Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Challenges Linux community
AmirS writes
"Microsoft are really pushing for the Mindcraft
benchmark to be re-run, so much that they've put up
a page about it.
They say they've met all the requests of the community (seems
like most have been met) and just require linux people to
step forward for it. "
Update your browser....Net$cape 4.51 reads it perfectly.
Lets try the benchmarks on a 486 with 16 megs of ram with each OS and see who wins ;)
an not just some MS bs, then the Linux community better make an effort to meet the challenge, tune the box, and kick the stuffing out of nt. I'd help, but I don't know enough to make a difference. I hope we can get some top-notch people to participate. BTW, the table comparing NT and Linux in terms of overall characteristics - training, applications, support, etc. is just flat out wrong in some places.
not really a coward, but I forgot my passwd, sniff.
>Clear longterm roadmap based on a customer focused vision Over $2 Billion in R&D spending by Microsoft against the roadmap combined with even greater investments by ISV's and OEM's to evolve the platform.
Hehe. NT 4.0 Server is still evolving. I thought they were planning to move on to Windows 2000 Servers or so.
Oh well, I think that kind of FUD goes well with some PHBs.
There's a page on the perl site that has a link that describes something called MS-HTML. Apparently, this is an intentional plot by Uncle Billie. Check it out.
Had to restart netscape...It worked the second time though
Zeus is *very* fast compared to Apache, however with CGI enabled, it's as bad as anything else.
Not really, they are preaching to the choir. Microsoft does not have a reputation for truth anyhow, just read their slant on the DOJ case.
I would say that this is a typical example of how a Pi.-Of. journalist would do it. Challenge the "bad" guy, when receiving response, write a new articel and add your own final comment. If no response publicly state "The bad guy do not dare to stand up.".
In other words, the journalist will always get the last word. My personal belief in this is that it is always best to totally ignore the journalist (M$), giving absolutely no comment, neither before or after.
Actually take a look at the Mindcraft site. The challenge has been there for a week and a half.
And Linux just like all the other Unic's were open to Teardrop as well.
Try Compaq, HP and IBM for starters..
Who gaurantee's 99.9% uptime for Linux ?
Solution: Please upgrade your browser. There are several upgrades available - IE3, IE4, IE5. These can be downloaded and installed with active update at no cost - follow the links provided at the Microsoft site.
Note: You must be using Windows (95, 98 or NT will do fine). These products will not work with the Linux OS or other nonstandard operating systems. Most web sites today are designed for
Windows users, and in fact the NT vs. Linux server tests use Windows clients, exclusively.
Server operating systems, such as the Linux OS, don't need browsers. These just make its command line driven interface slower and contribute to poor perform in tests such as the rematch proposed by Microsoft. You do want Linux to make a better showing in this rematch than it made in the original Mindcraft test, don't you?
Every system has its strengths and weaknesses. Linux may find its place in the back office as a print or mail server for that old 486 sitting in the corner, and perhaps as a more general web and network server - let's find out how well with these tests. But for a client system Windows is now the standard.
I literally fell out of my chair laughing when I read the parts about security and server uptime. The funny thing isn't that they're going to be beaten into the ground in the next set of tests, but that they really don't understand why.
"Your hands can't hit what your eyes can't see..."
It is imperative that the setup of the NT and Linux station is reproducible by anyone. It wouldn't be above MS to make a canned test, if the benchmark cannot be reproduced by a third party, it's a definite indication that the test was rigged and hence invalid.
Worked fine with Netscape 4.06. Besides, this isn't for the Linux community, this is for the PHB's of the world.
What do you expect them to say?
"Linux beat us fair and square. It is over 200% faster and costs 100% less then WindowsNT. But this wont be a problem with the release of Windows 2000"
Here where I work having USB support on servers is really important because downloading images over a serial connection is way too slow when our customers lose thousands of dollars per second of downtime.
i don't see why...
one of the advantages of linux-based systems is that you have the source code. i see no reason why the linux-tuning experts shouldn't be allowed to do some of *that* kind of tuning too...
and why limit it to apache. for serving static pages fast, most people would use another server instead (maybe boa, thttpd...).
-duncan
99.9% uptime HA it takes 10 minutes to boot the machine! Now do that twice a week
Uh...I'm not sure what you're suggesting here. My guess would be that Linux cost more to develop (especially since most of the work done on it should be probably be charged at time-and-a-half or better rates since it seems to be largely done on weekends and at night :-)
But what does cost have to do with anything?
That's the best comparison between Windows NT and Linux I've ever seen. The Slashdot Emperor has no clothes.
only 35 minutes ago there were 9 comments, and now look... 135... MS should sell banner advertising on that page for a little revenue jump. Then again, so shouldn't anyone who publishes something bad about Linux :)
No offense, guys!
This is no more than flamebait.
Take the high road, continue improving stuff.
Why submit to this taunting?
Linux will eventually exceed NT in every
respect, and any results (no matter how good
for Linux) will be contorted into appearing
favorable to MS.
The best way to handle this is to do the same.
Find out where Linux creams NT, build tests
to show it, and publish the results. This is
basic specmanship--PHB marketing BS.
You can't win this game
otherwise, at least in the short term.
I don't see any benefit to submitting to their
scenario.
In the long term, continue improving stuff, and
word of mouth will prevail.
The upper management at my client site have decided to sleep with Bill, and are moving web sites from TWO Ultra II's to *SIXTEEN* NT Servers! Okay, this is not quite a Linux/NT comparison, but really, it would not take sixteen Linux boxes to replace a couple of UltraSPARCs.
And I hardly believe their figures that NT costs less to manage. In a previous life, I was managing about a dozen Solaris and SunOS servers and close to a hundred UNIX workstations (mix Solaris, SunOS and IRIX) and X terminals by myself (and at the same time, I was rebuilding the entire network and updating all the services). We had to hire another person just to manage the ONE NT server and the dozen or so NT workstations. My former coleagues inform me that they are moving to Samba because the NT server is too much of a pain to manage -- it stops working occasionally for no apparent reason. Oh, and the NT admin really *loved* that GUI...she just enjoyed having to physically sit at user's desk whenever someone had a problem, which was quite often.
By the way, a 99.9% uptime isn't that spectacular; it's nearly 9 hours of downtime in a year! Oh, that's right, you have to reboot NT every week...
Its about time someone admits Linux has some flaws. I'm a long time Linux user, and I know it. I don't much care for NT, but ignoring Linux's technical problems is a dangerous road to go down. A lot of Linux people have turned into zealots, and I dont think thats helpful. A friend of mine pointed out a thread a while ago about flaws in Linux's scheduling. This was followed by a bunch of posts like "Outlook sucks!". sigh.
-AC
Is it this? Looks just like a laptop with a more detachable cd-rom/floppy.
--ac
of course.. M$ forgets to put monetary values on both servers. Let's see the Linux cost.. hmmm... well the RH 6.0 was $8.67 from LSL.com, and the NT server with all the service packs and IIS server is well over... hmmm $1,500...
:)
a few % slower is fine, if i get to pocket the change.
-pf
I've noticed that a number of people here are falling for one lie.. Unicode..
Linux and (almost) all apps should support unicode right out of the box.. Under Linux we use UTF8, and not the bloated UTF16.
Hmmm. Works fine in Lynx. Not even any frame nastiness.
As much as I got in IE4 seemed to display OK ... except it finished with:
;-(
----------
error 'ASP 0113'
Script timed out
/ntserver/nts/news/msnw/nt4vLinux.asp
The maximum amount of time for a script to execute was exceeded. You can change this limit by specifying a new value for the property Server.ScriptTimeOut or by changing the value in the IIS administration tools.
----------
I'm sure it must've been me doing something wrong
We should invent a trophy (virtual of course) akin to the America's Cup for yacht racing. Like the America's Cup you would have the same handful of contenders every time. Such a competition would be good for both (and other) OSes. It would drive optimization and counter bloat. Admittedly, Linux is showing early signs of feature bloat while lagging in core areas (SMP, transaction FS, etc).
The race would be a well defined run of some kind with a well defined metric by which the winner is determined. It should be mediated by some third party as impartial as possible (a rare bird though).
The competetors would be disclosed the hardware configuration and told what HD (size, manufacturer, etc) they can use. They could then procede to setup said HD (on their own HW, hopefully similar to test HW). The tests will be run on the exact same instance of HW by simply switching HDs.
This assumes x86 HW. Therefore, it should be open to Linux, FreeBSD, NT, Solaris, etc.
This procedure makes it possible for not-so-rich competitors to make a showing for the price of a HD.
Oh yeah, the name of the cup. I dont know...I cant think of something clever at the moment.
What exactly are Linux's strong points? It's not user friendly or easy to setup, has few apps, a chaotic development, is not all that fast (even *BSDs are faster). The only thing going for it it the fact that it's not Microsoft. Face it guys, Linux has been around for 8 years and hasn't progressed very far. It's a hackjob, a makeshift OS for the Microsoft haters. QED
No excuse then. It is a rare page that I dont prefer to just get the meat of the matter with lynx. RARELY are graphics justified. Decorations I can do without. I just select an illustration or figure if I need it.
Fight like real men - accept the challenge.
A cynical idea just struck me. Is M$ doing this because they are trying to find some weeknes in the Open Source comunity which they can exploit? For example trying to expose us as a bunch of outraged idealists with no credibility?
It is time for Linux and Alan Cox to issue a strong response, publicly, to the fud published here, but *NOT* to fall into the trap of participating in or endorsing any kind of contest sponsored by Microsoft or its agents which Microsoft is sure to win.
It is also time to consider a lawsuit for slander regarding false statements published on this web page. Eben Moglen (name may be misspelled) at FSF can offer some advice or provide contacts with attorneys specializing in such litigation and there are others. It's not like what we are dealing with here is comments by posters at Slashdot. This is an official publication by Microsoft which make statements that slander Linux which need to be challenged. Failure to do so will be a form or acceptance.
This is serious. Of course there is no monolithic Linux community which can respond, but the personalities who are most identified with Linux in the public mind must respond publicly and must act forcefully, and the must get competent legal advice before making offhand statements or posting essays which are sure to be used against them by Microsoft.
Most importantly, the figures most closely associated with Linux in the public mind and the major corporate players on the Linux side like RedHat and Caldera *must not* participate or become involved in any way in these Microsoft sponsored activities, except to publicly debunk them and take the necessary legal action.
This "quickly taking the lead" stuff is a myth. Linux has been around for 8 years, longer than NT. Where has an open source effort ever surpassed a commercial product in terms of quality and performance?
Smart people don't code for free.
The standard - maybe - for now. The clock's ticking....
Its as much as I expect that Microsoft can't make a robust solution for everyone - they can't even write good software for their own products
Maybe 50% uptime. I work with large NT servers running oracle, and its unstable as hell. Plus MS is so slow in responding, and the MS people I deal with don't know anything. I hate to think how much the large company I work for pays to have MS support.
Anyone who thinks the results will be in Linux's
favor when the challenge is accepted just does not understand how the big boys play. They knew from the beginning how this was going to go and they were gleefully waiting for everyone to say how flawed the tests were. Then they would get everyone to come and fine tune Liunx (but under the specific conditions they knew would always favorbetter results for NT)so they can crow Linux had its best shot. Then the results will be even more damaging for Liux's mindshare. Its a sucker's game and its amazing how so few seem to get it.
Well that would certainly not be Linux. The BSD variants are known to be much better performers. If you include consultant fees as well then go with Mac OS X Server because you won't need any consultants to set it up.
Somebody pick up on this one!!
But we'd need to make a lot of noise about it, to get the word out there.
Uh... sorry, but Linux was first release in 1992 (or there abouts) and NT was first release in 1993. That's not 8 years.
The mere fact that they now have a 'Linux strategy' says a lot. Remember the 'Linux Who?' phase?
Has anyone noticed how they forgot to remove "Why don't we address the int'l and accessibility point?" from the final bullets?
I am an experienced NT admin and have a few years in on it. I am just starting out on Linux and my experience with it is thin.
Yet I have a hashed together piece of junk system with a lot of older and unusal componants and I could not install NT at all.
With little to no experience I was able to get Red Hat running on the Frankenstien system in under an hour. So Mr. Gates, how about a comparison of install times?
Now, I'm really disappointed. When the benchmarks first came out, everyone complained, how unfair they were and that Linux would kick NTs a** anytime. Now all I can hear is that Linux is cheaper and still under development and runs on small machines and so on and on ... does that mean you don't want to do this test? Is the Linux community afraid of losing?
It's amazing, isn't it. Could it be that all the Linux hype over the past few years has never been supported by hard facts? It's about time we find out.
My NT web & mail server was last rebooted last June (power outage). You people don't know what you're talking about.
Ask not what Linux can do for you, ask what you can do for Linux.
This is the way Linux will win. It's about responsibility. Do you feel responsible for Linux or are you just waiting for a free meal? Let's all assume MS is right with their claim that NT is superior and let's make sure they aren't right with that kind of claim ever again.
The truth maybe?
...Or a 486sx with 8MB. I set up a box like this out of spare parts. If you turn down the quality a bit you can play MP3's!
I'd like to see Windows 95/98/NT/2000 do THAT!
Because you have to compare apples and apples. My guess is that most people, like me, want to turn the computer on and make it work. Businesses don't have time to compile, etc. That's something that you guys just can't seem to get through your heads. Turn it on. It should work. If Linux doesn't, tough. NT DOES work like that. You turn it on, it works. Period.
Reliability - We all know Linux is more reliable, notwithstanding journaling filesystem.
There are really no numbers to back up such a claim. I've seen linux systems that are completely unstable as well as NT systems with a years uptime.
Most see something like a network failure as NT failing. Or specific sofware failures (such as oracle crashing) as an NT failure (remember, an OS can't stop crappy code from crashing). The typical response is to reboot since this is faster than trying to hot correct the problem in most cases (under ANY OS).
Things like blue screens on NT are typically due to hardware failures or crappy device drivers. The same would happen under Linux if it has the same level of hardware support that NT has (ISV's putting out half assed drivers simply because their customers demand drivers before they are ready).
Linux currently has a big advantage in reliability for one reason only. The same people that hack the kernel are the same people that write the device drivers. As such, they have an intimate knowledge of the kernel and can make better, more reliable drivers. Should the time come when Linux enjoys the same kind of ISV driver support that NT has, it too will have reliability problems with a majority of hardware.
Some people will see Linux's lack of hardware support as a feature, since it currently provides better driver support for the hardware that is supported. I remember similar arguments about the Amiga's lack of Memory Protection. "Lack of memory protection means that programs have to be much more bug free"
I liked how Microsoft listed off the names of the linux "top developers" as if they these mean people that try to beat on little old microsoft. That page is rediculous. My favorite was the part about NT being more secure than linux.... hahahha..
-redmenace
I bet that Slashdot will soon be totally bogged down when everyone will have to reload that 300+k page to follow this thread.
Linus didn't really write the OS either. It's "OPEN SOURCE"... so the Linux that you use today is barely what Linus wrote anyway.
Linux is already doing fine in the server end, and Linux et al will be improving SMP, NFS, SMB, and all of those goodies.
However, it is time to focus on challenging Microsoft's desktop monopoly. GNOME & KDE. The improved TCO when you use XDM instead of lots of Windows machines or Hydra. Increasing numbers of end-user applications.
Microsoft wants people to only think of Linux as a server product. If the only thing published are server comparisons, people aren't going to consider getting rid of Windows on their desktop.
Mark
or a 386SX16 with 8 mb and a 43mb hdd.
i've got slackware 4.0 installed on that one..and it works. 2 of them now serving as a printserver.
Clustering - Beowulf beats the pants off of anything NT offers.
Even most die hard linux advocates understand that Beowulf is nowhere near the high reliability stage. Sure, it works... It's fast... But I don't know anyone that knows anything about it that would bet their business on it yet.
Security - Melissa virus? Chernobyl?
Chernobyl didn't effect NT. Melissa wasn't really a virus so much as a trojan, and any OS can be effected by something similar to Melissa. How much effort would it take to write a perl script that read your mail aliases and fired off a copy of itself to everyone? You could easily hide this inside a larger script that did something interesting and most users would blindly run it if you told them to.
TCO - Linux licenses and maintenance cost more?
Seen the cost of Linux support agreements lately? 10 incidents costs more than a 25 user version of NT. In any event, there's more to TCO than just liscenses and maintenance. The amount of work necessary to maintain is also a big factor. NT is clearly much faster and easier (and requires less skilled labor) to maintain than Linux for everyday administration tasks (admining users, groups, file management, resetting printer queues, etc..).
Applications - Ability to recompile from source is a drawback because it encourages deviation??
I suppose you've never worked with someone who thought they were a hot shot but weren't? These are the kind of people that go into the source and modify it and screw things up. It also makes it easy for a disgruntled admin to be able to put back doors into your system so that after he's fired he can destroy your system.
Forced integration of GUI is a good thing??
Valid point.
And how in the world can Microsoft claim NT is more scriptable and more capable of remote administration???
More tools exist for doing remote administration than for Linux (and telnet is not what I call a remote admin tool. I'm talking about tools dedicated to the task of remote administration that make it easier to admin 100 machines).
SMS for instance, or Tivoli.
Now, having said all this, I'm not suggesting that NT is better than Linux, only that your list of supposed lies aren't really lies.
depends on whether you allow telnet access from outside. simply disable that or put a tcp wrappers block with hosts.deny on your machine and its more than enough.
##will not work with the Linux OS or other nonstandard operating systems.
Can there be a more obvious plant that this one? Microsoft have
no concept about 'standards'. They subvert and destroy them,
waste taxpayers money, and imperil national security. It's
time that the public wakes up to this plot. The stuff about A
"HREF=http://language.perl.com/misc/div-www.htm
of standards like HTML and POSIX needs to be posted in every IT shop
around the world.
Now what kind of test criteria did you have in mind? Which OS can boot faster from a floppy disk? Which OS can format floppies faster on a 386 at 20MHz with 2MB RAM?
You guys are so pathetic.
down-times, are not taken into account. What then do these one-hour tests measure? and and what constrains are applicable when interpreting and presenting the results? There is little point in selectively measuring some attributes while ignoring others, that would not be meaningful.
And secondly, since Microsoft
made their choice of software and hardware for their machine, it is reasonable that Linux also get the chance to designate their choice of hardware and make similar choices about software.
Someone really needs to decide whether Linux is a server or desktop OS. A desktop without USB is obsolete. A server without real SMP is obsolete. Linux has huge flaws regardless of which side you look at.
Problem is who can we trust in the media for these kinds of tests these days? I am not sure I trust Ziff Davis or anyone else. I had found Byte's tests to be pretty fair, especially how they would discuss problems with their benchmarks and what they intended to do to make them better. I am still ticked at that company that bought Byte and closed it. Still we have our problem of who we would trust to run such a test. Any suggestions?
I think the person meant that Linux was released 8 years ago which is longer then NT has been around. Still wrong but not that far off. His point is still perfectly valid, though all this talk about Linux having the _potential_ to beat everything is just idle speculation. Nothing OpenSource has been able to surpass it's commercial equivalent at this point, maybe in the future but only if _all_ software companies go out of business first.
IMHO the Linux community should NOT respond to this benchmark challenge. As others have said before me, these is no way Linux can "win". As Microsoft has done before against Unix and Netware they are using THEORETICAL numbers to prove REAL WORLD facts. This simply does not work and useful only for those who are concerned with "my dad is bigger than your dad" type comparisons.
The fact that NT does well on benchmarks in controlled labs and such does not negate the fact that in the "real world" Linux does a heck of a lot better.
The whole situation really should not be surprising to anyone. As we have all noted in the past, Microsoft is weak on technology but VERY STRONG on marketing.
Well excuse me. Of course I ask what Linux can do for me, and if it can't do what I want then I'll look elsewhere. Linux is no religion so get over it!
which one crashes less. Or better yet, how about an ethics test for the two main authors of both OSes, Linus Torvalds and Dave Cutler?
It would be a short test. Just ask Dave Cutler if he ever bothered to clean the DEC copyrights out of the origional NT source code before "Project Ozix" was pirated over to the M$ campus from Digital's DECWest site.
Well, I'll have to say I'm a little skeptical right now. Why? If slashdot.org is running Linux
/sec just trying to read the Web pages that are talking about this subject here?
(don't know what kernel), I've gotten overload messages, slow page feeds whils't trying to read
the messages posted so far.
In other words, during the course of 8 hours for today what was the hit rate/hour,
Now you know why the PC software market is littered with the dead bodies of superior software. Unless you can conjure up a benchmark that proves "NT is a flaky pain in the ass", you can't win. If you can't stand to ignore them, then rig your own benchmark and spew forth accordingly.
If you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'.
How about a travel money fund for the experts
(like Linus, Alan Cox, etc.) to defray the
expenses of attending the benchmark.
I, for one, have an easy $10 or $20 to throw in.
The OS manufacturer doesn't submit SPECweb results! The hardware manufacturer does.
And VA Research has SPEC numbers on their site last I checked.
USB is a serial connection. :)
Linux and Free Software is already over critical mass. Hackers don't care about fabricated benchmarks and FUD. As for the rest, if they coose to use non-free software it's their loss not ours.
For those of us who aren't familiar with all of the technical details, it would be interesting and informative to see Linux experts address the issues Microsoft raises, point by point.
I'd also like to see the test re-run with identical hardware on both sides and identical software (e.g. same source compiled for each machine) so that, as far as possible, the only difference is the operating system (of course the compiler used will affect things, but this should be minimized as much as possible).
Actually, I admin both a network running NT and a few Linux boxes... For most basic things, the Linux boxes are easier to admin, unless you're an idiot.
Though, what often occurs is that they get sucked into all the awful Microsoft marketing hype, and lose interest in other OS's.
As a former BSDI system admin (who now prefers the title, "Software Engineer"), I have worked with Linux network/system administration tools for almost 5 years and found them to be quite idiot-proof. Then again, such things as their interfaces are built exactly like the way I think. So, maybe we're dealing with lots of "dummies"?!
Like mail, for example. Gee, was setting up a mailserver under Linux ever easy! Call your provider, edit sendmail.cf, and run sendmail on boot. Ooooooo... now I can call myself a Linux expert!
Well, maybe we're back to square one: that is, trying to compare apples-to-oranges, hackers-to-computer illiterates, you get the point.
Brian Mitchell
IIRC Linux was released in late 1991. Anyone know for sure?
This sort of task is something which MS have been
working on, and Linux hasn't. So I have no doubt
Linux underperforms at this sort of task.
