Slashdot Mirror
Linux Advocacy Hurts
sundae writes "For those who are into Linux advocacy,
check
this little piece from WinInfo before you
pointlessly brand any critizism as FUD, then attack the
author and everything else related. This article criticize the
way many pro-Linux sites, such as /., only whine about how
the Mindcraft study was funded by Microsoft and ignored the
fact that the study actually *did* happen. "
My opinion is that the Mindcraft study is completely invalidated
by using an optimized Windows box and a vanilla Linux box. Its
that simple. I'm kinda bummed that this article fails to
mention this, instead implying that the Mindcraft test
was reasonable. But don't miss the point- we're our own
worst enemy. I got CC'd on a lot of criticism of
this report, some of you guys did an excellent job
of fairly ripping the report to shreads. Others... well...
didn't.
Where is a bunch of volunteers supposed to find the resources to buy a US$50,000+ (I'm guessing at the hardware cost, but it's a lot) computer just to refute one set of benchmark numbers? When Mindcraft does it's next set of benchmarks on a 8 way server, is the community then supposed to buy another box for one set of benchmarks? Even saying that some company like RedHat should shell out for the hardware is ridiculous. They may be the golden boys, but they don't have infinite resources. The point is, Mindcraft has acknowledged that they didn't have the expertise to run this comparison, and yet they don't indicate that they plan to retract any of their findings. It is their responsibility to do the test right in the first place, or lose credibility in the IT industry.
As usual, we need the obligatory link to the Linux Advocacy HOWTO.
This article illustrates an important point--that overeager advoactes do more harm than good. Regardless of some people's ideas of the strengthening nature of flames, well-reasoned, well-presented arguments go farther in winning someone to your side of an argument than brimstone-laden insults. The author of the article noted that he already uses Linux. If he wasn't already familiar with the OS, I doubt that he would have bothered to try it after the torrent of flames he got.
I've seen a couple of comments pointing out that Slashdot does not represent the Linux community as a whole. Slashdot does, however, have a huge readership that is markedly pro-Linux. Even a small percentage of that readership flaming an author can generate enough vitriol to turn someone off to Linux, thinking that it's an OS used by people of an immature bent. (Yes, I'm struggling to avoid "pimply-faced 13-year-old" stereotypes.)
Please, people, try to avoid knee-jerk reactions, and work on refraining from flaming people just because you don't agree with them. If toey're wrong, there ought to be solid facts that can be quoted in your defense, and, if you are not in posession of those facts, go look for them before posting.
--Phil (Paraphrasing a little: "If you don't have anything constructive to say, don't say it.")
355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation!
When I heard that NT spanked Linux in there testsi was perplexed. When I read on LWN how they could have had the Linux box run faster I felt better, but not good.
;) ).
When Mindcraft reported that the reason they didn't tune the Linux box was due to lack of tuning information on our part, I was willing to help. (I don't care how they asked RedHat, any inquery into the newsgroups would have been welcome and dumped them with tons of useful information but maybe they knew that already
But now after hearing that I'm mad. There will only be satisfaction after reproducing the NT box *exactly*, installing Linux (I don't think newly coded drivers are unfair, its after all GPL's strength and selling point. Just call it "Tuning" like any company willing to spend that much money on a machine would like to do.) Anyway, install and tune linux on that box and show a marked improvement.
It will show...
1) Linux is more tunable/customizable
2) Linux is faster
and most importanlty...
3) Linux *LIVES*
I really take offence when they attack the community, let alone Linux. The community has always been the most important aspect of Linux. When I started out I was a punk-arrogant college kid who believed there was a better way than MS. When my college buddy showed me that his program code (nearly identical to mine) ran three times as fast on Linux I gave it a look.
But what kept me in was the community. The Linux community has always believed in bettering the individual user/programmer and invests knowledge and time in them. The knowledge and training I recieved from news groups (which looking back I'm embarrased at how idiotic my origional questions were, but they treated me politely and helped me out in any case) would have cost me $2,500+ in MSCE and CNE training.
Much of which Microsoft keeps out of the knowledge base to "encourage" one to get that training. Or rather they assume you've taken that training to understand what is in the knowledge base. (Yes I've used it, and its no better than deja-news in useability.)
Linux has always been interested in individual needs, from my mother (who just uses e-mail and word processing) to my brother ready to port EDA tools to Linux.
I really think its time to show that once again to the world. If anyone knows of a place working on reproducing these tests I'd love to send help, info, and if they are reputable enough even money.
