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CNN on Microsoft and Linux

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the stuff-to-read dept.

noise writes "Article that details Microsoft's continuing anti-Linux campaign up through Ed Muth's comments last week. There are some nice OS and web server usage statistics, as well as some information on the difficulties that MS will likely have with the 64-bit version of NT. "

9 of 210 comments (clear)

  1. Don't kid yourself by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3

    Wake up people. Mr Petreley is hardly "unbiased". He's been pounding away at Microsoft for years, as editor of "Linuxworld", and before that the ill-fated "Network Computer World". I like to see people pounding away at Microsoft, but that's where he's coming from.

    Furthermore this story is a bit off-base, as his stories often are. Is Linux considered "splintered" because it comes in 64-bit flavours? Of course not, so why should Windows be? And surely the ability of some future Win64 to emulate 32 bit code should not be counted as detrimental.

    Also, counting the numbers of machines running various Web servers and operating systems and attached to the Internet can't be extrapolated to, say, what IT people like to use generally. So let's not get carried away.

    Anyway, what I'd really like to know is how many big NT sites use it because they receive "incentives" from Microsoft in cash and kind. At least, four years ago this was happening at some companies I was close to.

    roc+sd@cs.cmu.edu

  2. Still has a long way to go by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4

    "Ease of use" depends on who you ask. On the desktop, Microsoft likely still has the upper hand--but KDE and GNOME mean that said upper hand is slipping. Things look even bleaker for Microsoft if uptime is a part of ease of use. No system is easy to use when crashed or wedged.

    Much of the article was looking at NT the server, though. When running a server (as opposed to running a client that happens to talk to the server), the base assumption is that the machine is run by a professional computer operator, such as a sysadmin. From the sysadmin's perspective, a Unix or Linux server tends to be _much_ friendlier than an NT server. Most of this comes from the fact that the GUI is not wed to the backend as it is on Windows.

    For one thing, the server is friendly enough to talk to you at _your_ console, not _its_ console. If I'm running a dozen NT boxes and have to do something to all of them, I have to log into a dozen consoles. To do the same job on Unix, I use X to "beam" windows to my machine from all of them.

    Another "ease of use" advantage in the server world is scriptability. Most anything you can do on a Unix machine, you can do by manipulating text, whether it's manipulating data streams or configuration files. Since text generation is a simple task, this means that you can build your own macros and UIs to do tasks specific to your installation. When talking to an NT application, you have to click the buttons in their preferred order.

    At the low end of the scale, desktops for casual users, Microsoft holds the upper hand for ease of use. At the high end of the scale, servers, Unix beats NT. The turning point is probably close to where the power users sit, depending on one's definition of power user.

  3. No 64 bit Windows NT? No problem. by heroine · · Score: 3

    Remember when 32 bit processors came out the world was perfectly content to stick to 16 bit Win 3.1 for years until Microsoft "invented" the 32 bit OS. When Intel finally "invents" 64 bit chips the managers and CEO's of the world are going to be perfectly happy running a 32 bit OS for many years to come indeed They already are if you count Sparc and Alpha.

  4. If you thought those were good ... by cthonious · · Score: 3
    You should check out Nick's "The Next Ten Minutes series, which he did for NC World, back in March 98

    Really good stuff if you have the time to read it

    --

    support gun control: take guns from cops
  5. Actually... by edgy · · Score: 3


    Actually, if you go here:

    http://www.sunbelt-software.com/0399_ 2000.htm

    You can see that when they noticed that the statistics were getting skewed towards Linux, they stopped using those statistics. Only the first 2000 responses were used. These responses were made before word of the survey got out to the Linux crowd.

    There's no ballot stuffing here.

