Slashdot Mirror
Kernel Musings: Unix and NT
Hulver writes "This is an interesting technical artical describing the differences and similarities between Windows NT and Unix. The article mentions Linux, but he is fairly dismissive, and very heavily biased towards NT being the best.
If you are interested in how NT works and how it compares to unix, this is a good place to start. It might even open your eyes about how NT works.
" I actually thought it was quite interesting, and only an eensy
bit of it seemed inflammatory. Note that it's an article about
the kernels of the operating systems, not the entire operating system.
How does my kernel work:
http://www.lycaeum.org/
But his criticisms of Linux are based on the 2.0.x level kernel. Nonetheless his conclusion that Linux is not "enterprise" ready does not follow from his discussions about the Linux process model. Linux has been demonstrated to be faster and more stable than Windows NT in a number of contexts, not the least of which is at the departmental file/print server, which is NT's strongest market penetration.
The kernel API only has 20% more calls than
Linux, with a large number being 64-bit support.
(in the beta)
Win32 is another matter of course, but that
is _not_ the kernel API.
That article was extremely bias towards NT. It favored them greatly just look at the last paragraph.
Uhm, just because VMS engineers leave DEC, and join Microsoft, and implement VMS-like designs in it, does NOT make NT VMS. Saying that NT's life began in the 70s alongside UNIX is ridiculous.
Ok folks, so uhm, UNIX is older, cuz like, its similiar to tty based computers previous to VMS and UNIX.
And if NT is so similiar to VMS, why can't it share the astronomic uptimes than VMS enjoys? Because NT isn't a REAL Server OS. No, NT is for people too lazy to learn UNIX. NT is for companies that can't afford to hire UNIX people. NT isn't Enterprise-ready, and probably won't ever be.
And answer this question:
Why is it, since NT originally began as a power user desktop OS, which was then moved to a Server function...WHYYYYYYYYYYYY can they not fscking move it back to a Desktop implementation? Too many patches, perhaps?
NT is not going to enjoy technical superiority, until it's completely rewritten by actual programmers who are skilled in OS Design & Implementation. Cotton candy != good, Microsoft.
Yours Truly,
Annoyed NT Admin
Happy UNIX Admin
PS: I'm not a Linux zealot freak, like that whiney egocentric, linus-bashing Richard Stallman freak. Software doesn't HAVE to be free and open, not everyone's a communist. Although software tends to turn out much, much better when it's open & free. In short, RMS, don't tread on me.
Does the article mention that NT is single user at one time?
"NT's roots extend back to 1977 and Digital Equipment's release of VMS 1.0. Many core members of the
future NT design team left Digital in 1988 to join Microsoft, which released NT's first version,
Windows NT 3.1, in 1993. Thus, NT and UNIX have been evolving since the mid-1970s"
Windows NT is perfect, Microsoft will prevail. War is peace.
A *bit* inflammitory?
"Although NT's security model is superior to traditional UNIX's security model, modern UNIX implementations match NT in security robustness and classification. One notable exception is Linux, which does not implement several requirements of a C2-capable rating, including ACLs and auditing."
Oh, really? And which OS is it that we hear, almost daily, new serious security holes for?
The proof of an OS' security isn't in it's concepts, it's in it's implementation. And we all know how well NT has been implemented.
i just think that there are some inaccuracies in almost every article. perhaps i am misunderstanding something, so /. readers can correct me as well.
In 1993, Linux (including source code) became available on the Internet for free download.
wasn't it 1991?
NT's roots extend back to 1977 and Digital Equipment's release of VMS 1.0. Many core members of the future NT design team left Digital in 1988 to join Microsoft, which released NT's first version, Windows NT 3.1, in 1993. Thus, NT and UNIX have been evolving since the mid-1970s, and trends in academic OS research have influenced each OS.
that also doesn't look convincing. i am sure there would be licensing problems if Microsoft got the core of VMS with the people it rehired. plus the argument is more like NT and VMS vs. Unix. Didn't Unix slaughter VMS on PDP-10 and PDP-11? So NT is a better VMS than UNIX? i am confused. 8(
Before NT 4.0, the NT windowing system was a user-mode implementation, but Microsoft found that the performance of graphics-intensive applications improved when the windowing system operated in kernel mode.
this doesn't seem convincing. my x-windows seems to handle graphics well enough to be compared to NT. part of which is due to the fact that X-Windows can act as a module, which is tightly linked to the kernel, though it loses some flexibility because it is not allowed to call some interrupts directly. still, nt graphics is a part of the kernel, but does not call interrupts directly either. so there should be a marginal increase in performance, but it is probably overcome by other kernel features. like the shear size of NT kernel vs that of linux.
well, i guess i'll write some more when i reread the articles and see the responses.
anonymous coward, who is too lazy to remember another password.
I hate NT as much as the next guy, but I'm afraid it isn't single-user. Stick a (user mode) telnetd or a sshd on NT and you can login as any user that has the correct privileges. It can be painful due to NT's lame dependance on GUI tools, but it is possible.
Unix never existed. It's just a nasty rumour started by the corruptive elements in society.
Bill == doubleplusgood.
Let's see
- glibc 2.1 supports 64-bit completely
- the VFS layer in Linux kernel 2.2 supports 64-bit
There is still one problem though:
- ext2fs does not support 64-bit files on 32bit platforms
So, you see that the APIs don't need to be extended anymore. Hopefully, we will see a fs with support for larger files on Linux soon.
Although NT's security model is superior to traditional UNIX's security model, modern UNIX implementations match NT in security robustness and classification.
Translation: Though NT got the idea right, they fscked it up by having a buggy underlying OS that circumvents the "security". He also forgot to mention that in order to get C2 clearence on NT, the box has to have no floppy drive in addition to having no network connectivity. (I could be wrong on that, but I doubt it.)
the second criteria, and this kinda defeats the whole purpose of C2 if you ask me, is that it's non-networked. compliance with orange book really is to get into the fed gov't door, not really geared toward practical security.
(i don't even remember what my slashdot id is...)
what a "Sparq" chip is?
Ugh.
what a "Sparq" chip is?
Yup, they're experts, all right.
Yes, NT's design takes advantage of some newer
ideas in OS design. But NT's implementation of
those new ideas is partial and shoddy. And its
not always clear if the new design techniques
are really necessary(HAL).
Many Unices are based on design principles that
have been around for years. But those ideas and
the implementation of those ideas is field-proven.
Remember a few years ago when they tried to race
turbine-powered cars at Indy? Theoretically, the
turbines should have kicked the crap out of
the old piston engines. Hmmm...I haven't seen
anyone racning turbine engines for a few years
now. Or how about those W-12 engines that they
tried to use in the Vector? Good idea, but needed to be
refined a bit more before really unleashing them.
The same idea applies to NT. Some good ideas, but not field-proven. Add to that the fact that
MS is motivated only by market share and
"mind share" instead of by quality and
satisfying their customers.....that's the recipe for a crappy OS.
Agreed, why would anybody expect winntmag to favor Unix? If NT dies, so does winntmag.
NT architecture is definitely more modern than UNIX, incorporating many desirable features (and some undesirables, as many of you have been expounding here for long time).
however, nt seems to be the poster child (poster devil?) for E raymond's theory about how "cathedral" development model fails in reliability. ms recruited many many high quality talents with their market clouts, yet they still put out low quality products (at least in terms of reliability).
I wouldn't mind mucking with NT more if MS breaks up into pieces and NT becomes more open platform.
(don't remember my id, nevermind the password)
NT DOESN'T EVEN HAVE A QUOTA SYSTEM...
NT CAN'T RUN WITHOUT A VIDEO CARD OR A
MOUSE....
IN NT YOU HAVE TO BUY(!) SOFTWARE TO HAVE TELENT..
NT'S PERFORMANCE PAST TWO CHIPS DROPS.....
NT LOST TO LINUX IN SAMBA BENCH TESTS
NT SUCKS COCK
Directly from the military archives:
NT is C2 certified if and only if:
- there is no network linked to it
- no port has any storage device linked to it
- there is no floppy drive in the system
Wow... I guess its time to switch to NT..
would someone please post the url for these
military archives? I want to read the original
document and laugh some more.
If you ignore the many FUD goodies in the document, the guy is comparing them theoretically between the two different OS's. And, yes, ironically, I do think that NT does have a better designed and perhaps a more robust KERNEL.
UNIX is a 30 year old design that has been grafted onto. NT's kernel is a modern 10 year old design, and it shows in its elegance and prettiness in the design space. What could be capable of is much more than UNIX.
Linux, for all its hype and optimization and design, is mainly a stock UNIX kernel.
But now contrast their implementations and how the kernel's are actually used. All notable software under UNIX is designed to be network transparent, both from the de-facto GUI, to the lowly shell. Also all of the software is written with the intent of being on a multi(simultanous)user system.
Contrast this with NT. Where almost all applications are designed to be running on a single(simultanous)user, or even a single-user workstation. And the graphical system is not network-transparent. Finally, thow in the fact that the video (and other) subsystems run in kernel space.
For instance, ACL's on NT are mostly useless for locking down a box unless you are highly trained and know exactly what you are doing. (I once tried to lock down a box by removing the 'create' and 'write' privledge for all system directories.. The result was that HELP failed!!!) ACL's may be nice, but if they cannot be used, whats the point.
Another is remote administration or telnet. Here, the exclusive reliance on graphical elements and non network-transparentness of the GUI make remote use or configuration difficult. This is not the NT kernel's fault, but of the applications and the win32 subsystem.
Although, because of the incredible amount of studying and tinkering with the linux kernel, linux will probably exceed NT in raw throughput, most of that difference is not inherent in the kernel architectures. (And yes, I did note that they did not add linux into their benchmark comparisons.)
NT's kernel has wonderful features, but unless you are writing your own high-performance application (and perhaps also have a source-license to the OS), few things will let you take advantages of it of it in the default configuration.
Overall, the difference is that NT has a better design, but very few things let you take advantage of it (not even MS creates 'good' code for NT). UNIX has a bit worse of a design, but you can use ALL of its features and most applications expect you to. Which is better?
There are worse things than rearchitecturing the Linux kernel to resemble the NT kernel. (trying to put win32 on the hardware under Linux is one, layering it over X would probably make it too slow.)
Don't be bigoted against the NT kernel, its similar to how I would design a modern kernel. Other than being a bit slower than the insanely optimized puppy that is Linus's creation, most of what makes windows bad is higher-level API's (win32), windows coding conventions, windows applications, and expectations on the use of software under windows (single-user computer).
Scott Crosby
crosby@qwes.math.cmu.edu
Did they ever lie. I seem to remember some noise about how NT 3.51's C2 rating is based on not being network accessable. I'm talking C2 compliant if and only if someone tries to hack into a hardened NT machine with only a keyboard+mouse+monitor accessible to them.
How fucking usefull is that, may I ask? You could bloody well put a shell on DOS that would do the same damn thing for crying out loud. Just trap CTRL+ALT+DEL!
Check out the side column of this article:
Linux and the Enterprise
I'm not a kernel hacker and don't know much about the internals, but how much of this article is still true today with the 2.2 kernel?
Also is there any work to get Linux C-2 certified?
Oh, doesnt it make one feel so secure with all the microdroids going around telling banks they have a 'C-2 secure' 'OS', when in fact, the C-2 secure OS they had isnt even sold these days (NT 3.50 special hardware no floppy or network).
/winnt.
Either way, ACL's are by far overrated. For most systems, except perhaps anal-retentive military installations they're just a *severe* annoyance that make system administrators just eventually give up and enable write-for-everyone on
Gee, wonder what's most secure, a rwx-ugo system with at least some pretenses at keeping root stuff to root, or an ACL based system where anyone is permitted to do anything anyway. The times I've felt a need for ACLs to achieve security as a sysadmin at a 50k employee company can easily be counted on no hands and no feet.
The turbine engines were banned after one Indy 500. It was just too huge an advantage. The guy running it had something like a 5 or 10 lap lead on the #2 car; he had a lot more speed and he was going longer between gas stops. 12 laps to go, a $6.00 bearing let loose. Could have easily been avoided by using a $7.00 bearing :)
The turbine engine disappeared because it was regulated out, not because it "needed more refining." It was regulated out in hopes that the races would not become a contest to see who had the most money, but who the better driver/team was.
I did my owne benchmarks on 16 DEC alphas with NT, Linux, and AIX using the software the author mentions in the article and NT blew both the other two operating systems away. The performance differences were much greater than what the author has in his charts though.
Didn't Unix slaughter VMS on PDP-10 and PDP-11? So NT is a better VMS than UNIX? i am confused. 8(
VMS is post PDP10 and PDP11, VMS came with the first VAXes, PDP10's ran TOPS-10, PDP11's ran RT-11, RSX-11, MUMPS-11, DOS-11, or RSTS-11
dave
daa@rmi.net
C2.org says that NT is C2 secure. My MCSE books say that NT workstation is C2 secure. The fact that C2.org say NT is C2 secure is good enough for me.
Here's an interesting quote:
An ironic twist to the tale is that only a few years ago the computer industry press debated whether NT could challenge UNIX's market share--today the argument is whether Linux can be the UNIX challenger to NT
During the history lesson about how NT was conceived, this article conveniently leaves out the OS/2 factor.
It's somewhat frustrating to see all of these Windows-related articles not expose the entire story, about the relevant topics being discussed.
First, Bert's columns on ZDNet, and now this crap.
I suppose I asked for it by actually reading something from www.winntmag.com. Oh well, live and learn.
Hmmm, I actually have seen Solaris 2.5.1 panic tho, on a box with extended (months) load averages over 40, with a slightly buggy NIC driver.
Mmmm, and HP-UX 10.20 too. But that machine had logged somewhere over 400000 hardware errors before finally blowing up.
Mmmm, and and old 1.2 linux with a development SCSI driver and heavy disk access. Never a production release tho.
NT, of course, blows up in my face if I look funny at it. Ah, how I long for the next release, they'll probably 'integrate' IIS and the dancing Office paperclip into the kernel. 'Well, people were removing the clip, so we had to integrate it into the kernel for security and performance reasons'.
You can purchase a Quota application for NT 4.0, and Win2K comes enabled to handle quotas.
NT can run without a video card and without linux. After you install it, remove both. Enjoy. (try installing Linux locally without a videocard you fscking idiot) The 'no-videocard' limitation is usually set by the system/bios, Not the operating system.
You can get Telnet Daemons for NT free these days (yay.. you can run command prompt based win32 executables.. yuck)
Performance drops after 2 chips? The performance increase maybe isn't as DRASTIC, but it is there. 3 processors isnt going to offer less performance than 2. I'm not sure on the Samba bench tests you talk about, however, Samba has a few limitations (that should hopefully be fixed soon)
And finally, maybe your the one sucking cock, or as the case may be, smoking it.
stop smoking - publish the data if you ain't.
Actually, most NT professionals I know are trying out Linux, and like it a lot better than NT. So we get the IT students, the ex-NT professionals, the current UNIX sysadmins, a lot of old mainframe guys, the ABM crowd and the linux geeks Moms and Pops:).
I'm going to take this opportunity to submit the following security standard for peer review:
Z6 - The next-generation security system standard
1. The system must not reboot spontaneously when you are giving the boss a demo.
2. The source code to the operating system must be encrypted and stored in a three-level down directory. This may be done with a pig latin filter and ARJ.
3. The system must be able to detect if the person sitting at the keyboard is male or female. If the user is female, all offensive 'fortune' messages must be encrypted and stashed.
4. Every time a user hiccups, the system must not delete random files.
This spec is the wave of the future! Make *your* OS compatible, and reap the rewards! Advertise it in technical journals! (But don't ever ask yourself why you'd want some of these measures.)
nice work raising s/n ratio here.
;-)
btw, i think CMU rocks
(like i said, don't remember my id...)