The discussion on Slashdot and LWN was great now I'm ready for the slam-dunk proof.
In the movie 'Tora-Tora-Tora', after bombing Perl-Harbor the Japanese Admiral was asked why he wasn't happy after such a success. He repied someting like "I'm only afriad we have woken up a sleeping giant." I hope the community is awake now.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~^~
I think you missed my point. I was discussing the psychology of advocacy, not the long-term viability of Linux. However, I'll gladly opine on your topic as well.
You claim that "rabid advocates" cause prospective users to avoid Linux. I think this is unproven. For every user who says, "Gee, those Linux people are a bunch of nuts!" there are probably several who say, "What do those people have that's so good they can brag about it so much? They mock Windows for crashing all the time -- is their system really that much stabler? Gee, I should check it out!" This is just as likely a reaction as the one you suggest -- though in my opinion there is no proof of either.
I am quite sick of hearing people say "Stop flaming! You'll scare the newbies away!" when all around us the newbies pile in like clowns into a VW Beetle. The fact of the matter is that nobody is scaring users away from Linux. Linux-based systems' user base is expanding constantly and with increasing speed -- and it is beyond the power of half-incoherent flamers to stop this growth. I'd just like to see them try!
One of the points where Linux-based systems differ from proprietary systems is that Linux, which largely lacks marketing and advertising power, is forced to rely on a much more primitive way of proving its worth: the truth. Even the commercial distros do not have the marketing funds to pull off the kind of Big Lies that Microsoft executes. Microsoft can lie and say that their OS is stabler or faster or more secure; we can come around and prove that ours is.
The amusing thing about this method is that while it's not hard at all to convert someone from a belief in a lie to a belief in a contrary lie, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to make someone who knows the truth accept a lie instead. Linux users don't get converted to Windows. It just doesn't happen. We don't need a monopoly position to force our users to stick with our OSes; our stuff actually is better.
There is a critical flaw in Mr. Thurrott's comparison of Linux advocacy and the advocacy of systems such as the Amiga and OS/2.
Both OS/2 and Amiga were dependent upon commercial success in order to remain useful for their users. Without commercial success, a proprietary system will fail to propagate; it will not be marketed or advertised; it will no longer be upgraded; most of its application development will cease; and, as the rest of the industry moves on as usual, it will fall behind technologically. (This last is true even if at its birth it was technologically superior to more commercially successful systems.) In short, it will not remain useful for the majority of its advocates, because they are dependent on circumstances outside their control for its viability.
Linux-based systems are not limited in this way. The vast, vast bulk of Linux's growth has not been due to commercial marketing. Because of the nature of free software, it is not dependent on any company's profit in order to keep being maintained and upgraded. Commercial success can be a benefit to Linux (though it can also be a peril -- see my post here) but commercial failure can never kill Linux.
How does this change the meaning of advocacy? In the case of a proprietary system (and this applies as strongly to the MacOS, which I favor, as to Amiga or OS/2) a significant portion of the advocate's motivation is to prevent his/her own investment in his/her favored system. This investment is not merely the amount of money the advocate has spent on software and equipment; his/her training and expertise as well as other forms of psychological investment (pride, for instance) also form important parts of it.
In psychology and sociology there is a concept known as cognitive dissonance. When a person has a large psychological investment in an idea or movement, that person does not want to see that idea disproven, or that movement fail, because it would mean that all his/her efforts and strivings for that idea or movement become worthless. The advocate's thinking is altered (not to say "blurred") by his/her interests. This is not a mental disorder; it is a part of our everyday thinking. We do not want our projects to fail because it would mean our effort has been wasted -- and so we work harder. We do not want our children to become drug addicts and criminals because it would mean that the love and care with which we have treated them has come to naught -- and so we love and care all the more, and teach all the better.
The advocate of Linux-based systems is not in this position. Linux cannot become wasted effort, because it is free. When we advocate Linux, we are doing it perhaps out of generosity (Let the rest of the world experience such a good system as I use!), perhaps out of abhorrence for lesser systems (Windows is so awful! Let's get rid of it!), or perhaps just out of desire to see our own work be more widely used (See what a good kernel patch I made!) -- but it is not out of fear that all our efforts will be wasted.
