems. A big part of this is due to the design decisions made when it was originally invisaged; modularity is one such rule.

up-front licensing costs are immoral? Redhat, Mysql, and many other companies based on open source projects require up-front licensing costs.

They do require up-front licencing costs, but it's isn't quite the costs themselves are immoral. Due to Red Hat and MySQL's business structure, no one is forced to pay those licencing costs (thought there are good reasons to do so, including high quality support). Red Hat is GPL, and so Free copies of the system are distributed (see CentOS). MySQL only charge licences for non-GPL usage. Microsoft do not provide source code, and they also force people to pay licence fees if they want to use the software. This is the immoral behavior that I refer to (Microsoft should provision source code to their customers, and allow free use, alteration and improvement).

I have no objection to either Red Hat or MySQL charging fees for purchases; Free Software doesn't mean zero cost (though it normally does; and in effect ensures that the software is free beer from someone). When you buy a copy of RHEL, you get source code, ensuring yourself, and your community, Freedom.

Re:Short memories

[BiggyP]

Hehe, ok, that told me, you should probably note that I am not making any claims at all about win64, that's entirely your doing, and unsubstantiated ones at that, there's really no need to get stroppy about it.

Re:Short memories

[kz45]

This statement does not make sense. Unless you count the Windows desktop, Windows XP has no standardised GUI either. We do have standardised "GUIs" (you even mentioned two of them!) Personally, I think that the competition between the desktop enviroments is probably beneficial to the overall standard of desktop enviroments on Free Unix. I don't use anything that could be called a "desktop enviroment", though (neither GNOME or KDE).

XP does have a standardized GUI. Every windows development environment utilizes it. There is a set of APIs that you can use to create windows, track mouse movements,etc.

GUI development doesn't actually increase the speed of development any more than a GUI increases speed of file management. I can promise you that a skilled vim or emacs user is probably far more productive in their inviroment that you could ever be in theirs. It's not the bitmapped display which makes the difference - it's the design of the software.

I can visualize and create programs at least 2 or 3 times faster with a GUI based development studio than VI,pico, or emacs.

They do require up-front licencing costs, but it's isn't quite the costs themselves are immoral. Due to Red Hat and MySQL's business structure, no one is forced to pay those licencing costs (thought there are good reasons to do so, including high quality support). Red Hat is GPL, and so Free copies of the system are distributed (see CentOS). MySQL only charge licences for non-GPL usage. Microsoft do not provide source code, and they also force people to pay licence fees if they want to use the software. This is the immoral behavior that I refer to (Microsoft should provision source code to their customers, and allow free use, alteration and improvement).

I want a ferrari...but it requires an "up-front cost". Is this immoral too? They aren't "forcing" anything. They are offering a product for sale. You have a choice to buy it or not.

It is understandable if you disagree with the point, but if you don't actually know the reasons for modularity, then you really need to read up more

That's such a back-handed and arrogent comment..I don't even know why I am responding to the rest of your posts.

They do require up-front licencing costs, but it's isn't quite the costs themselves are immoral. Due to Red Hat and MySQL's business structure, no one is forced to pay those licencing costs (thought there are good reasons to do so, including high quality support). Red Hat is GPL, and so Free copies of the system are distributed (see CentOS). MySQL only charge licences for non-GPL usage. Microsoft do not provide source code, and they also force people to pay licence fees if they want to use the software. This is the immoral behavior that I refer to (Microsoft should provision source code to their customers, and allow free use, alteration and improvement)

Microsoft and other proprietary application companies have a business to run..with their biggest asset being the source-code. They don't want to give it out because it would
basically create direct competition to them (and they would lose money).

It is not an issue with morality (why do zealots like you continue to turn software into some kind of religious or political movement). Micrsoft sells a product..some people buy it..others do not. You have a choice to buy it or use one of the countless other alternatives on the market today.

I have no objection to either Red Hat or MySQL charging fees for purchases; Free Software doesn't mean zero cost (though it normally does; and in effect ensures that the software is free beer from someone). When you buy a copy of RHEL, you get source code, ensuring yourself, and your community, Freedom

It doesn't really give you much. 99% of the population do not even utilize these "freedoms"..which is probably why the majority of people don't really get upset when they don't have the source code to a new application.

I like having the freedom to create and sell proprietary applications.

Re:Short memories

[Cal Paterson]

XP does have a standardized GUI. Every windows development environment utilizes it. There is a set of APIs that you can use to create windows, track mouse movements,etc.

Well, actually, that was a sarcastic comment. I was pointing out how stupid your comment was, but I didn't count on you being so stupid that you didn't understand me.

To quote, you said; "mostly because there are no standardized guis for unix (unless you count KDE/GNOME)". This is somewhat akin to saying something like "excluding George Bush, America doesn't even have a president". I tried to point that out, but obviously do didn't get it, so I have the delicious pleasure of handing your ass back to you a second time.

I want a ferrari...but it requires an "up-front cost". Is this immoral too? They aren't "forcing" anything. They are offering a product for sale. You have a choice to buy it or not.

This is a different issue, and I'm pretty sure you know exactly what I mean. When you buy a Ferrari, you can change the tires. You can repaint. You can swap the seats out. Imagine if someone sold you the Ferrari, and wouldn't let you change the tires, or repaint, or get new seats. Imagine they tried to sue you and put you in jail if you did. Imagine if they had to make their car design really poor and slow and unrepairable if you got certain problems, because they didn't want you to have control over something you own. That's exactly what Microsoft do, and you're so blinded by your own ignorance that you make up stupid car analogies to mis-represent the facts of the case.

Next time you want to compare two things, instead of pulling an deliberately mis-concieved imaginary situation out of your ass, try actually using the facts of the situation itself. That way, what you're saying will have the illusion of relevance, instead of making it look like you need to alter the actual situation by using the cover of an invented, idiotic analogy.

Microsoft and other proprietary application companies have a business to run..with their biggest asset being the source-code. They don't want to give it out because it would basically create direct competition to them (and they would lose money).

Again, you show that you don't actually know shit about the situation. Maybe you might want to google for the "Open Source Business Model". Then, maybe you want to google Red Hat's profits last year.

It is not an issue with morality (why do zealots like you continue to turn software into some kind of religious or political movement).

Because freedom of access to infomation, and the method of accessing infomation is an important political point.

Micrsoft sells a product..some people buy it..others do not. You have a choice to buy it or use one of the countless other alternatives on the market today.

Well done. You very nearly tricked a five year old child into getting sidetracked because you managed to counter a common criticism with a completely irrevelant statement.

Choice between alternatives products isn't the issue at all. The central issue is that people who do buy Microsoft products don't have the freedom they should have.

It doesn't really give you much. 99% of the population do not even utilize these "freedoms"..which is probably why the majority of people don't really get upset when they don't have the source code to a new application.

Another basic mis-understanding. Are you saying that 99% of the users don't install any extra software on their machines? Everyone benefits from source code. While not-everyone reads the source code directly, everyone can make use of the products of the people that do. I don't read the source code for the X.org X11 daemon, but if the programmers of fluxbox hadn't, I wouldn't have the desktop enviroment that I use. While I don't personally check every line of the OpenBSD source code, I can benefit from the public review pr

Linux administrators

[marcello_dl]

From TFBlurb: "...without having to become a Linux administrator"

Thank $DEITY I did try getting Linux desktops on my home network and shortly after settled for apt-based distros. Linux administration is a breeze compared to windows. Desktop users' life is also good if peripherals are recognized, especially if by OSS drivers. Your mileage may vary cause most of you were familiar with windows in the first place, I came from good old macos. Anyway I don't care to try and convince you with examples. Those who are curious don't need my opinion, and the lazy ones are better of wherever they are.

Back to topic: .net is faster? maybe. That is a reason to revert from open source, not memory hungry, nice to code with stacks to Microsoftland? haha, no. Apart from the main reason (Freedom), the secondary reason (smalltalk on net is not like ruby on rails), if people reverted back to Microsoft Microsoft would revert back to itself in the 90's. Are you sure you want that? [N/N]

Re:Linux administrators

[drinkypoo]

Back to topic: .net is faster? maybe. That is a reason to revert from open source, not memory hungry, nice to code with stacks to Microsoftland? haha, no. Apart from the main reason (Freedom), the secondary reason (smalltalk on net is not like ruby on rails), if people reverted back to Microsoft Microsoft would revert back to itself in the 90's. Are you sure you want that? [N/N]

Actually, the general consensus I've seen is that .net is a joy to use, more or less no matter which of the .net-managed languages you're using. On the other hand, your last bit at the end is completely correct and there's tons of reasons not to support Microsoft - supporting Microsoft is supporting computing fascism.