Yep, stuff the latest hyped trendy theories of OS design into a project, ignore what has proven solid through time and you'll get NT. HAL (badly implemented), Microkernel (basically monolithic on top of an mk. Subsystems only there for show), ACL (irrelevant and unnecessary unless for 'show'. Nobody uses them anyway.), Threading (usually unnecessary and destablilizing unless you're running very specific badly designed applications in need of extreme CPU power, or your forking stinks), etc.
As far as the microkernel stuff goes, only HURD appears to have at least an interesting implementation which could actually use some of the advantages an mk could in theory give. In NT it just contributes to slowness.
Windows95 is C2 secure, in isolated (unpowered) configurations. :-)
Richard M. Stallman isn't a "linus-bashing freak". He wrote more useful code than Linus ever will - gcc, gdb, emacs.. with ideals of freedom to share it, only to see it used as a base for a system now being recuperated by the big guns of proprietary software.
Of course all software doesn't have to be free, but at least have some respect for someone without whom there would be no Linux, because there would have been no free compiler to write it, no free debugger to fix it, no free shell to boot in, no free shell commands to use with.
When you'll have written, say, a compiler producing code for 30 different archs and recognized as the second best optimizer, come back and criticize him. In the meantime, give him some respect, even if you don't agree with his ideas.
Thanks.
i found the article to be fair and unbiased. /. iq remains where it's always been - below that of the intelligent general public.
then i looked at the comments.
looks like the typical
A Linux box is C2 certified... provided the floppy drive and all other storage media have been removed, it has no network card, and no power supply.
Just like NT.
Heh, I bet NT is faster than MacOS on an alpha too. Liars these days...never put any effort into anything.
Uhmm, AIX on Alphas? Go back to your cave and don't come out until you can at least get your OSes and Hardware platforms straight.
Linux is Enterprise-ready. Beowulf-cluster is an example of enterprise-ready. What else do you need, you have a cluster that can do fault-tolerant and dynamic load-balancing, as an application server and/or a web server. A cluster with about 100 systems can serve over millions of users and/or billions of transactions.
Real-life experiments are more meritable than simple ideas or "opinion" that the author likes to fabricate. He can talk, the talk about NT superior design. How about comparing source code to source code against Linux? He can't because he never seen NT kernel source! Do you trust this guy, when he can't match source code to source code to proof his point?
Show us NT source code to proof your point damn it! If you can't, you're full of OPINIONS.
All of them except OpenBSD.
One thing that doesn't get mentioned often is the advantage of an open source operating system in a secure environment. Cryptographers discovered long ago that the only way to be sure a cryptographic algorithm was secure was to release it to the public and let other cryptographers beat on it. Securing an operating system works the same way. There is NO WAY that a proprietary OS can be as secure as an open source OS, simply because the source code enables people to search for holes.
;-)
Specific security measures such as IPSEC, encryption of files, etc. are basically worthless if used on a non-secure OS. As security becomes even more important on the internet (or at least as people realize its importance) open source will become even more important to security. Having source available will become a de facto requirement for a secure OS, and M$'s claims to provide security by describing the theoretical and architectural basis for their security systems will pale when compared to their IMPLEMENTATION of those basics.
I don't see any way that a proprietary operating system can even come close to providing the security benefits of available source code.
(Kernel hackers - the FreeS/WAN project to implement IPSEC (end to end TCP/IP encryption) at http://www.xs4all.nl/~freeswan/ is nearing a 1.0 release for the 2.0 kernels, but they could use some help porting to 2.2. Course you gotta live in the free world.
As much as the author does say that "NT can hold its own" and that "NT is the choice of a new breed of IT professional," he does concede that UNIX boxes hold the absolute world record for performance. Granted, few of us could afford some of the big iron that achieves those records, but there are people who do demand it. The article seemed somewhat fair, although being in an NT magazine, you'd be a fool not to expect the pro-NT slant: advertising dollars depend on it.
Market share? He forgot to mention the web OS search (lost the url) found more Linux servers on the web than anything else. More than NT and more than all other 'nix's combined. and it's growing.
Third party development is the only thing that WinDoh!!!z usable.
The only people who trust MCSE books are those that have never worked with NT professionally. Once you finish taking your tests and get a real job, you'll find how accurate those books are. Trust me, I'm an MCSE sitting in a Microsoft office using a Microsoft owned computer.
Just like the only version of any Unix to earn C2 was a special version? (Hint: they don't certify generic systems--they only certify specific versions and configurations running on particular hardware.
You're right, NT is multi-user. However, there are certain parts of the Win32 libraries and many applications (especially MS ones like Office) that don't work correctly in a multi-user environment (like WinFrame, MetaFrame, or Terminal Server). According to MS, these things are being fixed in Windows/Office 2000, if you believe that.
I had an interesting conversation with some guys from Citrix about how much they had to work around broken apps...
Now if NT had Gnome, it would be as ugly as it is useless!
The comparison is so theoretical that it's meaningless. Sure, the NT kernel is nice, but you don't interface directly with the NT or Linux kernel. You have to go through the userland. And NT's userland is poorly designed.
He must understand this, so the article is really nothing more than anti-Unix (and especially anti-Linux) FUD.
I can't read the article because the server crashed. Their router reports that the host (www.winntmag.com) is unreachable.
PING www.winntmag.com (204.56.55.202): 56 data bytes
--- www.winntmag.com ping statistics ---
102 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100% packet loss
Don't even talk about Mach.
The micro-kernel Mach has got to be one of the most over-hyped OSes ever. All efforts to build a viable micro-kernel OS based on Mach have had terrible problems. I worked for one such company, we had to rewrite the whole damn thing to the point where it didn't look like mach any more (should have just used Chorus, but now Sun owns them).
Further evidence is the extremely slow pace of Hurd, based on Mach, they are having all the same problems we did, they just don't have the money and manpower to dig themselves out of the hole.
And before anyone mentions NeXTOS, realize that was based on the monolithic version of Mach which is almost a completely different beast.
Hulver writes "This is an interesting technical artical describing the differences and similarities between Windows NT and Unix. The article mentions Linux, but he is fairly dismissive, and very heavily biased towards NT being the best. If you are interested in how NT works and how it compares to unix, this is a good place to start. It might even open your eyes about how NT works. "
It's opened my eyes on how NT works: Not very well
Just because you can stick a telnetd or sshd on NT doesn't make it a multi-user OS.. The fact that NT has the 'lame dependance on GUI tools' and also the fact that you cannot run every program in NT's :) It could be argued that NT is multi-user, but even if you looked at it as multi-user, it just doesn't cut it.
program base while logged in through said sshd or telnetd makes this so. With unix, you can even run the gui dependant programs on other computers, providing you are running X..
"Aha! Now we see the violence inherent in the system!"
Prediction: NT server fell over and won't be rebooted until Monday, when the MCSE that runs it comes in to work.
I seem to remember several servers being touted because they were running apache on linux getting /.ed. Rather quickly too.
I think the key is in the networking, specifically the level at which the drive mapping is done. With Windows 3.1 and Lantastic (a non-Microsoft network), The windows programs all share a common set of drive maps, but each DOS session has its own drive maps independent of the Windows drive maps and the other DOS sessions. The above also works with DR DOS task switching and Novell networks AFAIKT. See how far we've come with Microsoft :-(
Just like the only version of any Unix to earn C2 was a special version? (Hint: they don't certify generic systems--they only certify specific versions and configurations running on particular hardware.
...and how often do you see Unix zealots scream "our OS is C2 certified, so you know its secure"? The C2 tag seems to be an "NT argument".
It's so reliable that I can't even connect to winntmag.com to read this article.
(1) NT's user interface is better. Note that the *architecture* of its user interface really blows, though. Now that we have two free desktops (KDE and GNOME) which are roughly the same quality but with superior architectures, this advantage will disappear over the next 6-12 months.
(2) NT can run Win32 applications. This is being worked on, see www.winehq.com. I'd give this 12 months, too.
(3) Microsoft spends about $10 bn/year marketing NT.
That's pretty much it, those are the three advantages of NT over Linux. But paradoxically, these are also its disadvantages:
(a) Because the focus is on the user interface instead of underlying functionality, application quality suffers.
(b) Software companies save development $$$ by targeting only one "platform" (the win32 platform). Thus most applications for windows NT assume single-user mode, are poorly architected, etc.
(c) Microsoft's marketing money is getting NT into the enterprise, where people are discovering that it sucks. They are spending a lot of money educating people on just how much NT sucks. It will take years to undo the marketing damage, and to be honest I don't think Microsoft has that long.
I thoguht that the security ratings used in the article(C2, B2, etc.) were for operating environments, not operating systems. I seem to remember hearing that NT received its rating while running on a Compaq with a specific configuration. Also, this rating was not valid for any other system or configuration, even another compaq with memory from a different vendor, for example. Then again I could be wrong.
It's a revolutionary new chip from Rosq semiconductors..
You can type ping, tracert, ftp, or telnet from the command prompt in NT 4 to run the respected program. Might want to give that a try.
Which is why people have developed AFS, and now CODA.
Don't give them ideas like this. Please. I have to use the stuff. It bad enough already.
What OS does this site currently run on. It's currently down, and was just curious. And I mean down (ie no daemon listening on port 80), NOT timing out.
By that lame logic, Linux has also been "actively developed" since the early 70's, because that is when Linus Torvalds was born. :-)
You Katz-reading, superbowl-watching, cigarette-smoking, NT-using morons make me laugh! HAHAHAHAHAHA!
C2Net makes a Unix based product, which
appears to be closely tied to Apache.
Apparently NT's security is not enough
for them to build upon. I couldn't find
even one NT reference on their web site.
Yup.
Netcraft could not get to it to answer your question.
bottom line. My NT box crashes, not often, about thrice a month (not often from other horror stories).
Linux I have had Crash (and I mean NTLike, frozen, nothing works crash) ONCE! in three years. This was due to OPERATOR ERROR, loading the incorrect module for DPT Controller.
I just don't understand why NT can't come down like Nix. If I have informix crash on Nix, I clean up shared memory and restart THE APPLICATION, no other services are affected. If I have an Application crash on NT, 70% of the time, it Locks up the whole damn thing, and the only solution is "reset".
I would like to know more about the internels of the NT kernel, however the sites box is down, therefore cannot read there article.
Rob.
You know, you communist mother-fuckers are making my buddy Bill really sad. He's trying to make an ethical, honest living selling an American-as-apple-pies operating system which never crashes and is written by tie-wearing professionals (instead of your toy OS written by a bunch of pimply-faced 14 year old socially inept nerds -- go out and get some SUN, boys!).
Give the poor guy a break. Stop running down his business. Free Speach is one thing, but c'mon!
He's not talking about a telnet CLIENT. He's saying you can't telnet INTO NT.
And you can't.
And even the telnet client that comes with it totally sucks. It has almost zero options.
AND while you can get third party telnet daemons (for $ or not) you STILL can't do squat, because nearly all NT configuration is graphical.
# queso www.winntmag.com
204.56.55.202:80 * Windoze NT firewalled (like *.microsoft.com)
:-)
Bullshit. Pure, complete bullshit.
Its neighbors at www.duke.com are running Microsoft-IIS.
Right now, www.winntmag.com is not running anything
Because it has burst into flames
-=Bette Noire=-
Even if I approved of NT as an OS I still would not by a long shot approve of MS's business practices. They have proven themselfs over and over again to be rude and ruthless in how they promote their systems.
This major shortcoming will haunt them with whatever product they come out in the future. I find it difficult to devote my time to develop for a system that is so closed off and where I don't believe in the company that stands behind it.
duhhhh!
hehe well no one certanly expects to find
a) a lot of ppl with any ability to
see operating systmes objectivly here.
b) A lot of ppl here who can even say the word NT
and not start cussing.
The article in WinNTmag, is far more objective
and better, than _anything_ I have ever read, in
any other journals that are dedicated towards one
OS. The typical Linux puplications are so full of
pure lies and rumours about anything from Redmond that its ridiculus.
The fact is Linux is far from Solaris.
Solaris & AIX is enteprise ready, Linux is NOT.
and NT is probably farther long the lien than
Linux really is.
That's just because nobody really uses it. With few enough eyes, no bugs exist.
I wouldn't say "suck". Generally my experience is:
/etc or /var/cfg, /opt/informix/bla/bla/bla), BUT, that one file is 48bit cryptic at best, hell aside from change basic interface settings with regedit, good luck, and one wrong move "poof".
.DLL's and making registry entries that affect the stability of the OS. Let's face it, installing some app's you just grit your teeth, like walking on eggshells. MS needs to strengthen there OS, it's entirely to "gentle" in this area.
a. platform is unstable, system crashes as opposed to just processes or threads.
b. multithreading is poor, first user eats up cpu clocks, as other users fight for 10%.
c. "HOG" requires entirely to many hardware resources for basic operation. (ie PPro or better, and 64 Meg Ram).
My general experience is with a. (I use NT too.), under our Unix platforms at work, if we experience an application crash, or service crash. This is usually just a matter of cleaning up semaphores and restarting app, other services are not normally affected. Total opposite for NT, usually when we experience application crashes the entire OS grinds to a halt.
Then the registry, I think the registry has a plus side, all settings in one area, (not
I do believe NT get's alot of bad wrap from poorly written applications. Whereas the application install is overwriting
Since I am just rolling along.. I think I will end this rant and get back to work;)
Rob.
finish elementary school first, dopy.
They have been /.ed
Oh, well. I guess I'll have to get my daily requirement of FUD elsewhere.
I must admit that I like NT. It makes UNIX look good!
My all knowing superiors spent a bazillion dollars on NT + support. Then, when the network blew up, the old linux and solaris servers saved their jobs.
Linux kernel 2.2 mm/mmap.c:
asmlinkage unsigned long sys_brk(unsigned long brk);
Looks like it is still 32-bit on 32-bit platforms. But what the hell do you want to do with a 64-bit brk on such a bad architecture?
People have problems with using more than 1GB with a standard kernel on Intel platforms, if you need so much memory, use a real 64-bit system.
LOL! Dancing paper clip into the kernel...
haha! I think the little paper-flying things
are in the kernel alredy.
>NT DOESN'T EVEN HAVE A QUOTA SYSTEM...
true. NT 5.0 does. This is party an offshoot of true ACL's. Linux has arguably the most minimal file security after FAT*.
>NT CAN'T RUN WITHOUT A VIDEO CARD OR A
>MOUSE....
NT Can run fine without a mouse, and videocards cost $30 for a 4meg AGP.
>IN NT YOU HAVE TO BUY(!) SOFTWARE TO HAVE >TELENT..
Wrong. MS has a free UNIX connectivity pack with a telnet daemon.
>NT'S PERFORMANCE PAST TWO CHIPS DROPS.....
Wrong.
>NT LOST TO LINUX IN SAMBA BENCH TESTS
yup
>NT SUCKS COCK
it's software, for that you would need additional peripheral devices.
/* NT can run without a video card and without linux. After you install it, remove both. Enjoy. (try installing Linux
locally without a videocard you fscking idiot) */
Why would you want to be limited to doing local installs?
hehehe.. Despite the address, I am CS. Actually, I am taking Operating Systems (15-412) right now.. Current project is to WRITE a OS kernel supporting multitasking and multithreading. I've got most of the infrastructure in, the VM state, program loader and the task switching infrastructure in already. The only real work left is to handle the TTY state, copying the VM space (to implement Fork), and the memory-fault code.
If you abstract out a few small low-level chunks of code (the special inline assembly for switching between kernel contexts, flushing the TLB and others) and the device drivers, a core OS kernel is not bad at all. I estimate mine will be about 1.5-2.0 Kloc.
And yes, he has quite a bit of FUD and falsehoods there, he complains about. Unix has changed far less over a decade than just about any microsoft API you wish to compare it too. So, instead of writing to an API that changes and gets altered YEARLY (Microsoft Windows/ MS-DOS/ NT), you write to a set of very similar and standard API'S that while having some variations, are surprisingly consistent for most 'normal' code (UNIX).