However, the Mindcraft test has diverted a lot of
attention towards static page throughput. Within a
week I guess there will be a Kernel verison which
does not suffer from overscheduling, which will
likely mitigate the Apache high load problem.
Combine this with a more appropriate webserver
(Zeus, thttpd) and Linux will perform much better.
Perhaps the next Apache will have an option to
optimise for flat files.
Also, it must be remembered that the NT setup is
running out of a FAT partition, not NTFS, so there
are no file protections. Clearly this setup is
unthinkable in a production environment.
With both of these changes, a fair comparison of
the OS's would be possible, and I wouldn't want
to try and call it at the moment.
Journalling in the filesystem will most likely also be available for testing within a month -
check the Kernel list-archive. And capabilities,
which will be necessary for a C2 secure filesystem, are also under development.
So yes, I think Linux loses. Within a month I
think in a reasonable test it will pass. Within 6 months I think that most of Linux's weaknesses will have been addressed.
Hand Micros~1 (I like that one! thanks slashdot!) a Mac and say, "Here's our test platform. You install your OS, we'll install ours, and then run some tests." Mwuuahahahahaha. :)
I run a 10 MBit router on a 486/DX50 with 32 Megs of ram. It has 4 Nic's and I can pull a full 7.5 mbit through each one simultaneously (compared to about 4.5 on a winNT system with the same cards, or 1.2 on the SAME system with NT).
Every single one of these claims is true. You have done nothing to refute them, you just quoted them. Sadly that was enough to get you the highest possible score on the moderation scale. Quite impressing indeed.
How old is that box? What are you going to do when one of the capacitors finally dries out and the whole machine goes kaput?
There are a number of Linux users who claim that one of the advantages of Linux is that it can be run on these old machines. Most real administrators wouldn't want some 5+ year old piece of crap anywhere near their server closet. It doesn't matter how phenomenally reliable the software is, if the hardware is not trustworthy then the server is still an accident waiting to happen.
Obviously MS has an angle or they wouldn't offer a rematch. MS has had weeks to test various linux vs MS combinations on different hardware to find the one in which MS's trouncing of linux is the most aparent. This was then decided by mindcraft to be the non-biased test system for the challenge.
Linux will fail - Bill has decreed itIt is a trap. Do not fall for it. We, the linux community know linux rocks, lets not prematurely submit to a raping at the hands of microsoft.
-matt
If I recall correctly, about as long as it took for the OS/2 patch.
Why aren't we talking about uptime? I had a Linux 386 that was up for almost three years as my modem/ISDN server.
One of the great strengths of Linux is it's lack of structural problems. I LIKE 1000+ day uptimes and I have gotten them a lot. It has been sad to see the boxes that I have set up over the last four years get taken down for Y2K patches, because some would have been over four years at this point (AIX, not Linux).
How often MUST you reboot NT. And see if it will come back up? How many disks do you lose because you have to bounce the machines and don't keep the heads flying?
And how many installations DON'T use NIS?
We need a point by point rebuttal.
And they need to proofread.
For only $500 software only or $5000 for a big time kick ass machine(OS Installed), you get one of the Fastest Network OS's on the market. The easiest to use UNIX GUI probably ever made. good support, an incredible programing environment. The fastest platform to run apache from (think it is roughly 2.5 times faster than NT) Webobjects. Robust Native applications (NEXT), the ability to run all MacOS apps (MS OFFICE 98) and the abiltiy to compile and run almost any UNIX app that is setup to run under BSD.
While this machine does not currently support multiprocessing such as the 4 xeon box, I think it is clusterable, and for $20000 you would get 4 of these things which would give you big time Internet access levels far beyond what most large companies would require.
It probably has a better uptime than NT, but that is hard to guage since it is a new OS (Next systems did have uptimes that ranged in years, not weeks like NT)
Linux *IS* faster than NT. It just depends on how the context of "fastest" is. If it is for nearly meaningless benchmark comparisons, than sure NT is great. OTOH for real world comparisons it usually does a lot worse.
several flaws in your argument dude!
in reverse order (because to reply I am rereading your bost from the bottom up obviously)
Tivoli have released their stuff for Linux - check LWN. There is also web based admin (which can be made as secure as necessary by a decent web admin) , NIS, to name a couple - telnet is the lowest common denominator, it will work even if very little else does.
You're right about beowolf, but there are commercial clustering solutions for Linux and both commercial and open source HA suites available.
NT is way slower to administer - wizards get in the way, the command line is appalling, it has nothing on bash, the administration features are only available from console while with any unix you have the option of web/X GUI/command line/script. Linuxconf is way quicker to admin systems than the mess NT has to offer.
There is a dearth of scriting tools and languages for win32. You can use pretty much the same bash or perl or tk or even expect accross different unixes and they have far more power than anything MS has to offer.
Aaron (TeeJay/TheJackal)
Wow, if you've read this far you are a dedicated (or bored) soul indeed...
Well, if they're targeting business users, than money is what counts, so let's compare costs, not hardware.
Let's take the total SRP of all the microsoft software on the server. Add this to the cost of the support needed to tune NT to the degree it will be for these tests.
The cost of both of these for linux is nil.
Then take this rediculous sum and allow the linux side to spend it as they please on hardware.
I wonder what would happen then?
I just wanted to say that I agree.... Microsoft will definitely say that their OS is easier to setup than Linux. However, both in my experience it can be difficult to optimize NT at times too. However, It is still a bit easier to optimize than Linux.
I just hope that Linux continues to get easier to setup and optimize. It has become much easier to setup and optimize since the Next > Next > Finish and your are done......
Yes MS will post the results triumphantly.
But what does that mean to the average IT manager who is trying to decide which OS to use? Not much. How many of them actually NEED that much performance?
In the end, Linux is still free - well, except for the cost of the hardware you are running it on. Would any sane person rather use a file server which sells per-client licenses? After all - if you really need that bleeding edge performance, that'd be a heckuva lot of licenses.
- Speed
Will someone please explain why we're using RedHat for high-end benchmark testing?
We don't need a distribution with precompiled 386 binaries. We should be using a distribution like Stampede, where it has fewer running daemons to eat CPU, and binaries that are optimized for the processor that we're running on. We shouldn't keep debug code on for these things. We can use Boa or Zues instead of Apache.
Hell while we're at it, we can challenge them on a dual-P2/350 or something with ONE Ethernet card and 2 gigs of memory. Honestly, how common are servers like they used? Does it really matter if their machine can only do TEN times Yahoo's daily traffic instead of twelve on *static* pages? challenge them on dynamic-- like cgi.
We can do this. We have our faults and incompleteness, but damnit, so do they!
While you may not have had the opportunity, I have. It was a few P100'ish systems and a revolving name server on a switch. The performance was impressive, and while I didnt have an NT system around to compare against, it performed much faster than many BIG nt systems I've seen.
Not to mention that headless P100's with 512K VGA cards cost under $1000 CANADIAN (about $600 US). Even with a really decent 10Mbit network card.
And why, if Linux cannot do clustering and high-availability, is NASA using Beowulf clusters and not Wolfpack? HRM???? Linux may hit a barrier at the 4 CPU level, but for a cluster of single or dual CPU systems Linux outperforms most commericial UNIX SUPERCOMPUTERS, let alone pathetic NT systems, with less overhead.
Also, if the tests were to be done on a system like they suggest with 4 CPUS, lets try using some slightly more complicated services, something which uses some CPU. NT is just all out BAD at pure CPU-intense calculation. Just try running a program with 35 threads on a dual CPU system, each thread pulling the kind of CPU power that (for instance) a realtime rendering system would use. This test is not hypothetical, NT chokes, crashes and burns horribly, after running at about 0.03 FPS, while Linux maintains about 7 FPS. You want to see overhead on a context switch? Or a context creation? How about an application that spawns and collects a dozen threads per second. Linux handles it fine, NT chokes. Even on a big system.
Come on, lets get some fair tests.
I seem to remember people saying that the ZDnet article showed linux to be faster, and yet microsoft provides links to these independent benchmark pages that show the opposite.
Was everybody lying, or am I confused?
NT wips linux's ass on a box with outrageous hardware ( 4-8 cpus, lots of memory, etc...).
The reason... do you have $28 trillion to buy every brand new system and optimize your software for it. no? me either, but ms does.
If linux tries to win in a real benchmark with NT, the life will be crushed out of it until we are no more than slimy stain.
Linux is better, its obvious, but with cutting edge hardware MS is in control
-matt"...Most configuration settings require editing of text-based files..."
Heaven forbid that I should want to see my config
file in vi, or even *gasp* play with it directly!
#further down
"...No long term roadmap - features get added based on coding interests of the OSS development community as well as their willingness to implement them..."
It seems to me that this is usually because one
unfortunate soul finds out that his backup device
isn't working too well with what's currently
available, and after 24 hours and plenty of
sourdough pretzels, they've written something new
we can all play with.
#on the NT plus side
"...Clear longterm roadmap based on a customer focused vision..."
The Linux community may not have a clear long term
roadmap, but we have no customer base, either. We
use the product, and (from the Linux users I know)
we don't force it on people without their consent.
We can only show them the door, they have to open it. (Got a quote in... woohoo!)
More on the roadmap: Since when has a living
organism known ahead of time what it's going to
do? The Linux community happens to be a community
of living things. Some of us (myself included)
don't quite classify as human, but things that are
alive, yes.
Maybe this won't make sense to anyone else, but
I've got it off my chest. Please direct all
flames, corrections, and general monkey fodder
to the brick wall on your left.
iad
The one who shoots well does not hit the center of
the target.
The same people who are putting a journaling filesystem into Solaris (hint: NOT Sun), W2K (hint: NOT Microsoft) are also planning a journaling filesystem for Linux.
Timeframe, whether it's gonna be open source, or partially open source or whatever. I duhnno.
Check out the press releases. They make TONS of money just because NT DOES crash alot. You have to pay (I presume alot) to get garuanteed 99.9% uptime.
linux is a well-meaning swimmer, bobbing about, splashing in the fray... maybe playing a little q3test, or creating a nice image with the gimp on the shore.
MS on the other hand, lurking beneath the water, surfaces at just the right moment to devour the unsuspecting linux.
Get the hell out of the water linux. Benchmark's are for operating systems! let's be a friendly community of happy programers a little longer.
So how long have you been working for Micro$haft?
Seems to me that running NT on this machine would be a big mistake unless you had enough cash
for a few of them.
How many Linux boxen could you build to do the same task for 100+K$??
You all KNOW that a cluster of Linux boxen would beat the pants off of this one NT machine.
And what does one do when the blue screen of death appears on your ONE NT box? Well.. let's just see here... You're... Ummmm.... SCREWED until you can get it back on-line.
A load balanced cluster of Linux boxen would be faster by far, for the same price and be very fault tolerant. You could probably even have one or two machines fail and STILL be as fast as
this one gargantuan expensive piece of crap NT box.
Why build one HUGE silo to store your grain
when building several smaller ones is more
efficient, cheaper and flexible. As well as capable
of holding just as much, if not more grain.
(GreyFauk, forgot my password.. *sheesh*)
Hmmmm... interresting points and Im glad you raised them.
1. NT did not start from a clean slate. A good part of the source code was borrowedb *cough* by D. Cuttler, and probably still remains in NT today. Linux, to the best of my knowlege, pretty much started from scratch ( though I don't know that for certain, I didn't write it)
2. NT was under heavy developement from day 1 becasue M$ paid an army of programmers. Linux started fairly slowly from a simple news group post... but our developement pace is ever growing. Point being, our rate of development is accelerating... we will catch you!
3. While it is true that NT has some advantages currently over linux (UI), isn't it true that linux has some advantages over NT? Whether or not linux is better than NT is a matter of opinion, but some will say this "open source effort" has surpassed NT in terms of both quality and performance... many more for 9X... and all for dos ( wait, that may be the same as 9X)
4. "smart people don't code for free."
ummm...well... yes, actually they do, and how smart was it to say that they don't? Or do ya think you have more horsepower than Linus or Alan.. methinks not.
See Ya
G_X
This Mindcraft debate irritates me more than anything else I have seen on Slashdot.
When the numbers first came out the response was "Tell me it isn't true--the Linux box must have been misconfigured. Geez, MTUGIBS was set to 30 rather than 42. How could Linux possibly compare under those conditions?"
Now out of the large group that posting nonsense like this, there ought to be someone with the guts to step up and accept the MS challenge: set MTUGIBS to anything you like and run the tests again.
Instead we have a lot of cowards with fancy nicknames saying, "Well that test isn't the real world anyway". If that was your view, why were you wasting my time writing about MTUGIBS?
Changing your slant every time someone dares to lift the fig leaf is the worst form of cowardice conceivable.
The truth is the NT does indeed run better on fat-pig hardware than Linux does, and the Linux world would be better admitting the fact than claiming that Linux is better for all things for all people.
The fact that MS spent a lot of money bringing this state of affairs about is the entire foundation of the debate of private enterprise versus the open community.
The fact that NT is a fat pig has never bothered me. It's just one more line on the spreadsheet to take into account with all the other (which usually end up dominating the sum anyway).
The reason I've fallen off the NT bandwagon is that NT makes me feel stupid.
Just last night I was trying to set up a VPN under NT using my cable modem. Eventually I decided to enter the IP of the target system into dial-up-networking in place of the phone number (for lack of a better guess about where this should go).
I got the error message back: "a modem did not pick up the phone". And then I gave up.
Today I discovered that my guess was inspired. That is indeed where the target IP address belongs. This is a good example of how NT makes me feel stupid every time I invest effort to make it do something which configured by default out of the box.
Against a pig OS like this why do we waste our time protesting that the Mindcraft benchmarks are not accurate? I think they are accurate and that it just doesn't matter.
What component is the leak in ?
.. Never heard of perfmon ? .. Dont know what private bytes are ?
.. Your .. uh .. Lying ? :)
You should run perfmon on the process object and see which components private bytes are going up.
Then you should get a fix for the component..
huh
huh
huh
Well actually NT Does support NFS with "NT Services for Unix" and from what I have seen it does it damned well.
:)
And unless your smoking crack *most* enterprise servers are At LEAST 4 processors with huge amounts of Ram..
So say what you will about Linux running great on a 486 but I could pull out MSDOS 5 and out perform it on the same hardware!
well, i've tried it w/ navigator 4.51 from an nt box and 4.5 on solaris. neither could display the page. always remember that ymmv before spouting.
When there are a certain number of messages above a certain limit (maybe you can change it if you have an account), the article goes into overload mode which is just to seperate the news traffic with the posting traffic. And for a while now slashdot hasn't really been too fast serving pages with dynamic content. Maybe you just didn't know about both of these things.
Well, they did steal a bunch of BSD code...
Anonymous Cowlings
mailto:oj@did.it
You're absolutely right. I was wondering the same. Just last week, Slashdot.org was unaccessable for several hours. Yet, MS's servers are unaffected by SlashDot. I also notice that this very on-topic post got a "-1", where the moron who talked about chopping wood got a "1". Typical SlashDot FUD.
The only NT "Daemons" that require user interaction to run are poorly wirtten ones. Poor code is written all of the time, and that has nothing to do with NT.
And back on topic, as I recall, NT out of the box was compared to Linux out of the box. Linux lost. So what's your point here? (My latest NT webserver: 3 months with 0% downtime and counting....)
The subject line says it all. You can't trust the zealots, regardless of their stripe.
3800 requests per second? 3800 * 24 * 60 * 60 is 328 million requests a day. Is there a website that serves this much?
--ac
For all you windows fanatics and ms employees reading this I have one question for you. WHy do you have to lie and have a whole army of evangelists and marketing thuds just to sell windows. Linux has 17% of new server Os's sold with any of this.
Say what? Linux is the one with the huge army of evangelists. Don't you read slashdot? There's more unsubstantiated FUD in a single days worth of user comments here than MS has spread in its entire existance! MS doesn't lie, it's the Linux zealots I see lying here every day.
All the commnets from real people all prefering linux over NT
Case in point. Linux zealots spouting off because they think it makes them cool. Doesn't mean they're right, or that Linux is any better.
Name one unbaised source who claims that NT is better then linux.
The problem is that all the people I know who know that NT is better than Linux would just be labeled "biased" by you. The difference is that us NT fans acknowlege our biases. Can you name one (really) unbiased source who claims that Linux is better than NT? You can't, because there aren't any.
Linux can and will beat microsoft only with some might ( much more of it ) coming in the shape of money...
I know what you mean. I had a twenty-dollar bill that could hack. My God, I couldn't believe the code that thing produced-- it built a Lisp compiler in about an hour, and it was only one self-modifying loop with a hash table for tokens and grammar. Amazing.
I'd love to see what a fifty could do.
If we don't get some more money, and I mean talented money, we are in deep trouble.
Microsoft's idea of a "low-end" server is a single processor machine with 256MB RAM. What are they on? My linux router happily runs in my closet without a single second of downtime with its glorious 16MB RAM and one 3.5" floppy drive. Let's challenge them to make NT run well (or even at all) on a 32MB 486! Linux will fly, NT will sink.
No, on Linux you get other things put in the kernel such as sockets...
Sez you. A divide-by-zero error in a s/w application brought a US warship to a dead stop.
Nowhere in any article ever written about this subject did it ever say that the divide by 0 problem caused a blue screen. From what I can tell, it was a classic problem of no error checking in the code. When the application was restarted it again tried to divide by 0 and crashed. The data had to be removed from the database before the application could be run.
The warship was run by this application, and since the application couldn't run without core dumping neither did the ship. This would have happened under any OS.
The fact that you attribute this problem to an NT failing without any real evidence shows your lack of objectivity in the matter.
The fact is, from all accounts i've found on the subject, the OS did not fail. The application running under the OS did.
It's real simple:
:)
Configure it all, get it tuned, set the benchmark to run for a month.. Then test both NT and Linux at the same time. If both boxes are still benchmarking one month later, the one with the highest performance wins. If a box crashes, it stays down. If both crash or the month ends then the one who served the most docs during it's lifetime win.
I think this is the best way for us to get our twist in and it would look bad for MS to deny it. Plead mod me up!
This is just the sort of bogus anti-Microsoft conspiracy theory type of story that you Linux FUDsters thrive on, isn't it?
Before claiming some anti-Microsoft thing, maybe you should check your facts. Something tells me that if everybody did that, we wouldn't have any anti-Microsoft stories any more. For a while, I used to go through all these MS bashing stories and try to find out the truth about them, and every single one turned out bogus. Interesting, no?
We all know linux is better,
We do? I sure don't. You don't speak for me. You post is classic FUD spreading -- acting like something is a known quantity by "everyone" when in fact it is highly debatable. In my experience, NT is better.
but MS will win any MS sponsored fight
But this isn't a MS sponsored fight. It's time for the Linux zealots to put up or shut up.
Blah blah blah... what are you all so worried about?
..must be a fluke..* regardless... even I can see their must be more to the world than NT and M$. I recently installed Redhat 5.2 on my laptop... got it nestled in nicely beside NT. Took a while to get it running right.. now..I learn when I have time. I could care less if NT beats the stuffing out of Linux or vice versa... I am a future Linux zealot simply because I want more from my OS than endlessy.repeating.dialogue.boxes. and limited control. I want to learn more than what I can on NT.
If M$ wins.. who cares? Most of you zealots spent last week pissing and moaning about how RedHat is bringing the unwashed masses into your pristine Linux community.. You act as if a defeat will cause Linus himself to cancel the whole enchilada.
What sales will suffer? This can play nicely into your desires to keep Linux out of the hands of clueless NT 'Admins' and Joe Surfsalot.
Be happy in the knowledge that M$ has just ack'd Linux as a threat. You sure as hell don't see any benchmarking tests against a non-competitor.
On the other hand... I run NT. I am a clueless admin and I taught myself to use it... it does the job for the most part... and yes, I reboot it fairly often. * well, 'cept the accounting server... 108 days and running
Besides, I'll never be able to hold my head up and proudly proclaim to be real Sysadmin without a Linux user sniggering behind me as long as I run NT.
I don't know where I am, but I sure know where I'm headed.
Wouldn't it be better with tools that _worked_ ? DCOM isn't _that_ good. Try reading the DCOM discussion at MS, quite a few people that actually works with this stuff is having a lot of (often very strange) problems. Includeing me. Moving DCOM stuff between SP's is not fun.
/Me
There is no parallel in the Linux world to auto-executing VB macros
You forget. The melissa virus does not auto-execute by itself. The user must physically launch the attachment in order to start the macro process.
The problem is that the macro is hidden inside a document. The same could be true of an email attachment to a Linux system. Suppose the script were embedded inside a larger script that displayed pretty picture on the screen or something. The user would be told to run the script to see something cool. The clueless user would do it and then launch it off to 50 of his best buds.
The analogy is the same, since in both circumstances (Melissa and the theoreticaly Linux trojan) the user must initiate the execution of an attachment.
Microsoft could easily dispel the entire macro virus phenomenon by requiring user initiative before executing macros.
Then it would simply be moved to something else. The fact that I'e already presented a plausible way to duplicate Melissa functionality under Linux shows how simple it really is to do this.
Your "open source equals poor security" argument is nothing more than a repackaging of security through obscurity
My argument isn't "security through obscurity". My argument is "insecurity through availability".
The argument against "security through obscurity" is that open source allows security to be more thoroughly understood. My point is by making the source available it's entirely too easy to add back doors that would become very difficult to find. In fact, thousands of them could be put in place and nobody would be the wiser until someone actually used them.
Yes, back doors can be made for other OS's (including NT) but they become more easy to spot since they either have to impersonate another program (in which case it's signature changes radically and can be found with a file compare) or it has to inject itself into the OS somehow. It takes a *LOT* more expertise to do this than it takes to go into the source for login to check for a specific user name and password and avoid validation...
No system can be secure if a highly knowledgeable person has full access to it (even for a short amount of time) but when source is available it's a heck of a lot harder to prevent average skill set people from doing it.
How much extra does telnet cost on NT?
Several freeware ones available. But that's not really the point. You claim telnet is an admin tool. The same logic claims vi to be an admin tool. It's not. It's a tool that can be used to help administer things through it's general purpose nature. It doesn't do anything to make admining a system easier or to help less skilled and cheaper talent to do mundane tasks.
I'm visiting San Francisco and I want to recompile, install, and configure my web server in Boston. I can do this very easily in Linux with telnet. How would I do it with NT?