Re:What a farce

[uioreanu]

I think any test can be criticised; main reasons are usually tainted environments or lack of tuning. What is interesting here is the conclusion, and since the article made it to the slashdot/* crowd, it might probably someday get to IT managers / decision makers

Re:Benchmarking Strategy Doesn't Matter Here

[ThinkFr33ly]

I agree. In fact, I'm a fan of a lot of Microsoft stuff. (*ducks*) I've developed systems that were blazing fast and were written with .NET.

I'm just saying that, in this case, the benchmark is completely useless. It would be like conducting a drug trial to determine if a particular drug works, but letting the participants also take any other drugs they want in addition to smoking some crack on the weekends.

Re:And if...

[blazerw11]

And if the title read "OSS Web Stacks Outperforms .Net" I would bet it would not say anything like this The article's conclusion is that .Net outperforms the open source stacks, mainly because of its tighter integration, but also notes that running the open source stacks on Windows (WAMP) delivered strong performance.

It is important to note that strong is not stronger and, in fact, could mean weaker. Couldn't it?

Also, in our imaginary world, the article might say: The conclusion is that OSS outperforms the .Net stack, mainly because of a stronger development model, but also notes that running the .Net stacks on OSS is impossible.

I only skimmed the article

[SCHecklerX]

...but which 'P' did they use? Did they use mod_perl or mod_python, or just call things as straight CGI scripts? That would certainly kill performance. Did they preload often-used subroutines into the embedded apache stuff?

Re:I only skimmed the article

[stuntpope]

They list the tested portals in the fifth paragraph, and none of them are straight CGI. They didn't use mod_perl because no Perl-based portal was tested. They didn't use mod_python because the Python test was against Plone, which runs on Zope's ZServer. I understood from the article that they tested with requests going straight to the appserver, with no Apache intermediary.

Re:Benchmarking Strategy Doesn't Matter Here

[gerrysteele]

it does seem like they have never heard of the scientific method at all, only see it fly past; in the hope of making people think its a fair test.

Issue 1: SUSE Enterprise Linux: i ran this at home as a file and web server. even there it performs very very slowly, i can't imagine it as an enterprise server. In the article they say its the closest to a pure LAMP stack one can get. Clearly nonsense as it is deemed to have proprietary software on board. I've recently replaced it with debian sarge, performing the exact same tasks. harder to configure? no, it just doesn't have GUI tools to configure it. eWeek labs clearly don't have anyone who knows anything about linux or they wouldn't have used SLES.

Issue 2: Comparing random portal platforms tells you what about what? thats right... feck all.

Issue 3: eWeek and Ziff Davis are located just north of microsofts anus.

stacks?

[MobyDisk]

Am I the only person who has never heard of the word "stack" in this context?

Wikipedia: stacks - Nope
Google definition of stack - Nope.
Urban Dictionary: stack - Nope.
Dictionary.com - stack - Nope
Google search "IT stack" - Only hit is the eweek article.

I think they made up this term.

s/stack/platform/g
or
s/stack/framework/g

Re:stacks?

[Just Some Guy]

Google - lamp stack: 2,450,000 results.

Yes, you're apparently the only one.

Re:stacks?

[booch]

It's right there at the bottom of the Wikipedia page you referenced -- solution stack. It's been there since May, merged in from the page on computer stacks.

No wonder Linux sucked!

[Just Some Guy]

For our tests, we ran what is essentially a pure Zope/Plone implementation, with Plone running on a SUSE Enterprise Linux system.

In some benchmarks, Plone was an average performer, sticking close to the middle. This is actually better than we expected, given that the Plone documentation is very upfront about the fact that Plone shouldn't be used alone in a production environment and should be run behind other servers to improve performance.

So, they ran an outward-facing Zope server (after being explicitly told not to) and the performace was lackluster? Go figure. In the real world, they'd run Zope behind an Apache or Squid proxy (as per every installation recommendation I've ever seen) which would immediately boost throughput by an order of magnitude. In short, using Zope to dynamically generate static content instead of caching the results whenever possible is insane, and pretty much no one does it. They also apparently forgot about ZEO, although I'm not sure how you can be savvy enough to get Zope up and populated without knowing about it's built-in clustering.

Apparently they had no interest in any tuning whatsoever, to the point of de-tuning it by installing it in an explicitly unrecommended configuring. And then it lost. Go figure.

Re:No wonder Linux sucked!

[Ambassador Kosh]

There are other issues also. Zope/Plone has a far better security system that the .NET stack by a LONG shot. Every connection is run as the user that made the connection, every since object/attribute/method that is accessed is security checked to make sure it is okay. Having security issues with zope is pretty much unheard of. Over the past 5 years or so there have only been a handful of issues and almost all of them required someone to be able to edit things like dtml, python scripts or zpt which is not common for anyone other then those maintaining the site.

The other issue is that while zope itself is pretty darn fast plone is not. It really needs the whole caching system to get acceptable speed. Mostly plone has been written to make it easier for novices to get stuff up and running and without shooting themselves in the foot, it has not been written for speed.

There are other tuning things that are recommended to do also like the object cache. By default it is very very low so that zope won't use much memory. I think it default to about 2000 objects in the cache however most people probably run it with 20000 or more.

Re:Not so fast

[drinkypoo]

The article mentions that the Linux test system was "untuned." If this means "out of the box, running a kernel compiled for i386 and without any network tuning" then these results are hardly informative.

Well, they don't tell us the overall performance, but they do tell us what a basic install will do. In theory, enterprise linux distributions should be detecting the CPU and installing the proper kernel image/modules/etc. NT manages to configure itself properly no matter what [supported] CPU is in the box.

In fact, although I don't believe it either one of Microsoft's bullet points for selling NT is that it's "self-tuning".

Re:Benchmarking Strategy Doesn't Matter Here

[drinkypoo]

What's a good resource for learning ASP.NET? I'm using classic ASP right now and I know that it will fall by the wayside soon enough... I'm currently stumbling my way through developing a dynamic website and the sooner I can start reimplementing it in ASP.NET the better.

Trains and planes

[oglueck]

1. They say no word about the problem and the implementation of the solutions. Results may vary depending on the problem.
2. Comparing J2EE/.NET to PHP/Plone is bollocks. Problems that are solved with J2EE/.NET today are so complex that choosing PHP/Plone instead is no option. It's like comparing trains to airplanes.
3. Where are tables, figures and graphs?

Re:Trains and planes

[oglueck]

Answering myself:

Some tables and figures are here.
Plus JBoss has answered the "study" with a nice blog entry:

Test Goals?

[tinkerghost]

After reading the artical, and I hope there is some more real data somewhere as it's a piece of fluff, what I think they did was take a chunk of different web stacks using portals and compare them. That - to a degree - is fair. If I want to impliment a new setup, the first thing I am going to do is see what everyone else is running & how it works. Duplicating their setup and running a benchmark for web serving is a reasonable way to do that.
Can I run exactly the same benchmark against the different portals - no because the portals themselves are different.
Does the database choice influence the performace - absolutely, but it's not a matter of optimizing here - it's what is common in production.
Does the build of linux/apache effect the results - not so much within the same kernel build - distro choice is not going to make a huge difference.
Does the choice of 'P' effect the results - yes - they say as much by puting in a note that PHP is not designed for performance and better performance could probably be garnered from Zend tech.
The problem that bothered me was that they didn't tune anything. That's part of the test - they used essentially default settings for the whole LAMP/WAMP/WNet stack. That's where I think the major issue is going to be located. Tuning Apache is certainly an art, but the basics are fairly well defined. The configuration needed to run a high volume - dynamic page server is very different from a casual server on a junk box in the basement, and different still from a high volume static page server. This follows through with the SQL server and the script interpreter also - tuning is important to get the type of performance an enterprise is going to need/want.
The artical points out that they feel the major benifit of the WNet stack is the tight integration of the components - and thus the complimentary configurations and expectations of the components. I would like to see 2 more stages for this benchmarking. First, the default vs the tuned performance of the various configurations. Second, a mix & match of the MP components to get an idea of how exactly the various combinations of SQL servers and Script languages interact.