  6. This article is damning.... by Electric+Eye · · Score: 4

    I think this is the first SOLID piece of evidence I've seen showing how much trouble M$ is in in the OS market. There's no M$ bashing. Just concrete facts, as far as I can see. The author deserves applause for writing such a brilliant piece. I would think, more so now than ever, the folks in Redmond are chasing their tails more and more, not knowing how to stem the tide of Linux. The simple fact is that Linux is going to roll right over them. The momentum is too strong to fight. Cheers to all you folks developing Linux apps!!

  7. Still has a long way to go by MrDarkguy · · Score: 5

    Granted. Personally, I've been using Linux for a little over 6 months now and I would never go back. (Well, actually I do...but only when I need to edit complex Office 97 documents)

    I agree with you that Linux is a ways away from being what I would put on my mother's computer either, but consider it's roots.

    As we all know, Linux is a variant of UNIX, which was originally written by developers for other developers. Computers weren't household appliances. They didn't need to be "idiot friendly", they needed to be "professional friendly". And, due to hardware constraints, it had to be a lean and mean.

    Windows on the other hand, traces it's lineage back to the inception of the PC, and QDOS. PCs, in contrast to workstations, had to be more "idiot friendly" than UNIX, because they were not targeted exclusively at the professional.

    Now, if we bring this forward to the inception of NT, we find that Microsoft has seen the writting on the wall when it comes to the "PC" market. They can see that they have saturated the home market. In order to continue making the unbelievable amounts of revenue they have been sustaining, they need to A) Force the people who have bought their product in the past to upgrade to a new version, and/or B) Move into the server market, where the big bucks are. Microsoft decided to do both. (Hence NT, and eventually, the 9x line)

    Meanwhile, the commercial UNIXes were happy as clams in a pond. They WERE the server market. There were many variants available, and the competition kept things fresh, but there was little reason to make UNIX "idiot friendly". NT (and more importantly, NT's marketing) caught them off guard. All of a sudden, NT was on it's road to becoming the big game in town, and the various UNIX vendors began loosing that ever so important market share.

    Now, we bring this forward to present day. Many companies who standardized on NT have knowingly, or unknowingly been forced to bring back UNIX. Linux is rising in popularity and, for the first time, there IS a reason to make it "idiot friendly", if only to end Microsoft's stranglehold on the PC market.

    The bad news is, Microsoft has been making "user-friendly" OSes complete with user candy for quite some time now. Arguably, they're pretty good at it.

    The flip side of the coin is that UNIX/Linux has been doing networking for quite some time now. And I think we'll all agree, it's pretty damn good at it.

    So what we have is two seperate systems, built for completely disparate environmnents encroaching on each other's living space. (Imagine a whale being forced to walk on land and an elephant being forced to swim.) And at this point, they either evolve, or you end up with a lot of beached whales and drowned elephants.

    It comes down to a question of how well each can adapt to their new environment. Can NT become more reliable, scalable, and robust? Can UNIX become more user friendly, intuitive, and simple?

    Linux, being open source has a distinct advantage. It can (and has) evolve very quickly. Look at where Linux was in terms of use-ability a year ago, compared to now. Then, look at NT in terms of stability, and performance a year ago, compared to now.

    So, while Linux still has a long way to go, I'd much rather wait for it to become more user-friendly than I would for NT to become more scalable.

    These are interesting times. Enjoy them.

    --
    "What do you mean, invalid parameters? 9000Gigs of RAM and it can't answer a simple question!" -- Earthworm Jim
  8. Here is what Sunbelt actually said. by VanL · · Score: 5

    Several people have pointed out that this survey could have been slashdotted.
    Well, it wasn't. Here is the intro to the survey results from Sunbelt:


    Sunbelt March99 Survey Results
    over 1999 NT users

    And now, the answers to the survey questions! Before anything else,
    thanks for your many thousands of survey answers. This is a hot
    topic for sure!!

    First though, some background data. This survey was meant to
    get an idea how things are looked at BY the NT community, FOR
    the NT community. Well, that was somewhat naive I have to admit
    . The questions were created while looking at discussions
    between NT system administrators and were definitely written
    from that viewpoint. Some claim that they were biased. There may
    be some truth in that if you look at it from the Linux POV.