The proprietary-system advocate, on the other hand, is in a position even worse than that suggested above: Not only does s/he have to fear that his/her investments will be wasted, but because the system s/he favors is strictly under someone else's control -- that of its owner -- the advocate has very little influence over whether it succeeds or fails. The programmer of Windows applications may desire Windows to maintain its dominance on the desktop, but s/he can do little to ensure this. The Amiga users could do nothing to stop Commodore's mismanagement, and cannot guarantee that AmigaOS's present owners will do better.
Proprietary-system advocates can do three things: they can hope; they can beta-test; and they can raise a fuss. Open-system advocates can do so much more, that there's really no comparison.
The problem I see with this is that in general Linux people don't want to do a benchmark that will "give them the results they want to see" (It says something like that on Mindcraft's web page). We want to see real hard evidence. We want to know what the exact parameters are to set up a fast server. We want to know if an NT box can be beaten even when tweaked to the max. This isn't something most testing companies will have the time or money to do - and if they do, the report will cost you - big time. The iron alone would be a hellish price - 50 PCs + a quad P3 is going to set you back a hell of a lot.
Take for example the web server benchmarks. No Linux sysadmin is stupid enough (I hope) to just go by static HTML results - the key to benchmarking results is to see results for dynamic page implementations, since they are where your server slows down. For some benchmarking started in that area, see http://perl.apache.org, where we started to benchmark mod_perl vs ASP vs CGI and some other stuff. Of course these tests need more work too.
Matt.
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
What did come out of that test was that it is challenging for a big corporation to find all the necessary Linux tuning info. Whether they actually tried to or not is up for debate.
The questions that come up are:
1) Is there a good source for Linux tuning info in one consolidated place (even if it's just links elsewhere)?
2) If not, who's working to make one?
I'm sure this isn't a popular opinion here, but the fact is the Linux community should be banding together to address the problems that do exist rather than writing yet another piece on why the tests were invalid (which I agree they were).
Lets' face facts:
:P ). There's a difference betwen FUD and criticism. Some sites which give FUD are misbranded as criticism by /. Most sites which give criticism are misbranded as FUD by /. At the kernel of all FUD is a weak point of the enemy product. It may not be a fatal flaw, but it is a *weak point*, so their FUD should be treated as advice -- and one their FUD-laden comments are countered by software improvements, they'll have nothing to FUD about.
1. Any group with money will skew test results of their product in their favor through the most subtle of coercion ("Oh, you want to do a Microsoft test, here's a brand new Pentium III... Oh I'm sorry, I only have one of *those* for Windows, but you can use this Pentium I for Linux").
2. Any group with enough rabid fervor (*cough*stallman*cough*) will skew test results of their product through dogged trial and error ("GNU/Linux/TCP/IP/Kitchen Sink Didn't do well in this test! Must be a plot from those evil closed source Kapitalists! Let's recompile the kernel -O3, and test it again!")
3. Any group with enough of a desire can skew test results of their product by twisting statistics. Remember almost all statistics are filtered through Confidence Intervals, for the purpose of hypothesis testing. It could be that one group is using a 90% confidence interval, while another is using a 99% confidence interval. The problem of this is the eternal problem of the statistician: balancing Type I and Type II errors; one is about including more than you should, and one is about excluding what should rightfully be there. Each error comes at the expense of the other. Be careful when you read those statistics!
4. Linux has problems. So does any O/S. Personally I don't get too worked up about it (I use FreeBSD myself
Example: "Linux is hard to install." Pure FUD. Caldera lets you play *Tetris* while it's installing, for (insert deity here)'s sake! But it is a weak point, because after, say, a Windows install, a series of "Wizards" pop up to configure basic services to some semblance of a default. Perhaps after a Linux install, if there is an Apache package, an httpd Wizard pops up (in ncurses -- how cute) and asks you if you want this or that.
The point is, *any* O/S can get better. And even at FUD -- (F)ear, (U)ncertainty, and (D)oubt -- addresses *fears* among the public. You can only sow the seeds of fear if there is a receptive heart. Joe WinUser might percieve a Linux configuration to be harder because linuxconf doesn't have the same help menus (for instance). While you or I may personally disagree, Joe WinUser is the public, and if the O/S is to be friendly to the public, the programmers have to address their fears.
Three Step Plan:
1. Take over the world.
2. Get a lot of cookies.
3. Eat the cookies.
I spotted a thread below that asked where we /.ers were going to get $50,000 for hardware to debunk poorly done benchmarks. I think that is the wrong approach and the wrong question. We already have all the equipment we need and the tools are already available. You just have to be a little creative.