Very accurate comparison . . .

[izam_oron]

Who knew that a stateless, event-driven constantly running MVC-like framework would outperform scripting languages that had to be reset for each request? It's a good thing they didn't compare stuff such as RoR or Django with FastCGI and page cache, or else ASP.NET wouldn't look as great as it did in this article and eWeek would feel ashamed for still using the obsoleted ASP . . . well, that last one should be valid either way, especially since they WTFA.

Re:Benchmarking Strategy Doesn't Matter Here

[ThinkFr33ly]

These are all excellent books.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0735619034/ (ASP.NET 1.x)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0201760401/ (ASP.NET 1.x)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0735621764/ (ASP.NET 2.x)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0735621772/ (ASP.NET 2.x)

Re:Benchmarking Strategy Doesn't Matter Here

[cshirky]

You are correct -- people who don't want to hear the truth won't hear it, no matter how clearly presented. You seem, however, to be drawing a false conclusion from that, which is that the truth doesn't matter. In working social systems, accurate criticism creates effective responses, no matter what the disbelievers do. If the study had been well done and well presented, instead of badly done and badly presented, people who do care about the truth could have set about fixing or imporving any bottlenecks in the OS stack. Considered in that light, the study, as presented, simply punts the question of truth, because it is not described clearly enough either to replicate or react to.

Re:Don't forget that, besides the software vendor

[Bedouin X]

I wonder how many enterprise projects truly have "a requirement to work nicely across arbitrary hardware platforms." Web apps and services seem to make the platform that code is running on irrelevant. Hence the ado about SOA and such.

Re:Like saying 'A Ferrari outperforms a Mini'

[DuckDodgers]

That's a poor analogy. Microsoft software is a Ferrari, and by comparison Open Source is a Mini? I don't think so.

A better analogy is this, because they refused to do any tuning on the OSS technologies: They bought a Mustang GT and a Nissan 350z and put them in a race. Then they told the driver of the Nissan that he could only use first and second gear. It would be nice if the Nissan was so dramatically superior that it could win even with that handicap, but since even a Ferrari would lose to a Mustang GT with just two forward gears at its disposal, it didn't happen.

Re:Don't forget that, besides the software vendor

[billwert]

.net 2.0 naitvely supports x86, x64, and ia64, fyi.

Re:The article is NOT that *informative*

[Phillup]

Here is a direct link to the tests.

This tells us little to nothing about the tests... only their results.

Big difference.

(it isn't your link that is bad, the article is lacking)

Re:I don't really understand what they are testing

[Phillup]

Anyone have a closer hunch?

Just guessing, but...

They needed an article that would appeal to a certain kind of advertiser and it had to fit in the smallest space possible.

If I may expand upon your post ...

[khasim]

You raise some excellent points. If I may be allowed to expand upon them ...

#1. Set a price limit. You can set multiple limits ($1,000 vs $5,000 vs $25,000 vs $100,000 vs $1,000,000+). The key concept here is that you get different characteristics as your budget increases/decreases. What characteristics does each "stack" offer in each price range? Yep, this does give the advantage to Free stacks (Free like speech, free like beer). Deal with it. In the Real World the bottom line is the bottom line. Each team gets to spend the money however they want to.

#2. Get the "experts" to tune each stack. BUT they must document each modification they make, including WHY they made that modification (what testing did they run and how did those test results tell them what mod's to make) AND they are only allowed to make mod's that can be found via public websites (no secret tuning parameters that are only known to the organization writing that software) AND they aren't allowed to touch any source code. They get what everyone else gets.

#3. The fun part. Each team gets to pull apart the work of the other teams. Even if your solution is faster for the specs given, how much wiggle room do you have? Is faster and fragile better than slower and stable? How much "slower" is acceptable for how much more "stable"? Can the other team defeat your security (network access only)?

#4. Freeze those systems. Then, over the next year, patch them and re-test them. Do the patches break the "tuning" that was done?

Now that would be an informative test process (and would result in lots of articles and interviews for the magazine publishing it).

Yeah, you can run Linux / Apache / MySQL / perl on a single drive workstation and get damn good performance for less than $300.

But that will be completely different from Oracle / Java on a cluster of Suns costing $10,000,000. And not just in the number of boxes you'd be running.

Re:If I may expand upon your post ...

[sparkz]

To be fair, the source code should be modifiable (when that is a customer option) - that is, you can say "A COTS customer could tweak the source by paying the vendor $x for access + paying a developer $y to update it; a FLOSS customer could tweak the source by paying a developer $y to update it" It may be that $x==infinity in some COTS cases (whilst $x=0 for FLOSS) As for getting competing teams to test each others' solutions, you will end up going round and round in circles, with no publishable article that everybody will sign up to. Maybe each team should provide a (fully documented) test suite which rates all possible solutions. This should be done "blind" - that is, each team should provide an answer of "Here is my web server; here is my test suite" without having seen any other team's solutions. (This doesn't have to be vendor-vs-vendor, it could be firewalled teams of journalists). Each web server (let's stick with the easy (web server) stuff for now; for real results, you need complex apps, but then the whole benchmarking thing falls apart, so we'll ignore that inconvenient detail completely!) is provided, with its test suite, which matches provided criteria ("do logon", "request search results for x y z", etc) Even with the above, you could be scuppered from the start, as the journo would have to specify a standard API (eg, "http://example.com/search?q=x+y+z") for equivalent tests to be provided by each team; one team might be able to provide a better solution with another method (maybe Cookies, or whatever - this is too simplistic an example to give real results)

Re:Benchmarking Strategy Doesn't Matter Here

[Wylfing]

No study that concludes Microsoft's product is faster, more efficient or "better" in any way will ever be accepted here because holes can be poked in the methodology of any study. ANY study.

Nobody is asking for a bulletproof study. What we want is a study that (a) uses a valid sample size and (b) limits itself, as near as possible, to a single well-defined variable while controlling for all the other variables. A study with a tiny sample size is worthless. A study with 45 variables is worthless. Things that seem insignificant, like inequal expertise with the systems being tested, can distort the results to the point where they don't mean anything. You have to control for such things (or explain why you didn't) in order to be taken seriously.

Doing quality research requires taking great care with methodology. In addition you must always try to state where your own methodology may be faulty. Not taking care (which they didn't) and then compounding the error by not stating potential faults (which they didn't) means this study is not research. It's agenda-pushing.

I don't have any issue with real research that shows .Net frameworks are faster than LAMP frameworks. That would be an interesting result, but only if the study was conducted properly.

All well and good but...

[Maxo-Texas]

As recently as last month, one of our customers corrected their very peculiar connection issues by replacing their windows server with a linux server. For some reason the windows server was changing the acknoledgement part of the TCP header- for the same client- at the same computer- for every transmission.

Windows Servers/App languages doesn't seem to scale well. It's a *great* way to get your business up and running asap. But you run into growth problems and need to switch to an enterprise solution (oracle, as/400, java, linux, etc.) once you reach a certain size. I still prefer windows as a desktop OS for now. I still slightly prefer windows office to openoffice. I think part of that is years of using office makes me comfortable but openoffice gets closer every day to replacing it for my home and personal use. I will probably not buy another version of office unless it is super cheap ($50/included free on the PC I buy).

Not so unlikely

[Toreo asesino]

I'm not surprised by this conclusion. Think about it for a minute; the .Net system was only ever truly designed to run on Windows which means the run-time's roots can go deep into the inner workings of the OS - kernel-level HTTP servicing for instance (a win2003 feature I recall).

In fact, so tightly integrated are .NET and Windows Server 2003 that I believe Microsoft were going to call it Windows Server 2003.NET at one point until they dropped the idea and opted for plain "Windows Server 2003" instead.

That by design would give the extra performance gain, but of course lose flexibility too - something the article didn't explore much.

Essentially this is just another "flexibility vs. performance" argument here.