To fault the other areas of FUD:
Thrashing as they describe it is difficult to do with Linux, given its page flushing system.
The NT security model is more powerful and flexible, but far less usable. Unix's security model is simpler, but it can be used to its full power, this is again an application-space issue, if an application demands to have access to things that it doesn't need, securing a system is impossible. UNIX applications are designed contrary to this, and with source code, they have been restricted to exactly what they need. Add in ACL's and UNIX can likewise use them for their full power.
For the IO models, while they describe NT's designed IO model with that abstraction, Linux (and presubably most modern UNIX's) also have a layered IO model, but the layering is not in the kernel abstraction, it requires actually studying the internals of the IO model to see that UNIX's is also layered. So, they are actually contrasting the published abstractions and not the actual internal models.
Finally, the benchmarks he gives cannot be trusted. They do not give details or other necessary information
Most of the other (legitimate) problems he mentioned (async IO, moving IO events through the internals of the kernel) can be solved within the Linux paradigm, it IS GPL afterall. But only when it is concluded to actually be a net advantage instead of a liability. (As someone else pointed out, they are using some new and untested/untried doodad's that may end up making it worse.)
As before, what the kernels are capable of is FAR different from what capabilities are actually used. NT wins as a nice modern kernel, Linux wins as far as how that kernel is used. A kernel may offer ACL's, but if using them breaks things to hell and back, what use are they?
So, while I would probably have to give NT's kernel the advantage, their extension that a superior kernel means a superior general OS is completely and absolutely false, and FUD. Its regrettable that such a good OS kernel has been made so hard to use all its true capabilities. The only way to utilize those beautiful capabilities is basically to write the Operating system from the kernel-on down. (Which is basically what a high-end database or transaction server actually looks is.)
So, NT is mostly a rewrite of the UNIX kernel with minor changes and more elegance. If it ever gets GPL'ed and goes through the bazaar for a year or two, I could see the Linux kernel inheriting large chunks of it.
I should look into BeOS's kernel a bit more to get its design. I _think_ that it is a an Object based kernel, more like NT, with microkernel like features like low latency task switching. Anyone know if this is right?
Scott Crosby
crosby@qwes.math.cmu.edu
How f***ing usefull is that, may I ask? Heh.
When I was at university, 5 years ago, the situation was the same: All the students were using Linux, while the rest of the world used Dos/Windows.
Now, where are alle those Linux professionals-to-be? They are using Windows for work. Things will be the same another 5 years from now.
are they running NT ;-) ???
Summary of the kernel list discussion: the author generally knows what he is talking about. He had a couple misundertandings, but mostly raised good points.
that's why www.winntmag.com is down! ;-)
(running Winblows Nice Try Server)
That's NOT a mirror, I don't even think the
article is related. It doesn't match the quotes from the posts. The thing on winsucks is not
worth reading, they start by saying that Linux
doesn't have kernel threads, blah blah, scalability in the enterprise, blah blah.
Not even half-clued: most distros have nothing
BUT kernel threads. The rationale (Linus's) is that since Linux context-switches fast, user threads are not that interesting (as opposed to what happens in Solaris).
If somebody has it somewhere (like in your browser's cache), that would be cool.
Damn,
If you are going to write an article declaring the technical advancements of NT, please have the forththought of ensuring your NT Machine, doesn't crash your NT Magazine site, that contains that NT article.
Iwant2readit.
For the last 4 hours all I get is:
ERROR
The requested URL could not be retrieved
While trying to retrieve the URL: http://www.winntmag.com/Magazine/Article.cfm?
The following error was encountered:
Connection Failed
The system returned:
(61) Connection refused
The remote host or network may be down. Please try the request again.
Is this a NT server, perhaps?
/.ed
It was tested on a stand-alone machine (NO NETWORK!!!).
Also, it was version 3.5 with service pack 3, not 3.51. And of course NT 4 has not been tested.
LOL! WinNT Magazine, down due to the "Slashdot Effect". Must be pretty embarrasing for them. I wonder if they've considered upgrading to a Linux-based web server. ;)
And they say it's better than Unix? (sorry, haven't read the article but what can you expect form Win NT Magazine/)
Because there is a large difference between theory and practice and a large difference between design and implementation.
In theory ACL's are more flexible and allows better security than unix permissions.
In practice ACL's result in unmaintainable systems at one end or the ACL's are pretty much circumvented. In NT's case everything breaks if you use a 'secure' ACL setup, so it defaults to far worse security than a default UNIX. And, in the end, few ever need the granularity of ACL's. The only case you'd actually have use of it is when you have a lot of people on a single server collaborating on projects of mutually exclusive top secret material. Which no sane security administrator would have anyway, since the risk of mistakes in such a case would be dangerously high.
In theory, the NT task switching system is more flexible, and allows special priorities on cases UNIX doesnt.
In practice, the ability to prioritize a 'foreground' application would only be useful if you're doing heavy duty (but unimportant) server stuff on a personal workstation. Uhm. Someone doing that should get their priorities straight. Either way, if you really feel the need to run heavy duty stuff in a less prioritized fashion, you can always set it manually. The extra automatic flexibility in the task switching ends up just adding unnecessary complexity for a case that doesn't happen. Bad place to have any extra complexity.
In theory, a microkernel design is more portable than a monolithic kernel.
In practice, portability depends mostly on separation of the hardware dependent code, which you can do in a monolithic kernel as well. And in practice, keeping several active ports to different architectures current will do far more for portability than any microkernel design.
In theory, moving graphics drivers into the kernel allows some speedup in graphics access.
In practice, hardware acceleration will do far more for graphics speed than the placement of the driver. So again you've sacrificed stability due to the added complexity of graphics code in the kernel for gains that are dubious at best.
Because most of the things that NT does 'better' than UNIX/Linux have proven of little advantage in reality, there is little incentive to do them. Someone will probably add ACLs to linux (seem to remember reading something about it), but it will probably never make it into a mainstream default, because few ever need or want it. There are several ports of Linux to MACH microkernel, but they are usually slower than the monolithic version, so nobody is really interested in that either. Etc.
but above that of the article's author.
i would assume that the intelligent general public can figure out that slashdot.org is not the place to find blind praise of everything microsoft.
i would assume that the intelligent general public can figure out that something that started in 1988 did not start in the 70's. there seems to be some kind of time warp here.
i would assume that the intelligent general public can figure out that a security classification of an obsolete stand-alone system is not relevant in any context involving a network.
Tracing roots of NT back to VMS seems dubious. Might as well trace UNIX back to MULTICS which strongly influenced the design of UNIX. UNIX of course has strongly influenced the design of all operating systems since.
hahahahahahaha...rotfl
That was to funny, I haven't laughed
this hard in 6 months, good reply
dude.
Rob.
Who wants to break it to the author that some people *are* working to provide ACLs and auditing for Linux?
One major NT feature that Linux lacks, but is required for C2, is a secure SysReq function which can't be masked. This is tied to a login prompt, and allows the user to be sure that he isn't looking at a trojan program designed to capture passwords. This is easy in NT (since the display seems to be managed by the kernel; why else would you need to reboot the system after changing screen size), but far more difficult to implement in a meaningful manner in Unices since their login process actually involves multiple independent programs... programs which can be replaced by local policy dictates.
But the main reason that Linux doesn't have C2 rating, and is unlikely to get it soon, is that C2 is a closed standard. AFAIK, the exact standards for C2 certification is classified (although the general outline is available in the rainbow books). The only way to get C2 certification is to have your system tested, and that costs big $$... and you are required to have *every* configuration retested.
That's why MS's claims that "NT is C2 certified" are so incredible. As others have pointed out, a specific (and nearly useless) NT configuration was tested and certified.
*NO* NT 4 system has been certified.
*NO* NT system with network functionaility has been certified.
*NO* NT system with removable media has been certified.
Linux, while not C2 certified, can have its source code checked and locally recompiled. With NT, you're forced to assume that nobody has broken anything anywhere for several years.
C2 certification requires testing (for big $$) by a certified testing agency. It's a fairly safe bet that Linux is *not* C2 certified.
Look, C2 certification does not mean that a system *is* secure, only that it *can* be made secure in a tightly controlled configuration. Does anyone doubt that your average Linux system is *far* more secure than your average NT system?
If you still have doubts, go to any conference with networking provided. Count the number of systems exporting their file systems to everyone else. How common is that among Unix system? How common is that among Windows (oops, Open Windows) systems?
Too bad that new generation of IT
professionals can't keep it up...
...their nt server...that is
The document providing the (unclassified) definition of C2 security rating is in the Red Book. Certification is not cheap, from what I have heard.
N.B., these certifications are intended for specialized use. E.g., placement in critical systems on warships. Hence the story about how a Navy ship was crippled for hours due to an NT error. (Well, they now claim it was a data entry error, but it's a pretty poor OS which goes down for the count on a simple divide-by-zero error in an application.) I think the government is now starting to use a related certification for all computer purchases... but they've had to waive that requirement since NT lacks it.
Read the document (if you can) and ask yourself how NT and Linux compare in actual use. Unless you're installing a system on a military base, that's all that really matters. There are some pretty common Unix security errors, but once you nuke all of the "trust-based services" (rcp, rsh, etc.) and run crack as a weekly cron job things are reasonably secure. NT, in practice, tends to wide open... and attempts by the MIS department to tighten security leave everyone unable to do their work while still leaving countless gaping holes.
Looks like someone came in and rebooted their NT server.
# nmap -sT -p80 -O www.winntmag.com
Starting nmap V. 2.08 by Fyodor (fyodor@dhp.com, www.insecure.org/nmap/)
Interesting ports on www.winntmag.com (204.56.55.202):
Port State Protocol Service
80 open tcp http
TCP Sequence Prediction: Class=trivial time dependency
Difficulty=8 (Trivial joke)
Remote operating system guess: Windows NT4 / Win95 / Win98
Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 7 seconds
IN NT YOU HAVE TO BUY(!) SOFTWARE TO HAVE TELENT..
that sucks! even on Mac OS you can telnet to your machine with *free* software
(free beer, not speech).
http://users.skynet.be/douwere/TD1_0b4.bin
The C2 etc raitings say that a given specific configuration is compliant with a given level in the rainbow books. In general the OS is accredited as well as the hardware. The memory bit you talk about is the general requirement that all memory must be accounted for in the system (that includes video cards, monitors, keyboard, mice, etc. -check the NISPOM for details) This is done for the hardware so that no infomation gets sent out in the hardware. The C2 raiting for NT last time I checked was without a floppy drive or network card - real functional. In the real world the only people who have to worry about true C2+ accredidation should be working with DoD.
Quote
Before NT 4.0, the NT windowing system was a user-mode implementation, but Microsoft found that the performance of graphics-intensive applications improved when the windowing system operated in kernel mode.
UnQuote
Only a Microsoftie could look at this statement and not say, "What the #$@K!"
If I want to share a file or directory on NT I can make a list of people who I want to have access. I can give read access to some people and write access to others on the same file. I don't have to have any special privledges, I just right click on any file or directory and select peoples' IDs and grant them each whatever permissions I want them to have.
Mac os 8.5 can do this too.
why do you suppose NT is still native on Alpha processors ? it sure ain't a market share consideration...
I am shocked at the performance results. There is no way in hell that NT can outperform solaris in a 1 cpu system! Infact the zdlabs test did a 1 cpu 266mhx p2 system to do the NT vs linux test and LINUX WAS 250% faster! THIS IS PURE FUD AND IT WILL COST US OUR JOBS! The same it pro's think the zdnet tests are just paid by redhat and like linux users also think zdnet has no crediblity! BUT, they will belive this and go on heavy NT crusades after this ! I fear unix is dying as a workstation os and these results will fool all my boses and co-workers into thinking they can GET THE JOB DONE ACTUALLY BETTER WITH NT BECAUSE ITS FASTER WITH THE 1 CPU WORKSTATIONS! I WILL NOT USE NT ON MY DESKTOP!! These results are full %^&*! ALso I highly doubt that NT is close to as powerfull as solaris and vms with 4 cpu's! IF i recall I remember that after 1 cpu the second one loses 30% of its performance and after the second one to the third one only HALF OF THE CHIP IS EVEN USED 50%! I am sure the results are even worse whith the fourth cpu AND THEY ARE TELLING ME THAT NT IS ONLY 20-25% SLOWER THEN SOLARIS AND VMS! THESE ARE PURE LIES! VERY DANGEROUS LIES THAT COULD POTIENTIALLY COULD KILL UNIX IN THE WORKSTATION WHICH MIGHT BE ALLREADY DEAD TO THE SERVER! F*CK MS AND ALL THERE UNSTABLE PRODUCTS! I ignored ms for years and just felt sorry for their users and didn't really care untill now! IF IDIOTS WANT TO BUY MS SOFTWARE, THEN LET THEM BUT DON"T LET THEM TELL ME WHAT TO BUY FOR MY OWN MACHINE OR FORCE ME TO USE IT AT WORK! I WILL LET YOU GUYS KNOW IF I GET FIRED FOR SELECTING LINUX AND FREEBSD!
aaaa that felt alot better.
"IBM's AIX runs only on the PowerPC chip, which IBM codeveloped with Motorola."
What? PowerPC only? I thought it ran on any of their power chips. Hmmm.
Lots of little errors down at the bottom there.
Pretty FUDdy considering how well ported linux
is.
What I'm really curious to know is how real
those benchmarks are. Are those the same machines?
The same servers? I doubt it's the best server on the best machine for each OS.
The article has some of the right big words, but unfortunately has no real information content. The only help is a little from the threads. ;-)
IMNSHO, the original design of NT might be good, but the implementation is definitly messed up from a mixture of marketing pressures and bloat. Everything IS more complicated than you think it is. UNIX (all of them/it) has a long history of messing with the boundaries of what is doable, and if^H^HWHEN you run into trouble at least try to give some useful information. In the early days AT&T gave UNIX plus source to various universities, who did all sorts of experimentation. Despite forking the code tree, there has always been a lot of cross-fertilization. I'm not expressing this very well, but you can get the general idea. Any unix, including closed-source, has its roots in experimentation. This means that minor errors should not have major consequences. Unix from the beginning has been multi-user. This means that user A should not be able to do in user B.
This means that applications should not be able to damage other applications, or the kernel. Unix has its roots in "small is beautiful".
Conversely, Microsoft belongs to the "bigger is better" school. Integrating the browser with the operating system. I don't know how many undocumented hooks there are from Microsoft Office into the operating system. NT is a single-user system. I think Windows for Workgroups (with a non-microsoft network) was the last Windows that was in any sense multi-user.
For what it's worth, I would strongly advise never installing, much less running any Microsoft Office software on any server. FWIW, I have an NT Server that has been up since Oct 17, 1998. This is a 486/33 with 16 meg RAM, used as BDC and supports a SCSI Jaz drive for backups. It's easy to get long uptimes with NT. Just don't use it
If you think it's bad now, wait for NT5 or Windows2000 or whatever they are calling it.
NT 3.51 (w/SP3) was certified by Microsoft's choice without the network interface. In addition it was certified with a floppy drive on both tested systems. In fact, both systems also had CD-ROM drives and one of the systems had a tape drive. Look up the evaluation report!
"...one of the great feautures of iis4 are sql server database intergration and backoffice domain security authentication. Iis4 is built upon the standard NT c2 security model for all your internet /intranet needs. THis makes iis4 the most secure web server software in the inudstry..."
:-)
"...IIs4 server requirements are very lite compared to most applications servers. IIs4 has tightly written code and requires only 64-96 megs of ram and a pentium 233mhz to boot up. WIth over a thousand users or more, its recommended that you put at least 256 megs of ram or 2 or more oentium pros cpu's or higher. Also the alpha family of cpu's also make a great web server for moderate loads."
Now, How ram and cpu does apache require for boot with linux and for up to 1,000 users?
..this is actual stuff from my mcse books.
Don't say I didn't warn you!