You don't have to do this with NT. That's like saying "How do I shift into 4th gear on a snowmobile?" The snowmobile doesn't have gears since it uses a gearless transmission. Claiming that the lack of ability to switch into any particular gear proves that snowmobiles are incapable of multiple differentials is incorrect.
Saying "how do i recompile my web server" is particularly uninsightful since you don't recompile web servers on NT. You add modules to gain new functionality.
In any event, you can most certainly use any of a number of tools (including freeware ones) to install any program you line under NT. VNC or Netmeeting (freeware) or commercial tools like PCAnwhere for instance could be used to take remote control of the UI.
I'm not saying these are better or worse tools, I'm simply saying that they are "DIFFERENT" tools, and are often much more geared to making it easier to do things for lesser skilled and cheaper talent than equivelant unix solutions.
I suppose you've conveniently forgotten about rdist, NIS, NFS, AFS/arla, coda etc.
No, I haven't. Like many Unix based tools, these are the screws and nails, not the screwdrivers and hammers. you still have to write long scripts and do the real work to use these for remote administration. A real tool does all the work for you so that you can put monkeys on the phones to do the work. That is why it's TCO is less for NT. It costs a *LOT* less to have people do routine tasks (since people time is a lot more expensive than the cost of the tools).
I have done more to substantiate my claims right here than Microsoft has done to substantiate any of the claims in their entire table of bullet points.
If you live in a vacuum, sure. Microsoft has published tons of documents elsewhere on their web site that talk about these things.
Again. My point is not to say that Linux sucks. It doesn't. It's a great system. I'm just pointing out that these claims of "not being able to remote administer" or whatever on NT typically are either over exagerated or simply not true.
These arguments are always the same. When it's pointed out that NT *CAN* do the same things, then people start saying things like "Yeah, but it's not part of the distribution" or other stupid things to try and justify these claims in their minds.
Please, don't deteriorate to that level.
>What component is the leak in ?
.. Never heard of perfmon ? .. Dont know what private bytes are ?
.. Your .. uh .. Lying ? :)
>You should run perfmon on the process object and see which components private bytes are going up.
>Then you should get a fix for the component..
>huh
>huh
>huh
bzzzzzzzzt, huh ? Now where is the OS source code again...
/
You really need the source code for this?
Sheesh... RTFM, even just for one time....
There is list with lots of software projects here .
HEheheh.
I sincerly hope you work for microsoft or you are joking. Oh WAIT WAIT WAIT! I bet Internet explorer is an Operating system! Oh wait! WIndows 3.0 was ALOT MORE STABLE THEN OS/2. WINDOWS 3.1 memory management is close to unix memory management and it can beat OS/2 any day (actual qoute from Steve Balmer). Microsoft has lied and will always lie in the future to gain money at the expense of consumers by fruad and monopilistic practices. Why do you think Bill is buying all the cable companies. Its to throw Abc and cnn out of bussiness and only let us hear what Bill Gates wants us to hear or charge and arm and a leg for information. I can't find any truth in them. I went to a computer show where an ms salesmen was demonstrating windows95 vs windows 3.1 on 2 identical machines and I opened the case with the supposed 486 machine with 8 megs of ram and it was an p120 with 32 megs of ram. The other machine was a 386 with 4 megs of ram. THe salesmen freaked out and threatned me. THey lie lie lie more then Satan himself.
Look at zdnet.com's section on linux and look at some earlier stories and tests which show linux beat NT by 250%. These tests were sponsored by microsoft. Plain and simple. IF linux was so bad then why are there over 8-12 million users. I am former NT user and Linux is always 2-4 times faster in every situation. Zdnet is what made people actual believe the os/2 fud by having the ms marketing deparment actual tell what the editors what to print just because of a few lousy ads. Just look at all the articles showing compaq as the best computer when there were more compaq ads then any other computer company or the articles which show Dell as the best computer when there are more dell ads then any other computer company.
The whole thing is a joke and Jesse Berst should be shot. Zdnet is very biased and they have all sorts of contests where whoever gives us the most money will get a good review and we will sell it to the people as fact. If linux really sucked so bad then why is microsoft freaking out and paying for all sorts of tests like mindcraft which Bill himself made sure linux would fail and why is microsoft treating linux as a serious competitor. Microsofts own internal emial calls linux best of the bread unix that needs to be squashed. ITs true. GO to opensource.com and if you think its a fraud then go to www.zdnet.com and do a search for the halloween docuements. Pc magazine acknoledges its real and go to the NT server web site by Microsoft and even the VP of marketing acknowledges them as real. Read them. Even microsoft admits that linux is faster and better then NT in all situations. They are scared!
I think I speak for a lot when I am saying that most of us have to learn a lot first. Everybody want's to help. but If you think how much MONEY microsoft has put into trying to develop a OS that could even come close. Ok so the linux has put a lot of money in too. Coffe, cola, cigarettes, weed and lots of shit people are using is pricey too. Besides so what. And don't forget (wo)man hours over the year's They may have won the battle but not the war. Even the germans had luck so and so. And as others have said. What hurts us will only make us stronger. The linux comuntity is growing. And thus the amount of 'developers' is growing. And don't forget microsoft was using linux on there ftp servers a while ago. Not anymore though. If that whould have come out on time they would have been in serious shit. Let us work togheter and go for the ultimate OS Long live Linux (And don't let us forget our prinicpals nevermind the spelling on that and the rest for that matter Greetz Oliver.... Student Science AND Linux. One day I will get there!
I tried NT because Jessse Berst said all sorts of great things and pc magazine called it supperior to unix in every sense and ms payed for them to use words like scalability and reliability. I relised that NT had its problems and began to dislike it. I was infuriated at how microsoft treats me and other IT professionals. They crippled there own vc++ compilier so only the 1,300$ ran fast for graphic and game programming. I WAS PISSED and I joined the linux bandwagon and was amazed at how pwerfull unix was. I will never buy NT again but have to work with it for work. People bought NT believing hype no NT user bought NT because he or she liked it for technical reasons but rather political.
We get a whole day in the lab to tune our box.
Since Microsoft has kindly identified our weak point...
Let's use the time to profile Linux under the
conditions we are worst at. The benchmark is
almost a lost cause, but we can collect some
useful data.
I had a feeling sooner or later someone was going to make a laundrylist of NT vs Linux.
There are plenty of things NT/Win98 lacks as compared to linux.
I wish REDHAT, SUSE, Debian, linux.org would get their act together and present a spreadsheet form just like MS had of each topic compared piece by piece to counter NT.
+In particular, the kernel dynamic loading, updating, selecting multiple kernels,etc.
Where linux excels..
+ Goodies with screen shots of enlightenment (totally configure everything), gnome, kde, e-term, some apps. (I have friends who were semi-clueless about linux only because there isn't a page that says this is all the cool stuff of why it was better in a detailed list. (linux country just lists stuff) One guy at work, finally got hooked after I explained the power of linux
+they should also point out apps, like gimp,
blender, wordperf.. Thats what mainstreamers want.
One of the main reasons Linux constantly gets shit on is because there is no clear document link on these sites saying "Linux compared to NT"
(besides the vauge examples, it should be a bullet by bullet list comparison)
Stop talking on slashdot.org with your FD about it (waste of time) and e-mail your thoughts (not gripes) out to RH, SUSE, Debian, etc.. It benefits all of us.
Shall I give an example how a small Japanese company did it?
:-)
Hire a comp scientist student for a year who doesn't know too much about Linux, but is interested in it.
Results: running a full Internet connection 24$ hour a day, a happy student who can also learn other things than rebooting a server.
The student learn about apache, sendmail, inn, samba....
costs: 1000$ per month!
Hey, but you should even know that the Linux box crashed: the five year old harddisk said goodbye. One reboot in one year. Hmmm, maybe me (the Linux immatured student) was to stupid to crash Linux... sorry for this.
Anyway: The company was so glad and thinks about kicking out all their Windows95 client machines in favor of Linux.
I hope my self test is interesting:
First: Know nothing of Linux
Second: Take your time and read relaxed tons of intersting information. At the same time.. just build the network.
Third: It runs... is that all?
Did Mindcraft also check the "Hire-a-stupid- trainee-and-run-a-server-OS-costs/month" ?
ThX to Linux that I will get into this interesting computing world... I'll never get into a Windoze registry.
See you!
You should get the FreeType patches for XF86's font server. Having true type fonts makes it a very readable page. I don't recall where to get it from put the X11 Faq talks about it. The differences is well worth the effort.
How do you know when Microsoft is
hurting?
When they quote Benchmark rating from Ziff-Davis Labs (ZD is a magazine editorial company, not a
research institute).
If you gave it up to some researchers
who are not easily weened by money, or
fooled with unproven industry targetted
benchmarking schemes like the ZDlabs WinMark
value system (which was developed after
I knew Microsoft was a crock, back in '89 when they claimed to coin the term "Multimedia"..
Realize this entire industry is based on their
bullsh*t.. It was built up around it..
And the learned professionals know where
MS has been and what sigficance these
technologies are that MS will sell
many enthusiastic Windows groupies on
next.. MS are losing major footholds and
this is yet-another-BS-the-consumer-market
claim, in short FUD.. They FUD'd themselves
in practically every case, the last thing they will let you see is their source code,
and if anyone knew what evil lurked inside
boy it would be messy.. I mean when they
ask us "Show me what you've got" we can show
them our source code, what can they show?
Realize that nothing they could do would make NT any better than Linux for many reasons like
price and compatibility, and availability of
things like Apache and complete source code
to be changed and optimized at Linux user's
will..
Microsoft is bleeding.. I think we need to find
something we can measure them by, something like
a real benchmark, with complete open source,
so that ZD labs has something to compete with..
I mean if ZDlabs uses a benchmark that doesn't
make its source available, how do we know they
don't have a flag like "if(windows) { ratings +=
ratings * 2.0; }" .
They have every advantage to cheat, giving
FUD to the cows of Win-land to chew
on.. But the FUD is laced with Anthrax..
Be aware. Beware..
Nothing will stop the MS-shredding machine
we call Linux..
Better have a good plan Microsoft!!!
We are coming at you from all directions and
there is nothing you can do..
Like Hopper, in Bug's Life, we ants are many
and we know you are just a big mean greasy
titan that will be fed to the birds..
Linux Freak, CS graduate Programmer and
Learned 3D artist,
Kiernan Holland
Dear sir, where is the source code
for these so called benchmarks MS
did? If you can't find them, then please refrain from posting about who wins or not..
ZD of ZDlabs is a magazine company..
They sell Computer Shopper among several computer
magazine, would you think they might be
biased a little toward making the benchmarks
rate unfairly against Linux? So why not
release the source code and let us
optimize it and make it unbiased, clean and straight, we can show it before a judge and court
and have a few mathmaticians prove that
the algorithms used for testing are not
biased in any way and that they give a complete
testing of all the capabilities needed to
do the job..
When you had provided the proof and
people from Linux and Microsoft determine that
the algorithms are fair, then we can do the tests..
I serriously think Microsoft is more comfortable
with people they have commercial ties with
than people they don't.. So why not someone
who is completely unbiased.. Linux and
Microsoft can debate the source code,
they can provide claims and draw up
proofs of the algorithms used, test them
and make fair and unbiased testing programs..
If you believe ZDlabs is the end all and beall of
computer benchmarking and if you are easily
changed with one dimensional claims,
lets make it four dimensional like it really
is.. Lets consider all the uses of Linux
and Windows NT operating systems.. Lets
also consider their relationship and the specs
about the growth of each marketwise, popularity wise, we should really consider every parameter..
I think you will find that there is nothing NT
is purely better than Linux for, and there are things NT is better than Linux.. But what are
these things that compare each?? And can we
adequately compare them at all.. I mean I think Linux is from a totally different paradigm..
Anyway...
For what its worth..
Hi John. How's life in Australia? Is it Friday already over there?
One thing to remember here folks... perl is not platform dependant!! I run perl on my NT workstation and web servers. It's great!
Where I used to work, at an ISP helpdesk, we had an NT server running exchange for email, and another was the domain controller/sercurity/print & file server. Both would go down every few days. I know NT can be more stable than this, but for it not to go down on a regular basis is almost unheard of.
MacOS X Server can't do SMP yet, so NT would win hands down. Also BSD!=Linux. Just because some BSD is faster than Windows doesn't mean Linux will beat it as well.
Who cares about what kind of half-baked distorted benchmarks M$ puts together ? Who cares about all the FUD that they spread through "the usual suspects" (hired stooges at ZD) !
If you want to go with NT, be my guest.
Deploy it in the field.
Install a bunch of supercool M$ apps on it.
Pay Bill for all the stuff that you get for free on Linux.
Pay Bill for every copy of NT, knowing you could have installed Linux on all the machines you wanted with one little CD.
Sign on to M$ onerous licensing terms with a big smile on your face.
Watch NT go down for no apparent reason.
Apply all those "well designed" Service Packs and "Hot Fixes".
Drive out to the site at 3:00 AM for rebooting parties.
Believe them when they say that Win2K will fix everything.
Throw out all the "low end" hardware (that could be running Linux) everytime Bill says "upgrade".
Doesn't it feel good ? You're another M$ stooge and you LOVE it !!
Are you a retard? My organization has an NT server that operates months on end as a basic file server. Occasionally a process like a backup program that gets a little eager to hog bandwidth needs to be roped in manually, but otherwise it is rock solid. You have some sort of mental deficiency causing you to crash your machine?
Your whole post sounds like a pile of bullshit written by yet another zit popping, linux loving unemployed former burger flipper. You DUAL-BOOT your servers? Whatever pal.
Jesus. Idiots like this are the reason the whole Linux community looks like a bunch of slobbering retards.
"You'll notice that MS's idea of "low end" is beyond what you'll usually find in the company closet"
You mean a single processor with 256MB of RAM? 128MB of PC100 SDRAM currently costs around $117 US. The next time some wanko Linux lover runs out yipping about how great Linux runs in 16MB of RAM I'm going to kick em in the groin. Yeah, Linux sure woulda been great in 1990 wouldn't it have.
Just what I have been looking for all evening, a post by a rabid NT advocate.
This "challenge" and these "tests" are already passe. The individuals fingered by Microsoft as having been "consulted" (Linux, A. Cox and one other) do not include Eric Raymond, and they are not going to fall into Microsoft's trap by playing along. They may have a thing or two to say about their names being used in a way which implies agreement with or endorsement of these conditions in a deliberately misleading way. Eric Raymond is also entitled to change his mind and may also have a thing or two to say about the way use of a statement he may have made as an endorsement of this p.r. stunt by Microsoft. I would not put it past MS to pull that statement out in an act of desperation.
I don't think Linux companies or projects specifically named by MS are going to play along either - RedHat, Samba, Apache. They may have learned a thing or two and grown in wisdom, and now have the benefit of investors and allies in the industry like IBM and now Sun with decades of experience in dealing with MS tactics. No, they won't fall for it.
Microsft's benchmarks have already been discredited and nobody in the business takes them very seriously though I expect MS to swagger it for a while as a publicity stunt. A few Microsoft funded web magazines may play along for a while, but even they will lose interest and will balk at being too closely associated with the Microsoft/Mindcraft p.r. stunt because their readers frankly aren't very interested in this story. In the long run this will make Microsoft look very bad - and make Linux look even better. Really, why should MS be so eager to run these benchmarks against an operating system it didn't even acknowledge a year ago? Because it is losing market share to Linux. That's obvious to anybody in the IT business.
The Linux community has made its bed, and can sleep on it quite comfortably - in the House of Tom Bombadil. Tom is the master, no-one owns him but he owns no-one.
I will quote directly from "The Scouring of the Shire" in Lord of the Rings, by Tolkien, which illustrates the situation quite well.
"'So that's your tone, is it? Change it, or we'll change it for you. You little folk are getting too uppish. Don't you trust too much in the Boss's kind heart. Sharkey's come now, and he'll do what Sharkey says...'
'Yes, I see', said Frodo. 'For one thing, I see that you're behind the times and the news here. Much has happened since you left the South, and there is a King in Gondor. And Isengard has been destroyed, and your precious master is a beggar in the wilderness. I passed him on the road. The King's messengers will ride up the Greenway now, not bullies from Isengard.'
The man stard at him and smiled. 'A beggar in the wilderness!' he mocked. 'Oh, he is indeed? Swagger it, swagger it, you little cock-a-whoop. But that won't stop us living in this fat little country where you have lazed long enough. And" -- he snapped his fingers in Frodo's face --'King's messengers! That for them! When I see one, I'll take notice, perhaps.'
...The ruffians gave back. Scaring Breeland peasants, and bullying bewildered hobbits, had been their work. Fearless hobbits with grim faces and bright swords were a great surprise. And there was a note in the voices of these newcomers that they had not heard before. It filled them with fear.
'Go!' said Merry. 'If you trouble this village again, you will regret it.' The three hobbits came on, and then the ruffians turned and fled, running away up the Hobbiton Road; but they blew their horns as they ran.'"
A lot of horn blowing at this point by ruffians whose day is over is what this is all about. Still, it will take a while to undo the damage Sharkey's lads have done, to replant the chopped-down trees, tear down that ugly mill that is polluting the stream, and redistribute the goods that have been gathered and hidden away in tunnels or sent away south in waggons.
In parting, words of wisdom from Frodo Baggins for those who would overreact or play Microsoft's ugly game:
"'Fight?' said Frodo. 'Well, I suppose it may come to that. But remember: there is to be no slaying of hobbits, not even if they have gone over to the other side. Really gone over, I mean, not just obeying ruffians' orders because they are frightened. No hobbit has ever killed another in the Shire, and it is not to begin now. And nobody is to be killed at all if it can be helped. Keep your tempers and hold your hands to the last possible moment.'"
"This test is not hypothetical, NT chokes, crashes and burns horribly, after running at about 0.03 FPS, while Linux maintains about 7 FPS. You want to see overhead on a context switch? Or a context creation? How about an application that spawns and collects a dozen threads per second. Linux handles it fine, NT chokes. Even on a big system.
Come on, lets get some fair tests. "
Nothing like good old Linux FUD. You should have added the classic "AND NT DOESN'T EVEN MULTITASK
AND BILL GATES IS SATN!"
I posted the solution comment. Can't you tell it is a joke? It was a troll to get a reaction.
How could anybody think this was a serious post or that I work for MS?
Linux does have some problems with fonts and browsers, but that will improve with new versions of XFree86 that have built in true-type support, or hacked versions by distribution packagers because users want this.
I am very encouraged by what you write about low cost *consumer*, not server, PC's with Linux preinstalled being profitable for resellers and smaller PC body shops. However, it is difficult for me to believe that Joe User is buying such machines, because I see no evidence of effective advertising being directed at Joe User. It's still 99% servers and nerds. Even in less afluent countries where every cost is significant, where are the figures on sales?
Also, I commend your efforts to create a slick, user friendly distro but Linux already has these. Linux is easy enough to use and nothing beats Window Maker for slick or Kde for usable. I think Mandarake is the best example of an almost ideal distro for current Windoze users. It is easy to use and very slick. Personally I use Stampede but Stampede is is not quite ready for Joe User yet. ZipSlack could be with more work on the post install configuration. Maybe such distros are doing well in Europe among non-techies, but I live in America and nobody is publishing figures on who is buying Linux except vauge numbers that are not broken down into any meaningful categories.
Strangely, doing a not so nice thing has had good results. Your response to my troll means a lot to me, and don't be offended. Thank you for taking the trouble.
You're assuming that no one checks the source code for such backdoors. In practice, open source code is checked a lot more thoroughly than closed source code, which by definition cannot be checked by anyone.
You're talking about public distributions. I'm talking about Joe employee Admin who's sitting around waiting for the phone to ring and thinks "Hey, how bout if I put my own back doors into *THIS* installation so that if I ever get fired I can make them wish they hadn't done it".
Unless the new system admin (who replaces the fired one) manually reads all the source code for back doors, the system is now compromised.
I too am confidant that the distributions are fairly clean. That's not the worry though.
Guess what? Integrity of RedHat 6.0 binaries can also be verified with file signatures!
How? Due to the nature of of open source, any number of legal patches may have been applied to the system and it won't match what's on the CD anymore (for file compares). The source that's on the hard disk might have been restored after the trojan was put in place. The only way to make sure that your system isn't compromised is to completely reinstall from a trusted source, then reconfigure it, apply any needed patches, recompile, etc... all that could take enough time that the disgruntled employee could have already taken down the system.
The difference is that on Linux, I often write and compile my own modules. On Windows, you're asking me to use someone else's precompiled modules. Or at least, that must be what you're asking, since you claim I don't need to (re)compile web servers on NT.
No, you don't need to recompile the web server. You might need to recompile the modules (although many of them are scripts that can be easily modified through telnet or remote console or whatever). Even so, you could a) recompile them on the client machine and ftp them to the server or b) recompile them on the server in the same way as you would on unix. The server itself though need not be recompiled.
I find it amazingly easier to compile software using gcc/telnet than MSVC/VNC.
What's wrong with using telnet or remote console to log in and use the command line tools to compile the module? You did know that MSVC has a command line compiler and make utility, right?
I have no wish to get into a brawl over TCO, mostly because I have no hard data comparing the TCO
Let me ask you this. Why should I pay you, a knowledgable unix admin to change passwords, dink with printer queues, manage server space, restore backups, etc... when I can pay someone $10 an hour fresh out of McDonalds to do the same thing? Which is cheaper? Oh sure, I still need to pay for a high priced admin to do the more difficult things like tuning the web server, but 98% of the admin work on an NT machine is monkey work. Admin cost is a big chunk of a server's TCO. It's just common sense. Linux/Unix requires a *LOT* more knowledge and skill even to do fairly minor things such as file maintenance or printer queue maintenance which ends up costing the company more money in salary to pay for that knowledge.
No, I have no hard numbers either, but I have looked at the admin salaries for primarily unix based shops and primarily NT based shops.
Are you guys back pedaling, or what? Those that wrote open letters condemning the MindCraft report, and those who beat this horse to death here on /. NEED to participate in this bake-off, didn't you guys pretty much ask for this? I understand you're all now shitting your pants because you might end up putting your collective feet in your mouth, but come on, how often does a company say, "meet me at the PC Week Labs, and let's fight."
/. visitor recommends, the platform as a whole could lose some credibility.
/. just a bunch of wanna-bes who sit around talking about cool OS software but can't write a line of code? If that's the case you all need to delete LinuxPPC from your partitions, re-boot your Macs and get some work done.