Re:Don't forget that, besides the software vendor

[mydigitalself]

Forgive my ignorance, but isn't x86 one of the cheaper - if not cheapeast - price:performance architectures? Doesn't Google run hundreds of thousands of really cheap x86 boxes with their clustering flavour as opposed to say a few hundred really large scale Sun boxes?

And, furthermore, what's the problem with being tied to a completely open architecture as opposed to a proprietary architecture? (heaven forbid! this is /., right or did I accidently stumble upon a Mac site that looks exactly like /.?)

Wrong side of the coin

[booch]

While performance is important, it's not even remotely the most important factor when deciding upon an API stack. It's much more important to have an environment that will help/let you code quickly. And other factors like flexibility, correctness, security, and reliability generally come before performance.

Re:Wrong side of the coin

[JustNiz]

>> And other factors like flexibility, correctness, security, and reliability generally come before performance.

Yep, those are almost exactly the reasons why my company chose to never use the Microsoft stack ( or come to that, most of their other products too ).

I said it doesn't matter "here"

[Petersko]

You seem, however, to be drawing a false conclusion from that, which is that the truth doesn't matter. In working social systems, accurate criticism creates effective responses, no matter what the disbelievers do.

Actually I specifically meant that the methodology (and potentially the truth, now that you mention it) doesn't matter HERE - on Slashdot.

You're right - it makes a difference to the world at large.

Re:Benchmarking Strategy Doesn't Matter Here

[adolfojp]

You can always start here. The best source for tutorials is google. ;-) Download the Visual Web Developer express for free. It might be the only Visual Studio that you ever need to develop .net web apps and web services. A lot of app wizards use SQL Server by default. If you are lazy like me you will be tempted to use them. I recommend not doing that. There are drivers for postgresql, mysql and just about everything else out there.

Some nice things that might help you out AFTER you've gotten your feet wet:
1. Data layer code generation with Mygeneration and dOOdads. http://www.mygenerationsoftware.com/
2. Well defined (clean) URLs: http://metasapiens.com/PageMethods/
3. Ajax (What you want is the UpdatePanel): http://atlas.asp.net/

The best advice that I can give you to make the transition is to think in terms of applications instead of scripts. That might not make sense now but eventually it will be obvious. And always use code-behind.

If you need any specific advice you can email me at my username at gmail. Helping each other is what the slashdot community should be about. :-)

What a completely useless set of results

[jimicus]

In fact, what a completely useless concept for article.

Hardware's cheap. People aren't, and the business certainly isn't

For any platform, chances are you're going to look at a whole bunch of variables:

• What your developers are used to if you're developing your own application (or commissioning someone else to).
  
• If you're getting your application(s) from elsewhere (either COTS or Free), what platform they need.
  
• What current systems you have and (if necessary) how easy it will be to integrate the application with those systems.
  
• What systems you have experience in running.
  
• If the application will be crucial to the business, how confident you feel in betting the business on it. This is where Windows often wins - in the minds of the many CTOs who don't consider "I've posted a query to a mailing list" an appropriate action to take when hitting a problem, or who don't want to discover 18 months down the line that a crucial security fix requires upgrading part of the platform which in so doing will break the application (I'm talking about you guys, PHP).
  

Performance is going to come way down near the bottom of the list unless the difference is absolutely huge and cannot be made up by throwing some extra money at either a bigger server or a number of servers, which is likely to be significantly cheaper than the cost of retraining all your staff or hiring a team to write to a specific platform.

It depends on configuration and how you measure it

[kimvette]

It depends on a lot more than just "is it IIS/.Net or is it LAMP?"

On equivalent hardware, with equivalent RAM, if you're running MySQL with the MyISAM engine it will blow away SQL Server performance for most queries, but at a cost: You do not have stored procedures or transactions. When you switch to InnoDB you gain those but take a performance hit and that advantage over SQL Server disappears. On the plus side, MySQL is free/free (unless you need the commercial license - which in turn depends on whether you bundle it with your application AND how you interface with MySQL AND the "license" of your software).

As far as .Net itself vs. php or .jsp - it depends largely on several things:

- What is the architecture and how efficient is the code? If you use, say, DotNetNuke as an example, it's a good argument AGAINST using .Net because performance (of at least 1.x.x versions, I haven't worked with it since) absolutely sucks to almost any PHP application.

- How much RAM can you throw at it, and is caching appropriate for your application? With fully dynamic web sites where pages may display random content (rotating images, randomized quote of the day, etc.) unless you override the caching mechanism, the cache can effectively break your web site. However if caching IS appropriate and/or you override it when necessary, .Net can provide blazing performance. Your code has to be very efficient and you often need to throw a real large amount of RAM at it. Also, when you start a .Net application, it can take a while for it to serve up the first page - a concern for Tuesday updates when you were forced to reboot for patches to finish installing.

- (related to above) are you comparing a poorly-coded, inefficient, beastly PHP application to a lightweight highly-optimized .Net application? Say, OS Commerce vs. a custom single-purpose .Net eCommerce application? I'd darn well expect .Net to blow away the LAMP solution, because OS Commerce is an inefficient beast - the only thing going for it is is that it's a "swiss army knife" open source eCommerce application. It does EVERYTHING, but sacrifices efficiency due to its hacked-together design. (yes, I'm using "hacked" as in "that guy is a hack"). On the converse, if you compare, say, DotNetNuke to mambo or Drupal and set out to provide the same or similar functionality, chances are that the LAMP solution will blow away .Net by any load test metrics you can come up with.

What is my point? Unless you are comparing apples to apples, it's FUD or at best an amateur comparison. The way to test it is to implement the same task with a similar (as possible) architecture on each platform, with the application on each fully optimized, with both IIS and apache/tomcat/whatever fully tuned and streamlined to pull out every bit of performance from it, then load test both of those using the same sorts of tests. Comparing a highly-optimized single-purpose application to a general-purpose portal platform is not a fair test.

Also: Even though the article says "Even the most ardent PHP fans will admit that PHP is not designed with performance in mind," PHP performs damn well considering it's heritage, the fact that its primary platform is "a patchy server" and that it is FREE.

Why would one choose LAMP over .Net? Licensing. Hardware costs. Have you ever set up a Windows cluster? It's not cheap, and even if you can come up with a cheap way to do it, you don't WANT to because it will be unreliable. SQL Server licensing is EXPENSIVE (or if the db is real advantage of Microsoft's .Net platform? The development tools, NO one has an IDE which is better than Microsoft's. Zend's PHP Studio is darn good, but the level of integration with documentation, the debugging environment, the code completion, and keyboard navigation does not match Visual

Pure and utter Bullsh*t.

[Qbertino]

Comparing Sharepoint to Zope is beyond silly.
Zope is an object relational application server, making it slower than anything else running standard DB's. Technologically wise Zope is ten years ahead of Sharepoint - this is payed for with performance hoging and heavy-weight memory usage. 2Gigs is not enough for running Zope/Plone in a serious production enviroment.
Sharepoint is a monolithic built-to-fit solution that was grown over the course of almost a decade and finally has turned into something that doesn't crash every odd hour and - at last - performs the way it was supposed to back in 2001.
Keeping in mind that Zope was allready working back in 2001 and actually hasn't changed all that much since then. The entire redo - Zop 3.0 - still is in developement.
Sharepoint is usually used for CMS purposes, while Zope is usually used for highly abstracted business application developement.
Nobody in his right mind would get the idea to build an ERP system with Sharepoint.

Bottom line:
These guys didn't know what they where testing.

Re:Pure and utter Bullsh*t.

[C_Kode]

This was supposed to be a test of stacks not what the application does. You can never get a perfect setup for testing the differences between two applications since every application is built differently. Although, what they present should sound an alarm about something that should be very important to the OSS community.

What I find they didn't present is how after a while, the Windows server takes three weeks to login too. IIS still serves the pages fine, but hah logging in to the console can be excruciatingly slow...

Wish they had tested open source .NET apps

[JoeAudette]

I wish they had tested open source .NET apps against open source non .NET apps. You really can't run sharepoint on public sites very easily or cheaply. There are a number of open source .NET portals they could have tested including
DotNetNuke http://www.dotnetnuke.com/ VB.NET
Rainbow Portal http://www.rainbowportal.net/ C#
or my favorite
mojoPortal http://www.mojoportal.com/ C# and also can run on linux with Mono

Cost

[MrCopilot]

To do a fair comparison I would like to see the Cost of the systems as set up.