I think you seem to be confused about C2 status. Class C2 is defined in the Orange Book. How do I know it's the Orange Book? Because in my hands I hold a copy. It does in fact have an orange cover. But you are right, the certification process if very expensive, time consuming and tedious usually resulting in a 200+ page report.
http://www.w inntmag.com/Magazine/Article.cfm?IssueID=97&Articl eID=4515
There's still security-related FUD, though...
C is for coding, not cookies...
Basil Ganglia
I'm honestly very happy to see that some people agree that NT isn't all horrible. The research group that I belong to at university actually has an NT source code license, so I have seen and worked with the NT source code. To be truthful, the underlying NT kernel is actually pretty decently written. Unfortunately the Win32 source code is pretty cheesy and it is obvious that it has been wrangled this way and that so it can be used in several different contexts.
The big lose for NT as far as I can see is that there is no way to use NT without using Win32. If MS had put a little more thought into things and separated Win32 from NT, it would be easy to use NT as the basis for a very nice operating system that wouldn't have to be mired in Win32 hogwash.
Yeah, but at least it works better than KDE.
If you honestly believe the comments that you made in this message, then you are very ignorant.
.DLL's that can change as new products are installed on the machine, deal with a GUI, etc. Yes, it is true, NT *should* be able to handle these things if it is a viable product. All I can say is that NT 4 is much better than NT 3.51 in that regard, as far as I am concerned. Perhaps NT 5 will be better than NT 4. If not, MS deserves to lose in OS competitions.
I worked for several years as a VMS systems programmer, and now work on NT kernel-level development projects. Many of the VMS Internals documents map directly into features of the NT kernel. I can offer specific examples if you care.
I think there are at least a couple of reasons why VMS is more stable than NT. First, VMS has had a long path of improvement since 1977 when it was initially released. Early versions of VMS had problems that were gradually removed from the OS as it evolved and grew. I'm hopeful that this will happen to NT also as it evolves. Second, NT is being used in a greatly different way than VMS. VMS was installed by a system manager on a shared minicomputer in a pretty well-defined way. Additionally, the era that VMS comes from didn't include things like shared library management, the need for a GUI in the base operating system, etc. NT, on the other hand, is installed by end-users on commodity PC's that may or may not be as robust as a minicomputer. Likewise, NT is asked to do a lot of things that VMS didn't have to do: manage
Finally, your last comment about how NT should be rewritten by "actual programmers who are skilled in OS Design & Implementation" is way off base. David Cutler, the original architect of NT (and VMS, as well as several other successful operating systems) is very knowledgable about OS design and implementation.
Whoa! You better calm down there! You're starting to sound like a raving lunatic. Almost.
- I agree with your SMP comments. From what I know, NT SMP sucks the worst out of any SMP-capable OS. OS/2 Server scales much better. As does various *NIX
- What's the difference if someone is forced to use Windows at work, vs. being forced to use Linux? It is unreasonable to think that your workplace is going to let every employee choose their own OS. The maintenance would be a nightmare...
Personally, I have to use Win95 at work. It sucks. But that's what they pay me to do. When I go home, it's a different matter, I boot what I like, and it's not Microsoft.
- I do believe that a NT station could be faster than a Solaris box. Have YOU ever personally run the two of them? I have run overnight simulations for me thesis using Maple and Matlab (same version) on both a Solaris (SPARC2) and Windows (486-66). Guess what, the Windows box won hands down every time. It's not everything of course. The Solaris box was always more stable and remained responsive during the run, but the Windows box WAS faster. By far.
- I wish people would read the article with a more open mind and stop getting so emotional! I do think he stretches a little in some areas (NT with roots dating back to the 70's? Come on! We all know NT is the illegitmate half-brother of OS/2, the spawn that came out of the unholy union between MS and IBM), it is fairly even handed. He doesn't actually pick a winner, and it is noted that various other factors come into play. Cost of maintenance, availability of apps, etc. (how about RELIABILITY?). And I do believe his only conclusion is correct. NT is here to stay. Whether it will dominate or not is another matter.
Not to stand up for Windows NT, but the upgraded version of "HyperTerminal" seems like an OK telnet client for me.
Also, you may not have non-NTFS partitions and of course no dual-boot possibility IIANM.
Well I study at a rather large university. Where
ther are LOTS of linux fanatics, esp in the IT
department.
But after reading a discussion in the local
newsgroups it became clear to me that even
those linux fanatics in the IT department did
not believe that Linux/Sparc was ready for
mainstream deployment in the IT labs.
PCs are not at all regarded as stable enough
to be used here it seems.
So it seems to me that ppl claming Linux to
be ready, dont really wish to put their words
to action when time really comes.
*sigh*
Well, *something* about C2 is in the link I provided. I'm sure the orange book is at the same site, if you know the tag for the document.
So like how do you messure the uptime of a
kernel? and what do you run on the kernel?
if your writng an article to compare
how kernals are constructed you should
stick the kernel architecture, not
studies about uptime on full systems!
Uptime involves, machine hardware, software
running on the system and lots more that
is NOT part of the kernel.
But since it was about NT I guess Linux ppl
dont have to think about it before flaming it.
"I would assume that the general public can
figure out that slashdot.org is not the place
to find blind praise of everything microsoft".
It's not obvious from the URL that it is a
pro-linux site, unlike winntmag.com.
Kernels are kernels and GUIs are GUIs and never
the twain should cross....
A while back ZD ran a FUD piece on NT vs. Unix for workstations. Their fantasy was that NT on high-end Pentium boxes was nearly as good as (if not better than) *average* (note: not high-end) Unix boxes. One of the boxes they used was a SINGLE-processor Alpha running Unix; all the other boxes they ran (including the NT pile) were SMP.
That Alpha smoked the rest of 'em consistently. It was either the fastest or 2nd-fastest machine in the bunch.
My point: I've got benchmarks to prove that this guy at Winnt mag is a twit: single processor Unix WHIPS SMP NT.
So who's benches are correct? Don't put much stock in that crap.
Yupp :)
Academics and various odd ppl like to use Unix.
esp since then they look REALLY knowledgeable
since they can do a really long cryptic
command and do lots of stuff
THe rest of the world uses something a bit more modern than 1970s and something that works well
WindowsNT rules.
Check out http://www.sysinternals.com . Most posters act as though they've never heard of Mark. Remember that lil' quirk in NT where a 4-line program could consume 100% of the CPU? That was the author.
For those of you talking about MS lies as though Mark is a puppet, check the NTFSFlp entry on the above site. Pay particular attention to: "Windows NT has never supported NTFS floppy disks, because Microsoft claims that floppy disks are too small for NTFS data structures. NTFSFlp, a program that will both format and enable NTFS support on floppy disks, proves this to be wrong. Now you can see for yourself why NTFS on floppies, while possible, is not a great idea." Sound like a puppet to you?
You idiots should read a little more before spewing your trash. The article was very well-balanced. Fscking holy war bastards.
The idea is that kernel will recognize some distinct SysReq (Ctrl+Alt+Del for windows, shift+SysReq for many unices) that the kernel responds to directly. Any program sitting on the console can (and will) be blown away.
:-)
I don't recall what the experimental Linux kernel code does with SysReq; I think some other unix flavors can force the machine into single user mode with it. (Obviously not something you would want to advertise to the casual user
Modified keyboards can be a problem with standard commercial keyboards, but the military mindset would simply provide keyboards in welded metal cases. Or keyboards built into stationary workstations. Or... oops, the military is now trying to use standard components instead of $600 keyboards. I wonder what type of keyboard they use on warships?
...or are you his mother?
I admittedly know very little, but in Linux a user can't mount other drives either, can he? So what exactly is the difference?
A user can still maintain separate "drive mappings" as symlinks in his/her home directory.
$10 KeyTronics they bought at CompUSA (they were free after rebate).
You can read the text of the article here:n ix.txt
http://www.kentroad.demon.co.uk/winnt-vs-u
It is at www.kentroad.demon.co.uk/winnt-vs-unix.txt
No, there's actually an undocumented system call, llpanmGDICreateFlyingTrashPaperAnimationA(). It accepts a structure specifying the angular momentum, center of mass, and amount of foldage in the paper.
Actually, I don't like using Windows NT because it has all of those really long cryptic function call names.
I completely agreee with this statement. Anyone remember the Workstation is Server if you adjust a few registry entrees? Sorry, but this guy knows his *&^%. As far as him being an MS spokesperson, get real!
And like most of you, I'll post this as an Anonymous Coward.
You're as bad as Upton Sinclair!
. . . and he's creeeeeeeeping up on slashdot!
Look, I'm no fan of Microsoft, but C2 clearance is really, really anal. C2-cleared Linux wouldn't be much more useful than C2-cleared NT. I mean, to make it semi-fair, assume that the NT box has cygnus' bash/egcs thing installed and whatnot so you can get some work done. Basically C2 means taking it off the network. Once you're locked in a little box, obviously [A-Z]+n.x has more cool toys to play with.
It's true, I read it on slashdot.
The Red Menace is menacing Our Boys in Uniform!
They must be stopped!
First I'm confused about the Linux/SPARC comment and how it might relate to PC's.
But anyhow, in regards to whether Linux/x86 is ready for mainstream deployment I think that DejaNews serves as ample proof that it is. DejaNews is running x86 Linux and has been since its inception.
Is NT ready for deployment? Since this site just crashed www.winntmag.com, I'm tempted to think not.
But you make your own decisions, it's your job not mine.
Beware! Beware!
They're sneeeeaking up on you! There, turn around, quick! Damn, you missed 'em. They were right there, I tell you. Right THERE!
Oh, well, they'll be . . . WAITAMINUTE! THERETHEYAREAGAINLOOKLOOKLOOK!
Damn, you're slow. Missed 'em again.
I suppose this site is propaganda. Keep in mind that Microsoft is a 100 billion dollar company paying advertising whores millions of dollars to hype their software and has many thousands of stock holders to keep happy with profits going up, up, up and thousands of programmers working for them who get paid in stock options instead of money.
Linux has a bunch of users and programmers supporting it and a few companies that sell it - some of which have maybe 200 employees.
Who's got the better credibility? If Linux was erased from the planet Earth tonight, I'd still have a job tomorrow.
WINSHELLAPI int WINAPI SHFileOperation(
LPSHFILEOPSTRUCT lpFileOp
);
. . . don't ask. but it makes the flying paper thingies go "fly, fly". it's weird to use though, and the fucking documentation is, as always, either wrong or incomplete . . .
You think you're fooling somebody -- but you're not! Not me, anyway. I don't need you to fool me. I can fool myself just fine.
Truth be known, most sites aren't pro microsoft, unless they are owned by microsoft, sponsered by microsoft, or have advertising by microsoft.
The majority of the technical and professional community of which I am a member thinks that microsoft has low ethics and lousy products, that doesn't prevent the majority of the technical and professional community from feeding from the money bin provided by microsoft - after all, most of us are capitolists underneath the surface.
So microsoft is good for my bank account, even if I don't feel that it is good for joe blow consumer. However, I don't much care about joe blow consumer because joe blow consumer still insults me by calling me a 'geek' so fuck him. Microsoft is #1!! I suspect this is a bit how Bill Gates feels himself. Geeks rule the world today, but just the evil ones. Long live the technocracy. All praise Cthulu!
unix zealots are too busy whining about Microsoft and NT to discuss any of the benefits of unix.
In any trade rag on earth today (not to mention slashdot, where you are posting in the middle of a massive discussion of the benefits of unix) it's a damn unanimous chorus, 24-7: the benefits of fucking unix. stability, availability, efficiency, speed, portability, scalability, TCO, ROI, GCC, FOO, BAR -- get out of the house more, stupid. wake up. regardless of whether they're right or wrong (you'd rather see slick marketing materials than mere benchmarks and other hard evidence, so you probably think they're wrong), they're sure as hell talking about the goddamn benefits of unix alright. it's a lot of talk, but then again -- there are a lot of benefits.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA!
like them weird stickers with the orange afro skeleton clown guy.
heh.
Oh, yeah, you think I don't know what you're up to, snnnnnneaking into people's computers through that Tell Net and ENFORCING QUOTAS ON THEM!
You bastard! You think you'll get away with this, but you're wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong! That's a lot of wrong, and you're IT, baby!
Oh, yeah! Ohhhhhh yeah! Game over, dude.
Yeah, and Cthulhu, too, while we're at it.
bruuuuhahahahahahahahahaha!
yeah, alpha, alpha . . . heh heh heh . . . market share . . . market share . . .
uh, MS supports alpha for the same reason that intel has a hardon for linux. eggs/basket. the fact that intel now OWNS alpha is an interesting point, and even a valid one -- but the feds made intel license the alpha deal out as part of the deal, so there are alpha clonez from korea and places like that. or there will be. or else that iguana crawling out of your ass is hungrier than he looks.
hyuk, hyuk.
or better yet: "hyeugh, hyeugh, hyeugh!"
Now quick, what beloved hero of the sea laughed like that?
:)
THE RED MENACE IS CHEWING THE GROUND OUT FROM UNDERNEATH OUR FEET, CRAWLING UP OUR COLLECTIVE RED-BLOODED AMERICAN ASS!
Don't take it too seriously. The atheist "secular humanist" religion liberals take your house and rape your sister and all that but you don't have to care beacuse they'll take your gun to defend yourself with and then they'll make your mother marry a black man but you won't care beacuse you'll be married to a jew.
Don't worry about it, as long as you believe in Moral Relativism Anti-God Religion killing babies you just won't care about any of it, will you?
There are several good design features of NT - however, since the native API is masked, you run into the same problems that the Mach folks ran into in designing "personality" modules to run on top of the Mach microkernel. They've layered an
unnecessary level of complexity on top of an already overly complex kernel. There ARE things that should be gleaned from NT. We should move video card support into the kernel - though the GUI should run in user space. (This is partially done in the 2.2.X kernels). The treatment of user space as an OO universe would allow CORBA to migrate to a layer just below the current user space, and provide a reasonably clean IPC - something ALL Unices lack. I don't consider either the X model of IPC or the System V model to be much more than convenient hacks.
I HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO USE VC BECAUSE ONLY VC CAN USE THE API"S OF WINDOWS!
Who told you that bullshit?
A. Search on yahoo for mingw32 -- it's a native win32 port of gcc which links to the MSVC runtime dll (which comes with windows). Read Al Stevens' column in Dr. Dobb's; he's writing an IDE for it these days.
B. cygnus has another win32 port of GCC; IIRC you can do GUI programs with it.
C. LCCWin32 -- yet another free win32 compiler. C only, no C++, but it's a C API anyway. Dunno about COM crap; never tried that in C. In theory you can do it but I doubt that you'd enjoy it very much.
D. Borland
E. Watcom
F. Metrowerks
G. Symantec
How many compilers do you need?
I think its awefull that I am closed from the real (windows) world
I, personally, think it's awful that you haven't made the slightest effort to find alternatives. I also think it's a bit awful that you think the windows world is "real". It isn't. This month, it's a better career move than UNIX programming. Ask me again next year. Things change. Microsoft is not on the way up any more. They'll be around for a while, of course, but they are no longer successfully pretending to set the agenda.
My boss never called ms but rather ms called us and threatened us
Heh. Some self-promoting jackass of a Linux hanger-on and professional Microsoft-basher said in an article recently that using proprietary software was "criminally irresponsible" or some dumbass, fanatical remark like that. It'd serve us right if we let twits like that speak for us, and if we were to get the same bullshit back from the "other side". Poetic justice, dig? People with a war mentality always do more harm than good.
Anyway, I don't really believe that this part of your story is literally true.
As you can tell I have a big type A personality and I can invision BIlly grining . . . when he sees me fustrated with windows
Um, I have a theory about what type of personality you have, but "A" ain't it . . . Just one thing: If you happen to start thinking about climbing any towers, you know, and maybe bringing a rifle along . . . Talk to me first, okay?