    Sunbelt does not claim any kind of scientific validity. This
    survey is a snapshot and not a random sample at all. It is not
    objective but that was not the idea in the first place.

    BUT, I guess if you step into a war you should expect some bullets
    flying around, and I did get some flak from people. Most of these
    people are both running NT and Linux and know them well. Personally
    I know NT but have not much experience with Linux. We have a few
    'closet' Linux users in Sunbelt though, both in sales and Tech .

    Anyway, what happened is that we sent the invitation to do the
    survey, and very quickly got thousands of responses back. We
    followed in real-time what the results were, every 500 responses
    or so. Extremely surprising numbers to start with. But even more
    strange after the first few hours. Numbers started suddenly to
    change and become slanted toward more Linux than before. Very odd
    from a statistical perspective I remember from my stats course
    in college.

    Now, it so happens that the software we use to do the survey
    queries the browser that was used to fill out the survey. So
    we know what O/S it is running on, and the IP address it comes
    from. The Linux user community had gotten word about the survey
    and was getting into gear to show that Linux had support.

    So anyway, we took the first 2000 survey results and did our
    analysis on those. These were from predominantly NT users with
    some people answering from a Linux machine. That will give some
    idea about the current state of Linux use and the results are
    revealing.

    /snip/

    And here is my own favorite set of statistics, about the supposed
    advantages/disadvantages of Linux:

    How important are these perceived Linux Benefits?

    Scale= Very Important / Important / Of Less Importance

    Linux is free
    775.00 / 523.00 / 542.00
    Stability
    1584.00 / 195.00 / 58.00
    Not Microsoft
    340.00 / 290.00 / 1178.00
    Better performance
    1356.00 / 381.00 / 89.00
    Open Software
    1148.00 / 459.00 / 225.00
    Other
    619.00 / 294.00 / 294.00

    How important are these perceived Linux drawbacks?

    (Same scale)

    Lack of Applications
    463.00 / 449.00 / 882.00
    Not Mission Critical yet
    314.00 / 333.00 / 1099.00
    Lack of Third Party utilities
    324.00 / 352.00 / 1084.00
    Different distributions / GUI's
    261.00 / 299.00 / 1197.00
    Lack of standardization
    386.00 / 315.00 / 1060.00
    Open Software
    257.00 / 281.00 / 1214.00
    Lack of Tech Support
    324.00 / 312.00 / 1119.00
    Too 'Bleeding Edge'
    129.00 / 256.00 / 1347.00
    Steep Learning Curve
    238.00 / 401.00 / 1116.00
    Hardware incompatibilities
    371.00 / 404.00 / 985.00
    User unfriendly
    270.00 / 385.00 / 1101.00

  9. Great Article by Kozz · · Score: 3
    Was a great article by Nicholas Petreley.
    It's clear he has a good handle on the strengths of Linux in comparison to today's WinNT, as well as the NT yet to be developed.

    As usual, it's noted that so much FUD from the Micros~1 people downplay the importance and significance that Linux has in current Internet applications as well as home-users' desktops. MS seems to have just discovered that there indeed are GUIs for Linux, and there are applications comparable to most anything that MS has already produced. And Linux almost always does it better.
    To quote:
    Dual-processor Pentium III Xeon systems should also help IT managers trying to overcome Windows NT's tendency to spike to 100 percent usage when subjected to numerous simultaneous interrupts, which in turn leads to system crashes, said analysts at the Aberdeen Group, in Boston. Deploying a second processor should help alleviate some of those crashes, they said.

    And the reasons stating the superiority of Linux go on and on. Really, if you look at those numbers and have used Linux, the numbers shouldn't be a surprise to you. Can you really beat an OS that's not only free, but has thousands of programmers continually fixing, updating, and supporting it?
    viva Open Source! viva Linux!

    --
    I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.