To test the .Net stack, we ran Windows Server 2003 R2, SQL Server 2005 and SharePoint Portal Server 2003. Across the board, this configuration performed very well, with the top overall average throughput (by far) at 4.59M bps.

Quick check.....
$2,792.00 (Froogle Directron) Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise, 25 Clients
$5,489.18 (Froogle Non Academic) SQL Server 2005 Complete
$5,619.00 (MS Website Retail) SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Server License with 5 CALs

$1,124.00 (Dell) Suse Enterprise Linux 9 With Server Hardware
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx ?c=us&cs=555&l=en&oc=MLB1580&s=biz Couldn't find Suse Enterprise 10 Integrated LAMP Stackhttp://www.novell.com/products/linuxenterpris eserver/lamp.html

Hmmm, Could train a couple of Windows Admins with $11,000. Better yet just Hire a good Linux Admin.

To a large degree, we credit this strong showing to the high level of integration that exists among the components of this stack. While most of the open-source and Java systems are developed independently of each other, each of the .Net components is designed specifically to integrate and perform well together. Even if the .Net stack had bombed convincingly in these tests, it would probably still maintain popularity in many companies.

Some people (PHBs) will never come around.

But its strong showing should give companies confidence that the .Net stack will handle most high-level enterprise needs.

For more than $12Grand it better blow away the Free Alternatives and configure itself and require zero admin.

I know I will get slammed for not using TCO but I don't believe those numbers at all. In my experience it takes the same amount of time for day to day maintenance. And when there is a problem (and there will be, no matter which one you choose) It costs me less time and therefore money to bring back up the Linux box.

Cost is not the only factor in a buying decision but is a factor, and if performance is arguably equal than it is a huge factor.

VMware

[Poromenos1]

No, but I have considered running the Linux distro in it. For one, Ubuntu Server only has a command line and I don't know how I'd go about making it run there, and secondly I only need a few ports for the web server (80, 21, 22, maybe 1-2 more?). That would be a good solution, but the PC is a 667 MHz one and I don't know how well it can take it. I might put some memory on it and try it, though, it sounds like a good solution.

Re:VMware

[G Morgan]

Could you not apt a desktop environment. It doesn't have to be spectacular to be functional.

Re:VMware

[Poromenos1]

Hmm, I probably could. I thought it would require lots of configuration, but I've never known Ubuntu to be hard to use. Together with FreeNX, that would be a great solution, I'll try it.

Re:VMware

[G Morgan]

It can be done simply by running #sudo apt-get update then #sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop but that will install the standard ubuntu desktop which is a bit bloated. Personally I'd drag in the x server then run fluxbox if I had to run a desktop.

Con Kolivas

[peterfa]

http://members.optusnet.com.au/ckolivas/kernel/ I wonder how Con's patch would do in these tests. There are two patches, one for servers, and one for desktops. They make the box uber faster for its purpose, but it sucks ass for the oposite. Get the patch for the server, and the server is snappy. The patch isn't perfect, however. I use it for my desky. It's swift.

Re:Con Kolivas

[Teukels]

The patches do not make the box "uber faster for its purpose" no matter how much I'd like that.

Con has concentrated on the end user experience, perceived speed if you like. So he advocates boosting priority on processes which are 'interactive' i.e. the program you are working with. He has been lowering latencies and avoiding swap usage and reading ahead data. He also does not like stalls in his IO-scheduler, therefore he chooses the Fair 'CFQ' scheduler as default (instead of AS). While these measures might improve your desktop experience, I seriously wonder if your TPC's would improve.
He has really put a lot of effort into the Desktop experience and has released a server version of his patchset in which he disables the interactivity bits and rules out some things which do not make any sense on the server like having HZ=1000 for the process-scheduler. However, Con hasn't got big iron in his room and I would not (yet) advocate his server patch for any server.. Just as much as I would not use 2.6.17 vanilla in a production environment.
That being said I like Con's patches, I run it on my desktop and squeeze it even a little more.

Re:Benchmarking Strategy Doesn't Matter Here

[plague3106]

Go directly to .Net 2.0 if you can. There are HUGE improvements for ASP.Net in 2.0 (and in the framework itself).

something you didn't see in the article

[dino213b]

Ignoring the unscientific test and lack of version numbers and configuration file details, the article did not have a graph showing hits per second per dollar. Why? --- Division by zero. .Net is not free by any stretch of imagination, even if the hardware is identical (and taken out of the cost equation).

MS ASP.NET VS Mono+Apache ASP.NET

[chaim79]

Something I've wondered about and have started playing around with on my dev boxes is the performance/capabilities difference between running ASP.NET in an MS environment (win2k server + IIS, it's what I got) VS running ASP.NET on Mono (Linux (Ubuntu/RedHat) + Apache) if the performance is similer MS may soon find that they have totaly lost control of ASP.NET and it is now in the OSS wild.

a curious mix of flawed logic

[rs232]

A curious mix of flawed logic, marketing waffle and technical language.

"Probably most surprising was the solid performance that came from the .. mix of a Windows server and open-source components .. businesses should seriously consider the combo for their enterprise applications."

fud.alert: LAMP runs better on Windows.

Why would anyone move to Windows to use Open Source? Don't you still have to pay per simultaneous connection.

"Microsoft's .Net stack performed very well in our tests, clearly showing the benefits of the tight integration among each of the stack components"

How does 'tight integration', which is a function of how easy the sysop maintains the system, affect the efficiency of a running 'stack'. Does the stack know it is better 'integrated' and therefore runs like a happy bunny?

"JBoss Portal is relatively immature .. JBoss Portal on Windows performed considerably better than JBoss on .. CentOS"

fud.injection: JBoss on CentOS is immature. JBoss on Windows is better.

"we credit this strong showing to the high level of integration that exists among the components of this stack. While most of the open-source and Java systems are developed independently of each other, each of the .Net components is designed specifically to integrate and perform well together"

fud.injection: open-source and Java don't perform well together. Open Source runs better under Windows. Oh please Mr. Manager don't move off that Windows boxen.

"Neither the open-source nor the Windows communities seem to be able to accept a marriage of open-source server components and Windows operating systems"

What licensing restriction do the current ms.EULA put on Open Source projects developed with\and for Windows? Name any possible benefit that would be obtained by running Open Source on Windows? And don't mention the ease of use GUI. A proper sysop writes scripts to maintain the system.

"there are many IT managers attempting to run open-source .. on Windows .., no doubt, to the benefits and efficiencies of using open source without having to become Linux administrators"

How by any logic is it easier on Windows? This totally fails the logic test. Apache on Windows requires the same kind of config as Linux. Name any Open Source app that is easier to maintain under Windows. Provide concrete examples not opinion.

"JBoss on Windows far outpacing its Linux brethren"

I'm sure Marc Fleury would be interested in how Microsoft managed to get JBoss running faster on Windows.

"Enterprise IT managers shouldn't hesitate to look into the option of deploying open-source stacks on a Windows Server platform."

Yea, remember you still have your yearly tithe to pay Redmond. That's five seperate times in that article that you advised people to stick to 'open-source' on Windows. I do believe we have now all fully gotten the sub.text.

Re:a curious mix of flawed logic

[DuckDodgers]

How does 'tight integration', which is a function of how easy the sysop maintains the system, affect the efficiency of a running 'stack'. Does the stack know it is better 'integrated' and therefore runs like a happy bunny?

They probably meant that Microsoft takes advantage of the fact that they own the full source to the database, the operating system, the compiler, and the webserver and integrate them together. So in, say, LAMP, MySQL asks the kernel for a memory buffer, the kernel provides it, MySQL puts data in it, passes the data to Apache, who feeds it to PHP. There is probably some buffer copies along the way and maybe also some parsing and formatting of the data. 4 levels of communication. And really, it's exceedingly difficult for Apache developers to optimize communications with, say, PHP because they don't control the PHP development team.