Their comparison page shines a pretty dim light on Linux, and I'm pretty certain they took their sweet time modifying and editing that document until it told THEIR story, but if the Linux Community diffuses and hides in the shadows as one
This is admittedly a PR stunt performed by some of the cheapest scam artists in the business, but don't under estimate the effects it will have on public perception if you all stick your tails between your legs and head off for the hills.
Where are the irreverant hacker (not cracker) personalities in this group? Is
I got something to say on the browser issue... and I know ill get flamed on this one...
Netscape sucks. Don't freak, hear me out...
My logic sucks, but it works.
I get to see Netscape crash underneath Windoze as well as Linux and many other Unix variants. Now the fact that it runs under multiple OS's, well thats nice, but the damn thing crashes on multiple OS's, at least IE crashes only on one OS, that I have seen. IE loads quicker, pages pop up quicker, browsing the web is just nicer and easier with a Windoze box and IE vs Linux and Netscape. The plugins actually just plugin. Granted when you do get a crash it means rebooting usually. I hate windows, but I admit they got two things right, Web Browsing and a game platform. I wish they would just turn into something like disney and just be a channel for good talented artists to make video games.
Linux is not among the operating systems behind the top five, but Windows NT is.
"oops"?
It *is* possible to get decent performance from NT, too.
Are you _really_ this fucking stupid (or is m$ just paying you)? Get a clue. Please.
Some of the benchmarks listed in the M$ page are reported to cost $1M a time to set up run and have validated (the transaction rates tests in particular) Who's paying?
:-)
But then who cares? The number of sites requiring huge transaction rates is tiny and I suspect few if any rely purely on NT systems (most will still be using IBM mainframes
First off I'm not using Linux for performance, I'm using it because its free, and the fact that we actually own the OS and can do what we want with it, as oposed to throwing our money in the micros~1 wishing well, in which they don't spend it on what we want them to and they end up charging us for things we don't want to buy or have already paid for.
There is no way Micros~1 can compete with that, so the choice is completely simple. Either pay for micros~1's blunders or donate/contribute (voluntary words) to Linux's future, all of our futures.
a) You can get it for free
b) You are free to hack it
c) Its stable
d) It has tons of apps (free and commercial)
e) It is easy if you are literate!!!!
f) It has a lot of developers working on diffrent things
g) Its portable
h) It doesn't require a super computer to run
I could go on as I know I'm leaving many things out.... But personly you don't sound like someone who truely cares, you just want to be a jerk.
And lets not pretend like there are no legitimate reasons to dislike MS.
Are you saying that the benchmarks that were so important to show Linux's superiority one month ago are no longer valid. Gosh.... imagine if MS did that.... you'd be soooo upset.
Things change so fast in IT don't they ?
Pussy.
trusted source, then reconfigure it, apply any needed patches, recompile, etc...
This argument is silly. You're saying that integrity of open source code can't be verified because of the possibility of foreign patches. But nothing forces you to patch anything. If you install Linux straight from the distribution, in a manner entirely analogous to installing NT straight from the distribution, then your file signatures will match exactly with the ones from the distribution, and can be used for integrity checking.
Granted, if you do this, you lose the advantage of open source code--namely, the ability to modify the system to suit your needs. But no one is holding a gun to your head. If you value integrity checking with file signatures, then all you have to do is install the binary code fresh from the distribution CD.
Just because Linux gives you the option of patching the source code doesn't mean you must. Just because NT gives you no option to change the source code doesn't automatically make NT more suited to integrity checking through checksum signatures.
Finally, don't give me this lameness that reconfiguring invalidates checksums. Configuration causes file changes on any operating system. This includes the NT registry.
>Say NT does beat Linux in a fair test (read not the first Mindcraft one). That shows that NT is probably better (for now) on high end servers. While I'm sure MS will produce some FUD saying something like, "NT Server is xxx% faster than Linux!!!", really what would be true is that NT Server is xxx% faster on high end servers. I think that, as a comunity, we should accept that and not try and hide from what may be the truth. What we should be doing is working to change that truth. Help develop Linux SMP, the file system, USB support, or whatever, that way, next year (or whenever) these tests are run again on mid-high end SMP servers, Linux wins, and wins fairly.
Wisely spoken. Remember Linux is free software and MS is multibillion$. Just the very fact that MS goes into a benchmark fight with a "hobbyist" community is a victory for the Linux world. MS may not even realize that.
Given these circumstances, the Linux gang should just take a sober stand, accept the challenge but demand fair rules (and may take the opportunity to give some publicity to the fact that benchmarks can be misleading, just like statistics can, maybe citing the example of a no-need-to-mention-names certain software gigant). Then look at the test results, comment them, admit shortcomings and (most important) publicly declare a plan to solve them and try to put into action a strategy for doing it.
Can you imagine a nicer project to work on than to make Linux proven better than NT?! I would like to help out, though I am not an expert developer.
In this way the Linux community will retain its role as honest, sincere developers, which is to a large extent the cause of it's popularity now anyway. And don't worry about the time it takes to work out the glitches in Linux vs NT. How many years have people spent patiently waiting for MS upgrades?
Sour grapes, cries of foul play (unless substantiated) will just be counterproductive.
Per
What do you mean don't use CGI. Use PHP, perl. CGI is simply a method of communicating with the client. It doesn't imply any particular language.
To clarify.
The reason why CGI performs almost identically on all httpd's is because the daemon isn't actually doing anything during these periods - ie. control is effectively handed over to the perl interpreter, the kernal to run C code, or whatever... Using PHP or perl (assuming the same interpreter code) makes no difference in execution time *between* different httpd's.
Although I agree with your sentiments entirely, it is exactly the situation(s) you outlined that cause benchmarking rows to run-&-run.
By permitting Linux to use HW it better supports, brings up arguments about the chosen HW being itrinsically superior.
In a sense, this is exactly what happened in the original comparison. A machine was used that suited NT better than Linux (multiple processors), and look what happened. The fact that Linux had no comparible HW platform made no odds, NT still performed better in that situation.
For what it's worth, I think comparisons like this solve/proove nothing. Better, I think, a survey of real-world servers and there performance.
I know it hurts when some large, faceless corperation attacks something we feel so strongly about. But really, it isn't worth the effort. We can't win, plain and simple.
Imagine for example, that Linux prooves superior (which we all know is the case), will MS announce this? Will the news sites that do announce it, give it anything other than cursory coverage? Probably not. It will just be another installment in the MS saga.
Better to spend time doing something constructive.
If you code it, they will come.
I'm running an old 2.0.x kernel. I looked a the man page
for lseek, and it's returning an off_t, which eventually
turns into a "long" which on Intel machines is 32 bits.
You can try llseek, but in the bugs section it mentions
that "There is no support for files with a size of 2GB or more."
Is this improved upon in 2.2 ?
debatable whether its a config issue or a bug. i've seen two identically configured boxes with the same browser version installed throw back different renderings of the same HTML. i just resented the "get a clue" attitude.
Microsoft running scared? Of what?
The Linux community continually harrasses Microsoft and then when it comes time to put the money where your mouth is, you run away like scared little children.
Put up or shut up. You all sound flaky with your D&D quotes and false sense of grand plan of true competition. This test is what competition is all about. Either compete or get out of the ring.
Its less intuitive than Windows
It requires a huge learning curve
It cant support MS OFFICE
It doesnt work with ALL hardware
No guaranteed uptime
no one to blame when the software breaks
little interoperability among different apps
and thanks to the Mindcraft report...
Its slow as molasses.
Prove me wrong.
You're commment is wasting bandwidth. You should follow my example and not waste anymore.
Back to using outlook -- the best email client around!
Um, I'm not a terribly techie guy, but I'd like to help make sure Linux wins this one legitimately.
How can a non-programmer user help?
(not anon, just no acct)
aramaic@hotbot.com
That's quite valid, I think. It's low-end in that it's a single processor box. If it's twice as fast, it doesn't matter all that much, since it gives both OSes a 2x speed increase. The problem is more with high-end features like SMP, me thinks.
Hello All:
5 5,2256617,00.html
;[
From when I first started using Linux in 1996
I've been told
Linux is faster than NT
Linux is faster than NT
Linux is faster than NT
a million times.
So what's going on lately? Why all the news
reporting the opposite??? First Mindcraft,
now another one, PC mag:
http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/stories/reviews/0,67
I still like Unix, but I don't know what to think
anymore
Stephen
schan_ca@rocketmail.com
Where is the url of this announcement please?
Don't just measure raw throughput. Also measure latency. How long your customer waits to see a web site really does matter. If a web server can dish out terabytes of data per second, but does that by delaying some requests almost indefinitely, it sucks. I haven't benched throughput (and from Microsoft's claims, Microsoft may have pretty good throughput), but when I've compared the response time between IIS and Apache (not benched; just how long it takes pages to load on comperable servers), it's always seemed to me that Apache had lower latency.
- pmitros on no sleep
http://www.compaq.com/newsroom/pr/1998/pr071298b.h tml
e s/1999/mar/03296672.html
http://corp2.unisys.com/AboutUnisys/PressReleas
Is this the best the Linux community can do? MS is willing to agree to your demands and this is the response they get...
-"um, Linux seems faster but I don't have the numbers to back my statement". Nuff said.
-"how about a 486 with 4 megabytes of RAM." Sure, thats fine for a personal home page, but how will a corporation serve a ecommerce site on that.
-"my browser crashed at their site." Jeez, Netscape crashes on me at various sites as well. It's gotta be the sites fault. Actually, I would be very impressed if they could find specific HTML that would crash Netscape everytime. (Hmm, it doesn't carsh my netscape 4.08 or 3.01 or even 2.02.)
-"they're probably going to optimize the kernel behind our back." I don't see how this is possible when the Linux reps will be there and other tests have backed up their findings using off te shelf software.
-"MS is evil.", "MS sucks", "Linux rulez!". Uh,ok.
Like a person suffering from a terminal disease, the Linux...actually, the \. community.. suffers from the following:
Shock -- An anesthetized response to protect from pain. "No way!"
Denial -- Not acknowledging the loss in effort to avoid pain. "No way! Mindcraft fudged the #'s"
Anger -- Resentment at the loss or experience. "Mindcraft sucks, MS sucks"
Depression -- A deep sadness or hopelessness.
Acceptance -- Accepting the loss, learning and growing through the experience, and moving on. "Lets see where the weaknesses are and fix them"
It seems only Linus has moved unto the last stage and realizes that the OS still needs to be improved and is willing to do that.
Now they want someone representing that operating system to come and have it compete against their SUPERIOR, SMARTLY MARKETED and by PROFESSIONALS created operating system [Windows NT]?
Obviously they would have no reason to worry about any competition from this pathetic community attempt! What would it be then? I'm clueless!
N.
I don't really think NT is a better OS. However I suspect that even if I was proved wrong by empirical data, the majority of the Slashdot community wouldn't believe it. They would deny it, and call it flawed. It almost reminds me of religious fundamentalists. I am a Linux user, and have been for years. I love Linux. I don't however make the assumption that it has no flaws, and is simply the best OS _ever_ no matter what anyone says.
My feelings were pretty much the same as yours. Just a couple other things I noticed...
;-) But seriously, I suspect that a lot of these applications exist specifically to add functionality to WinNT - functionality which already exists in Unices of any flavor. (X servers, for example.)
"No centralized security - users must manually synchronize user accounts across servers" -- That's odd. My ISP, running Unix, has two user machines, and I get almost exactly the same environment no matter which one I log onto. I guess Microsoft never heard of NIS and NFS, huh?
"More prone to security bugs" -- I just had to throw this one in because it's such a perfect example of MS's unsubstantiated attacks. As we say on USENET, "Cite? Cite?"
Linux: "Hundreds of available applications" vs NT: "Over 8,000 Windows NT compatible applications available" -- Hey, MS, games don't count.
Linux: "Need highly trained system administrators - usually require developer-level skills" vs NT: "350K Microsoft Trained Professionals" and "160K Microsoft Certified Engineers" and "Integrated platform built around ease of use" and "Wizards to simplify complicated tasks" -- I don't get it. If NT is so easy to use and has all these great wizards, why do you need hundreds of thousands of MCPs? And aren't "Microsoft Certified Engineers" supposed to _have_ "developer-level skills"?
Concider this scenario:
We do the benchmark showdown, and get our asses whupped (NOT a forgone conclusion by any means, but possible)
M$ goes off and trumpets their "win" - but Linux is not a corporation who loses customers (and thus revenue) like past M$ competitors - Linux is practically a living organism.
So all that trumpeting serves only to piss off the UberHackers that do the most of the real work on Linux. They knuckle down, work way harder (thanks to M$'s goading) and in a VERY short period of time, we have a rematch.
Where we slaughter them.
Now imagine being M$. You've researched a competitor, and you've picked a huge, public fight based on exploiting your competitor's weaknesses. Two weeks later (say), those weaknessess are GONE, and are in general circulation.
How scary is that? There's NO WAY your big, monolithic corporation could EVER match that kind of release schedule.
More to the point, if you're an IT manager, how attractive is that? "Linux - we solve your problems FAST"
Bring it on, Billy boy. You can't kill us off, and EVERYTHING YOU DO makes us stronger.
Heh.
DG
This is probably the most common case, but the "real world" that MS is gunning for is not this. Do you think your "real world" scenario describes www.dell.com, www.intel.com or www.amazon.com? These are the sites that MS wants to capture and they spend a lot more than $10,000 per machine!
I've been a 100% Linux user for 2 years now, and I must say its a great great thing. I've done so much more then I could have with a microsoft OS, but I am sensing we're running into some growing pains...
/.ers take this into consideration, because I am.
When ever an article comes along, that says ANYTHING bad about linux, we ALWAYS have somebody sauing "FUD FUD FUD FUD FUD"; this is dangerous.
We need to take all issues into consideration. If they say "Linux has no support" we dont say "FUD FUX FUD!!!!!!!!!!!! DIE!" we just say "Redhat, and SuSE provide support for their distributions, and other packages can be obtained from http://www.linuxcare.com". All the points that are brought up that arent met, we should take into consideration.
If NT beats Linux, in this test, I'd like to see us improve it, rather then say "This is was fixed, blah blah blah". If we ignore the problems, they'll never be solved, and 2 years down the road, we'll have a POS OS named Linux that nobody wanted to fix.
Linux is coded very well, its very easy to integrate changes and improvements, Microsoft doesnt have this. We should take MORE advantage of this. Let the tests beat us, but 3 months down the road none of those things pointed out will be an issue. WE have controll of what happends, and its a very very good thing.
So, lets do this test. If NT wins, so what, we just make linux better (and thus, stronger). Lets not be immature, but offer contructive critism to the tests if we do feel that it was unfair.
Oh well. Hope some of you
BTW I'm not anonymous, just lost my passwd (doh!)
gusmaster@mediaone.net
Ok!
a). But what was the test all run on the same platform.
b). What linux or NT kernel version.
c). What pentium chipset, mhz speed, single or multiple processor, how much memory and swap.
Was this an Intel, Alpha, PPC...
d). What was the network card speed 10Mbs, 100Mbs,
and what was the line speed 56K, ISDN, T1, T3 OC3. Was this Ethernet, Token Ring....
e). What versions of each of the Web servers was used.
f). What version of the tools , such as gcc, was
used and the optimzation parameters used.
g). What was the cgi. Perl, bash. Interpreted or
compile shell scripts. Not: Perl can be compiled.
h). Was the servers compiled statically agains't the libs or are they doing dynmic library calls.
Dynamic conserves memory, but has to do an extra lookup. Any information following symbolic links during processing (this means another call to disk to do a lookup).
i) Acessing Web pages off the disk. Was the disk
IDE, SCSI, Fibrechannel, NFS'd.
k). Were there any other process daemons running that aren't needed by Linux and the Web server to
do its job. These other daemons eatup memory, fight for processing time and must share disk and hardware resources whils't performing this performance test. So strip the OS to bare metal of
unnecessary stuff daemon programs.
As you can see, there is more to reporting just a number than just a graph. However, It is a good
start.
Unlike Linux, NT 4.0 is not full 64 bit on the Alpha CPU. If you want to die laughing run the same Mindcraft test on Alpha instead of an x86. How could M$ complain? After all, if you're talking serious server benchmarks, what the fuck are you doing running on a wimpy 32bit chip in the first place?
"How would you like to shoot yourself in the foot today?"
I would like to see Linus Torvald, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates all on Jeopardy and see who knows more about their operating systems, competitor operating systems and computers in general. I would like to see what kind of question (remember it is jeopardy) comes up for "This company created the first Graphical User Interface for a microcomputer"...
I would like to see a comparison between NT and the newly released IBM OS/2 Warp Server for e-business. OS/2 has always been better than NT. There was one test in the past when a single-processor machine running OS/2 outperfermed a SMP machine running NT!
Microsoft has a point here. The issue is not whether or not the individuals named by MS accept the "challenge" to participate in this contest, but that they make some kind of response. Immature quips by Linus such as "Microsoft sucks" or sour grapes like Alan Cox's "Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics" don't cut it.
What we do have as a response is pages and pages of comments at forums like this one and angry emails from an assortment of Linux fanatics. Such ramblings will be used by Microsoft as representing the "response" of the Linux community to the Mindcraft study part 1 and to Microsoft's own challenge as laid down in the special web page at its official site. The contrast is startling. On the one hand, professionalism. On the other, chaos and reckless speculation and bad manners.
Perhaps Linus, Alan Cox and other individuals are not the people to make a response (though it seems that they would because that is expected of leaders in such a movement). Pehaps a response should be made by commercial companies and non-profit organizations basing their product lines on Linux. RedHat, Caldera, Debian and even IBM and GNU and Cygnus as indirect participants with a big investments of cash and time in Linux come to mind. One would think that these companies might offer some kind of official response to Microsoft's challenge (not to mention the original Mindcraft study).
Well, where is the response? True, it's a little early but I trust that in the coming week these parties will publish at their official web sites some kind of response. Of course none of them, even collectively, represent Linux, but one would think they would rise to the challenge and offer some kind of official response for their own needs, and to properly serve the customers who depend on their products and not let them down.
If these major players chicken out, then the ONLY response from the Linux community remains posts here at Slashdot and editorials in various on-line magazines. Again, I am not suggesting accepting the terms Microsoft has laid down or participating in any tests set up by Microsoft or its agents, but some published statements which address these issues are sorely needed from the key individuals Microsoft has named and/or from companies which base their business on Linux and expect their customers to continue to have faith in their products despite these distressing test results.
To earn the title of "leaders", these individuals and corporations and organizations must place themselves on the front line and lead the troops, not hide in their foxholes until the battle is over, or send hordes of Slashdotters to do their fighting for them at no risk to themselves. If they don't, then Microsoft's charge that Linux is lacking in a sense of direction and has no road map may be taken more seriously by those who are still looking for some answers to questions posed by the Mindcraft study, as well as by other recent tests which substantiate the origianl Mindfraft results.
Windoze and Linux are completely different. Playing by M$ rules is only acknowledging them. Screw 'em. This is a company comprised mainly of Lawyers and PR/Marketing folk.
Accept this challenge when the OSes are more similar -
1. Source to both OSes globally available for anonymous download via FTP over the Internet - OS source is downloaded and compiled on the spot - no tweaking opportunities.
2. All Licensing fees between the two OSes are the same price.
Until then there IS *NO* comparison.
Linux wins.
True Multiuser OS. Less startup cost. No client access cost. Unlimited distribution for no fee. True Open international standards support - not 'defacto' proprietary ones. Runs great on older, legacy hardware. More stable. Source available. Developer mindshare. True command line/scripting. Several Internet browsers included - none forced upon you. Complete development environment included - C/C++ Perl, Java, Python, Scheme, Pascal etc... etc... etc....
Sheesh. No contest. Ignore Redmond. This is their silly game. Don't swallow the (now tainted) Mindcraft Bait.
What you wanted to be yours, has made it mine.
-Soundgarden
I can't make a public stink about it, as I'd certantly get fired!
As for how they got there... You've got your basic public lib. system. A main location and five branches. There are 50 computers at the main office and 25 at each branch.. They are used by the public to access the internet..
Most of them were orignally windows 95, but because of the public screwing them up, windows screwing itself up, and other varrious issues the Libs decided to replace Windows with Linux.. Support costs went down (not a ton, because the windows boxes we're already as locked down as they come), and the public was happier..
Now that MS is offering them bunches of boxes and a pimped out NT server, they are reloading Windows. Perhaps, after they get the boxes, Linux will come back.. I dunno.. MS is also providing them with 'cheap' Office and Encarta.. Oh well.
With normal (1 kB) blocks, the ext2 filesystem
supports file sizes up to 16 GB. With 4 kB blocks,
the ext2 filesystem supports files up to 4 TB.
(yep, terrabytes)
Generally, you need an Alpha for this. You can get
an Alpha for about $1000, so this is no problem.
The memory limit on an Alpha is currently 4 GB,
but could be expanded to an outrageous value
if needed. (32-bit PCI cards need bounce buffers)
I will. Under specified conditions on specified hardware no problem at all.
I ran a 486 DX2/50 with 32MB RAM and a 540MB hard disk for 3 years under Linux as the primary nameserver for a busy domain (Large British Anti Virus company -bought by Merkins last year).
Total uptime before a power failure killed it - 893 days. This lived through all of the script kiddie DOS attacks in 97/98.
By the way, I carry roughly $7M liability insurance. If one DNS server going down is going to tax that cover, then you needed a secondary DNS server.
I don't want to bake billie boy look good or anything but two things have to be said.
1. In the early day's when bill was just bill and he wrote DOS 0.1 he did it on his own. And he did a reasonable job. And I don't want to defend him but
2. He is quite smart sitting on his lazy ass laugin his butt off and shit for he 'has' made it. That guy is pretty smart. Not as smart as linus or any of his staff and he got fuckin lucky but that's
Ok it is wrong how he does bussnis and everything and he turned evil. 2 days after he started a little running company.
I'm no defender of Gates at all. But accusations that he isn't a programmer are unfair.
Remember the Altair8080? Recognised as the first PC way back in the heady days of '72, Gates and Allen wrote a version of BASIC to allow users to program for it in a way other than flicking switches. Not to put too fine a point on it, this was quite a programming achievement at the time and this alone is enough in my mind, for the MS founders to be given at least a little respect.
However. It is from this and subsequent events, that I believe Gates' ideoligies eminate. At the time, the only computer people were hackers, people who, like us, believe that software should be free. Gates' had other ideas. The Altair version of BASIC was to be marketed through MITS (makers of the Altair). To promote this, the latest copy (unfinished as it contained some nigglesome bugs) was taken to a computer fair (I forget which one) to be shown to the gathered throng. At some stage during the day, the copy was stolen, and illegal copies were soon mailing there way to, seemingly, every Altair owner in the land.