One of my biggest beefs with all benchmarks is that they test things that don't matter in the real world. For one thing, the data rates being generated by the test server in the Mindcraft analysis were higher rates than even Yahoo! would have to achieve in a given day.
If you REALLY had to support those kinds of data rates you wouldn't do it with one server even if you could. The idea they try to put forward is that if it performs well in an opercharged overcharged configuration, it must be technically better for all configurations. This is like saying that because Jaguar's formula one racecar won the race they have the best passenger car. Ridicules! Scalability goes BOTH directions and more people buy small to mid-sized servers than servers that were spec'd like that monster. How many servers really need over a gig of RAM? (That aren't running NT...)
I was planning an event for my local LUG way before this survey came out and now I think it is even more important. I am planning on a head-to-head benchmark between two "station wagons"; Microsoft Small Business Server (of which MS conveniently sent me a 120 evaluation copy) and Linux (probably Debian) running equivalent services. The hardware will be spec'd at this weeks meeting and is being donated to be auctioned at the event by a small local vendor. It will probably be a uniprocessor server system that meets the "recommended" hardware settings for NT-SBS since Linux will run well on damn near anything.
We are going to either download and use an evaluation version of "Benchmark Factory" or the Ziff Davis benchmark suite to perform ODBC / Database, file service, web service benchmarks. I would also like to use Qmail against Exchange in an email benchmark just for laughs if I can find a good mail benchmarking package. One of the other issues I want to address is how easily Samba integrates into a mixed environment which will also be in our report. Cost to my group? $0 so far.
Since the Mindcraft report came out and I like the format (if not the content), I am going to release our report in a similar format with all the parameters, optimizations and notes so the tests can be duplicated by anyone interested. For independent verification I am planning on performing the benchmark at a local university under the supervision and sponsorship of a computer science professor and the local IEEE Computer Society chapter.
When I am done, you will have a case study and benchmark that is actually useful to small businesses. Other local LUG's or colleges or companies could start testing high performance web servers, small-scale file servers and proxy performance between any available operating systems / software using a little creative planning. We could then compile the resulting data into a single, searchable reference that could refute any other "sponsored" benchmarks if the numbers don't match our own.
If anyone has any ideas or suggestions, or would like to pursue this idea, drop me a line. I would be willing to donate time to help organize this.
DaGoodBoy
My God! It's full of Voids!
One person that is trying this is at http://www.linux1.org. Also I watched some of what was said on the kernel list and they said that 2.2.2 was picked because of specfic performance issues.
Another person who posted something earlier or latter is right we aren't going anywhere if we don't do anything. What we could do is make easier to use configuration tools, make more devices available, contribute to your favoriote window manager, the list goes on. The point is with us just talking about it nothing is getting done.
Maybe we should set up a contribution site and have people click on what type of project they want and then there would be a list of projects to pick from to do. I know that there are some sites that do this already but I am not sure how extensive.
That is what i think
P.S. I can't spel
One thing that ticks me off lately about both Microsoft and Linux advocates is that both sides tend to get caught up in mere exchanges of insults instead of exchanges of facts. Even Linus gets caught up in this. When a Microsoft employee brought up the MindCraft study last Wednesday at an AIIM convention discussion, Linus (who hadn't seen the study, apparently) resorted to mouthing the party line and hurling a minor insult at WinNT. This is great for us Linux advocates; it makes us feel better; but in a room full of pointy haired bosses who don't know the technical facts, it makes us look like losers.
(NB: Linus did manage to save himself later on by telling the story of how he and other Linux geeks debugged the Linux-driven OCR-based mail sorters used by the US Post Office. This may have changed a lot of the bosses' minds. "Wow! The Post Office might stink, but Linux can handle that kind of task day in day out?")
I love insulting Microsoft. I really do. But when it comes to presenting Linux, or other alternative technologies, to someone who doesn't know a pointer from a packet, what wins the day is fact, presented in a clear and unambiguous manner. Microsoft knows this, and knows that presenting crummy facts (eg: the Mindcraft study) wins when concrete facts (eg: the post office uses Linux for OCR mail sorting) are absent.
Finding God in a Dog
I will agree that some forms of advocacy hurts Linux, but you see this type in every circle. The people who sit here saing "Windows and Mac's and whatever suck" without showing how Linux can do better don't help. That just tends to push me farther away. Also, if you manage to conver someone, help them. The additude of newbies suck and should stay away from Linux when you advocate it is just wrong. If a person converts and has an easy time due to help from others, he/she may convert friends and help them as well, making the platform bigger.