Microsoft integrates pieces of IIS, SQL Server, and the .NET framework right into the kernel and controls all four. They might be able to set up common tasks in ASP .net (or whatever) so that the kernel allocates a buffer which SQL Server writes data to, and IIS and some .NET application read the data directly without any parsing, formatting, or buffer copies. Even if Microsoft doesn't do extensive tweaks/changes to make all four items interoperate seamlessly, it's likely that they've done things here and there to facilitate passing information between them and sharing processor cycles in an efficient way.

I think that's a very realistic explanation for good performance from the fully Microsoft stack. But I still think the article is suspicious because the OSS software stacks performed so much better on Windows than on Linux. I'm betting the performance tweaks they skipped on Linux were performed on Windows.

and they're good ones, too

[m874t232]

Yes, and those are actually good rules of thumb.

And it shouldn't be surprising when popular opinion (on /. or anywhere else) happens to agree with reality.

it's not "stacks", it's portals

[m874t232]

What they tested were "portals":

We used portals we consider popular--Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003 (built on ASP), XOOPS (PHP), Plone (Python), and Liferay and JBoss Portal (JSP).

Now, I know that Plone is a dog, and XOOPS may be popular on Sourceforge, but I don't think it's the most obvious choice for building a high performance portal using PHP. So, using these two as the basis for testing is silly.

The fact that JBoss Portal on Windows outpaces JBoss Portal on Linux has a simple reason: JBoss isn't fully open source; crucial parts of it (namely the Java runtime itself) are under Sun's control, and hell will freeze over before Sun bothers to do a good job implementing Java for their competitors' Linux systems.

As for things generally running faster on Windows, that's implausible. Differences between raw Windows and Linux system performance are at most in the single digit percentages, so if they saw any significant differences between the same applications running on top of the two platforms, either the application vendor spends more time tuning for Windows (as in Sun Java), or the testing labs screwed up.

In fact, the whole test is really ill conceived: none of the "portals" they compared provide the same functionality; it just doesn't make sense to test them against each other. Overall, this test mostly seems to test the competency of eWeek, and they aren't doing too well.

Re:it's not "stacks", it's portals

[sfjoe]

the fact that JBoss Portal on Windows outpaces JBoss Portal on Linux has a simple reason: JBoss isn't fully open source; crucial parts of it (namely the Java runtime itself) are under Sun's control, and hell will freeze over before Sun bothers to do a good job implementing Java for their competitors' Linux systems.

I was curious about the JBoss results as well. It seemed to me that this was the only valid area of the test. The rest of the test was more about testing different portals against one another than it was testing the OSS/MS stack in general. Do you have any data to back up your claim that the Windows JVM is faster than the Linux JVM ? Conspiracy theories aside, I don't envision Sun deliberately helping Microsoft.

Re:it's not "stacks", it's portals

[m874t232]

Do you have any data to back up your claim that the Windows JVM is faster than the Linux JVM?

Just my own experience. Note that they are probably about equal on microbenchmarks; it's the OS interfaces that usually kill Java on Linux, things like threading, graphics, and networking.

Conspiracy theories aside, I don't envision Sun deliberately helping Microsoft.

In Sun's twisted logic, providing good Java support on Windows and lousy Java support on Linux makes sense: they want to move large number of Windows developers to Java, but for Linux developers, their attitudes seem to range from "they don't have any alternatives anyway" to "they don't matter". And make no mistake about it, to Sun, Linux is a far greater threat than Windows.

it's their own fault that they can't win

[m874t232]

Microsoft has gotten so big that they are in the impossible position of trying to keep everyone happy.

No, they aren't in that situation, they put themselves into that situation. And that is exactly what is wrong with Microsoft: they want to be everything to everybody. They want their software to run everything. They want everything to be the same, uniform, for all users, for all applications, for the world.

Trying to create a universal operating system isn't just bad from a free market point of view, it's simply bad engineering. And because of Microsoft's monopolistic hold on the market, we all have to pay the price for their bad engineering.

Face it: Microsoft just can't win.

Sure they can. They can split up, and half a dozen mini-Microsoft's can compete separately in different markets, developing different solutions. Or, at least, they can stop trying to force a single solution down everybody's throat.

But, you're right, as long as Microsoft keeps up what they are doing, they will be criticized simultaneously as creating bloated software, as adding too many new features, and as being not innovative enough. And even though you may think that those statements are mutually contradictory, they are not; for each criticism, there is a large population of users for which it is true, and the only way to address that is for Microsoft to stop trying to be everything to everybody.

Re:it's their own fault that they can't win

[JacksBrokenCode]

No, they aren't in that situation, they put themselves into that situation

You contradict yourself a little bit there. I think what you are trying to say was that they weren't put in that position but that they did it to themselves and I completely agree. But regardless how they got there, they're there.

They want their software to run everything. They want everything to be the same, uniform, for all users, for all applications, for the world.

Not much different than Google, a comany "focused" on search that is offering a new app for almost every market, or Apple which makes everything from OS's to personal musical accessories. Many companies have broad focuses and it is difficult to excel in each field with such a wide array of products.

They can split up, and half a dozen mini-Microsoft's can compete separately in different markets

I'm a realist. I happen to think that's a bad idea because baby-Microsofts would probably be run in similar fashions to "Ma-Microsoft"'s strategies (without the monopolistic advantages, of course) and instead of 1 proprietary Office (or whatever) format there would be half a dozen proprietary baby-Office formats.

It's a nice ideal to think that the split-up "baby" companies would suddenly have new personalities and cultures, but realistically they probably won't.

VMWare question

[Kadin2048]

Hopefully this isn't too off-topic:

What are your experiences with the hardware requirements for successfully running Windows in a VM?

I'm thinking of trying the free version of VMWare on my Linux machine (running Kubuntu) so I can use some CAD programs that are unfortunately Windows-only; I think it'll be easier than spending a lot of time tweaking Wine, which I've had some mixed results with in the past. (Interestingly, I had better results with TG's Cedega for games, though.)

I don't mean what the bare-minimum requirements are for it, I'm thinking more of "comfortable" use. People allude to it being RAM-hungry, but I'm trying to get an idea of how much more RAM, if any, I'll need to buy. (Right now I have a P4 workstation with a paltry 512MB in it -- although surprisingly it rarely needs to swap during normal usage, even with KDE. =P )

Re:VMWare question

[mrnuxi]

What are your experiences with the hardware requirements for successfully running Windows in a VM?

If this was addressed to me (since I brought up the idea of running Windows as a virtual OS), I cannot answer as I am *planning* on running VMWare on a new machine (that I am currently putting together). Memory and disk are incredibly cheap these days, so why skimp on them? I would imagine the more power you have on your desktop, the better your experience will be using virtualization. Here's the current system I'm planning on getting (from Newegg):

• Antec P180 case $124.99
• SeaSonic S12-330 ATX12V 330W PSU $54.00
• MSI K8NGM2-FID Socket 939 motherboard $78.99
• G.SKILL 2GB(2x1GB) 184-Pin DDR 400 memory $164.49
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ dual-core CPU $357.00
• 3 Samsung 250gb SATAII disks $218.97
• Pioneer 16x DVD Burner $36.99
• Sony IDE DVD-ROM $19.99

TOTAL: $1055.42
This is a relatively high performance system, but not a gaming rig, and should have plenty of headroom for multiple virtual OS guests. The reason I have 3 250gb disks is to run [software] RAID-5 on them (with LVM on top of that).
Sorry -- didn't mean to drift so far off-topic from the original post.

Re:VMWare question

[G Morgan]

I've run WinXP in VMware and I found it to be acceptable when I got VMware tools installed (it's worthless without them though). I never tried it under any extreme loads though and you don't get and hardware accelerated GFX AFAIK.

Re:VMWare question

[ScuzzMonkey]

I've been running VMWare under Debian for the past six months or so with good results. I've got it installed on a dual-core PIV 3.2Ghz with a gig of RAM and Windows in the VM sessions is about as snappy as it is on my 2Ghz gaming box (although I am not using them for gaming nor would I care to try). I run the Windows clients primarily as test beds so they are not getting heavy or regular strain, but they are running simultaneously with one another and with several Linux server sessions, and the performance is more than adequate. RAM seems to be the limiting factor; I had performance problems when I had only 512MB installed that went away when I moved up to 1GB, and if you were going to be running the VM sessions as production machines I imagine you'd want 2GB. The dual core CPU is more than adequate for anything I've tried.