As for the part at the beginning where you're afraid that you'll lose your job because your expertise will not be needed, well, hey -- that would be a GOOD thing. But NT isn't going to bring it about. Not a chance. NT needs as many sysadmins than unix does, 'cause everything about it needs constant babysitting. IIS is unstable, exchange is unstable, the OS is unstable, yadda yadda yadda. It all adds up to a hell of lot of man-hours and job security for people too lazy to work for a living, but too dumb to learn C.
And if it's anti-God, it's serving the devil; you can't be against God and not be for the devil. Even if that's not what you want, if you're against God you're doing the devil a favor with every breath you take. So you're all basically worhipping the devil here with your little Linux boxes and your creeeeeeeeping sssssocialismmm! We all know that Linus is a goddamn faggot foreigner, he waits on his wife hand and foot -- AGAINST BIBLICAL COMMANDS! The woman is to OBEY her husband, her master. If the Southern Baptist Convention says it, and GOD says it, it's good enough for me -- but not for some faggot from a socialist country who doesn't even know what freedom means!
You're all crazy, but you'll all be rotting in Hell for a million million million years while I'm singing in glory in Heaven along with Bil^H^H^HJesus and God and all them guys. And when you scream up for help I'll laugh because Jesus taught mercy, he said to love the sinner but hate the sin -- and you LOVE the sin, so fuck you! Burn!
You just won a million tons of MULCH!
You heard it here first.
But creeping capitalist fags are okay, as are rompon-stompin' walkin'-tall socialist fags. He's also pretty mellow about creeping socialist breeders.
Go figure.
I should look into BeOS's kernel a bit more to get its design. I _think_ that it is a an Object based kernel, more like NT, with microkernel like features like low latency task switching. Anyone know if this is right?
No, the BeOS kernel works on the "virtual gerbil-wheel" principle. It's also got an alligator.
I smoke, I read Katz sometimes (he has a lot more to say than you do), I don't watch sports, I don't use NT. Pull your head out of your ass. SCHHHLLUPPP! There, that feels better, doesn't it?
Keep your mindless fears and insecurities to yourself, jackass.
you're a geek
GOD WILL PUNISH YOU FOR LAUGHING AT THAT JOKE! HE WON'T PUNISH ME BECAUSE I'M SAVED SO IT'S OKAY, BUT *YOU*, ON THE OTHER HAND -- BOY, OH BOY ARE YOU IN FOR IT!
You don't remember flaming anyone, eh? Oh, yeah. Sure you don't. Couldn't have been . . . IN A PAST LIFE, BY ANY CHANCE? EH? EH? Oh, now you're all QUIET all of a sudden, aren't you . . . You astrologer/new-ager/anarchist/nihilist/Trotskyite
You think we don't know what you're up to! You think that just because Bibi's getting chased out of office for, among other things (mind you, Barak's no bargain either, the NRP just plain scares me, and thank god Porat's irrelevant because he's a maniac), letting the US push him around -- you think that just because of that, he isn't actually the real power completely controlling the US government! Oh, yeah, you've been well fooled, alright. It's ZOG, baby. ZOG, ZOG, ZOG.
No version of BSD can save your soul, boy. Get straight with God and your OS will be irrelevant.
Oh, the worms will gnaw at your vitals for ALL ETERNITY!
Can't you feel the fiery maggots gnawing at your eyeballs already? Chew, chew! Chew, chew! Ick. If I were you, I'd get right with God in a hurry, or at least put something yucky-tasting on my eyes so they'd leave me alone.
The US Navy has shown NT is not stable and should never be used in critical mission.
They use NT in submarine control systems as a trial! What they got was the Blue screen of Death!
The crews on the boat have another intepretation of the "Blue screen of Death" when they look through the little windows onboard!
you're a geek
Oh, and you're not?
Jeez.
:)
I can't leave some of your stuff unanswered; for one, NT 3.51 is far better than 4.0 with regard to handling peculiar library situations.
WTF do you mean by "the need for a GUI in the base operating system?" Included along with? Or as a kernel-level implementation? If the former, perhaps you never actually used VMS, but it has come with X for a long time. If the latter, then neither did NT, not until 4.0.
Lastly, Cutler was demoted several years ago for objecting to some of the design f***-ups that MS perpetrated. Yes, he's knowledgable, but he hasn't been allowed to touch NT for a good long time. I happen to know some of the current NT designers/implementors, and while they're nice people, they are in way over their heads.
I could go on, but it's bedtime... :)
NT is popular because people are lazy. Has anyone ever set up a small network using NT? It's dead simple.
I think NT lacks in many areas, but you people bash on it too much. It's better than 95 by far, has a lot of modern features, some that even Linux lacks, and whats wrong with easy people?
Damned Techno-masachists
Ext2 doesn't support 64-bit files because the
VM layer can't handle it. Even if it did...
THIS IS ABOUT MEMORY.
NT can allocate memory above the 4 GB limit of
older chips. The Pentium Pro and above can
handle 64 GB of memory, though it is hard to use.
NT lets you read() into it and write() from it.
NT has about a dozen kernel calls that take
64-bit pointers.
The only case in which NT could evolve to a good os is: not being developed by MS anymore.
MS has the ability to put shit into everything good.
However, NT will die soon. Linux will defeat it, since it's totally superior
Dont get me wrong, there are times that ACL's abilities beyond ordinary unix permissions can be useful, it just happens very rarely in reality. In my experience, the client server paradigm often means that system security for data access is bypassed completely (databases, web access). In the cases where you have mutually untrusted users, they will demand separate systems anyway. In the case you mention, the setup would likely be that only the report editors have access to the files at all, and the readers just get the files on the corporate web (for simplicity reasons, the readers rarely want to go hunting around in the filesystem, and they arent interested in unfinished drafts).
This doesnt mean that ACL's are bad. Only that in seven years as a sysadmin for several hundred unix server systems (and a couple of nt systems) with thousands of users, I've never felt the need to actually buy the trusted version of any unix.
I'm sure they'll be implemented in Linux too at some time, and they have been in the various unices for years, but I find it unlikely I'll ever turn ACL's on anyway. The extra bother just isnt worth it in most cases.
when i try to read the aricle i always got:
Error Occurred While Processing Request
Error Diagnostic Information
Server busy or unable to fulfill request. The server is unable to fulfill your request due to extremely high traffic or an unexpected internal error. Please
attempt your request again (if you are repeatedly unsuccessful you should notify the site administrator). (Location Code: 25)
Please inform the site administrator that this error has occurred (be sure to include the contents of this page in your message to the administrator).
nothing more to say
So much about the scalability of NT servers. Apparently, the slashdot effect has hit them :) So, guys, click reload!
... Felix
hahahaha.. I go to winntmag.com and what do you
know? the traffic no doubt caused by slashdot
seems to have left the server all confused..
it takes a good minute just to spit back a
'too many requests' message. HA HA HA!
I wonder if they run their servers on the
bad software they cheerlead for? hahahaha..
I installed sql server . iis4 and it gobled up 80 megs of RAM AT BOOTUP! hehe what a lemon.
I never had time to deal with apache yet but I hope to soon. ALso this was a server I had at home with no clients hooked up and even if sql server isn't loaded at runtime, then it will eat up only 70 megs of ram. hehe I wonder why any bussiness would even bother to use this awefull product.
guess there's no reason to bother reading the article...
One major NT feature that Linux lacks, but is required for C2, is a secure SysReq function which can't be masked.
Eh? What is the Secure Attention Key (SAK) then?
RTFM, please.
ummm PUKE, gcc cant even compile KDE, what? it aint do templates... what its buggy?
I heard from more than a few people that say gcc is crap really and egcs is the way to go, perhaps anything that starts with G should be dumped, with out mentioning anything.
Brings to mind the situation at where I work. They've decided for some reason to migrate mail from 2 solaris systems on Ultra Enterprise machines to 20+ NT servers running Exchange. The level of stupidity involved here is mind-boggling.
The only thing I can really make of this is that the big corporations are committing acts of self-desctruction so that smallers companies which otherwise would have slimmer margins get a chance to make some headway.
I think it's just fine that things are playing out this way, because smaller companies tend to be more accountable for their actions, and aren't up in Washington bribing your local Senator or Representative.
WINSHELLAPI int WINAPI SHFileOperation(
/. is just as biased as winntmag.
LPSHFILEOPSTRUCT lpFileOp
);
. . . don't ask. but it makes the flying paper thingies go "fly, fly". it's weird to use though, and the fucking documentation is, as always, either wrong or incomplete . . .
Please don't confuse incompetence with lack of documentation. The Platform SDK documentation does have its problems, but the SHFileOperation entry is not one of them. The recently written part of the docs are indeed sometimes incomplete or misleading, but are better than "TODO: man pages". You mean that everything in Linux (or in any other open source project) is documented (!=RTFS) flawlessly (esspecially new features)? Some time ago i had to write an application that embedded Python and provided several objects and all i found in the documentation was a huge list o function prototypes with no descriptions. Having the source solved the problem relativly easly, but this is not an excuse.
With posts like this,
Cost per transaction is all well and good (altho Linux will beat NT on that by far), but when you factor in having to reboot between every transaction (ok, well, every 2000 transactions), it's a lot more expensive. Especially if you have to have ten machines instead of one large one.
I can resize the screen/resoultion without rebooting, and even the IP without rebooting NT4, all with SP4
Telnet in on port 80 and do get / and it spits stuff back at you quickly, it would appear to be running IIS4.0. Presumably for Microsoft Windows NT Server version 4.0.
Netcraft survey timed out though. The server seems to have been at various levels of broken-ness since it was mentioned on slashdot, at the moment I'm not even getting the misconfigured/busy message.
It would be unfair to blame the outage on NT, slashdot traffic has taken out far better servers in the past. I'm staggered at the time its taken to get it back online so far, I just hope that nobody is up to no good and this outage is entirely due to conventional traffic - it would be far less embarrasing for the poor winntmag people to blame it on hackers.
Gee, you can do TWO WHOLE THINGS on an NT box without rebooting! That's incredible!
Oh -- wait...I can do ANYTHING BUT LOAD A NEW KERNEL with *nix without rebooting.
This lovely sig wouldn't exist if it weren't very nearly the truth:
"Your mouse has moved. Windows NT must be restarted for the change to take effect. Reboot now? [OK]"
Hmmm...you could have a point...NAH.
How much are those saps at M$ charging for their dreck? How many technical writers do they have producing documentation?
And...how many tech writers does the average author of Free Software have, working in his spare time? HMMMMM?
No, there are problems with documentation for free software, but there's at least a rational explanation. M$ has no excuse...though there may be an explanation ("One set of docs for potential competitors; one set for us to use ourselves!")
It runs on both PowerPC and POWER.
www.interix.com
Linux has had support for ACLs via the AFS file system for many years now. I use them myself at work.
What's the difference if someone is forced to use Windows at work, vs. being forced to use Linux?
I'd rather quit than use MS products at work. I've had the luxury of never having to depend on any MS product at work since I graduated a few years ago, and I plan on keeping it that way. If my employer suddenly decides to move to NT, then I'm out of there and they can pay some MSCE high school graduate to keep their system running and code all of their in-house projects. I didn't spend $10K and four years of my time to get a CS degree and then sit around playing solitaire all day on some mickey mouse OS. And if the whole world moves to NT, then I'm officially retiring from the computing field and following my other dream, to open up a cattery.
why would anybody expect slashdot to favor Windows NT? If Linux dies, so does slashdot
Just got one word.... "HA!"
ACLs have been around for a long time.
Remember, MULTICS (the grandaddy
of all unices) had ACLs. That was
some thirty years ago.
It was deliberately dropped in Unix because
it was considered to be unnecessary complexity:
anything ACLs can do, you can do with setuid.
The other reason was that historically, ACLs
were never that successful. Security is not
a simple task, and with ACLs you invariably
end up with more and more lists and pretty soon
nobody can keep track of how they interact
anymore.
Security has to be done by careful design.
I have personally used both ACLs (mostly on
VMS) and Unix setuid, and I prefer the latter
because its simplicity makes it easier to
keep things under control.
I don't miss ACLs one bit.
pshah..
Both are (rather) new oses built on old designs. The future lies elsewhere.
My question to Dr. Russonivich.
If NT is so superior to Linux or Unix, why not open up the source code to peer review in the same fashion any other so-called discovery is presented. Why not publish in peer reviewed journals (IEEE/CS transactions or ACM), where others can judge for themselves.
I've seen people talk about how smart this guy is and how advanced the M$ kernel is, but the proof is in the "pudding" and Nts "real-world" capabilities are not really that impressive relative to its so-called "theoretical" capabilities. Futhermore, I would challenge the so-called "theoretical" capabilities as rhetoric because I've never seen any source code posted anywhere.
personal rant:
Dr Russo**** is spouting a load of cr*p and telling everyone to trust him because he knows what he's talking about, PhD CMU etc. If everyone had the straight dope on Nt (source code) then everyone could make there own judgement, not take it from me(Russo). The Hubris these guys exude is almost unbelievable. Also, I like the way he slants the argument Pro-NT, by judiciously using academic facts (because it is open source and is part of the CS curriculum) regarding Unix versus the closed (black box) facts with NT.
And HP Record on 16 processors? Haven't these
people heard about Origin 2000?
And what major Unix does not have STREAMS? Come on..
IRIX IRIX IRIX IRIX IRIX IRIX IRIX IRIX IRIX
Stop the `just Digital, Solaris and HP/UX' thing!
The Sony / Toshiba Emotion Engine that is supposed to be the brains of the PlayStation 2 coming out in 2000 will be a 128-bit CPU.
Learn to read....You will find what you need in the TSEC (aka Orange book). It has NOTHING to do with networks. If you can do it securely. Believe me worked on a B level system. We networked.
Dan
So much talking so little intelligence
I believe that the additional requirement for NT C2 certification was that the machine be disconnected from a network. Seriously.
At the time, someone mentioned that we should get Linux B1 (or whatever) certified if disconnected from power mains.
I wonder why all of the Top500 supercomputers in the world are non-NT machines? (Not even that many are Intel machines...of course, the first one is -- which counts for something)
AC Wrote:
> NT SUCKS COCK
Well, that must be one of the undocumented API's.
It certinly sounds like an argument for going
with NT.
The alternative to limited government is unlimited government.
Since when does AIX run on Alphas? Go away, troll.
That's what the article says. Really.
Hello anonymous coward,
/. right?
I hope you're joking. For your information, queso gives me this on your c2.org site:
209.249.31.128:80 * FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD
Hmmm, guess they don't trust NT that much.
And could you provide and more specific link on that web site? I can't seem to find anything about NT + C2?
I get it! You actually work for C2NET and you want to get
whats wrong with easy people?
Being the source of all stupid and evil probably. People who want complex things to become easy often screw up those things for a lot of other people, that they haven't happened to think about.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Geeeez! ;-)
You'd think that an OS that is as great as NT would be able to handle a little web traffic!
-------------------------------------------- It looks just like a Telefunken U-47! -Frank Zappa
"NT's roots extend back to 1977 and Digital Equipment's release of VMS 1.0. Many core members of the future NT design team left Digital in 1988 to join Microsoft, which released NT's first version, Windows NT 3.1, in 1993. Thus, NT and UNIX have been evolving since the mid-1970s..."
Ummm... that's a real leap. Just because some NT design team members also worked on VMS *does not* mean that 1)NT is descended from VMS 2) that NT has been evolving since the 70's. More FUD, sigh
:wq
With Unix's scripting capabilities, it shouldn't be too terribly hard to build a distribution disk that could set up an entire system with no manual intervention, and thus with no display at all, regular or serial. It would have to be pre-configured, of course...
Another method that comes to mind is putting a network-capable kernel on the distribution disk and firing up a telnetd in the init scripts.
Umm, RMS is not a "Linux zealot freak." He applauds Linux's progress, but I'm quite sure he'll prefer the HURD kernel when it is at a usable level of completion.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Well, it would be nice, at least for bragging rights, if Linux implemented the necessary security features to earn a C2 rating. Sure, NT's C2 rating is fairly meaningless with all those requirements, but Linux can't earn a C2 rating even when it's not connected to a network and has no floppy drive, due to the lack of some required stuff like ACLs and auditing.