And the part about Slashdot and similar sites hurting is just wrong. Slashdot points out the truth most of the time as long as you can get around the additude at times. It could also be other news agencies trying to discount Slashdot as it is one of the few successful "open" news sites.
And besides, anyone hear of the news.com effect?
Paul,
I do agree with you about the mindless flame wars and the knee-jerk My-OS-right-or-wrong advocacy of many teen posters. I also sympathize with you over your status as unwitting flame target.
However your article, as I hope many people will point out to you, was missing one vital point: the Mindcraft study was methodologically flawed to the point of being completely invalid. The NT box was properly set up and tuned and the Linux box was not. In such studies you have to compare like with like as far as is possible; and having failed to do that, for Mindcraft to present their conclusions in the manner they did was inexcusable. Under the circumstances, one is left wondering about their supposed impartiality.
It may well be that all Microsoft has left to fight with is propaganda. But their bank balance is so huge, and propaganda is so demonstrably effective that they can certainly do a lot of damage to any competitor's credibility. Surely you can see that the victims of this propaganda will feel a crushing sense of unfairness.
In this case it is entirely understandable that there was considerable anger from the Linux community. And your article, in omitting to mention the central vital fact of the whole issue, does little to pour oil on troubled waters.
Regards,
Ralph Clark
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I know that a lot of /. readers are not programmer types but are users and sysadmins of Linux systems. But these are the very people who have the skills and the ability to set up benchmarks. They may not be able to contribute to an open source software project by contributing code. But they could build a benchmark testbed and produce a comprehensive set of Linux benchmarks that would be VERY newsworthy.
Linux runs on many different CPUs. It supports many types of hardware such as network cards, SCSI host adapters, RAID controllers etc. All of these things affect performance and little hard data is available about the performance of systems using various hardware combinations.
And a nice spin-off from a benchmarking project like this would be the availability of a guide to tuning Linux for optimum performance. But first, we have to figure out just what configurations are optimum.
--
Michael Dillon - E-mail: michael@memra.com
Michael Dillon - E-mail: michael@memra.com
Check the website for my Internet
The greatest danger that Linux advocacy has these days is falling into the trap of the Mac advocates. Advocating Linux does not mean slamming the competition, being rude to those who disagree, being disrespectful of others opinions. Advocating Linux means marketing Linux, by telling the world of the positive points, and carefully deflecting the negative points.
The trap that the Mac advocates fell into is that they fell in love with their own conclusions. They (unfortunately) concluded that:
a) the mac was a superior hardware platform
b) the OS was superior software
c) because of a and b, anyone using a mac was superior
d) and because of c, anyone not using a mac was using a silly platform.
Well, that was all hogwash, but in their eyes, the non mac users are the unwashed masses. They treat people as such (some very good friends are Mac bigots, and I like them despite their handicap), and basically one has to let them have their say, let their dander settle, and move on.
These days, the vast majority of those who send in such vituperative or highly vitrolic responses to those with negative things to say about Linux, tend to do so without style, without moderation, and often without a clue. They proceed with ad hominem attacks, with levels of bile and disgust that one would not expect from a rational person.
What they miss is that constructive engagement is the correct approach. By kindly and humbly pointing out mistakes, incorrect facts, missed assumptions, etc., you are more likely to have a mind altering affect than with the often thermonuclear email blasts.
I have done the constructive engagement many times, and have seen significant progress in attitudes. Unfortunately the mob mentality could easily destroy this, by exposing those who are critical to sophmoric blasts of flamage.
You dont market a product by yelling at someone and calling them names for being critical.
That is after all what advocacy is all about... marketing. Linux advocacy is marketing the linux products. Don't let it become as bad as Mac advocacy, which borders on rabid fanaticism. That would in the end have the same effect upon linux as it did upon the Mac. It would sink it.
I am currently helping to put up a site for this very need. It will be at www.linuxaid.org, and will be a one-stop place for _anyone_ looking for help with linux.
/hardware/modems/ppp. Want to squeeze some performance out of your smb server? go to /tweaks/server/smb.
Tips and solutions are arranged by category for easy navigating. Having trouble with your ppp connection? go to
Who is going to write all of this? YOU! If you have a tip, you can place it in the tree. If you have a problem, you can place it in the tree and wait for others to fix it! Growth will be slow at first, but as soon as it catches on, the content will grow and grow until even a newbie can find help.
We'll have a beta site soon.
Is that what you're looking for?
Owen Williams