As the other poster said, installing VMware tools in the client session is a must. And you get a bit of a hiccup when switching sessions regardless of what else you do. On the whole, though, I've found it entirely usable with sufficient RAM.

Re:Well, even if Windows WERE faster, so what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok here's the problem. Most posts I've seen point out how great linux is. I don't think linux users take criticism well. If you all feel that the benchmark is wrong, do one yourself. Prove its close or faster. I have serious trouble believing that WAMP is faster than LAMP myself. I do think a properly configured ASP.NET/IIS server vs a linux/apache server would show dynamic content faster on the windows box. The reason is most open source languages require you to do a lot of research and read to get real performance. Anyone can sit down with .NET and get something quick running. This IS a flaw in open source and it needs to be addressed with better documentation and developers realizing they need to attract everyone. Having a hard to configure piece of software or hard to use library doesn't make you a good programmer. It makes you a bad programmer. Some linux users want more people to use linux and that means the TARGET AUDIENCE has changed. Software must be updated to cope with it. Further, I personally feel a linux/unix box takes more setup time than a Windows server even counting registry tweaks and configuration adjustments most windows admins ignore. The advantage is if the box is going to stay that way for a long time. In that case, linux/unix win hands down because configurations don't change with good software. This does not hold true for linux on desktops though. Graphical environments often require crazy upgrade procedures and often break resulting in a recompile of the whole damn system. (yes gnome developers, i'm talking about you)

Further, the real problem is the open source technologies for web development are lacking. Ruby on rails has promise. Like many open source problems, there are too many languages and little consensus. I won't bother complaining about PHP again because people who need to listen don't. Its not as user friendly and consistant as ASP nor is the documentation. (as a brief summary)

Performance can be a real world issue. If someone is on a limited hardware budget and can't just throw hardware at the problem like many linux people tend to do, its a big problem.

Cost of ownership (TCO) is relative. When Microsoft promotes TCO many scream their heads off on slashdot. Its not cheaper to run commerical linux over windows. Last I checked suse or redhat charge around the same for a license as microsoft. (especially when you don't need a rediculous number of users.. aka small to medium businesses and individuals) Yes, they could download gentoo or whatever. When I look at cost, I look at the cost to get a sysadmin (windows ones are cheaper), the cost of the hardware (usually same), the cost of the software and the amount of time spent on administration during the life of the system. Redhat has just as many patches as Microsoft does. Watch their list sometime. You can argue there are less (insert your system component here), but a good sysadmin updates everything on the box that could possibly get executed/exploited not just what he uses. If you can't delete notepad or X11, you must update it. It can mean the difference between someone on your box and someone with root on your box. Most os vendors ship a similar number of patches if you count software that is optional but still dangerous. (apple, microsoft, sun, etc)

Terms and vendor support are where you start to make sense. Microsoft has poor support. Oracle claims redhat does. My personal experience has been that the linux community is rude on forums and other types of support.

I've professionally administered several types of servers, and to this day I still think FreeBSD is the cheapest server platform. I recommend/use windows as a webserver or file server only.

Re:Benchmarking Strategy Doesn't Matter Here

[Dog-Cow]

"Issue 1: SUSE Enterprise Linux: i ran this at home as a file and web server. even there it performs very very slowly, i can't imagine it as an enterprise server. In the article they say its the closest to a pure LAMP stack one can get. Clearly nonsense as it is deemed to have proprietary software on board. I've recently replaced it with debian sarge, performing the exact same tasks. harder to configure? no, it just doesn't have GUI tools to configure it. eWeek labs clearly don't have anyone who knows anything about linux or they wouldn't have used SLES."

You are a fuck. Pure and simple. A Linux super-bigot and a fucked-up individual that the world could do without.

And you're ignorant.

Ford uses SLES for all its Linux servers. Ford is classified as an enterprise. You are classified as an ignorant fuck. How many enterprises use SLES and how many use Debian anything?

Where's that?

[Just Some Guy]

- your average comp sci college grad already knows visual studio

Depends on your school, I guess, but the average comp sci student at mine would already know Emacs, GCC, a Lisp derivative or two, and BSD/Linux. I literally never once saw Visual Studio on a comp sci lab machine.

Re:Like saying 'A Ferrari outperforms a Mini'

[bigbadbuccidaddy]

The new Mustang GTs are faster than 350zs...

Plone Sux!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used ZOPE and Plone and always found it to be the most sluggish and egregiously complex environment I've ever tried to support anywhere.

This is sad because I generally like Python.

In our environment I found that a Plone installation for an internal IT collaboration and documentation server (accessed by roughly 100 people in a company with about 5000 employess) was sluggish even after little tweaks and tuning that could manage.

I eventually gave up on that and installed Mediawiki (the PHP based engine that serves Wikipedia). That, with no tuning, has been a far faster and easier to use environment.

(If the user interface of Plone had been sufficiently compelling I might have invested the energy and devoted the extra hardware to putting it on a cluster using ZEO; but the real reason I'd switched was because we needed something more like a wiki with LDAP authentication support than a CMS; the performance issues were a nuisance but rather incidental to the selection process).

So, if I was Mindcraft and I wanted to generate plenty of sensationalistic traffic, then I couldn't find a better choice than Plone on Linux to compare it to anything else on any other platform. Because, as far as I can tell, Plone is going to just suck compared to practically any other "stack."

If I was a real-world admin (which I am, actually) then my choice of architecture or platform is going to be based on such factors as: availability, compatibility with third party libraries and tools, familiarity of my developers, cost (and scalability of cost, etc. I'll recommend putting together a minimal installation and load testing framework and implementing just enough of the application to drive a stake in the ground (to borrow from the extreme programming terminology here). In other words performance is weighted in terms of "good enough" (where good enough is defined as --- for our application and within our target market with enough head room to account for some "slashdot" events).

There's generally problems with "benchmark" articles written and published by people without any real-world applications deployment and maintenance experience, and by people who don't solicit advice or feedback by real experts. Of course, it seems that such articles are usually written with an agenda that difference from the real interests of the bulk of their readership. Whether that agenda is to promote a particular vendor or even just to irritate enough people to generate lots of irate "page hits" is irrelevant.

"Microsoft beats Linux" has become the IT press' equivalent of "if it bleeds it leads." It's the hallmark of the high tech tabloid.

Re:Not so fast

[WMD_88]

In theory, enterprise linux distributions should be detecting the CPU and installing the proper kernel image/modules/etc.

Many distributions do that. RHEL does for sure. I think Ubuntu does too, but I can't remember for certain.

Re:Like saying 'A Ferrari outperforms a Mini'

[DuckDodgers]

Probably. Similar horsepower but the Mustang has a colossal edge in torque. Still, the Nissan is 200 pounds lighter and has closer gear spacing with its six speed manual (versus a 5 speed in the Mustang).

Either way, it wouldn't be a blowout. If the Nissan was limited to two gears, it wouldn't even be close.

Re:Like saying 'A Ferrari outperforms a Mini'

[DuckDodgers]

300 horsepower, 260 pound feet of torque, 6 speed manual, 3250 pounds.

The 350z is pretty quick. There are plenty of 'rice' imports (and stock Neons and Cavaliers, for that matter) that are all show and no go. This particular car is no slouch. Now if only someone nice would buy me one.

Exceptional claims require exceptional proof.

[HiThere]

Exceptional claims require exceptional proof.

What else is there to say? Partially it's a matter of trust, of course. I don't trust MS, so I'm skeptical of anything that says they are good. I trust Apple in some ways, and not in others. If you praise the design of Apple, I won't demand proof. Especially if the design you are praising is esthetic, as opposed to software or interface. (Apple *used* to have the best interface design...but somewhere along the way they lost all those designers.) If you praise Apple's pricing, I'll want to see proof. Linux is nearly Apple in reverse. I accept praises of technical design without checking, but if you praise esthetics... I need proof. (OTOH, Linux is SO highly variable, that you can find nearly anything if you go looking, even esthetic designs. And over time they tend to dominate, so these days both KDE and Gnome *look* pretty...in most default configurations.)