If this does get done, it'll prevent the NT people from being able to say "we have a C2 rating and you don't!" Not to mention that some of the security features actually would be useful.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Linux can be installed without a videocard... perhaps the easiest way (off the top of my head) would be using the serial VT driver found in recent kernels.
As far as SAMBA goes, he's very right about its performance; I saw some reviews after the last major release (whatever the heck it was) that were very impressive.
Posted by Nedwin_H_Longfellow:
:)
1.) the article brags on NT's scalability -- running on a max of 4 processors == scalability?
HA! Even Irix, one of the worst commercial Unix variants available, runs on up to 256 processors, and probably more if the hardware would be available. Solaris has no problem scaling up to 64 or more in an E10, and probably into the hundreds, I just haven't seen it personally. Sure, Linux is way behind in this area with it's rather coarse-grained locking, but it's making very solid advances as we speak...
2.) Security - typical M$ smoke and mirrors here. The only version of NT to ever earn C2 certification was a special version of 3.51, and it only earned the certification when the machine had no floppy drive, and one other criteria (forgot which...) You always see M$ bigots saying NT is C2, but notice how they skirt right over which version they're talking about?
3.) They totally ignore reliability, which is everyone's main complaint about NT. There are some very serious design issues that I differ with in NT (such as putting video drivers in Ring 0, and allowing a poor video driver to crash an entire server, requiring that the entire machine reboot if you make one change in the network config, requiring you to keep reapplying service packs every time you load new software, etc.) but my main complaint against NT isn't the quality of the design, but the quality of the implementation. If M$ would spend even a 10th of their "research", advertising, or legal budget on improving the quality of their existing products, they would be quantum leaps ahead. I have never seen Solaris 2.5.1 or greater, HP/UX 10.2 or greater, or even Linux kernel panic without hardware problems (or in Linux's case unless I was dorking around with some kernel code
Just my $0.02 worth, flame away if you love NT
Posted by jguest:
Reminds me of Dan Quayle comparing himself to JFK.
I was a VMS admin on a 7/24 hospital lab system. We had 98% uptime *INCLUDING* scheduled downtime and backups.
I bailed as soon as I could when the hosp dedicated to an NT based lab system. Three years later, and they've finally decided that the app on NT can't hack it...
Posted by jguest:
Come on folks, if they're going to state that NT is VMS with a GUI, then they need to also state that UNIX is MULTICS with portability.
This puts the roots of UNIX back to the mid-60's -- significantly older than the VMS->NT pedigree.
This reminds me of the Heinlein quote about meeting a small lizard who claimed to be a Brontosaurus on his mother's side....
Posted by Nedwin_H_Longfellow:
You missed the point. 3.51 was the last version to be certified. What version are they pushing right now? Depending on whether you count vaporware, that would be either 4 or 5. How many million lines of code have been added or changed since then? Of course you'll probably tell me that multi gazillionaire Billy boy could get them to pass if he wanted to, he just doesn't want to waste the money, right? And nobody really needs a floppy drive or a network connection either, just like nobody will ever need more than 640K of RAM, right?
I've heard that there are literally thousands of government offices installing plain old NT 4 because they expect it to be C2 secure. And from the drivel you read in these M$ rags, you would expect it to be too! I would love to see the people who make decent C2 OS's get together and start a class-action lawsuit against M$ for false advertising. (hint hint, anyone know any legal bloodsuckers working in the computer industry?)
Yeah, the best example I heard of was each user logging in to an NT box via WinFrame and triggering FastFind. Every time.
Eventually the machine staggers to a halt under the load of a cheesy little app.
ha ha!
NT desperately wants to be seen as 'Industrial Strength'. The way this discussion is framed leans heavily toward that.
ie... NT is as old as Unix, and an evolution of VMS (a genuinely industrial strength OS).
ie... Describing NT's architechture first, then going on to say that "Unix implements a similar approach", as though Unix were playing catch-up.
ie... slagging Linux for not making kernel-level threads available, but ony casually mentioning that NT's kernel-level interface is undocumented and unavailable (the tech. may be beyond me here - is this a valid pont?)
I think we're going to start seeing lots of articles that Take NT Seriously (TM), with no mention of stability, speed or overall appropriateness of this OS on a server. But simply taking that tone will start to leave an indelible impression on a "New generation of IT professionals".
Gee, must be running nt. We should collect some
stats to compare how well nt boxes handle the slashdot effect as compared to Unix ones.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
I have to agree. From the article:
Many core members of the future NT design team left Digital in 1988 to join Microsoft, which released NT's first version, Windows NT 3.1, in 1993. Thus, NT and UNIX have been evolving since the mid-1970s, ...
Claiming that NT is based on a Digital OS from the mid seventies because MS hired a few digital programmers is a huge leap. The author made it across the chasm, but he had to lighten the load and leave his credibility behind to do it. And claiming that both UNIX and NT date back to the mid seventies because of this is a further distortion of the truth; 1969 is _not_ the mid seventies. Lets go by ship dates: UNIX 1976; NT 1993. What we have here is a credibility gap of about 17 years.
TedC
I never got to the article (for obvious reasons), but I wonder if the author left out the part about where NT's kernel realizes it has to do more than one thing at a time and decides to shut down all network resources, schedule all processes at real-time, flip the execution pointers to point to random instructions, and then start thrashing wildly as it completely falls over and fails to serve ANY CONTENT WHATSOEVER!
fwiw.
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
5 years ago linux was just starting to be picked up for use in universities. 5 years later we see Linux exploding onto the scene. Not a coincidence.
Is when he writes a couple paragraphs on "Which OS is Better?" where there's some good arguments for UNIX, and then the next paragraph is "Which OS is REALLY better?" What's especially funny is in the previous part he says the only way to really say which is better is by using standard benchmarking utilities. But to find out which is REALLY better you just have to know NT is the choice of a new generation of IT professionals..
I'm still chuckling about that..
Do not anger the worm.
You could use Samba to export the directory instead of NFS - that would work in much the same way (although without ACLs).
I do agree with the point to some extent - although I think it is one of the areas to cause the largest headaches on NT as well. Ever tried dealing with permissions problems on a server for NT? Nightmare.
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
Look at the "NT News Analysis" ( http://www.winntmag.com/Magazine/Article.cfm?Issue ID=97&ArticleID=4651 ) instead.
/mill
"According to intellectual property lawyers, the Linux licensing agreement binds any developers who produce software using components of the Linux OS (e.g., libraries, runtimes) to release the source code for their additions (i.e., applications) to the public domain."
You're right.
however, nt seems to be the poster child (poster devil?) for E raymond's theory about how "cathedral" development model fails in reliability. ms recruited many many high quality talents with their market clouts, yet they still put out low quality products (at least in terms of reliability).
Actually, read "Rapid Development" (MS Press). Don't get too hung up on its advice, although by and large it's a very good book.
Anyhow, the author points out that MS did the opposite of this -- they didn't pay money to get the best, they instead used an internal hype campaign to get the excited programmers eager to work on the project. There's a saying about that -- there are old programmers, and there are bold programmers. But there are no old, bold programmers.
So MS traded enthusiasm for writing "the best OS ever" (their words) for experience and competance.
The result is self-evident.
Will bazaar-style open source ("open development", to coin a term) make it possible to be both experienced, competant, AND excited? Time will tell. I hope so.
-Billy
Yup. Of course! The copyright's expired :-).
However, it implies that bold pilots end up dead, not that old pilots are generally useless, like one would infer from your version.
Read again -- like you say, I'm quoting the saying almost verbatim, and my message was otherwise extolling the virtues of experienced programmers. Don't know how you got that interpretation.
-Billy
I have a 486DX-66 with 16MB of RAM, which
boots Linux and runs Apache just fine.
It's currently serving up to 1000 users a day,
without pushing the load average over 0.05...
Danny
I have written over 900 book reviews
IF everyone thinks NT is better, guess what! we all lose. All the innovation with linux will stop because gnu will turn into a windows thing crippled by lack of api's (thanks to microsofts deliberate attempt to break the public ones and hide the private). Come Guys no one ever gets fired for buying microsoft software. MY job and your will be gone or you can still have it if you only use ms wrpducts for everything. Oh! Guess what! Your job will be gone! why do you need to to hire consultants when you can just visit microsofts web site and buy the package for your needs. Why do you need a consultant to find out which programing suite you need or which database you need when you or any idiot can just order SQL server or Visual studio. Microsoft has a solution for every problem right!:-)
.doc and .xls files so you can share data with the world or it would be greater if everyone used an open standard like html or any other txt format, so it wouldn't matter what wordprocessor you used. Everything was open before Billy Boy and Big BLue came along and changed everything. As you can tell I have a big type A personality and I can invision BIlly grining (just as he did when he told the press that Ie was part of windows)when he sees me fustrated with windows. I am tired of microsoft insulting mine and all other it profesionals intelligent's. I bet all the employees were laughing their asses off when they heard Muth bash linux. BIll just thinks he can do whatever he wants and can make all of the IT professionals think whatever he wants us to think. ITS NOT UP TO MICROSOFT TO SET STANDARDS OR TELL MY BOSS WHAT TO BUY> Its their job to try to convince us but not to call my boss directly and tell him to fire me (MS DID CALL MY BOSS TO TRY TO CONVINCE HIM THAT NT IS THE ONLY SOLUTION AND THAT GUY WHO ISNTALLED LINUX (me) SHOULD BE FIRED BECAUSE I WAS INCOMPETANT FOR NOT SELECTING NT!). I am not MAKING THIS UP! My boss never called ms but rather ms called us and threatened us. They are like the mobfia. These bull performance charts are just one small piece of the pie. I hope the DOJ SLAMS THEIR ASS!
I DONT WANT TO PAY $1300 FOR VISUAL C++ AND ANOTHER 700 FOR VISUAL BASIC! MICROSOFT CRIPPLED ALL THE CHEAPER VERSOINS OF VC BY MAKING THE PROGRAMS RUN SLOWER ! ITS PRATICALLY THE SAME PROGRAM BUT WITH A CRIPPLED COMPILER! I HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO USE VC BECAUSE ONLY VC CAN USE THE API"S OF WINDOWS! WHO THEY HELL DO THEY THINK THE ARE TO TELL ME WHAT TO BUY! I think its awefull that I am closed from the real (windows) world. I bought caldera linux out fo rage because I wanted to do some programming. I am not a unix tech guy but just a hobbyist who refuses to reward Gates for his crippling of the api's to visual studio only! I want to write high performance grahics apps with directx and opengl and microsoft has totally used my own computer agaisnt me. Why do I need to be punished by ms by not reading and sharing info with office just because I chose to buy my own os. Microsoft has ilegally and unethically abuased its power and we linux users suffer! WOuldn't it be great if office 2000 didn't have encyption technology in its
aaah the previous poster is right. This does feel alot better.
oh and one more thing. BIll Gates on Germany radio stated that windows 98 doesn't have any bugs and that if it crahses THEN ITS YOUR FAULT! Now. How does this make all you support people feel?
"Never stick an electrical appliance down your pants." -Tim Allen
Not for long. At approximately 13:45 UTC Sunday March 7, the server is down again.
Hmm, I dunno - what do you make of this: When my buddy is logged in at the console he gets his drive letter mappings (say under his login drive "S:\" is mapped to a particular directory on another machine). If (while he is logged in) I telnet in and log in as myself, I'm still stuck with his drive letter mappings not mine. I'm not trying to be a wise guy, but this is something I've dealt with within the last week so it came to mind. Comments?
there are two kinds of people in this world - those who divide people into two groups and those who don't
And I haven't checked, but are you sure that glibc 2.1 supports 64 bit mallocs? How could it, if brk() itself doesn't?
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
ahh.. yes.. i can finally go to sleep now.. thank you.. that felt good..
I believe that is what the article said about half way through. NT is C2 certified on a non-networked Standalone system. Duh..
Sure you can reboot a unix machine into runlevel 1 but what good is a secure standalone?
Idiots....
Bitcoin pyramid: Join here: http://www.bitcoinpyramid.com/r/1427 it's FREE!
Oh sorry... wrong forum.
Yes, you can, if you're running Solaris 2.5 or later - if the file system is local or on an Solaris 2.5 or later NFS server, set an ACL on the file (as another poster noted, man setfacl, although I've not found a man page that explains well the semantics of Solaris ACLs (they seem to closely resemble the ACLs in the POSIX 1003.1e D15 draft).
That depends on the machines to which you're explorting it. If the clients support SMB (Microsoft-flavored OSes do, as does Linux), and if you have Samba on your machine, you could SMB-export it (as you can with NT) with Samba.
Perhaps Microsoft should have considered using such a design, then. I've seen nothing to indicate that NT is anything like what I generally hear referred to as a "microkernel" - file systems, device drivers, networking stacks, and even low-level graphics in 4.0 run in kernel mode (I suppose a desperate Microsoft marketoon could try distinguishing between the NT "kernel" and the NT "executive", but somebody could partition the routines in a modern UNIX-flavored kernel in the same fashion), invoked via procedure calls, rather than in server processes.
Yes, some parts of the Win32 API are implemented in the Win32 subsystem process, but if that qualifies it as a microkernel, one could argue that an automounter makes UNIX a microkernel....
I've not seen anything to indicate that they are. Stuff at, I have the impression, the level of the drawing routines in Xlib may be in the kernel, but stuff at the toolkit level lives in userland, as well as stuff implemented atop it.
Assuming that citing a domain name that gets you to Softway's pages about Interix is an attempt to defend the assertion that NT is a microkernel, I don't consider the ability to have multiple environments for different types of programs to be sufficient reason to dub something a microkernel - were the Wine folk to add extra system calls to the Linux kernel to assist it, would that render the Linux kernel a microkernel?
In addition, how much of Interix is implemented in the Interix subsystem process and how much is implemented in libraries called by programs running under Interix (with those libraries perhaps making NT system calls)?
Actually, 3.51 was never certified. 3.50 was, and I know that the following 2 conditions applied to the certification:
1) No floppy drive.
2) No network connectivity of any kind.
Kinda sad how they have been getting away with claims of C-2 certification for all these years.
I would think it can't be very hard to replicate the NT login screen and make a fake program that can steal passwords.
Unless it is impossible for a program to stop the Ctrl+Alt+Delete? I suppose that would make a real clone impossible. However a tiny hardware modification (probably doable with only access to the keyboard) would make this pointless.
Oh, so is THAT why my NTW is BSODing on me twice a day?
Sanity.html - Error 404 not found
In the paragraph where he discusses the portability of various Unix variants, there is no mentioning of Linux. In the spec-ratings, not either.
Also, he tries very much to keep things theoretical. Nowhere anything about uptimes or reboot issues (for quite a lot of NT setting changes you need to reboot). Practical things count!
Furthermore, most of those 'hobbyists' happen to be IT students who are very very likely to become 'a new generation of IT professionals' in a few months/years.
And indeed Linux machines _are_ being used in commercial production environments. I for one get paid for installing Linux for companies, as file/mail/dial-in servers. Not ready for the environment? Ever so ready!
if I remember correctly that 'C2' NT 3.51 had to be stand-alone. Why didn't they just require it to be turned off?!
You have a point about the 'kernel uptime', although when both kernel and tools come from the same manufacturer, MS in this case, and uptimes aren't good, questions arise about implementation of both tools _and_ kernel. But other people have said more knowledgeable things about design, which is said to be good, and implementation, which is said to be not so good, regarding the NT kernel.
Furthermore, I don't remember flaming anyone.
I use both NT and Solaris at work and there is something to be said for NT's file sharing.
On Solaris I can set my files' rwx permissions for everybody, but since I can't create or modify groups I can't have any finer grained control. I either grant a permission to everybody or nobody. If our company was more geared towards Unix support I suppose I could make a phone call to an adminstrator and get a group created or modified eventually.