I could be wrong, but I don't think Gates has ever forgiven this act of liberation. In this early episode of the MS soap-opera, we can see all the motifs that we so lovingly identify with Gates and Microsoft. Free software, his loathsome attitude towards hackers (played now in part by Linux endorsses), piracy (not that anyone apart from Gates saw it as such), bug ridden software (how vociferously he denies to propogate buggy software now), and last but certainly not least his ridiculous endorsement of BASIC.
From the ones that are allready up there, they are kicking linux's ass.
:).
But I know first hand, that Linux is faster.
At my work, we have an in-office web server (as aposed to having somebody provide it for us). We used to run Windows NT 4 Enterprise server on a single CPU PII 450mhz, with 256meg ram. We had a licensed NT admin set it up, configure it, tweek it.
Then after a long talk with a linux zealot co-worker, we managed to switch it over to linux, because the money wasn't there to upgrade the bandwidth or hardware (didn't really need it anyway). Anyway, just from surfing the web page from home, Linux helped it ALOT (it would process connection requests faster.... and it was just all around faster).
Wish i knew more detail on how it happend, but this I guess is a Linux success story
Lets sue the bastards! This is unacceptiable!
They say that Linux supports only 2gig of ram.
Then they say that NT supports 2gig user+2gig kernel out of the box.
GUESS WHAT ASSHOLES!
2gig user+2gig kernel is exactly what Linux supports! That is only 2gigs of ram.
Get your fucking facts straight!
Furthermore, Linux supports 64bit processors.. The RAM limit is a hardware limitataion (with Linux unwilling to adopt intel's stupid hack). I've booted ultrapenguin on a starfire with 8cpus and 16GB of ram.
This kind of shit can not be tolerated. If MS published this kind of BS about Novell or SUN, they'd have their ass in court so fast MS's head would spin.
MS has gone full tilt against Linux. Yesturday my local LIB system has begun removing Linux from 150 public access computers because in two weeks someone from the Gates foundataion is coming to offer them a grant for 50 more computers. A person from the GF told the lib director that she'd have no change of getting the grant if they kept the Linux. Since they already had windows licences for all their boxes, off comes the Linux.
Bah! This all is very upsetting..
I think I'll go kill myself now.
Still not as stable as Linux/Apache/zeus/etc combo or Solaris/Apache/zeus/etc. wtf has a transaction server got to do with serving webpages anyhow?
$1000 is one day's work for a development team. if over a project, using NT's superior tools saves 2 days, the choice of NT has paid for itself. (before anyone flames me over "superior tools", please tell me the linux equivalents of MTS, MSMQ and DCOM)
Yeah but you get shite VB code monkeys for that, who need point and click because they can't code. I watched a Java consultant build a prototype EJB app in 8 hours yesterday and that included 2 hours explaining to the windows based developers how UI's work! He even managed to explain how the EJBs worked to me while he was doing it (These are guys from Silverstream, which is of course available for Solaris, and hopefully linux RSN)
Also there is already Oracles Application Server out in beta that will blow and IIS application server away. Then there is zope, PHP, about 3 or high quality IDE's for developing Java, Perl, etc.
There is actually already healthy competition. Given a fraction of the cost of an NT/IIS license and accompanying dev tools and apps I could have the same power and functionality and even a prettier interface. I would also perform the same job faster on less hardware.
Then theres messaging - MQseries for AS/400 and other IBM connectivity, plenty of Transaction and message queuing software available already. Oracle and DB2 application servers provide most if not all of the features you need.
Which server has more server side application options? Apache with it's module interface is superior to IIS and ISAPI. For example, rewrite and perl or python are much more powerful than ASP and jscript/Visual Basic
ASP has complete integration with COM and can do anything a COM object can do. This approach is markedly superior to text processing languages.
ASP is available for Linux as is equivilents such as php and zope - all the power but choice and stability too! besides COM is a very limited OO architecture and is no match for the raw power of Perl or C++.
This same advantage is shared by CORBA and EJB tools, which again, linux doesn't have.
er.. I think you'll find both on Linux and other Unices. GNOME is a corba based solution. Oracle App server among others of which there is a wide choice support both corba and ejb but also have perl/c/c++ support.
Don't forget that to actually develop any thing worthwhile on NT/IIS (like database access and ecommerce) you have to puchase additional and sometimes very expensive tools.
see above. the tools rapidly pay for themselves, then save significant cash. also, the cost of OS and tools is a very small part of the budget on major projects.
Only in a microsoft shop. It takes vb programmers longer to knock out bodged junk than decent c/per/java programmers can build a decent app using widely available tools.
The budget is far smaller when using open source, greatly reduced os costs, greatly reduced tools costs, similar application costs, cheaper hardware due to the ability to scale up thru SMP, clusters, and even architechures.
Then you have the fact that you can move your entirely application and its tools up through the UNIX's available without having to recode more than a few lines.
NT can't scale beyond 2 x 8 processor intel boxes - which cost far more than 16 x 2 processors but with out the redundancy. Or you could cluster multiple multiprocessor alphas or sparcs. Aaron (TheJackal)
Second, this story has grown 'legs'. The huge response against the results was something journalists could write about!
Third, there were extra bits to sniff out. Most people looked at the Mindcraft with Netscape or IE and missed the very tiny text saying "Test performed for Microsoft" at first. (Lynx-users, of course, saw it full-sized :)). The media enjoy a story where they can start digging, and the attempts to downplay MS involvement were just enough to interest the journos, who then learnt about Mindsoft's past benchmarking weirdness.
So there's one reason why this story is still going on: it could be milked!
One repeated comment you'll have seen is "it depends what you want to measure". Various alternative results have been posted both before and after (the difficulty is getting companies to provide numbers: most of us will know someone who said, "Well, internally, we found..." and then added, "But no, I can't say that, I'd need permission"). What you do hear, time and time again, is that for real "low end" machines, such as 386s and 486s, you can install Linux and it will _zoom_ along doing its job (webserving or email, often). You can't test _that_ versus NT cos you can't get NT onto the typical 386 or 486. So on those machines Linux is indeed incontrovertibly faster and won't crash.
You'll notice that MS's idea of "low end" is beyond what you'll usually find in the company closet, In fact, Halloween 1 (scroll down a page or two from that anchor) explicitly mentions its use in this respect as a big problem for MS. On that note, if you're new to the more political issues surrounding Linux, check out the Halloween documents (so-called due to their leak date). They're internal MS assessments of Linux and free software. They're now well-read by Linux and free software people (you can tell how well-read by the fact that "OSS" for open-source software comes from those documents and everyone knows that abbreviation now! One thing that caught particular attention was the sections on "How MS should combat Linux", with such delightful admissions that FUD won't work. He didn't even have to explain what he meant by it, it was assumed that all MS types would know what it was... People have been expecting MS to try _something_ since then (and before). Other tactics for your viewing edification are legal threats (!) and "embrace and extend" open protocols, ie make MS the standard and everything else measure up to it. Actually, there's a flavour of that to this affair: suddenly "low end" becomes that ridiculous machine, and anyone who wants to use MS had better have that or buy a new one.
This turned a bit long, but I hope it helped!
I liked this one most:
Provides source code to allow developers to deviate from standard distribution.
They got it! That's the sole purpose!
Like Zeus that is reportedly 3-20 times faster than Apache! Since we're pitting Linux vs NT, we should be able to use any webserver we want.
That page hurts. We are going to have to do something about this. There may be some FUD there, but there is a lot of truth too.
ac.
We've got Microsoft's list of selling points now. Address them one by one, and we've got a roadmap on what to improve.
A few of them caught my eye as being near lies where they compare cost of ownership, etc against UNIX, not Linux. Tricky those Microsoftians.
The most increidble selling point that they missed is the bulletproof nature of Linux compared to NT, and the work:crash ratio. NT is an immature product compared to the years of well-tested software that Linux has had to build upon.
Wish we had numbers like the # of man-hours and such or bugs fixed to show.
Have a look at some of the claims on there
"NO back compatiblity for a.out binarys"
"No international support" when KDE supports more countries than windoze.
"Poor support for java"
"MORE PRONE TO SECURITY BREACHES".. remember teardrop?
...that Linux really could lose.
/. does not count as "doing" :-)
Calling stuff "FUD" won't make the challenge go away, nor will it make the _real_ technical problems of Linux go away.
Linux still has a _long_ way to go with SMP scalability. Linux still doesn't have a journaling FS. Linux still doesn't have an LVM. Linux still doesn't have USB support. Linux still doesn't have a good, comprehensive administration GUI. [1] And unless you yourself are trying to help make these capabilities come to the point of production releases, you aren't helping at all.
The best way to approach this challenge is to say "No, Linux doesn't quite measure up yet, but I'm personally doing everything I can to make it so it does." (Posting to
-- Citizen for the responsible promotion of Linux
[1] All these capabilities exist in alpha form, but calling them production releases would be a LARGE stretch.
How about a third option.
Why can't Slashdot, LinuxToday, or one of the distro companies prepare a set of test criteria that Linux performs better on than NT and challenge _Microsoft_? Let's think outside the box a little and quit letting Microsoft set all the rules of the game.
Thats what we need, an ethics benchmark; I can see it now... "Linux has a ethicmark of 9700.3, while NT has one of .002" or an "OK" rating.. "Linux makes you feel like a good productive member of society, where as NT makes you feel slimey like a newt"...
heh;)
whee -Me
Which can perform better as an NFS or Coda server? Stability under high CPU load? Which can perform better as an IMAP or NNTP server? How about a "pathetic" test like which can perform number crunching benchmarks faster.
Now let's do the above on a four-way Alpha-21264 system with 2GB of memory.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
The original Anonymous Coward wrote:
What exactly are Linux's strong points? It's not user friendly or easy to setup, has few apps, a chaotic development, is not all that fast (even *BSDs are faster). The only thing going for it it the fact that it's not Microsoft. Face it guys, Linux has been around for 8 years and hasn't progressed very far. It's a hackjob, a makeshift OS for the Microsoft haters. QED
First off, blind assertion does not equal truth. If it is truth, than it flies in the face of the experiences of most people here, so some references or examples are pretty much required. If I were to assert "The sky is blue", few people would argue, if I were to assert "The sky is pink", I would need to support that statement, or it will be dismissed out of hand.
Secondly, the original poster's assertions are either false, or so poorly defined that they couldn't be called "truth". It's not "user friendly"? What do you mean by "user friendly", I find Linux very user friendly, since it allows adminstrator-type users to access everything while restricting normal users from demolishing their system trying to install a pretty screensaver. I have set up many Windows 95/98/NT and Linux boxes, and I find RedHat much easier to install and configure than Windows.
"Has few apps"? Have you looked at Freshmeat.Net lately? I don't know what you call it, but I don't call that "few". A "chaotic development"? Linux development is carefully managed and delegated. Microsoft is rumoured not to even let their programmers have full access to the code of the program they are working on.
The blanket assertion that "even *BSDs are faster" is flawed on many levels. The tone is along the lines of "even this slow thing is faster than what you like", when most people consider the BSD's to be fast. I mean, "even horses run faster than you", what kind of comparison is that? It also isn't true without that tone. From everything I've heard, OpenBSD and NetBSD are generally slower than Linux. FreeBSD is faster only for certain situations, and only on the Intel platform. If I'm wrong, show me real references.
"The only thing going for it is the fact that its not Microsoft". No, it also has "it's a fast, stable, general purpose operating system that works incredibly as a server and darn good as a desktop system". Also, "It's Free, both in the speech and in the beer sense!". These are big things going for it in many peoples books.
"Linux has been around 8 years and hasn't progressed very far"? In 1991, Linux was barely more than an idea, in 1992, it still didn't know what SCSI or Ethernet were. Now it's a full blown operating system competing tooth and nail with megacorporations for being the platform of choice in the server room. I'd say it's progressed very very far.
"It's a hackjob, a makeshift OS for the Microsoft haters", I don't even know what this means, much less how to respond to it.
"QED", Latin for quod erat demonstrandum which was to be demonstrated. This being here means either the poster has no idea when to use "QED", or the entire goal of the post was not to answer the question "What exactly are Linux's strong points?" but to demonstrate that it is a "hackjob, a makeshift OS for Microsoft haters". Not only is that a pretty silly goal for a post, but it is a failure, because the post demonstrates nothing of the sort.
In all, I think the post solidly deserved its -1 score. (No I didn't moderate it, otherwise I wouldn't be able to post this).
----
Open mind, insert foot.
As a registered member of the community, I thought I'd take a few shots at the MS "challenge."
First, in the sloppy writing department:
Well, uh, no: the consesnus is that when Mindcraft configures and tunes the servers (or not, as the case may be...), things go badly for Linux. Feelings on the second point seem to be the same.
What MS mean to write, of course, is that Linux people want to configure, tune, and be present. I'm sure that the sloppy writing isn't intended to muddle the issue, since it's sort of clarified a paragraph or two down.
Looking at their comparison chart, I note that they claim Windows has turned in the "best" scores on some benchmarks, while also noting that no Linux results exist. Winner by default, I guess?
On Linux, it's "easy to gain root access...". But, they say, on NT:
Does that mean that this exploit no longer works?
Here's a nearly incomprehensible complaint about Linux:
Melissa shows what costs and technical risks come with "integrating" stuff to the extent that MS wants to, but I'm not entirely sure what they mean by the word in this context.
In the damning faint praise department, MS graciously admits that there are "hundreds" of applications available for Linux. Call me crazy, but Unix is, er, "several years" old -- I'm pretty sure there are more than hundreds of useful programs available (whether they're "applications" or not is not terribly relevant, if you ask me). Even if there are only hundreds, well, a comparison of quality, rather than quantity, would be more telling, I think.
Another Linux failing, they say:
I'm sure I don't know what that means. Organizations like The Learning Tree have Linux courses, and there have been a couple of certification programs announced (if inchoate).
More Linux evil:
Or, you could just give the job to some random person and let him/her peruse the manuals. Things wouldn't turn out any worse than they would if the person were told to run NT instead. The fact is that a Gooey WimpyWYG PointyClick screen doesn't change the fact that administering a computer well (let alone a network) requires skill, intelligence, dedication, and plenty of learning. No "Wizard" will get around this fact.
Uh, well, maybe. But you do have to "install service packs" on NT, which comes to the same thing in the end -- downtime while the admin does something that, if it doesn't work, will result in Bad Things happening until it gets straightened out.
Oddly enough, they forget the corresponding item on the NT side: "Most config. settings require editing of binary files." Or, rather, one (the Registry), and if you screw it over, God help you. At least the OS keeps a couple of backups by default.
Here's one of their Big Awesome NT Features:
Unix is Home of the Script. That's all I have to say about that.
NT feature:
Melissa. Not all rosy.
Linux liability:
Nope, I'd say MS is the master of forcing people to integrate. (Yes, that was an out-of-context quotation followed by a cheap shot).
NT feature:
And you know who's paying for that -- look at the prices of their OS and applications (particularly the proposed prices for the various Office 2000 flavours).
And then they sum up. It's crapola in the best tradition of election campaigns, such as the one I'm currently enduring here in Ontario. Some highlights:
Well, when you notice that the messenger is full of shit, you don't tend to pay much heed to what's being said, now do you? The test was flawed (arguably fatally), so there's little point considering the results.
No, Beavis, it's not. Even if no Linux person steps forward with brilliant test results in response to this "challenge," the fact remains that the original tests (and thus the original report) deserve the criticism they've received. This statement is about as valid as an assertion that since we have trouble treating cancer, we musn't go around saying how bad it is.
Mind the Gap
Nevermind the bogus claims this page is making about NT's superiority over Linux (Linux inherited UNIX' weak security because of buffer exploits? Like NT doesn't suffer from the same weakness?)--the fact remains that Mindcraft/Microsoft tried to pull a fast one and they were caught with their pants around their collective ankles. This challenge is nothing but kicking dust in the air until Microsoft and Mindcraft admit that they set the tests up to show Linux in a poor light. I am not willing to give Microsoft a pass on this one, and participating in their benchmark without forcing them to acknowledge the real reason for our dissatisfaction, instead of dismissing it as "attacking the messenger," would do a disservice to the Linux community. This would be like the archetypal battered wife returning to her abusive husband because he promises to clean up his act.
It should be noted that one of the side effects of the Mindcraft benchmarks was that some very effective optimizations for Apache were identified and, last I read, were going to be submitted to the Apache group. I imagine the benchmark rules will prohibit their use in the proposed benchmark.
The Linux community should respond in kind with a challenge to Microsoft admit that the first benchmark was a sham, that Mindcraft lied about the extent of their efforts to find help tuning Linux and Apache, and that Linux and Apache were de-tuned on the test machines. Last, but not least, they should fire Mindcraft.
slashdot broke my sig
Linux has an advantage in a few key areas:
So let's look at these points and see how we might take advantage of them.
Entry-level / Mid-duty Servers:
Linux may well win this section of the benchmark. If not, it will be close. The addition of NT clients to the file serving test makes the test a bit more fair. Let's be a little reasonable about the test though and measure more than throughput. Request lag and reliability should be measured... Let's stick both boxes in a closet for a month serving some randomized requests and see who comes out alive (:... Should we use Apache? I don't know. If we just want to measure throughput or pure number of connections maybe not; so don't! Why do we have to?
Adaptability / Range of use:
Again, Linux rules here. Show me an NT box that can serve mail, web requests, smb traffic, ftp, etc and run on a PII/256mb... Now turn it into a firewall as well (: Push these points!!!!
Price:
What to say? How about we just include the cost of the solution with the benchmark (:
Now my next point. Let's do the test. Let's accept the results. And then lets come back in 6 months with a better product! If linux gets creamed somewhere, fix it and test again. Show how quickly linux can adapt and repair itself. Hopefully NT will have been slaughtered in some category as well; I'll bet it won't change in 6 months.
Anyways. I'm getting sick of "FUD! FUD! FUD!" every time we see criticism. Let's take that criticism and use it!
My $0.02.
M$ and Mindcraft will balance the test in some way from some obscure aspect, which will make NT win. There is NO WAY Microsoft would be pushing for a re-test unless they've gotten assurance from the Mindcraft minions that Linux will fail the test. Testing on Mindcraft and/or Microsoft's terms is a NO WIN situation for us.
They oughta do one like that... I can see it now... Gates uses dirty tricks to kick Linus ass, but then the audience mobs the ring and rips Billyboy up.
Yarbles.
I am _personally_ taking an interest in working out how to devise a linux distribution (probably off Slackware) that provides a really high-gloss but low overhead CLIENT computer for novice computer users. It will have all the eye candy, but do a lot with terms and console programs running in tricked-out terms. It will probably also have extensive development libraries- depends on how much space there is.
Why?
Because the shop I work at is selling new-old-stock (NOS) PCs and we can sell a Linux box for a _hundred_ dollars cheaper than the Windows box. Even the most inadequate legitimate Windows we can get costs us more than all the hardware put together! We are being given no consideration by Microsoft, we are getting _no_ special treatment or help, and we have nothing to lose at this point.
You, sir, talk like 'astroturf'- and you'd better go back to your boss and tell him, 'We can't keep people from running us into the ground on cheap operating systems! The real grass roots are deserting us over cost issues and they can sell for half the cost of our OEMs!' and then you better desperately try to subvert all the standards at once for all the good it will do (it will only hasten the collapse, go for it).
What can I say? YOU LOSE. Nothing makes that clearer to me than our shop paying over HALF Windows tax on _seriously_ low cost computing. We want to hype linux and to be able to legitimately claim a _seriously_ low price for our entry PC- but if we didn't want to hype linux we could sell the linux box for ten dollars LESS than the Windows box AND make FIFTY PERCENT more on it besides! Do you understand this, or is it too frightening to face? Recent remarks from Steve Ballmer about how people will inevitably pay more money for quality (*LOL* worked good for Apple all those years eh?) suggest that you guys are _not_ facing this.
It's this simple. YOU LOSE. Thank you for playing, it's been fun watching you corrupt the whole industry and turn it into completely commoditized incompatible unreliable garbage, and now that you have been beaten at your own game and can't even pretend to undercut what's currently going down, don't let the door hit you in the butt on your way out.
Try to be a good loser, for loser you shall be.
They are very serious for getting computers into peoples' hands for under $300. Or under $200. Or under $100...
Cuts into your premium Windows-based price structure a little, doesn't it? >:)
I already gave some good benches in an earlier thread, including an active server page one.
It's so very easy- simply have all benches measured by 'Amount of (x) per $500, $1000, $5000, $10,000'. Possibly Linux would have difficulty at $10,000, but maybe an Alpha could be used or something. The point is, we _want_ to measure everything by realworld dollars. The fact that linux is free is not _our_ problem, nor is it the problem of linux deployers. To be fair, have any and all Linux tech support used in the test charge their full hourly rate (no freebies)- and have the NT techs charge their full hourly rate (NO FREEBIES!).
What, I ask you, could be fairer? If you like you could also extend this testing paradigm to $50,000 and $100,000 price points. The linux side could talk Beowulf servers, but remember time spent setting it up _would_ be paid for as well- what could be fairer?
Come to think of it, aren't we missing something?
Benches should be realworld, and should be created from a budget with labor costs included at full industry rates (no free labor! no Linus-labor _or_ teams of Softies working for free!).
BUT! Granted that, then the bench should be the amount of work done over the course of a month, with any maintenance billed at full rates.
I'm picturing a vanilla linux box, set up properly, sitting unattended and chugging along while an NT box puts in spurts of blinding activity interspersed with falling over and being repaired by $100 an hour MCSEs >:)
I sympathize with your viewpoint: I just would like to mention that bad PR is not an accurate litmus test for problems. If, as it appears, Mindcraft made a concerted effort to destroy Linux performance, then their results are not a broadly useful indicator of problem areas needing immediate attention, and efforts to 'fix' these 'problems' are to some extent wheelspinning, attempts to cover for pathological situations that wouldn't normally happen. :) :)
If somebody beats you in a race by tying your leg to your opposite arm and putting warm oatmeal in your ear that you're forbidden to spill, then the thing to do is not to try valiantly to get better at hopping on one leg with an ear full of warm oatmeal. It's more useful to continue training for more normal races, and kicking up a fuss anytime someone approaches you again with warm oatmeal
This is what happened. Except for the oatmeal, which is metaphorical in this case
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Posted by airborn603:
Note that one of the two testers is PC Week, which is OWNED by Microsoft.