Re:Not so fast

[drinkypoo]

Ubuntu does not. I speak from experience... Which is kind of why I brought it up :)

Long dreams

[hao2lian]

It's true there's a market for a professional IDE like Visual Studio but the very act of porting something is a punch to the profit groins; it would take much work to port a project the size of VS. Microsoft would also have to port its building toolchain, its .NET platform, its web services/server/etc. platform, its debugger, and so on. Then Microsoft, as a professional company also in the licensing market, would have to support it.

Also, a large *nix server market doesn't necessarily make up a substantial portion of the developers market *nix VS would target. Microsoft would also have win hearts and minds; the *nix platform thrives on open-source. VS doesn't.

Re:Long dreams

[tomstdenis]

That's the beauty of the Microsoft culture. Had they used GTK+ or QT or god forid ported GDI to Linux they'd be set. But because they use their platform dependent system and user libraries they lock themselves into their own damn OS.

And note, they wouldn't have to port all the .net crap and what not, at least not at first. I'd pay a decent coin just for the IDE and integration with GCC/GDB. The editor [and the RAD tools] are actually very well put together (at least for VC6, the later VSes are less and less friendly IMHO) and useful.

Kdevelop sucks because it makes horrible looking projects by default and requires KDE libs (I hate KDE in general).

Jedit is about the best thing down [in OSS land]. It requires Java and ANT but runs pretty much anywhere and has decent source editing tricks.

The trick is MSFT would have to work with others. I mean GCC and GDB already exist, why not profit from that?

Tom

Where's the tests

[sholdowa]

I've now read the 'article' 4 times, and can find no description of the tests anywhere. Sure, there's a blog mentiones, but there's nothing anywhere! HOW ON EARTH are readers supposed to add to these results.

Shall I now go off and write a fictional article about how wonderful LAMP is and desctibe the results of the tests I ran on my (purely finctional) quad opterons that I have racked up at home???

There is absolutely no credibility to this article. How did it ever get published?

Re: Dell and Linux

[bobv-pillars-net]

Yup. Here's a link to their list of officially supported operating systems. Includes three flavors of Windows, two flavors of Linux, and VMware.

Big Deal

[DrSkwid]

Apache bloated : Film at 11!

Default: very different for MySQL on Linux and Win

[Jamesday]

Default for MySQL on Linux: low RAM shared use box, minimal RAM use. Default for MySQL on Windows: ask some questions about use and make fair use of the resources of the system. On the Linux box you have to copy a sample configuration file by hand and that step wasn't in the installation instructions.

Net result: use default MySQL and you get a setup that inherently strongly favors Windows, because Windows setup is optimzed while the other isn't.

I don't know whether they made this mistake or not. If they did, as it appears from their results, the comparisons that include a database component are meaningless.

Re:Well, even if Windows WERE faster, so what?

[blueskies]

Yes, they could download gentoo or whatever. When I look at cost, I look at the cost to get a sysadmin (windows ones are cheaper), the cost of the hardware (usually same), the cost of the software and the amount of time spent on administration during the life of the system.

Does this include the per head licensing fee in comparison to using Samba?

Re:Benchmarking Strategy Doesn't Matter Here

[gerrysteele]

OK trolltard,

no need to insult me just because your a talentless an impotent moron dependant on microsoft specific knowledge to make your penis inflate once a week.

judging by your previous posts your only input into any discussion is to degrade your detractor by calling him something witty, like "asshole" or dumbfuck" and accuse them of being a "slash-drone" and other clever comments.

just because much of the /. content is *nix related and you have no authority whatsoever to enter into the conversation is probibally a sign that you should take your unskilled ass some place else.

On this http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=184930&cid=152 70754 post, much to my amusement, you find your self confused by the X window clipboard system. Your a moron.

A complete moron.

I thought Portals were dead years ago

[goat_roperdillo]

The concept of "Portals" was abandoned several years ago despite Oracle and Microsoft arriving after the party ended. Why are we having a technical discussion about portals now?

The 2003 article Is the Portal Dead? discusses Gartner's announcement that "the portal is dead, long live the portal." And more recently, Portals are Dead reiterates that. But of course, there's plenty more about the death of the portal.

Actually RTFA

[dschl]

Well, most of it, anyways. It appears that the /. article linked to page 2, and the graphs are linked from page 1.

I've played with Plone a little bit, and it is resource intensive, to say the least. However, when you look at their graphs, eweek ran plone under both Windows Server 2003 and Suse Enterprise Linux. Given that they used the built-in Zope application server as the web server for Plone under both Windows and Linux, I would expect the performance to be equivalent.

When you look at the graphs, Plone on Windows appeared to outperform Plone on Linux by an order of magnitude. Something smelled funny. Like debugging.

While I'm not sure how Suse configures their Plone packages, by default, the Zope packages come with debugging turned on, which cripples performance. If you look at Chapter 2 of the Plone Book by Andy McKay, it states:

By default in Zope 2.7 debug mode is enabled. Note that Plone runs significantly slower in debug mode, approximately 10-20 times slower. To turn this off, add the following line to the configuration file:

debug-mode off

To make the out-of-the-box experience more impressive for Windows users (debug mode slows Plone down on Windows even more than on Linux), it ships with debug mode off already. If you have a Plone site running and want to know if debug mode is running, go to *portal_migration* in the ZMI and look at the variables listed there; this will tell you if debug mode is enabled.

If I were running an enterprise which needed to use something with the features and robustness of Plone, and was about to devote the hundreds (or thousands) of hours required to fill it with content, and tweak it to my heart's content, I'd read the [expletive deleted] documentation, and notice that I might need to turn off debug mode. Sure, eweek said that they wanted to keep everything untuned:

But the point was to test the stacks, not their ideal performance points, which is also why we didn't tune or optimize any of the systems but ran them as close to default as possible.

Too bad that they didn't turn Zope debugging on in Windows, just to be consistent.

This is not a complex tuning or advanced configuration issue. You don't need to use eye of newt, or sacrifice small animals on the night of a full moon to make this simple change. If debug was left on in Linux, it not only invalidates their results, it also shows their conclusions to be utter garbage. A big part of their conclusion that open source software worked better on Windows was based on the Plone example (the best "apples to apples" comparison in their entire test). Eweek said:

Probably most surprising was the solid performance that came from the stacks that contained a mix of a Windows server and open-source components.

Probably most surprising was the solid incompetence that came from the testers, and the failure to configure anything other than a Windows server in spite of readily accessible documentation on setting up these complex systems. The sad part is that some IT managers will rely on these flawed results.

Hard to take the article seriously

[dcam]

I'm finding it kind of hard to take the article seriously.

What is an IT Stack? Is that where you go on a team building exercise and have to make a pyramid (with sys admins at the bottom)?

or quotes like this:
A few years ago, microsoft threw around the .Net moniker so aggressively in so many areas that it became difficult to figure out exactly what the term meant. But, as all the irrational exuberance that comes with a failed marketing blitz finally pulled back, .Net went back to being what it was originally intended to be: the name of Microsoft's server and service stack.

First sentence is fine. Second isn't. .Net is not "the name of Microsoft's server and service stack". It is an application framework. What is a "server and service stack"?

In fact, why has eWeek decided to call everything a "stack"?

Equally (and they do acknowledge this), it seems to be much more a test of particular applications.

I understand the need to dumb things down a little, but seriously.

64 bit Windows Servers. Hah.

[bruce_the_loon]

While Windows 2003 64bit exists and runs well on the hardware, there is nothing worth running on it except maybe SQL Server 2000/2005 64 bit.

This is from personal experience in the last month with a round of server replacements.

Exchange does not run on 64 bit Windows 2003.

Exchange does not like to talk to a 64 bit Windows 2003 AD and global catalog. It ignored it and moaned constantly.

MS ISA 2004 and 2006 (yes the brand new version) does not run on 64 bit Windows. Says so in the installer and the documents on the ISA sub-site.

32 bit AD servers are iffy about talking to 64 bit AD servers. Although Enterprise 2003 AD servers are iffy about Standard 2003 AD servers, so that could just be versioning issues.

So in spite of the huge amount of push MS has given 64 bit, it isn't possible to run an AD-based network with ISA and Exchange on it.