If I want to share a file or directory on NT I can make a list of people who I want to have access. I can give read access to some people and write access to others on the same file. I don't have to have any special privledges, I just right click on any file or directory and select peoples' IDs and grant them each whatever permissions I want them to have.
Furthermore, NT's file sharing is based on *people*, not *machines*. My Solaris machine is on the network full time and my home directory is on a server. I can share files because other people have access to the same server. This wouldn't work for a laptop. If I want to share a directory on my NT laptop I just right click on it and turn on sharing. Whenever I'm on the network the shared directory will be visible to the specific people I granted permission.
If I had Linux on my laptop I'd have to NFS export the directory. That would require knowing what machines are likely to be used by the people I want to share files with. On NT if I grant "fred" access to one of my directories, "fred" can access it from any NT machine on the network as long as he logs in a "fred". If "fred" normally logs in to a machine called "tophat" I could export an nfs mount to "tophat", but if "tophat" died one day and "fred" went over and logged into someone else's machine he wouldn't be able to nfs mount my directory from that machine. He'd have to call me and ask me to add that machine to the nfs exports (which I couldn't do even if I were in the office instead of at an all day off site meeting, I'd have to call an administrator).
-- there are old programmers, and there are bold programmers. But there are no old, bold programmers. --
Cute. Your little saying is not new. It originates in the same phrase with airplane pilots. s/programmers/pilots/. However, it implies that bold pilots end up dead, not that old pilots are generally useless, like one would infer from your version.
-kabloie
But what happens when it crashes? YeeeOUCH!
I laughed my arse off. Then I realized he was serious.
NT is here to stay and it's becoming the choice of a new generation of IT professional.
I refuse to comment. Despite the fact that he himself admits that NT does not perform anywhere near UNIX, his opinion is that NT is competitive with UNIX on high-end servers.
He also refuses to acknowledge the "homegrown Unix variant" Linux, stating that "a large percentage of the Linux installations are still in the realm of the computer hobbyist". Proof of this, Mr. Russinovich? To be sure, there are many of us who have adopted Linux as our home OS and continue to happily hack away at it, but signs have shown nothing but continued acceptance of Linux in the business market.
All in all, it's standard FUD, exactly what one would expect from a source like www.winntmag.com.
~Dan
"World domination, of course. And scantily clad females. Who cares if it's twenty below?"-Linus Torvalds wizard@twcny.
From: jamie@mccarthy.org
Subject: Unable to reach article
Dear webmaster,
I read about your NT-Linux comparison on slashdot.org. However, I was unable to get through to your Microsoft-IIS/4.0 website because:
Good luck getting it back online. I feel your pain...my company used to run its webserver on NT too...
Jamie McCarthy
Jamie McCarthy
jamie.mccarthy.vg
Why not? While it may not be found in the dictionary, it's a lot more likely to be understood than many words in the dictionary. And isn't that what writing is about, being understood?
Ain't Windown NT GREAT?
Get off my lawn.
Apples and Oranges! If the NT benchmarks had been done on something exotic like Alpha hardware, or PPC hardware the numbers would be quite different. Everyone knows the "mainstream" UNIX vendors are raping their customers with price, but to exploit that in a benchmark is silliness.
Get off my lawn.
I've only been doing this stuff 3 years(just barely)so a lot of that article (when I could finally get it to load :-)was way over my head (All those years of Radio-Electronics and {the original}Popular Electronics, I devoured the analog and HI-FI stuff and just sort of skimmed the digital unless I had to fix something with TTL chips in it).
So let me see if I got this straight.
Linux is mostly GNU, GNU's not UNIX, and Linux is just another form of UNIX.
NT's all original innovation, no "borrowed" Digital code in it, but it traces it's roots back to when the guys who wrote it were on Digital's payroll. (Maybe they were writing NT after hours on their own time before jumping ship.)
Clear as FUD!
P.S. Katz on C-SPAN, Monday (3/8/99), talking 'bout his book! Is there a Slashdot Effect for TV ratings?
(Yeah, but he's OUR gasbag!:-)
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I was very active selling Apples and writing Apple BASIC apps to run on them in the early 80's. My memory of XENIX was that it appeared as the OS on a model or two of Radio Shacks's computers, but never made a big dent. I think this is the "suprise" the author refers to when he says that XENIX had the largest "market share" of UNIXies at the time. As I also remember, that market share was largely home and very small business. So, M$ gets praise for having the "largest" market share of UNIX computers in the early 80s even though they were personal-home computers, and Linux gets dissed because a large part of it's market share is personal-home computers.
How do you say "double standard" children?
At the government agency where I program, my self and many others installed NT 4.0 on our workstation when it first came out. As the months passed we reverted back to Win95 because of problems relating to speed, stability and NT's "user friendlyness" forcing us to do things in ways we didn't want to do them, I guess to protect us from ourselves. "User friendly" gets in the way when it assumes that every user is an idiot who has to have their hand held (or slapped) all the time.
A couple of weeks ago we installed our first Linux server, replacing the NT that had held our Oracle 8 database. Results: an immediate four-fold increase in speed and the nearly daily reboots have ceased.
When app development issues (which language, which toolkits, which Xclient, which VCS) get resolved by the suits it is my belief that 30+ servers and 300+ workstations are going to get a drastic overhaul. All from one CD. The economics and the speed and stability are going to force it.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
That only proves that NT executed the BABBIT API call without warning! That's why you can't trust it - it's so unstable.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
The Graphics wasn't in the kernel to start with because most video drivers are written by the manufacturer not MS.
Then they realised that NT is useless if video doesn't work 95% of the time, so they moved it to the Kernel to eke out a little bit more speed.
Chris.
If this is the same article, I quoted it on http://www.windowssucks.com
--fatboy
Nope, I restarted my webserver to do rev lookups. :)
Try it now
--fatboy
OK, its not a mirror --- I couldnt get to the article so I didnt know which one it was. Therefore you are correct, I am scum.
--fatboy
.
---
I checked out this guy's claims, and they're true! I put each of the following OSes onto the 16 DEC alphas I have in my living room, and did some web performance testing by refreshing a page in my browser. Here's what I found:
Windows NT running IIS 4: 15 pages per minute (until it crashed)
Windows 95 running PWS: 20 pages per minute
RedHat Linux/Sparc running fdisk: 0 pages per minute
AIX running SSH: 0 pages per minute
MacOS X Server running MacAmp: 0 pages per minute (and they said it would be good!)
PalmOS 3 running Memo Pad: 0 pages per minute
So as you can quite obviously see, Windows NT is a far superior operating system!
</joke>
--
OK, I have used NT. In fact, using NT is what inspired me to learn about Linux. After reading this article, though, I come away with the clear impression that NT has a much better design for its operating system. Some things, in fact, that I would say are better in NT. But my experience dictates otherwise.
So, if someone could explain to me:
a) What are (seriously) the things that NT does better than Unix/Linux? (Besides BSOD)
b)Are those things being developed?
c) If NT is "better" in some ways, why does it suck so badly?
NT 4.0 does not, and is never going to have, a C2 level clearance.
NT 3.51 (service-pack 3?) does. But the person who got that clearance, Ed Curry, has publically stated that the changes to NT 4.0 have weakened security so much that it cannot meet the standard.
Doesn't stop Microsoft from spreading their lies though...
Regards,
Ben Tilly
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
I work for what some would call a shark-tank (I'm a government contractor).
At one of my contracts, we went in to replace NT boxes running simple web services (we were replacing them with Sparcs running Sol 2.51)
It would be too generous for me to say that the NT system was too unstable. Those poor bastards who set up the system had to install a watcher. It would ping all of their NT boxes (about two dozen) until one of them failed. The watcher program activated a modem, and dialed out to a pager when one of the systems failed.
Then one of the poor bastards would come scurrying down into the server room -- and reboot the NT box. Those dudes would be paged twice a day. I know, I sat at the desk next to the modem. I held back a huge belly laugh each time the modem dialed out.
I feel sorry for you NT people, I really do.
NT zealots: You won't be taken seriously by the Unix/Linux crowd until your OS stops crashing once a day.
The winntmag.com site should think about investing in that watcher program -- or better yet -- install a reliable OS for the webserver.
-- If you met me, you probably wouldn't remember me. I'm pretty hard to remember.
C2 is an extremely ugly business. I personally would not volunteer to work on any machines that are C2 level compilant -- cause you can't do anything on them. I've unfortunately had the most distasteful duty of making a proprietary UNIX operating system C2 compliant. It was darned hard to do that -AND- have the system do anything useful.
Linux would probably be C2 level if (and not to bust on Linux -- I like it a lot, but C2 is ridiculous):
1) The code was proprietary, and evil hacker scum couldn't look at the code because the best security is by obscurity.
2) The permissions on all files were set to 700
3) Shadow passwords were enabled
4) All files were owned by root
5) No floppy drive
6) No Internet connection
7) No Network card
8) No third-party "hackerware"
9) turn the computer off
10) solder the power switch into the off position.
Next time somebody brags about their system being "C2" compliant, think "Ah, you poor dumb bastard"
-- If you met me, you probably wouldn't remember me. I'm pretty hard to remember.
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/
Kriston
If you think you got the balls to insult everyone who reads slashdot: "looks like the typical /. iq remains where it's always been - below that of the intelligent general public.", you might want to tell us who you are, tough guy. Just a little something special from you friend calx, who isn't even able to look at the article, because their server is down.
>If I had Linux on my laptop I'd have to NFS export >the directory. That would require knowing what
>machines are likely to be used by the people I
>want to share files with. On NT if I grant "fred"
>access to one of my directories, "fred" can access
>it from any NT machine on the network as long as
>he logs in a "fred". If "fred" normally logs in to
>a machine called "tophat" I could export an nfs
>mount to "tophat", but if "tophat" died one day
>and "fred" went over and logged into someone
>else's machine he wouldn't be able to nfs mount my
>directory from that machine. He'd have to call me
>and ask me to add that machine to the nfs exports
>(which I couldn't do even if I were in the office
>instead of at an all day off site meeting, I'd
>have to call an administrator).
And this is a GOOD thing?
Hows about I just walk into your office with a new laptop with a "fred" user account on it and login to your machine.
I'd much rather apply a network-address based control than a login-based one.
It seems that this type of security model is based more on convenience than anything else...
Hmm, about 10 months ago, I was one of those linux using students. Then I graduated and went to work for a place that had NT on all the desktops. (Most of the development actually happens on the solaris servers, because we use clear-case, and the compilers we use are available for solaris.)
After about a month I was using linux on my desktop, occasionally rebooting to NT to use word/excel. Now, there are at least 3 linux servers at work, 2 of which I set up, and we have several more in the works. (One of those linux servers in the work will replace our last NT server.) Also, several of my co-workers have switched to linux on their desktop, and there are some others who are playing with linux at home.
So, if every one of the current linux using students graduate and have this sort of impact, M$ has really got something to worry about!
--Rob
2.) Security - typical M$ smoke and mirrors here. The only version of NT to ever earn C2 certification was a special version of 3.51, and it only earned the certification when the machine had no floppy drive, and one other criteria (forgot which...) You always see M$ bigots saying NT is C2, but notice how they skirt right over which version they're talking about?
The "other criteria" is that it can't be attached to a network... I'm not fully conversant with C2 specs, but IIRC that means not having a NIC installed, not just not being plugged in. There's a secure server OS !
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
No, unix zealots are too busy whining about Microsoft and NT to discuss any of the benefits of unix.
... And slashdot.org isn't propaganda favoring linux???
More likely GDI was moved into kernel space when they realized people were able to hook all GDI calls and translate them to X protocol messages and you could use NT from, *gasp*, a non-windows workstation. Without even paying mucho denero and signing NDA's for source licenses.
Couldn't have that, no sir.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Everything may be a file in unix, and unix may have ACL's, but it seems neer the twain shall meet in some cases.
/dev/cua/a
/proc filesystem. It just refuses to, treating you as an idiot who's just not "ready" for that kind of information.
Try this on solaris:
setfacl -m dude:rwx
You lose. What burns me about NT is that it could expose every internal structure as a file, ala a
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
It's a new processor from Sunni Microsystems. Everything else is shiite in comparison.
Man, I'm gonna pay for that one in the next life.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
>>IN NT YOU HAVE TO BUY(!) SOFTWARE TO HAVE >>TELENT..
>Wrong. MS has a free UNIX connectivity pack with a telnet daemon.
The one that crashes every time someone disconnects? The one that has dire warnings of unstable beta software written all over it? The one that is unsupported and doesn't come with NT, meaning I can't telnet into a newly installed box?
What a joke. This is TELNET. God forbid MS should try something like ssh.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
I'll let you in on a little secret:
:) I agree NFS sucks though. So does CIFS. Just in different ways.
man setfacl
I didn't know about that til I came to work for Sun. Enjoy.
For me, there's one major reason Unix FS's just blows the doors off of NT's: symbolic links. I hear NT5 will have those. I hear NT5 might even exist. I hear voices too.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
My favorite is this:
"Internal data structures limit NT to using a maximum of 32 processors, but licensing limitations usually restrict the number of processors to 8 or fewer."
HAHAHA
I just don't understand why you would want to use this operating system.
FiGZ.COM - A waste of perfectly good web space
Both benchmarks he uses are wrong. One measures the performance of web serves, the other the performance and cost-benefit of databases. The Web test he uses was also used by ZDNet to "show" that M$ Web Servers were faster than Apache (the non-production NT version of Apache...).
In the database test case he is lying deep. He is quoting from the transaction test. SQLServer does not even appear in the top-ten performance list. But gets all ten positions in the cost-benefit list (does anyboy else sees dumping here?) with very poor performances. This test only shows that MS SQL Server is a expensive alternative to MS Access. He obviously refrain from quoting the warehouse test (large data sets, low transaction rates). SQL Server is not even listed.
Even ZDNet published file-serving and print-serving tests showing Linux beating the crap out of NT (both running in exactly the same hardware).
I heard from more than a few people that say gcc is crap really and egcs is the way to go, perhaps anything that starts with G should be dumped, with out mentioning anything.
`I heard...'--beautiful; I love people who can't think on their own....
What's egcs made out of?
-rozzin.
Of course all software doesn't have to be free, but at least have some respect for someone without whom there would be no Linux, because there would have been no free compiler to write it, no free debugger to fix it, no free shell to boot in, no free shell commands to use with.
There'd be no operating system to host Torvalds' kernel--that is why there'd be no Linux.
As others have said, kernels don't do anything by themselves.
-rozzin.
The site's down. Do I assume that the slashdot effect got it.. or does it have to be publicaly announced to believe that...
Yep! I managed to catch the article on slashdot right hot. The thing was still working there. After almost one hour I lost contact with NTMag.
SLASHDOT EFFECT starts to possess nuclear properties...
More. In a very, very broken comp I installed NT. The thing crashed every hour. Sometimes it was crash time. In the same box Linux managed to freeze twice in a month! And I may tell you that I didn't use it just for typing ls -l. The little thing was app fried several times. It even ran with Quake2 (SVGALib) + X + Netscape (downloading compressed files) + gcc (compiling kernel). It cried like Hell. But it kept working.
Besides on a IBM's NetFinity with NT Server I wonder until now why nwadmin32 + netscape ONLY, managed to eat up all memory (reinstalling everything didn't help).
I confess I ran through the article in a fast way. I hoped to read it more calmly at home but it seems that "Slashdot Effect" killed NTMag.
:)
However the very first reaction I had, was that this guy was trying to demonstrate that NT is a UNIX like anyone else. Funny but that was my very first reaction on looking through the whole article at fast speed. It seems that M$% is changing the politics of a "better OS than UNIX" to a "better UNIX than UNIX"
Yes, and when you MS Lackies stop posting as ACs pigs will fly right?
/. went the Drudge route - post webserver logs. It's always good to see how much of his trafic is whitehouse.gov.