Posted by essell:
:)
My version of Netscape (4.51) did the same exact thing you described. I just minimized the window and did a couple of other things.. Popped it up a few minutes later and it was fine. Netscape seems to have this problem on several pages I attemp to view... So maybe it's not just a MS thing. Who knows... I'd be interested in anyone with a solution to this type of problem
is this webserver actually on the net?
MSFT, as usual, interprets open standards in their own special way. If you define "works" as implements the Unicode standard correctly, then I have to disagree with you.
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
This is actually not so hard. I thought about it for a while and several things occurred to me.
1) The benchmark should be run 3-way:
Solaris x86
Linux 2.2.8
NT 4.0sp5
2) The high-end server must use a gigabit NIC
3) The low-end server must not be a PIII
(Microsoft will almost certainly hack in
optimizations to take advantage of KNI)
4) A test of database-backed web performance is
mandatory (use MySQL... heheheh...)
5) The tests should be run in a neutral setting
(maybe once each at VA and MS labs)
With these demands met, it should be possible to get a fair test, and even if Linux does get clobbered on the high-end box, Solaris should not. Linux will destroy NT on the lower-end box. So two sets of numbers are produced:
"Solaris outperforms NT4 in the enterprise"
and
"Linux destroys NT4 for entry-level servers"
which will be spun by Microsoft as
"NT4 outperforms Linux in the enterprise "
and
"NT4 offers better price/performance than Solaris"
but no one will care and the matter can be put to rest. Microsoft won't be conclusively demolished (and hence will be unlikely to try legal means to suppress the results) but neither will Linux, and (if these demands are made, loudly and publicly) MS will have to rise to the challenge.
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
"Dear Microsoft,
Thank you for pointing out some performance flaws in Linux's SMP implementation through your Mindcraft benchmark tests. We are making changes now and should be able to remove these bottlenecks.
We also wish to thank you for the list of bullet items on . While we disagree with the interpretation of some of these items, some are legitimate weaknesses of our OS and we are addressing them or will be soon. In gratitude, we have come up with a list of bullet items that you may wish to consider addressing in your operating systems.
1) Physical vs. logical drive locations
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
(Whoops, tab->space fires the submit key...)
"Dear Microsoft,
Thank you for pointing out some performance flaws in Linux's SMP implementation through your Mindcraft benchmark tests. We are making changes now and should be able to remove these bottlenecks.
We also wish to thank you for the list of bullet items on . While we disagree with the interpretation of some of these items, some are legitimate weaknesses of our OS and we are addressing them or will be soon. In gratitude, we have come up with a list of bullet items that you may wish to consider addressing in your operating systems.
1) Physical vs. logical drive locations (drive letters)
2) File organization (/home vs. put it anywhere)
3) Support for multiple operating system file systems
4) Lack of applications included in distribution
5) No built-in way to run progs on one machine and display on another
6) Limited platform support
..."
Respond to combativeness with friendliness. It'll drive 'em nuts!
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
There should be a rule that both side use only
shipping code.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
At least, that's what they're implying. Commercial UNIXes cost a lot of money, and compared to them, NT is a good deal. But Linux costs nothing, so grouping it with the other UNIXes is very shady. Linux is surely cheaper than other UNIXes to set up. And NT is cheaper than other UNIXes to set up. But you can't use that information to compare NT and Linux (not that they do directly, but look at the context). It's called a logical fallacy.
It's not as if this guarantee makes it TRUE that the system is up 99% of the time. If there is a severe problem, they may miss their guaranteed uptime. This happens! Then the firm doing the guarantee must pay up to the extents specified in the contract. But the system was still down more than 99%. Microsoft's product has not improved, just the willingness of others to bet their money on said product.
People seem to be think that this page must be fair because it includes a sampling of three different benchmarks (two in addition to the disputed Mindcraft one). But what about this nice benchmark from Smart Reseller. This is the article that includes the wonderful quote: "According to ZDLabs' results , each of the commercial Linux releases ate NT's lunch." Microsoft included benchmarks by the other ZD magazines -- why did they "forget" to include this one?
Denial? The results weren't denied. Nobody is saying they lied about the results. What they're saying is that they didn't bother to tune the Linux box at all, while they most definitely did tune the NT box, since they said in their report that Microsoft helped them do it. Alan Cox pointed out some flaws. The Samba team pointed out some flaws. There were lots of things that should have been done differently. Mindcraft didn't even try to make the test fair. Don't bash people for being pissed about the test. They have every reason to be pissed off. Mindcraft did a thoroughly unprofessional job of benchmarking the 2 systems. The hardware and conditions were hand-picked by Microsoft since they were paying for the test. What does this really prove anyway? Not much probably, and since they botched the setup, it's completely worthless as a benchmark. I guess you didn't really read that much about the whole thing. Why don't you think things through a bit before you post anonymous criticisms about the Linux or /. communities? Then again, maybe I'm asking too much...
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
It doesn't even support case.~
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~^
It makes us sound like we just whimpered away complaining that we got beat. But we didn't. We produced other casualties (Novell and Sun) who also showed that MindCraft simply finagles for the results there customers want. We produced plenty of benchmarks where Linux dramaticaly outperforms NT.
~ ~^~
But they used beta drivers, they won't let us write our own, and a whole list of reasons says that its better to admit, yeah they are faster in that study just like 90% of developers like having Explorer integrated into the OS in that study.
I heard that they were going to post a responce to the win Oracle wager. Did they?
There web page looks menacing but it is wrong on so many accounts that I begin to realize, the real weakness of Linux is we aren't organized enough to sue them for blatant misrepresentation and slander.
Time to reprint the quotes about Linux from the DOJ trial...
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^
Here's what's wrong with "wide links = no" in this context: the test platform was intended to be a dedicated web server, not a general purpose timesharing system, so it should be configured to not permit random logins.
Yes, that setting has its uses, but not in this context.
Beyond that, I agree (very much!) that it's important for Linux to perform well on high end hardware, but in this particular case it wasn't really the issue. The particular RAID controller they chose was well supported on NT, but poorly supported at the time on Linux (although there was a newer driver). There are other RAID controllers available with equivalent capabilities that perform well on Linux, and furthermore the one in question is under development.
By default, the Linux kernel can't use more than 1 GB of RAM, but that wasn't an issue in the test system (it had 2 GB, but NT was also limited to 1 GB in the test). So that was neither here nor there. Also, as they pointed out, NT is limited to 4 GB, and Linux can be recompiled to use 2 GB. Considering that the Xeon can address 64 GB, both have a ways to go.
>... you gotta answer these sorts of challenges.
No you don't. Remember American history? We didn't beat the Brits by playing by *THEIR* rules.
We Linux users have absolutely *NO* interest in helping MicroSoft and Mindcraft dig themselves out of the mess they've created for themselves.
No one who uses linux asked Mindcraft to run these tests, much less rig them....That was MicroSoft's doing...
In other if anyone who uses linux and claims that we should take part in these "tests" it should be pretty obivious that this so-called "linux user" is nothing more than a agent working for either Microsoft and/or Mindcraft.
"...come in Wingnut, over...shhhhh..."
Your proof in quite porous, and just what measuring stick are you using for progress? Are you an inflammatory FUD spreader, or just a person who finds diversity a challenging concept? Linux distributions keep getting better _everytime_ there is a release, and that happens quite often. I am constantly and consistently amazed at the progress this hackjob, makeshift OS has made, and keeps making, every day. And I'm not the only one. So please, face that.
And have a most fabulous day!
...yellow number five, yellow number five, yellow number five...
Walk, don't run to get a gander at that article. For those of us that run Solaris, that article was objectionable even without getting into the Linux information.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
one word: ecommerce
Yeah but you get shite VB code monkeys
a more experienced engineer would realise that there are incompetent programmers with every language. some of the COM work that's been done here is very sophisticated, and VB means we can get it out the door quickly
Also there is already Oracles Application Server out in beta
yes, i know, i have deployed applications using both 3 and 4. it does some things well, but some things quite poorly - as is true for most products.
besides COM is a very limited OO architecture and is no match for the raw power of Perl
you've never actually used COM have you? or done much perl for that matter?
Only in a microsoft shop. It takes vb programmers longer to knock out bodged junk than decent c/per/java programmers can build a decent app using widely available tools.
your bigotry is evident. here's a clue: get some experience first. why do i say this? because you are focussing on language and completely ignoring the bigger picture.
a product until it is done, and then release it. Anyway, I know that this model of
development doesn't fit with what a suit expects, but please broaden your mind.
once I thought as you do.
but suits have lots of money, and I like big expensive toys from Sun and Oracle, so...
certainly it has many more features, but it doesn't have more bugs. in fact, IIS4 is remarkably stable if you use it with MTS.
Is it $1,000.00 per server better?
$1000 is one day's work for a development team. if over a project, using NT's superior tools saves 2 days, the choice of NT has paid for itself. (before anyone flames me over "superior tools", please tell me the linux equivalents of MTS, MSMQ and DCOM)
Which server has more server side application options? Apache with it's module interface is superior to IIS and ISAPI. For example, rewrite and perl or python are much more powerful than ASP and jscript/Visual Basic
ASP has complete integration with COM and can do anything a COM object can do. This approach is markedly superior to text processing languages. This same advantage is shared by CORBA an EJB tools, which again, linux doesn't have.
Don't forget that to actually develop any thing worthwhile on NT/IIS (like database access and ecommerce) you have to puchase additional and sometimes very expensive tools.
see above. the tools rapidly pay for themselves, then save significant cash. also, the cost of OS and tools is a very small part of the budget on major projects.
yes, of course, and linux is probably quite suitable for small projects. however, it's not
suitable for everything, as some of it's more zealous advocates seem to proclaim.
That's because you are accustomed to using the Microsoft tools
it's not ease so much as capability. certain features, such as message queuing, ORBs, &c simply don't work on linux (for now; but i'm not holding my breath). And where's the journalled filesystem, HA clustering, transaction monitoring, system partitioning?
Do you work for a company where budgets are very easy to get?
not anymore so than any other company, i'm sure, but we do fairly large projects.
The hardly seem to be 'fearing' Linux with this.. They've already seen the second test results, and their betting that Linux, even finally tuned, will not beat NT..
I hope their wrong, but we shall see..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
You know. It's like, if you notice, the entire list of things. NOT A SINGLE THING LINUX DOES BETTER. Or even equivalant for that matter.
As far as a clear roadmap goes, I guess that depends on which day of the week you talk to Microsoft. Unfortunatly they don't know what they are doing either.
I also found it interesting that they changed columns in the article when pointing things. One Column, it's NT - Linux, the next column it's Linux - NT.
I also find it interesting that a lot of the inadequicies of Linux on the x86 platform have a direct relationship to the Microsoft/Intel megalopoly. Why, exactly, do we STILL have that 640k limit on boot? Yeah. Backwards compatibility, with WHAT! Dos 1.0?
Yeah. Linux doesn't offer some of the things that NT does. Linux is almost turning out to be the slut of the OS's. NT sure is pretty, but it doesn't put out. Linux puts out. And puts out well. OKay. Maybe that wasn't the best anology.
Wow - that was harsh... I guess the Microsoft battle is now firmly ON - big time. That's probably good news - it means they're a little bit scared.
,hacker Perl another Just)'
So let's try and address these points.
Spec Web
The Spec Web figures are generally put out by hardware and software manufacturers in cahoots to produce high figures (often using slightly modified server binaries). Linux has no hardware vendors who are yet big enough to produce these figures. VA are getting there but I don't know if they have plans to produce SpecWeb figures.
The same goes for SAP and TPC figures.
Netbench
The kernel developers are aware of some issues here, since Solaris and Irix don't exhibit this behaviour. Also the clients have so far tended to be '95/98 clients. Where I work all the desktops are NT Wks (thousands of them).
WebBench
These figures use Apache, instead of Zeus. Let's see some real figures with Zeus before making judgement here. Apache is meant for complex systems developers who need flexibility, not raw speed.
Also, WebBench's dynamic benchmarks cover ISAPI on IIS and CGI on Apache. Gee, that seems like a fair test eh? It's not, and until WebBench provides an apxs module it will continue to be unfair to Apache. Why not compile that ISAPI module on Zeus and see how it fairs? I think we know the answer.
Reliability
Microsoft are most scared of Linux's reliability (hence it's at the top of their non-performance list). OK, so no OEM guarantees Linux uptimes. Big deal. NT's 99.9% uptime guarantees are based on clustering solutions - not single servers. And these guarantees are expensive. NTFS is not a true journaling filesystem either, although they may be talking about a commercial filesystem that I'm not aware of.
Scalability
I think they're probably pretty close on this - although they still make some glaring mistakes - like Synchronous I/O - only on the driver mindcraft used. And if pthreads aren't kernel level threading I'll eat my shoes. Yummy. Oooo and NT has an integrated file cache... Linux has one of those too. Wow.
Security
I don't even have to touch this section. Wow... stunning marketing going on in there.
TCO
Comparing to UNIX, not Linux.
Ease of Use/Admin
I just loved the bit about "Scriptable administration tools for automated local and remote administration". OK, so wsh is now available. How much is it used? What about non-automated remote administration? For most administrators of NT boxes, wsh and SMS just don't cut it - they have to walk to the box usually.
Actually, I'm bored with breaking this down. What can I achieve - leave me to just use Linux and be successful with it, and not have to suffer reboots.
Matt.
perl -e 'print scalar reverse q(\)-:
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
I can't run an NT file server and burn a CD at the
same time without getting a BSD..
At least it does that reliably!
You simply need to have more than one. Heck, I don't generally use 486's in especially critical roles, but if I did I could easily set up create a backup machine when I created the first one. Plus, these old 486's allow me to leverage my Linux experience all over the place.
Geez, I have got a stack of old 486's. I use them for all sorts of things, department webservers, proxy servers, dial in servers, you name it. Mostly however, I put them out on the plant floor. If they die, I get another out of the stack and pull out the appropriate CD. Half an hour later I have a new 486 out on the floor, and the original is in the trash.
They've now told us all the FUD they intend to use to "topple" Linux. Most of them are blatantly FUD (like no OEM's guaranteeing 99.9% uptime...when it's only been recently that OEMs started shipping Linux. Or that Linux is unsecure).
:-)
Some are damned lies which are easily countered (like Linux not having a threaded kernel).
Others are limitations which only the most powerful user would ever reach (like not being able to access more than 2G of memory). These will most likely be corrected in future releases.
It's nice to know what your enemy is planning for you.
it seems like a lot of FUD. a table with benchmark comparisons. the last table especially comparing linux and NT seems full of it. more bash bait.
"For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and Long Words Bother Me"
Note that their footnote for this contains a link to http://www.lwn.net
< sarcasm >
Could it be because lwn has a security section each week, and Microsoft almost never announces security problems?
< /sarcasm >
Seriously though, did SP5 fix bugs such as the case-sensitivity bug? And if it did, did Microsoft tell anyone? did they ever admit that it was a bug?
To me the Mindcraft report proved that Linux is not scalable. OK, there was supposedly some 512MB RAM issue that (I think) has been addressed in the latter 2.2 kernels. But the fact remains, if the Linux people bitch and complain about the hardware being "unrealistic" and "too high-end", they're sending the message that Linux cannot scale up: it's not even worth testing; NT will win.
And what on earth is wrong with "wide links = no"?? As hard as it may be to believe, some people may want to use the same data on a Unix network and a Windows network. As hard as it may be to believe, some people don't want their losers doing an "ln -s / r00t" to gain access to the the root directory from Windows. I don't see why this shouldn't be allowed: I can see many plausible scenarios where it would be useful. It seems that people think it's "cheating" just because it makes Linux look bad. Oh, I'm sorry, making Linux look bad under any circumstances is called "FUD" now, isn't it?
Every benchmark I've seen proving Linux faster than NT has used "sane" hardware: one, maybe two, processers; 128MB, maybe 256MB, RAM; one NIC; one SCSI hard drive, maybe a RAID 0 or RAID 1. If we bitch and complain enough, then, besides being known for bitchers and complainers, we'll be able to prove what is already carved in stone: Linux is good for low-end servers, maybe useful for small to mid-sized organisations, maybe useful for small ISPs. Personally, I think a little bad press would be worth it to find out exactly how horrendous Linux is when scaled upwards, and I definitely don't think whining about it and pretending the problem isn't there is going to solve anything.
Actually Linux is nothing more than a kernel. The day a kernel benchmarks itself and posts the results by itself, we'll have an interesting system to say the least :)
Hmmm. Bad point. I disagree entirely.
Why do you think we're fighting a battle here? Unlike certain operating systems (which shall remain unnamed), Linux's strengths lie in its technology, not its marketing. We're not running a popularity contest here. This could be quite beneficial really: the Linux people get a chance to see how Linux really compares to NT on high-end hardware (I have not heard of such a comparison before), so as to improve Linux's scalability; and Microsoft could very well get some good publicity. Win-win if you ask me.
This is only a reply to your comment about COM being a good thing, and a lack of CORBA for Linux. First off, COM is nowhere *near* as robust as CORBA, and there are many many CORBA implementations for Linux. In fact, if you don't mind using Java, I highly recommend using ObjectSpace Voyager. It runs on any platform, its ORB has a small footprint, and it interfaces with *BOTH* CORBA and COM seamlessly. Plus, it isn't linked to any particular platform. COM objects are only useful to those runinng Windows, and are usually "coded" in bloated visual development IDEs like VB. Why waste money on VB monkey's when you could hire a talented coder for about the same price and get better results? You speak a lot of time vs. money advantages. I am a developer, and I find that it is *ALWAYS* worth the extra day of development to make a product better. This probably isn't the best business practice, but it certainly is the best development practice. Your comments seem to come from the "suit" mentality, which is fine and good. Sure, you can hire monkey's to make a product that will work using inferior technology, and do it fast, but you will have a buggy product, almost definately. How do you think that Microsoft got to the top? Quick, cheap, inferior products that do the job, but not well. The true coder will always tell you that you *NEV ER* set a release date. You code a product until it is done, and then release it. Anyway, I know that this model of development doesn't fit with what a suit expects, but please broaden your mind.
I think Microsoft will never learn.
No no no. As has been said before, don't use apache, use zeus. On both NT & Linux. The purpose here is supposed to be to test the underlying OS, not the web server. If you use apache for linux, you should use apache for NT, and you can't do that as apache for NT isn't up to par with apache for linux.
Also, they say that linux folks may be present, but will they pay linux people's travel costs and missed time at work for those like Linus whose jobs are not linux "enterprise" related?
What I'm wondering about is, what if the linux community does respond, and they have 4/500 people show up as members of the linux community to oversee the testing? hehehehehe.
Quite frankly, I think that MS should have challenged a linux vendor to come forward for the testing.
Dagnabbit something icky happened to the url.
It's actually http://www.zeus.co.uk/
What I'd like to see them do, with or without using Zeus, is to publish cost/performance ratios on software alone.
We know that Linux isn't perfect, it's still evolving, ever more rapidly.
I'm going to work on a response to their bullet list. Should be interesting.
For the uninitiated, here are some impressions of how amazingly wrong Microsoft's points are:
- Reliability - We all know Linux is more reliable, notwithstanding journaling filesystem.
- Clustering - Beowulf beats the pants off of anything NT offers.
- Security - Melissa virus? Chernobyl?
- TCO - Linux licenses and maintenance cost more?
- Applications - Ability to recompile from source is a drawback because it encourages deviation??
- Forced integration of GUI is a good thing??
- And how in the world can Microsoft claim NT is more scriptable and more capable of remote administration???
I am not blinded by faith; I know that Linux still has some areas to work on, but Microsoft is bordering on fraud by perverting Linux's strengths above into perceived weaknesses.If your claims are true (they may well be), then you've just shot down another of Microsoft's bullet points. Check out the "Hardware Support Runs on a wide range hardware and provides optimized drivers" section of Microsoft's brochure and tell me how in the world you reconcile their claims with your claims.
You could easily hide this inside a larger script that did something interesting and most users would blindly run it if you told them to.
There is no parallel in the Linux world to auto-executing VB macros that most users blindly execute not because they were told to do so, but despite the fact that they were told NOT to do so. Microsoft could easily dispel the entire macro virus phenomenon by requiring user initiative before executing macros. The fact that they haven't made this trivial change speaks volumes about their attitude towards security.
It also makes it easy for a disgruntled admin to be able to put back doors into your system so that after he's fired he can destroy your system. I hate to break it to you, but it is just as easy to trojan closed-source systems as open-source systems. Ever heard of Back Orifice? Or the Melissa virus that you wrongly call a trojan? (wrongly because it can self-replicate)
Your "open source equals poor security" argument is nothing more than a repackaging of security through obscurity, a position that has been thoroughly debunked by unanimous consensus of all experts in the field of computer security.
and telnet is not what I call a remote admin tool Maybe it doesn't fit your exacting definition of remote administration, but it is nevertheless a useful utility. How much extra does telnet cost on NT?
Here's a common scenario that I face every year. I'm visiting San Francisco and I want to recompile, install, and configure my web server in Boston. I can do this very easily in Linux with telnet. How would I do it with NT?
If that doesn't count as remote administration, I don't know what does.
I'm talking about tools dedicated to the task of remote administration that make it easier to admin 100 machines I suppose you've conveniently forgotten about rdist, NIS, NFS, AFS/arla, coda etc.
I'm not suggesting that NT is better than Linux, only that your list of supposed lies aren't really lies.
You can debate whether or not these points are true (and I welcome such debate), but on one point no debate is possible: I have done more to substantiate my claims right here than Microsoft has done to substantiate any of the claims in their entire table of bullet points.
You're assuming that no one checks the source code for such backdoors. In practice, open source code is checked a lot more thoroughly than closed source code, which by definition cannot be checked by anyone.
For example, I am highly confident that the RedHat 6.0 CD has no trojans. If you find any, please let me know, and I will recant my trust!
It's disingenious of you to claim that, say, RedHat 6.0 is vulnerable to trojans while NT integrity can be enforced with signatures. Guess what? Integrity of RedHat 6.0 binaries can also be verified with file signatures! In fact md5 signatures are built in to RedHat. Just run "rpm -Va"
Saying "how do i recompile my web server" is particularly uninsightful since you don't recompile web servers on NT. You add modules to gain new functionality.
I don't see any relationship between modular functionality and whether or not I need to compile code. Apache on Linux supports dynamic modules too, including precompiled modules. The difference is that on Linux, I often write and compile my own modules. On Windows, you're asking me to use someone else's precompiled modules. Or at least, that must be what you're asking, since you claim I don't need to (re)compile web servers on NT.
I write my own modules because it is literally the only way for me to enforce exactly the behavior I want out of my web server. Often this behavior is extremely complex and requires intricate use of the Apache API. To attack me for demanding the ability to compile programs is utterly rude. I need custom functionalty, and I need to write code. Of course I need to compile.
You're right, VNC or PC Anywhere would do the job. I would have much preferred if you simply pointed that out, instead of swearing up and down that I don't need to compile web server modules on NT (which is patently false).
VNC and PC Anywhere still suffer from the "forced GUI integration" problem that was one of my original points. You say that "less skilled" people have an easier time doing routine tasks on NT's GUI. If that's the case, then I must not be a "less skilled" person, because I find it amazingly easier to compile software using gcc/telnet than MSVC/VNC. Especially when I'm stuck with a slow modem.
I have no wish to get into a brawl over TCO, mostly because I have no hard data comparing the TCO of Linux and Windows (n.b. you haven't presented any hard data either). TCO is a long story and I am not at all convinced that Microsoft's bullet point is right. Suffice it to say that, no matter what NT has to offer for the "less skilled" admin, I am not in that group, and my "skill" is certainly not going to decline with time, so from my personal viewpoint (the only hard data I have at the moment), NT has nothing to offer me.
This little gem neatly refutes all your false claims about how NT has lower TCO than Linux. The truth is that low priced admins can indeed do both hard stuff and "monkey work" with Linux-based solutions, with ease.
Lets get a few things straight. Name one unbaised source who has used both OS's and have him or her say which is better, faster and more reliable. PCmagazine (owned by zdnet) was mentioned in the microsoft article as proof as how NT rules in every situation and linux sucks in every situation but there is one problem with that source. The same magazine praised linux as supperior to NT a few months ago and another zd publication (computerReseller or something.. I forgot the name) showed LINUX BEATING NT BY OVER 250% on web sharing and ARTICLE BLAMED IIS AS MUCH AS NT FOR THE PROBLEM AND IT WAS A DUAL PROCESSOR CONFIGURATION. The same test with samba file and print sharing showed similiar results. Go look under the linux section of zdnet. How can this be since the other tests shows the exact opposite?
The answer is $$$$. Zdnet did the same thing with OS/2 in the early 1990's when microsft had a whole bunch of ad's in its magazines. They showed windows 3.0 outperforming OS/2 and on top of this they even mentioned Steve Balmer crash os/2 in fornt of IBM's both at comedex and Steve said something like.."WHy can't OS/2 be as stable as windows 3.0" or something on similiar guidlines. Also read the computer reviews for zdnet. If compaq has alot of advertising in the magazien for that particular issue then the compaq comjputers would have the highest ratings. IF Dell put alot of advertisments in another issue then Dell would recieve the reward as the best computer. My point? My point is that zdnet is not reliable and unbiased. These resutls were sponsored by microsoft and even zdnet admits this in regarding its old os/2 articles. Zdnet also admits that the mincraft tests were paid by microsoft as well.
For all you windows fanatics and ms employees reading this I have one question for you. WHy do you have to lie and have a whole army of evangelists and marketing thuds just to sell windows. Linux has 17% of new server Os's sold with any of this.
TO me this means failure and fear from microsoft. THe hardware used for the test has buggy drivers and is SELECTED BY MICROSOFT! Microsoft has a whole lab with thousands of components and this hardware was selected piece by piece to slow down linux. Even Bill Gates admits doing this sort of stuff because he believes he has to too sell his software. At least us linux guys dont because we have nothing to hide and we just care about technical supperiority. GO to zdnet$ and look at past article showing linux in a positive light and read the comments.
All the commnets from real people all prefering linux over NT. I say this again? Name one unbaised source who claims that NT is better then linux.
Everyone execpt microsoft and microsoft sponsored mindcraft and also microsoft sponsored zdnet and even zdnet says some positve things on linux.
This is the truth
"Never stick an electrical appliance down your pants." -Tim Allen
The hardware IS SELECTED BY MICROSOFT! Microsoft has a whole labe with thousands upon thousands of pieces of hardware and each one is tested on linux and the hardware the worst performance on linux is selected. Next microsoft hakcs a version of NT designed specifically for that hardware. Instead of using standard drivers, the midifed kernel communicates directly to the Hardware to spike performance results. On top of this they EVEN ADMITTED TO USING ALPHA SOFTWARE FOR THE MINDCRAFT TESTS. Microsoft used an alpha experimental multiple ethernet adapter software that assigns each ethernet to the work of each CPU. Only solaris has anything close to this. This is how Microsoft won the first test. Real workd servers use single high speed ethernets instead of multiple low speed ones. Multiple low speed ones take up I//o which is major problem with linux right now but its not too big. Mixed with raid with a BUGGY HARDWARE DRIVER SELECTED BY MICROSOFT AND NT USED SOFTWARE RAID WHICH IS MORE EFFIECENT ENDED UP CRIPLING LINUX BUT NT WAS IMMUNE. In a real server you would have software raid in linux as well as NT. Believe me when I say that software raid is faster then hardware. I have seen it with my own eyes. THis is why microsoft only supports software raid out of the box.
We need a server with 2-4cpu's and one ethernet and software raid AND OFF THE SHELF LINUX AND NT.
If you want multiple adapters then fine! Just dont use alpha software on either platform wether its the adapter to cpu binder in NT or a buggy raid hardware driver in linux. and we also need to make sure that each server runs on the same tests or perhaps same software. NO CGI vs ISAPI. How about perl vs perl or fast cgi vs fast cgi. I will even consider using IIS on the NT side vs apahce in the other as long as we can tweek the settings as well. NO CEATING!
We will prove to all microsofties that our OS is supperior once and for all.
Name one unbaised person who uses both NT and linux who happens to prefer NT and I might consider surrendering. Zdnet (which owns pc magazine) is very biased when companies pay money for ads. They showed linux BEATING NT BY 250% SO DONT CALL THEM AS RELIABLE AND UNBIASED. Count the ms ads on there site now when they started creating false tests.
Microsoft said "were going to cut your ad revunue unless you make up some false tests with linux real soon."
Everyoen I know prefers linux to NT any day.
"Never stick an electrical appliance down your pants." -Tim Allen
WoW! Zdnet! The same magazine company that bashed os/2 as inferior to win3.1 when microsoft paid for ads but then bahsed windows 3.1 when IBM bought a whole bunch of ads is now bashing linux EVEN THOUGH THEY SHOWED LINUX KILLING NT BY 250% on identical hardware when Microsoft WASNT PAYING ANY ADS!
Yawn.
If you go to zdent.com and look in the linux section, you will find the test showing linux beating the pants off of NT by 250% in fileserving and I think 95% in webservering using identical tests with the NT machine using IIS and the linux machine using apahce and both machines using the same perl modules and dont give me trash about scalability because the machines were both dual cpu!
I can tell you from real world performance that NT SUCKS! I have a pentium2 233 with 48 megs of ram running IIS and the odler mahcine before it was a 486dx-2 66 with 16 megs of ram and the 486 can run circles around the new pentium2. MY idiot boss got into the IIS4 hype when it came out and decided to switch. THe 486 machine is the main itranent server which is used to talk to a database and display the querries in html code back to the clients browsers. The 486 is much faster then the pentium2 like 25% faster which is impressive since the hardware is hell of alot slower then that. ITs too bad I can't put linux on my pentium2. IT would fly.
SO don't give me that trash about NT untill you actually try it and take EVERYTHING ZDNET SAYS WITH A GRAIN OF SALT. ALSO THE TESTS WERE NOT IDENTICAL! GO LOOK AT THE GRAPHS. The NT machines ALL HAD w95 clients while the linux machines had NT clients and the web software and all machines were different and the NT machine ran ISapi and some perl while the unix machines ran obsolete and slow CGI running on web server software designed to slow things on CGI DOWN
IT was clearly a setup paid by microsft because of those stupid ads. MY real world experience tells me what NT and linux are really like. You remind me of those anti- Os/2 guys who read pc magazine and believed Jesse Berst when He said that windows 3.0 was more stable. Do you really think windows 3.o is as stable as OS/2.
I hate ignorance.
"Never stick an electrical appliance down your pants." -Tim Allen
Last time I checked, NT 4 did not have USB support,
a journaling file system, or SMP support that is head
and shoulders above Linux. And I personally feel that
Linuxconf knocks the socks off the cruddy NT admin
tools.
Take a look at the *rate of development* on the two
platforms, too. Even if the current rate of Linux
development only stays steady, where will it be in
2 years?
Just a thought.
I would give anything to hear how they plan this stuff in meetings. I would assume this stuff has to be planned carefully. It makes me think the marketing department is a war room fuming with hate and FUD slinging tactics.
When will they grow up and learn some ethics? Its not cool to have a negative business strategy and much energy may be lost trying to destroy competitors rather than having the consumer's needs in mind.
I feel Microsoft is an evil coorporation that must be stopped!
oops!
:)
99.97% means 15 minutes a week is lost during an unplanned reboot, while Linux has a 99.9998% uptime, or 10 minutes scheduled a year (if one so desires
It looks to me like they rushed this one out the door! This must be the strategy for everything: sell it now, bugs will bring them back for more!
The marketing campain also seems to be taking this avenue. No matter how rich the content is, what are a few mistakes? It looks good and that is what is going to be hyped. When you have money to back FUD, the details just accelerate the campain and drive for runaway marketing. Which is what they want, I guess. *sigh*
Linux is like a diesel, it just keeps on truckin' and can really haul some weight and deliver the goods in a safe manner. 500,000 miles before a rebuild.
Microsoft can only deliver its ego 1/4 miles, then crashes at the finish line, and requires an engine overhaul upgrade. Requires highly volatile fuel to run. Its for the thrill seekers. People who like to turn shades of white and red when the fun ends and the bill strikes. No practical use by me, thank you!
Here is a nice description of what 99% really means.
99.97% means 15 minutes a week is lost during an unplanned reboot, while Linux has a 99.9998% uptime, or 10 minutes scheduled.
99% is pathetic when it comes to reliability! I want to see that number approach 100 the way a mathematician would be proud!
After seeing NT hiccup last night on a production line, I feel offended! Plastic extruders powered by hundreds of horsepower each, capable of generating 500,000 pounds of thrust are dangerous to be around when temperatures drop (or rise!) and pressures exceed the massive iron head. When a few others and I saw the Visual Basic program decide to change temperature values to just below melting point, I knew we could have major property damage.
Its the most amazing thing to watch large, high speed machines when the operating system freezes. Things keep on running, but never get updated. The once coordinated efforts of energy shaping a new product causes scrap to pile up quickly.
Imaginge a half megawatt at the mercy of a single operating system and you have an idea how I feel.
"* No OEM guarantees uptime on Linux systems"
I don't see how any OEM could guarantee uptime on any system, specifically NT systems.
My Linux server has been up for 137 days now, with 99.9% CPU being used.
I would love to see a) An NT server be up for for 100+ days, and b) An NT server being up for more than 30 days with 99.9% CPU, and c) NT being able to do something better than Linux.
Not happening.
Let's remember something critically important in this battle of the OSes. Making the most technologically advanced system is not the sole issue which will decide which software will be dominant. It is also important to be able to present a good face to the managers and executives who ultimately decide upon what software is running in the server room, or on the desktops of individual workers. We need to win the hearts and minds of all involved, and that means playing to people with different paradigms.
;) Until the last six months, Linux was a faceless intangible to those who weren't nerds or geeks. People outside of the loop simply couldn't understand or identify with it.
In this theatre of war, Microsoft clearly has the edge. It does not have the edge because of any morals, standards, or acheivements which they can (truthfully) tout. They simply hold the advantage that they are an incorperated company, a legal entity who executives, management, and accounting can identify with. When joe CEO signs a contract with MS, he knows who he's dealing with and who's theoretically is responsible for the performance and reliablity of the software. (of course, we all know that reality differs from theory by leaps and bounds in certain cases.
It is much like when the PC came out in the first place. Towards the begining of the 1980s, Apple had emerged as the dominant manufacturer, with over 50% market share. Yet the PC didn't make a big entry into Corporate America until IBM stamped their letters on their own brand of plastic boxes. Then the boom started. And look which hardware architecture is everywhere in businesses.
Now adays we are getting the recognition, endorsement, and support of companies like IBM, HP, Intel, and Dell. Yet, it doesn't end there. It's not enough. None of these companies developed Linux of course, and so it's not sufficient that they are now offering support packages. We as a community have to do the rest. We must present a mature, can-do attitude about Linux's develpment, problems, and issues. Most of us are young, so we are not apt to respond in this manner. It crutially important that we not allow the knee-jerk adolescent responses to this kind of tactic by Microsoft to be what defines us to Corporate America.
It is precisely what Redmond is counting on.
Looks like that page was still in beta, at best.
As my good friends at The Register pointed out in this article, down in the depths of the page, it says:
"Why don't we address the int'l and accessibility point?"
Yes, why don't they? Hmm.
The Register also scores mega points with me for pointing out that those nice folks at ZDNet probably don't make the best unbiased observers in the world.
That's understatement. But then, The Register is so deliciously good at that.
-- h.
-- haaz.
I wonder how they would look if they showed how many applications and device drivers break this gaurantee? Does this include multi-headed systems running OpenGL, compilers, wordprocessors etc? If so, they're insane.
They're full of half-truths. Part way through the comparison they compare costs of running NT to costs of "UNIX", then they make hard statements with soft words like "prone to bugs."
I would really like to see this challenge taken up and for someone to investigate their claims. I sent off a bit of email to some interesting people who may be able to answer this challenge... at least it can't be said that I'm doing nothing about this.
NT is a decent OS. I don't like it very much, but it certainly has its places. It is just not that good.
I hope someone humiliates them.
The fonts they used weren't exactly the easiest to read under Linux. To make it more readable you can either disable style sheets and get a standard looking font or enlarge the font to make it easier to read.
--
Well the obvious way to show how Linux outperforms NT is if their NT servers get slashdotted with people accessing their site.
But really, is all this benchmarking crap really worth worrying about? Linux is free. Someone who wants to try Linux can get a hold of a copy of it for free and try it out. If it doesn't meet their needs they can then go elsewhere. It's obvious that these benchmarks aren't completed fairly but who cares as long as we know the truth!
Put it this way a company that employs staff with a clue will investigate Linux (or one of the *BSD's) and probably see it suits their needs more than Windows NT. They'll then have a better solution for much less cost than the Microsoft solution. Whereas companies that employ staff that just listen to Microsoft and their paid for benchmarks will end up shelling out a fortune for sub standard software and more for the higher end hardware needed to support it.
--
If anyone if willing to refute the comments made by Microsoft but needs somewhere on the web to put them then email me and I'll provide a home for it.
Then again I'm sure Rob will post it on Slashdot if you email it to him.
Whatever the case just make sure that it is published widely so everyone can see the innaccuracies in the MS argument. Publish on as many sites as you can.
--
But there aren't any SPECWeb results on the SPEC Web site (that's "SPEC" "Web site", not "SPECWeb" site; i.e., it's the Web site for the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation).
A search for "SPECweb" on VA Research's Web site turned up nothing; where did you find their SPECweb numbers? (SPECCPU numbers, say, aren't SPECweb numbers; the only "SPEC numbers" that count as a response to Microsoft's claim are SPECweb numbers....)
(There are NT+IIS numbers on the SPEC site.)
I'm typing this in one of those $0.38/minute internet booths in Chicago airport on the way to the Dayton Hamvention (ham radio conference). May have spotty net access this weekend. I'll be back on Monday night, call me Tuesday at 510-526-1165 or email if you want to discuss this issue.
Thanks
Bruce Perens
Bruce Perens.
Who would even dare to guarantee such a thing as a 99% uptime for NT? I wonder why the article never mentioned WHO guarantees it, that would be interesting...
I have absolutetly no doubt believing NT scores 99% uptime since that is a PISS-POOR stability figure. That would mean a down-time of one hour every 4 days and in a production environment, that sucks!
Linux scores much better, about 99.998% in my experience (about 45 minutes of downtime in about four years use).
... I just passed in front of our Help Desk board a minute ago; they had to reboot one of our Micros~1 servers again. Second time this week...
Haha.
Hows THAT for reliability and uptime???
Sanity.html - Error 404 not found
Hey it's short and sweet ands ounds cool, :)
do I need to say anymore?
But, as a case in point, my admittedly bandwidth wasting post elicited a response, meaning someone thought it was more than a waste of bandwidth.
Besides which, Outlook sucks enough to make informing others about how much it sucks enough of a public service to warrant the bandwidth waste.
I have a better idea. Let's go back and forth for a couple dozen posts debating whether or not Linux needs childish supporters, too. That would be quite a useful thread.
At the bottom of the page, the disclaimer says that all comments belong to their posters. That doesn't say anything about their usefulness or value for any particular purpose.
http://inconnu.isu.edu/~ink/new/links/computing/li nks/gront
The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
DeJaVu!! DeJaVu is usually caused by the matrix changingn itself.
DeJaVu!! DeJaVu is usually caused by the matrix changing itself.
--
Marques Johansson
displague@linuxfan.com
Marques Johansson
I had two other navigator 4.51 windows open (slashdot main and some linux news page)... when i opened the ms page they all "poof be-gone'd"...
Within 5secs I had my navigator reloaded and followed slashdot back to ms, no problems.. (squid caching helped that a bit)..
can't you just image them anticipating all these visits by Mozilla-linux browsers and inserting some snip-it of navigator killer code that they have not reported as a bug to the developers, a sort of biological weapon in a bottle...
--
Marques Johansson
displague@linuxfan.com
Marques Johansson
That may not help so much.
Asking them to perform such a comparison would be like saying "ignore our crappy performance, isn't it obvious, you guys spent 10,000x more money than we..." At the same time bus. profs. may just look at the findings and say the same, "well they put so much money into it, it must be better..."
--
Marques Johansson
displague@linuxfan.com
Marques Johansson
they are not saying that they are having problems...
they are just saying that there are so many replies to this that it would be a waste of bandwidth to show you them all if all you wanted to do was read the freaking article... saves my bandwidth and theirs.. i like it...
--
Marques Johansson
displague@linuxfan.com
Marques Johansson
I noticed.. I just thought I'd' keep my mouth shut...
:)
I'm sure at first glance of the "error" they would simply flip-flop them regardless of which ever is correct...
Actually it is an error, their percentages are realy off.
--
Marques Johansson
displague@linuxfan.com
Marques Johansson
My god, what are they thinking? Most of that page is either outright wrong, lying, or so vague as to be useless. And whoever wrote it is obviously incompetent (not just technically)- check out all the typos, half-done sentences, and "note to self"s all over the page.
And whats with the link to www.lwn.net at the end? I think I'll take a copy of this page to show to my grandchildren.
Even if a PHB reads and believes the lies (about some rather vaguely-defined feature points), surely they would be curious about how poorly written it is... Wouldn't that also do MS some harm?
Still, though, it does make me slightly nervous; MS is obviously swaggering and talking loud, and often people are more impressed with a big, confident image than real figures.
--
Whatever.....
In the end, I really don't care. Nothing can make me run over to use NT for any of our webservers because NT has shown to be unstable in my real time life. In addition, it is actually much easier for Linux to be optimized for large scale static web page services, if that's what I chose to do. I can simply turn off most of my other services and keep everything going on Linux.
I've known for a while that NT can out perform Linux up until the point it gets real load. This is a failing on NT's part, not an asset. NT doesn't scale it's resources well and just dies when any particular process overloads it's memory and CPU.
Also - the test on PC week are more about Apache than Linux. Apache does not nativily thread, and uses multiprocessing. Frankly, the Apache way of doing things is more stable and makes it easier to create a stable server. Once real web development is done on the site, and Database servers are added to Web Servers for dynamic internet paging, Apache/modperl, and embperl FAR FAR outstrips NT in stablility, speed, and development resources.
Added to that the development enviorment is free and perl modules are souce code viewable, this makes a far better platform to develope for a business platform. Companies can focus on web development instead of hardware/software expenses.
Any company which buy's into the idea that it is better to pay for MS based propitory web development kits instead of conventional programming skills is on the upgrade escalator and will never see the "cost of ownership" saving that are being promised. Since NT is so unconventional in it's development enviorment, and propriatory at that, one can only expect to be lead around in circles with constantly increasing costs.
When commited to any Unix platform - especially Linux - with standard Apache, Perl, Java and C tools, your company becomes part of the ongoing
development and improvement of software development, not just a bystander awaiting to be fed the next lastest and greatest thing. We've been using Apache since mid 1995 and have seen steady advancement in Apache, Perl and Linux for 5 years now. Without this development, there would be NO ISS or NT tcp capability at ALL.
http://www.mrbrklyn.com/amsterdam.html http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Whatever.....
In the end, I really don't care. Nothing can make me run over to use NT for any of our webservers because NT has shown to be unstable in my real time life. In addition, it is actually much easier for Linux to be optimized for large scale static web page services, if that's what I chose to do. I can simply turn off most of my other services and keep everything going on Linux.
I've known for a while that NT can out perform Linux up until the point it gets real load. This is a failing on NT's part, not an asset. NT doesn't scale it's resources well and just dies when any particular process overloads it's memory and CPU.
Also - the test on PC week are more about Apache than Linux. Apache does not nativily thread, and uses multiprocessing. Frankly, the Apache way of doing things is more stable and makes it easier to create a stable server. Once real web development is done on the site, and Database servers are added to Web Servers for dynamic internet paging, Apache/modperl, and embperl FAR FAR outstrips NT in stablility, speed, and development resources.
Added to that the development enviorment is free and perl modules are souce code viewable, this makes a far better platform to develope for a business platform. Companies can focus on web development instead of hardware/software expenses.
Any company which buy's into the idea that it is better to pay for MS based propitory web development kits instead of conventional programming skills is on the upgrade escalator and will never see the "cost of ownership" saving that are being promised. Since NT is so unconventional in it's development enviorment, and propriatory at that, one can only expect to be lead around in circles with constantly increasing costs.
When commited to any Unix platform - especially Linux - with standard Apache, Perl, Java and C tools, your company becomes part of the ongoing
development and improvement of software development, not just a bystander awaiting to be fed the next lastest and greatest thing. We've been using Apache since mid 1995 and have seen steady advancement in Apache, Perl and Linux for 5 years now. Without this development, there would be NO ISS or NT tcp capability at ALL.