I really wish
I'd love to see how much microsoft.com traffic we get here. Seeing as they tried to buy linux.com ( to either sit on it or use it to spout FUD )
--
James Michael Keller
"Linux is not our destination, it is simply the open road to tommorow"
Heck yea!!! Hook a good fast NT server under my desk and I'll work all day! ;)
Well, where do we throw Mach in at?
Imagine this scenario: you run a Win32 console app from the telnet session, expecting it to never interact with the GUI. The app is stored on a remote file server, accessed via a drive mapping. NT attempts to demand load executable pages from the binary, but encounters network congestion, and times-out on the packet. Poof, NT kills your console app, and displays a dialog message box. Where does that dialog appear??? On the frigging graphical console. Can you resume use of your telnet session? Most likely not. Gotta wait for someone at the graphical console to hit the 'ok' button on the dialog.
But NT does offer mechanisms for simultaneous graphical desktops on the same machine. Just use CreateDesktop(), and SwitchDesktop(). They can be created under the auspices of other users, using NT's impersonation routines. But you then encounter other multiuser limitations of NT, such as the redirector! Once the redirector creates a drive mapping, it becomes globally accessible to all active users of the machine, regardless of their privileges.
Imagine this scenario: you run a Win32 console app from the telnet session, expecting it to never interact with the GUI. The app is stored on a remote file server, accessed via a drive mapping. NT attempts to demand load executable pages from the binary, but encounters network congestion, and times-out on the packet. Poof, NT kills your console app, and displays a dialog message box. Where does that dialog appear??? On the frigging graphical console. Can you resume use of your telnet session? Most likely not. Gotta wait for someone at the graphical console to hit the 'ok' button on the dialog.
But NT does offer mechanisms for simultaneous graphical desktops on the same machine. Just use CreateDesktop(), and SwitchDesktop(). They can be created under the auspices of other users, using NT's impersonation routines. But you then encounter other multiuser limitations of NT, such as the redirector! Once the redirector creates a drive mapping, it becomes globally accessible to all active users of the machine, regardless of their privileges.
You don't need all that much money to have a system that blows the most powerful NT system out of the water. Just look at what BSD does on a daily basis for ftp.cdrom.com and compare that to what NT can do. NT isn't ready for the internet.
Hows about I just walk into your office with a new laptop with a "fred" user account on it and login to your machine.
Uh, you'd have to know fred's password. It's no less secure than having two 'fred' accounts on two different Unix boxes.
I think what we're seeing here is a certain Linux elitism -- "Linux doesn't have ACLs, so there not really useful." Unfortunately this is counter to the experience of thousands of production NetWare and NT administrators.
Seeing an ACL like this is quite common on any NT or NetWare file sharing box:
Report Readers - Read
Report Editors - Read/Write
Administrators - Full Control
Yes, I know that there are workarounds for the brain-dead Unix permissions, but please let all of us unenlightened system administrators know how the above ACL is not useful "in practice".
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
To follow myself up --
(1) I fully expect that someone will develop "ext3" or whatever that has ACLs and other desirable features within a year or two.
(2) I actually do know the difference between "they're" and "there".
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
"Full Control" means you can change the ACL, aka you are "owner". Why not make the user's owner? Because some of them will grant "Full control" to "All Users" for what ever reason, and then come back and bitch that there's a security hole -- believe me, it happens.
Your example breaks, because "other" is everyone else, not just "Report Readers". Why expose information to people who are not supposed to have it? Furthermore in an NT domain or an NDS tree, "Other" could be 100,000 or more people that you've got no control over, not just your 8 local users or whatever.
As other's have pointed out, in a large distributed system (like AFS), you need ACLs.
As for Applications which bypass normal OS security, take a look at Lotus Domino -- it has an even more complex ACL model than NT or NetWare does.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Funny, I was just starting a GTK to OS/2 PM port and noticed this in the win32 mods to glib:
[From memmory]
PeekMessage( MGG *, HWND, NULL, 0, 0, PM_NOREMOVE);
The OS/2 PM Eqiv of:
WinPeekMsg( HAB, QMSG *, HWND, NULL, 0, 0, PM_NOREMOVE );
I guess that somebody decided that the PM_NOREMOVE must be PeekMessage not Presentation Manager so they didn't have to change the constant.
Sorry, but I found it hilarious.
If anybody else is working on a PM port of GTK I'd be interrested in working with them.
shaun@tancheff.com
WTF: This 486 w/16M needs an upgrade, maybe you can /. it
http://shaun.tancheff.com/NtMag.html
Of course, those using unicode character sets will wish to call
llpanmGDICreateFlyingTrashPaperAnimationU()
or just use the macro
llpanmGDICreateFlyingTrashPaperAnimation()
which will be defined appropriately.
This stuff just cracks me up :-)
They try to say both NT and UNIX started around the 1970's... Then later in the same article, they give this sentence (for some reason I can't copy and paste, so I have to type it in)
NT's roots extend back to 1977 and Digital Equipment's release of VMS 1.0. Many core members of the future NT design team left Digital in 1988 to join Microsoft, which released NT's first version, Windows NT 3.1, in 1993. Thus, NT and UNIX have been evolving since the mid-1970 *choke*
Can someone explain that to me? I know, if you take it literally, you can say that the VMS people used their knowledge to help them develop NT, but that's not the same. They weren't actively developing NT in the 70's... Whereas UNIX was. That statement is just plain wrong...
I'm not sure how technically accurate the rest of the article is, as I'm sure there's a few mistakes in it... There always are. But it does seem like the author read up on his subject, and is trying to make a valid, informed opinion. Then puts a slighly pro-NT spin on things.
"Because UNIX does not employ an application-accessible security, UNIX applies security to files." -- Umm, did you forget to mention that in UNIX... EVERYTHING IS A FILE... doh!
And they also babble on about UNIX's lack of ACL's and such... Am I wrong? I seem to recall that AIX and HP-UX have had them, and have had them for a while, and Linux developers have stated that it will have them eventually.
And the last sentence is classic...
"However, trends in the marketplace over the past few years are making one thing perfectly clear: NT is here to stay, and it is becoming the choice of a new generation" (like pepsi?) "of IT professional" (note, the quote is like that, professional isn't plural, and it isn't punctuated.) Bah, if I ever choose something because it's the market trend, someone shoot me. We are all old enough, and I hope to say mature enough, to choose for ourselves without succumbing to peer pressure.
I hope to die peacefully in my sleep like grandpa, not screaming like his passengers.
What is the difference between read-write and full control? Otherwise, you can do this:
chgrp report-group report.file
chmod g+rw
chmod o+r
And you will have that effect. However, this is clunky as the administrator has to set up groups. Of course, my experience with Novell ACLs is that the admins have to set up the ACLs anyhow, so not much is gained here.
Don't get me wrong, ACLs, when optional, are a good thing. something like an ACL bit would be a great addition to ext2.
However, don't miss the point that the UNIX permissions do work in many situations, many of them very common situations. It is rare that you can't fit the desired secutity model into an "owner" "group" and "everybody else" paradigm. Sometimes this is clunky to do, which is why ACLs are being implemented.
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
What is sudo?
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
Remember that the 64 bit parts of NT are a botched on afterthought. It ran from day one on the best 64 bit machine you can buy (in my opinion) - the Alpha - and made it run like molasses, 100% 32 bit.
Microsoft have a track record of always being an integer length behind the hardware. As we are moving to 64 bits Windows 98 is still riddled with bits of 16 bit code. NT seems like its intended to follow the same trend. I guess someone will have to launch a 128 bit CPU before Microsoft take 64 bits seriously.
If NT's so good, how come the site www.winntmag.com, which _should_ be running NT, seems have been /.ed? If it doesn't even stand up to the /. effect, then what good is it? ;)
WinNTmag obviously has a lot to loose when NT looses [marketshare]. It's not so strange that they resort to propaganda...
Who really thinks that WinNTmag is the place where you will find people who know best about Operating System kernel matters anyway?
I'm doing my own benchmarks, and make my own conclusions.
...
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
I'm not telling anybody to use /. or any media as a reference for OS comparison -> I end by saying 'I do my own benchmark' and that is what I suggest everybody else to do.
-> Forget the hype, just test the technology (do your own benchmarks) and the methodology (discover what GNU really means).
> The fact is Linux is far from Solaris.
I use Linux, Solaris, HPUX, and NT daily at work. From my personal experience with Solaris, I must agree with you that Linux is far ahead from Solaris.
How more can an OS be 'enterprise ready' than it actually being used in the enterprise?
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
Linux/Sparc not ready for deployment because PC's are not stable?
Anybody judging IA32 to be instable when compared to Sparc hardware must have been using bad hardware in IA32 systems or bad software on IA32 in the past. Claiming IA32 is an instable platform is just redicilous.
Linux/IA32 is at least as stable as Solaris/Sparc. Linux/Sparc may not be, but is not an economical solution anyway (Sparc is expensive when compared to Alpha or IA32). When converting existing boxes from Solaris to Linux, the time&effort to do this, including migration of all installed apps on the systems would be the major issue.
Stability is not the main concern for being 'enterprise ready'. If that were so, NT would never have been considered to be so.
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
Sure it is, generally.
The difference with winNTmag is the reason why.
Just think about it. How many of us depend on Linux for our income? So why do we even bother to spread the word? How much does winNTmag depend on the succes of NT for their income? And why do you think they bother to spread the word?
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
> I wonder why all of the Top500 supercomputers in the world are non-NT machines?
And why two of them are Linux machines...
(make one wonder what the other 498 run, and why).
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
I've heard that the TCP/IP stack was already bypassed by IIS.. -> for performance reasons!!!
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
> Who's got the better credibility
Are you referring to the larger amount of money and stockholders behind Microsoft, giving NT a better credibility for being enterprise-ready?
As in:
200 Million randomly typing monkey's can't be wrong?
(Windows2000 is bound to be typed by one of them soon, for all we know that's what MS depends on).
In the middle ages most people were sure that the earth was flat. Well, was it?
If Microsoft was erased from the planet Earth tonight, I'd still have a job tomorrow too. Luckily, my job doesn't depend on the existance of an OS...
However, if Linux was erased from the planet Earth tonight, I'd start typing "int main(argc,argv**){ printf("Welcome to the GNU kernel.\n"); return 0;}", as a start for making it again first thing in the morning... I wouldn't want to do without GNU and Linux anymore.
I hate BSOD's, I hate driver problems, I hate reboots, I hate performance problems, I hate 'undocumented features', I have not having the source code -> I'm not really fond of NT...
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
Obviously Bias.
I would like to comment on how the author stated:
"it's ironic that both NT and UNIX have roots in the mid-1970s"
This is only true in the most vague and remote sense.
I think the NT community feels like the children in the enterprise server operating system market.
UNIX has been around for a very long time and NT has not. So the NT community feels the need to
point out so called "roots" dating back to the 70's. The only "roots" I can see dating back to
the 70's for any Micro$oft operating system is to Palo Alto.
I thought the article might at least be an amusing read, but haven't been able to connect to the site after trying for an hour or so.
:)
Makes me wonder how long the silly NT box stood up to a slashdotting. (Can we use negative numbers?
--Simba (says roar)
Hippies smell.
IMO This trys to clame a Unix legacy for NT that dose not exist.
The reality is (if I have my facts correct) NT is made from the OS/2 code Microsoft wrote for IBM after winning the rights to it in cort and losing the rights to IBMs half of the code.
My version of events (correct or not) supports Microsofts clame of a "Modern design" something you can have with this legacy clame.
I personally believe NT could be a very nice Os but right now Microsoft is trying to make it do to much to soon. They need to take there time and make shure everything works before adding more on. At this point it wouldn't hurt if NT were stripped down a bit so Microsoft can make it more reliable.
But Microsoft wants to make an Os for everyone. Remiinds me of Xmodem. Made only with the authers needs in mind and eventually became the standard for downloading files on BBSes. Other attempts were made to be all things to all people and ended up being nothing and for no one.
Well thats my opinion anyway. If I'm wrong slap me. Better yet slap me anyway I enjoy it.
I don't actually exist.
Yeah, I remember those lawyers... they were the ones who bribed the Ethics teacher to graduate from college.
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
I cannot connect to their site. HA HA. Shoulda been running a stable web server.
I think they're running on an NT server . . . .
Okay, I got Linux installed. So where's the free beer everyone keeps talking about??
From
http://www.netcraft.co.uk/cgi-bin/Survey/whats
"www.winntmag.com is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0"
I believe that Linux has been capable of kernel
level preemptive threads since version 1.3.xx, and that it is capable of using as many processors, if not more, than the author claims of Windows NT.
However, I started dismissing the guy as a FUD monger when he started to suggest that NT == VMS, because members of the VMS team at Digital worked on NT. Wouldn't Microsoft be in deep sh*t if the VMS guys used anything resembling VMS? Don't they have to sign NDA's?
Actually, with auto mounting and NIS, it's possible for shares to get mounted on different machines. Also, if sudo is setup, it's possible for trusted individuals to setup groups, and with ACL's, it's possible to setup per user access to files.
This is true: NT is becoming the choice of a new generation: the lazy IT professional.
"...Is this world not a call I can screen out" --
Sorry, I missed the relevance of that follow-up to the original post.
john
I think you mean /.ed
john
I don't suppose it's too much to expect to ask poeple* to use the word "bias" correctly is it?
The correct usage of the word in that context is to say that the article is biased.
* By USENET regulations, all spelling and grammar flames must contain similar errors.
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
Obviously NT can't handle getting slashdotted.
The benchmark that he choose is totally wrong: it tests the Webserver used, not the Operating System. You could have two side by side and still have different results based on the webserver choosen and the configuration used.
If you want to compare SO's, compare disk performance (both local and remote), for example.
It's Saturday around 4:00, and their site is unreachable. I guess their NT server crashed.
This is misleading.
;-)
The Linux kernel is GPLed and if code from the kernel is used in an app, that app must be GPLed as well. (GPL 2:b.) And of course, if you make
modifications to the kernel they are GPLed as well. However, code from the libraries linked in compiling Linux are, for the most part, distributed under the LGPL for libraries which states that apps which link code in LGPLed libraries are not bound by any license other than those the developer chooses. So a developer may use LGPLed libraries (such as the gnu c libraries commonly used when compiling Linux) without being legally bound in anyway to release the source of the app.
In other words GPL is "viral," as they say, and LGPL isn't. And of course, proprietary software exists for Linux and is welcomed by the Linux
community. We simple feel that proprietary software development models aren't as promising as OSS development.
Check out copyleft. There are links to both licenses. They contain legal jargon but are still intelligible
to we common men
-Daniel
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
To develop a scalable service on NT you have two choices. One kernel thread per each user connection, or use IO completion ports.
One kernel thread per user connection does not scale well due to excessive thread context switching by the kernel
Other way around is to use IO completion port. Here you have one active thread per cpu. Each thread handle multiple connections with asynchronous IO - a real pain in the ass.
Solaris supports both kernel mode and user mode threads and is definitely superior for a scalable easy to code synchronous solution.
but SQL Server is configured to seize a specific amount of RAM at bootup. I think it defaults to 64, though it may be higher. This is where the huge RAM hit is coming from. And if you think about it, giving an SQL server a bunch of RAM initially makes more sense than having it request more every time someone runs a query. Personally, my SQL servers are all dedicated machines. You may not notice a performance degradation with a web server until it gets busy but a single complex query and you'll be doing anything you can for a few extra CPU cycles :)
end users can mount/unmount drives if the root user gives them permission, i.e. makes the drive `user mountable'.
:)
I've done it myself.
We use GNU/SunOS.
The issue of "C2 certification" is pretty irrelavent when you remember a couple of points:
a) You can only certify individual systsms, not an OS.
b) The C2 spec is for STANDALONE systems only... As soon as you connect a system to the network, it no longer meets the C2 requirements...
Perhaps a good question would be: ./ effect?
Can your server handle the