In essense, we have not only made OUR bed, but the one Microsoft is hard at work to sell as well.
http://www.mrbrklyn.com/amsterdam.html http://www.brooklyn-living.com
"First they ignore you...
...then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you... ----- HERE
...and then you win.
We're just doing fine -- look at the slope of the curve, not its level.
-- LaTeX, The Best There Is
- "Administrators are required to re-link and reload kernel to add features to OS".
- Historically, in order to perform optimally, applications need to be recompiled when the OS is upgraded
Ah, and under the NT column, I think the following bullet nicely illustrates MS' overall "commitment to quality"...Hello? Modules? And the "reloading" statement is especially galling in light of Windoze's frequent need to reboot after installing a bloody application!
Utter crap. Can you imagine recompiling everything each time the patch level is incremented? And are you telling me that Windows 3.1 applications perform "optimally" under 95 or NT, when they actually work at all?
"Why don't we address the int'l and accessibility point?"
Steve 'Nephtes' Freeland | Okay, so maybe I'm a tiny itty
I agree with you 100% (MS equivalent of 99.98%)t ml
Why do companies like VA Research in particular remain quiet when they have the most to lose since they actually sell linux boxes that come with quad processors and gigs of ram! look at this page:
http://www.varesearch.com/products/VArServers.h
if those machines are going to be running linux, and at those prices, i don't think the price of an OS will matter much to a company who is buying hte box.
VA, if you guys are even reading this, don't just do a benchmark to refute MS, cause thats just petty. Step up to the plate (cause damn it, its hot right now) and tell people what your machines actualy can do! if it really can't do what you seem to be selling it to do, then you may as well pack up and go home, cause this is the real deal.
Well, i am sick of ranting right now, i got some stuff to do. my head hurts...
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
Okay, for this platform test, if it's going to be run AT ALL:
This should help level the playing field a bit. Anyone else out there have anything to add?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
If RedHat steps up to be the target, Microsoft will win. Why? Because any defeat can be made to look like victory. Microsoft has re-written history before, don't think they'll report the truth this time. And if Linux should lose on its own merits--that's reallyit.
"There is no more FUD, it's all truth anyways. You developers bought into ths benchmark."
Your manager, my manager, and everyone else will have a document they can hold up and say "you all bought into it", and that's the end of Linux. No-one in this industry ever comes back completely from defeat.
Get off my lawn.
As an aside, I think the expression "that is FUD" is a cop out. If a fact stated is inaccurate, say so, preferably with a link to support the fact. For example, when Microsoft claims that Linux does not have a distributed security model, the reponse should not be "That is FUD". The reponse should be "Yes it does. For example, NIS is a distributed security model that works wiht Linux." Ideally, a link to some NIS page, such as the NIS HOWTO, should be provided.
If the fact in question is true, hey, that's great too. Sometimes, opensource developers need more focus to do the best work they can, and what better focus than a challenge from Microsoft itself!
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
I think the main point MicroSoft advocates as well as everyone else has forgotten is that Linux is a FREE operating system, written by hackers. Here we have a multi-billion dollar corporation declaring their Operating System is far better than one that is FREELY distributed on the internet. It damn well should be! And that fact is still debatable. So basically you are here touting how great NT is too a community of users that use a FREE OS. Why not preach in a sun, irix, hpux newsgroup? Ahhhh.. because that's what MicroSoft uses to run there mail servers at that little free internet mail company they purchased. "Rabid advocate" is not a title to be proud of in my opinion, don't you agree?
Awesome!
They May 1999 Netcraft survey came out. Funny, Apache and Zeus are the only web servers gaining market share.
Microsoft's been consistently losing market share for the past few months. Maybe there's something Microsoft knows that no one else does...?
http://netcraft.co.uk/survey
How can an entire community as anarchaic as the Linux community do anything officially?
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
The Linux "disadvantage" I liked best was "Provides source code to allow developers to deviate from standard distribution." I also liked "OS services provided as an un-integrated collection of technologies developed by independent developers." So does this mean that there's no 3rd party software for NT? And, on the completely unsubstantiated FUD side, "More prone to security bugs." Lovely!
In any case, the article is more of FUD; "passwords need to be synchronised across the network"; obviously haven't heard of NIS(+) (yes, you can get NIS+ for linux).
However, it does cover some valid points; linux needs a journaling filesystem and some other stuff to really compete in the big world.
--
Why is everybody complaining over this? glibc 2.1 has LFS support, hasn't it? Is ext2fs limited in some sort of way?
Oh, BTW, both 95 and 98 has the same problem. (A friend of mine does video editing. Some people said moving to 98 would help. It didn't.)
Who runs video editing (which is the only thing MS can think of requiring 64-bit file size support) on NT anyway? OK, perhaps some, but you would need a killer machine.
/* Steinar */
(This comment is of course GPLed.)
...and they screwed up. Mindcraft is not a serious company, and do not deserve another chance.
0 5-penguin.html?05-11
Let Microsoft spew their FUD. From what I gather, it has changed from primarily being aimed at the management, and is now instead focused on *us*. Microsoft is trying to discredit the Linux community. Just read the link in the topic.
To the unitiated it looks like the tests were 100% fair (and not rigged), and that a bunch of Linux-kiddies now cannot tolerate the results. Pretty smart though...
Anyway, this article sums it up quite nice:
http://linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-1999-05/lw-
I think that the big objection is that Microsoft will use this benchmark to distort and maim the truth: Linux is bare-bones, quick and stable, NT is (sorta) pretty and unstable as heck. Mark Twain had a good on on that:
"Get the facts first, and then you can distort them as you like"
Sure Linux needs to grow and improve in many areas, and it will. However, many of us believe that NT will never improve, just grow. And many of us are the ones who work with both each day.
Any anyone who believes that no company making crappy products can stay in business apparently hasn't bought anything from China latel, and doesn't watch television.
You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake -- but you could be if you got off your ass.
I also found this:
From: "Stephen C. Tweedie"
Date: Thu, 1 Apr 1999 17:55:05 +0100 (BST)
To: Robert Minichino
Subject: Re: Journaling file system
Hi,
On Wed, 31 Mar 1999 15:39:04 -0500 (EST), Robert Minichino
said:
> For a project I'm heading up, we need a journaling file system
> (log-based metadata) for quick filesystem recovery after crashes. I
> do believe that there is some work going on with one, and I'm
> interested in it's status and assisting with it in any way. If there
> isn't a work in progress, or its completion is targeted too far in the
> future we will have to write the filesystem entirely ourselves.
I expect to have publicly testable code for journaling over ext2fs in
about 4 weeks or so.
--Stephen
You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake -- but you could be if you got off your ass.
Your NIC wouldn't happen to be a DEC Etherworks 3 now would it?
What's up with that? Killed netscape 4.51. Hm.
Results can be interesting from this standpoint... 10 of those VA machine can do some justice you know..
If you're going through hell, keep going. -- Winston Churchill
Anybody want to snag this idea?
Linux runs faster on my K5-PR166 w/64 megs of RAM than it does on the dual PII-233 w/128 megs of RAM at work.
Whether MS likes it or not, we're here and we're not going anywhere. It can't buy Linux or slash prices and run us out of business. Even if Red Hat, Caldera, SuSe, etc. go under, Linux will still be here. We don't have to keep adding flashy eye candy and use slick marketing and lies to sell our product.
The hardware chosen certainly won't give Linux an advantage, whether it be the four processor box, or the low end system (although it looks like Linux would have a better chance on the low end box). Apache sure isn't gonna kick butt as a high performace web server (which isn't what it was designed for anyway). Of course, I wouldn't expect Microsoft to pick hardware that would give an advantage to anything but NT.
Unfortunately, the "Linux Community" has made a whole lot of noise about the original Mindcraft benchmark and its problems. I fear that in doing so we have played right into Microsoft's hands.
This benchmark business has already made so much noise that I've had people who have a hard time figuring out the Start Menu in 9x/NT asking about Linux, NT, etc. Microsoft is certainly doing all they can do to make sure the world knows that the "Linux Community" has disparaged the original benchmark. Now, they're raisin' a ruckus because we haven't (seemingly) done much to respond to their challenge.
I think (and I'm probably not 100% right, I may even be wrong) that the "Linux Community" only has two options now:
1. Accept Microsoft's challenge (however we're supposed to do that) and have as many experts on tuning, etc., on hand as possible to make sure Linux gets as much of a fair shake is possible given the hardware.
2. Do nothing and let Microsoft trumpet to the press that the "Linux Community" didn't have the balls to accept their challenge because Linux really was inferior to NT (which we know good and well it isn't).
Seems to me that our best bet is to accept the challenge and take our beating like a man, if that's what it comes down to. Of course, if Linux loses, MS will plaster the numbers on every bulletin board and window on this side of the Milky Way, but at least it will be a well tuned Linux running against a well tuned NT, which is much more than can be said about the previous benchmark. Even if Linux does lose, it's not the end of the world for us, even though MS will work to make sure it is. They can't kill us, and what doesn't kill us will only make us stronger. If this turns out to be a failure for Linux, then we can learn from what went wrong and work to improve performance in whatever areas it is necessary to improve performance in.
And yes, I intend to help, as soon as I'm competent enought to do so. In the mean time, I'm learning.
Now for a question: I was under the impression that NT pretty much choked on more than two processors. Am I mistaken? I know we've got an NT box with two PII (233s, I think) and 128 megs of RAM and it's slower than molasses).
Micro$oft and their toadies at MindCrap have already rigged the results. They are still controlling the test conditions, and ultimately, the outcome. The Linux community must not allow this to happen.
Independant testing should be done which have the following features:
In other words, to play along with Micro$oft and their MindCrap cronies is complete folly. The best thing for the Linux community to do with this MindCrap BS is to do nothing.
Our only response to MindCrap requests should be a very public appeal for unbiased testing procedures.
Arne Flones
Long Ship Software
Where is this article they use to support their claim that NT is more secure than UNIX? The link points to lwn.net, which is almost as vague as pointing to zdnet.com. I searched the archives on LWN and didn't see that title page.
Saving random seed...
The present numbers (about 2 hrs after the above post) show:
NT 250 req/sec (68 % faster than Linux) [not 680 % faster]
Linux 195 req/sec. [not 1950 ]
These numbers may not be correct, but at least they are realistic and consistent.
99 % isn't so hot. that would be about 15 min/day downtime.
I have had Linux running on one box or another for an estimated 35,000 hours (yes, that's about 7,000 hours/year of a total of some 8,000 hours in a year). In all that time, I cannot recall one time when it was down except for hardware failures, power failures, or because I wanted it down for some administrative reason. Now that's reliability.
I think part of M$'s problem is over-integration. While I have not had to reboot the entire system, having to restart X is a not too unusual occurrence. (Say once or twice a month.) Of course I can do this without taking down the kernel or any daemons.
In WinDog's case, however, it's all one piece. Image Server, Window Manager, Desktop Manager are all of a piece with the kernel. So, if anything is this chain fails, the whole system comes down.
As the saying goes;
First they ignore you
Then they laugh at you
Then they fight you
Then you win
--Kit
Linux Hardware Solutions/
Former Inmate, VA Linux Sanitarium
I think free software is for personal use or for small firms where the price benefit is important.
And remember the FUD from the BSA:
We should make a clear alternative for the private user and the small business units : using software which is good enough , free or cheap , and ethical .
pffffth!
Your Servant, B. Baggins
(Anyone see the recent article on how the US Army rejected NT for "battlefield communications" because it was not secure enough?)
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Hej, This is an interesting story. Why dont you write it up and send it to /. as a seperate story. OR post a bit more on the background. Not only is it interesting that it is taken off due to M$ pressure, but how did you get that many in in the first place?
Help fight continental drift.
I'm sure linux is high and mighty on a 486dx2-66, but who runs a serious web server on a machine like that? Is it so hard for people to admit that linux might actually be beaten on high end hardware? Yes, I know that smp and other such high end goodies are being matured, but what about right now? Personally, I don't give a damn how well linux runs on 486s and below. They've long since been obsolete on anything serious.
"unplanned downtime" might be an issue for Windo$e, but
Windo$e has an Integrated file cache for faster access to commonly used files
What's new about that? Linux has got that for years.
It's easy to gain root access on Linux via poorly written applications
They don't say, that this is only true for suid-root applications.
26% less expensive to set up and integrate than UNIX :)
They don't say, that it's less expensive, because M$ admins can only double-click setup.exe, and if they're not happy with the result (after reboot), all they can do is reinstall from scratch (hopefully the right OS
Historically, in order to perform optimally, applications need to be recompiled when the OS is upgraded
What is historic about compiling? That's a FEATURE. In M$ OSs you have to buy an upgrade of your software.
Windo$e has Support for 24K devices - 15K with Logo
M$ doesn't write drivers, they just put their Logo on the hardware. And if your machine crashes, M$ will blame it on your broken hardware.
Windows has Support through partners and OEMs
They don't say, that the partners and OEMs can't do anything without sources.
M$ complains that: Most configuration settings require editing of text-based files
What's wrong about that? Aren't M$ server admins able to do that, or it notepad unable to open large text files?
M$ says: Provides source code to allow developers to deviate from standard distribution
They don't tell us that this is clearly a feature, not a bug.
just my $.2
--
Raphael Wegmann
Raphael Wegmann
wegmann@psi.co.at
Who is Xerox? ;-)
Too many people on /. enjoy flag waving about linux, and then put their hands over their ears, shouting "La la la" when someone starts pointing out it still has flaws.
I'm rooting (scuse the pun) for linux all the way - but it'd be daft to pretend there's no room for improvement in it.
Of _course_ Microsoft have posted a page pointing out all it's flaws - you don't really think they'd post a page saying where NTS has been beaten do you ?
I suspect there are a great deal of places Linux is gonna wipe the floor with an NTS - but there's still areas for improvement....
+----------------------+
| GodEater |
Gentlemen, start your penguins
Hmm. Good point. I agree entirely.
By the way, I have to say that I'm really impressed with the way the Little OS that Could has come along. Wasn't too long ago that MS dismissed Linux with a wave of their hand. Then, it was commissioning benchmarks from behind the scenes. Now, they have a page on their own damn website! I guess the demon is tired of working through its minions, and has figured that if he wants to do anything right, he has to do it himself. Of course, this is the point in the story where the demon exposes himself to the hero, and ends up getting his tail kicked.
Bookmark this page...save it to your harddrives...in a few months, MS will want to deny that this page ever existed. It's going to be quite an embarassment for them when we stuff each and every one of their points down their throats.
Let's have at them!
"UNIX" is never having to say you're sorry.
error 'ASP 0113'
I think this:
"Script timed out
/ntserver/nts/news/msnw/nt4vLinux.asp
The maximum amount of time for a script to execute was exceeded. You can change this limit by specifying a new value for the
property Server.ScriptTimeOut or by changing the value in the IIS administration tools."
Just about says it all. (-:
The two other benchmarks they refer to both apparently stuffed the tuning. Mention of slow read times is a bit of a giveaway. Go read the SaMBa tuning HOWTO.
One of the benchmarks was also comparing apples with oranges; as if a server running, say, PERL as a CGI would compete with one running mod_perl!
Microsoft through and through, as usual.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Doesn't apache run on winnt? Why not bench apache on NT vs. apache on linux? After all, are we benching different web servers, or the OS?
--Rob
I'm using Nscape 4.07, & the first time thru the page loaded fine. However, on subsequent viewings (I tend to jump up & down the history stack of followed links) this page would load far more slowly.
.asp extension.) Could it be due to bugs in Nscape's history stack (which makes how I go back & forth over links impossible under NS 3.x, & risky under 4.x)?
Could it be due to M$ ``technology"? (Note the
Pick yer poison^Wbug, folks.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
>Most see something like a network failure as NT failing. Or specific sofware failures (such as oracle crashing) as
>an NT failure (remember, an OS can't stop crappy code from crashing). The typical response is to reboot since
>this is faster than trying to hot correct the problem in most cases (under ANY OS).
>
Yes, but crappy code, or a poorly-written application should not take the OS down with it. Except for the stuff Microsoft & Apple have written, operating systems will run for months (or even years) without needing to be rebooted except for upgrades to the OS or hardware failures.
>Things like blue screens on NT are typically due to hardware failures or crappy device drivers.
Sez you. A divide-by-zero error in a s/w application brought a US warship to a dead stop.
And I have tried to troubleshoot BSOD on NT. It's like trying to reach the base fo the rainbow where the Leprechaun's pot of gold lies.
>Linux currently has a big advantage in reliability for one reason only. The same people that hack the kernel are the
>same people that write the device drivers. As such, they have an intimate knowledge of the kernel and can make
>better, more reliable drivers. Should the time come when Linux enjoys the same kind of ISV driver support that
>NT has, it too will have reliability problems with a majority of hardware.
Methinks you are a rat, & this paragraph proves your Windows way of thinking.
Linux -- as well as many other non-MS OS's -- are written to conform to publicly defined APIs. There are probably undocumented system calls in Solaris, AIX, & even Linux, but except for champion-round games of Computer Trivia Pursuit no one needs to know about them. Write the drivers to address these APIs, & the peripheral will work.
However, in the Windows world, there are vast constellations of officially undocumented interfaces & system calls that are needed to make third-party software to run at acceptible speeds. Andrew Schulman & others have written about these, & have shown how they emerge, shift, mutate & vanish into the fogbanks of every new M$ software release. That is why ISV applications will stop working when a new revision of Windows or Office is installed.
In short, device driver writers have little need for ``an intimate knowledge of the kernel" -- & if they do, then wouldn't it be easier for them to write to Linux & other OS with available source code (like the BSDixen?) than a proprietary OS like Windows that changes every time its users study it?
If you had experience with non-M$ software, you would know these things.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
And Micros~1 want to show that $2Billion can build a OS that may be only slightly faster (on a specific piece of hardware) then a OS developed by a bunch of guys in their spare time. Hummmm, are the CFO's reading this? They would have to be laughing out loud at this one.
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Wow, I didn't realize RedHat was so naive. Then again I didn't think Sun would ever be dumb enough to accept any license arrangement with Micros~1 either.... Maybe I'm the naive one for thinking I could understand the intelligence in partnering with Micros~1 or it's main PR branch (Ziff Davis). Did you know that Ziff-Davis and Micros~1 formed a company back in 1995 whos only purpose was to promote the writting/porting of games to Micros~1 Windows 95? Nothing to do with quality, just quantity of games. Now is Ziff Davis a independant 3rd party?
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
And another thing...
What is that with calling PCWeek a neutral location and using them to audit the results? MS Ziff Davis is not a neutral party. Let's do it at IBM or better yet, Intel. Using another part of the Micros~1 marketing arm, Ziff, is unacceptable. I also don't like that they want to compare to Test #2 and not Test #1. After all, the Linux community attacked MindCrap because of Test #1. I feel that Micros~1 knows if the test is rerun, they can't jam it down Linux's throat if NT wins when the results show a drastic difference from Test #1 because that is what this is all about...Test #1 publicized results.
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
The excitment around Linux is overshadowing NT and let's not even talk about developer interest. What also is amazing is that Micros~1 has a OS that they spent hundreds of millions of dollars to develop and they are attacking something that a bunch of guys put together in their spare time. How can there really be any comparison, test or no test? Linux wins just because it can be used to replace NT in many cases. Plain and simple, but will the public see it this way or the way Micros~1 is painting it? I wish there was a Linux Fund (like the Java Fund) only that the $$ were used for maketing Linux in general. To dispell the damage Micro~1 can do with its PR lies and FUD.
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
A funky X server can indeed bring down an entire system. Even a funky window manager has been known to do it.
I've been using Linux off and on since the "Soft Landing" distribution days (kernel .9x.x), and have used it exclusively at home for over two years. I don't care about comparisions to NT, or any other OS. Well, I care only in that if the comparisions point out things that need work in Linux, then that is a good thing. Other than that, they simply don't affect my decision.
Why do I like Linux? Well, it's fun for me. It lets me get my hands dirty, see the code, understand how things work when I want to, but pretty much leaves me alone when I don't want to dive in. It assumes I know what I'm doing, treating me as it's equal. Condesending operating systems are as annoying to me as condesending bosses. And, on the occasion that I do manage to drive a config file to insanity, or delete an essential library, a small rescue floppy with vi on it lets me fix things.
But, this little trumpet blowing of Microsoft isn't about home users, it's about using Linux in the datacenter. Linux does have some problems here, not the least of which is the lack of a log structured, journaling filesystem, as Microsoft legitimatly pointed out. High availability on Linux right now is problematic, but people are working on the situation. The cost of a current project I'm working on is skyrocketing because of the need for true high availabilty, and we simply can't trust it to the alpha level projects that exist now. But, we aren't going to use NT for this application either. Neither is proven.
So, I'm a bit of a pragmatist. I don't hope for Linux to be the be all, end all for every use in every situation, I chose the right tool for the right job. At home, the right tool is Linux, because I like it. For low cost file and print services, general ISP duty, etc, Linux could be the right choice. For instant failover and high availability applications, I'm chosing Solaris.
And, dare I say, some people probably find NT to be the right tool for what they need. NT is geared for the great unwashed, hence Microsoft's critically pointing out the need for "highly trained system administrators" to use Linux. I just hope people aren't basing the choice of tool on that. Personally, I'd rather have a highly trained administrator responsible for running my critical systems than trusting it to a button monkey who doesn't know how to solve a problem that isn't scripted in his NT certification class. But, according to people I've talked to, NT doesn't really make hard things easier, it just makes them seem that way. A dangerous illusion.
To sum up, use Linux (or Be, or MacOS, or whatever) because you LIKE it, or because it solves a particular problem.
Sorry for rambling.
update your browser... Lynx can read it perfectly.
:)
This sig is false.
because the most expensive part of any server is still the system admin.
Meaning we are worth more, that is, if Linux is more expensive than NT, even with having to pay for NT.
Maybe if we could convince would-be NT admins that they could make a lot more money doing *nix admin, we could get them to refuse admin NT. Show them that they are settling for the short end of the stick by going NT.
This sig is false.
"Who gaurantee's[sic] 99.9% uptime for Linux ?"
Me.
Or your money back.
Oh wait. You didn't pay for it. At best you paid for the packaging of some distro.
*shrug* Oh well. Who needs a guarantee anyway? Look at the track record.
This sig is false.
And as you get better and better at setting up and maintaining linux, help others out who don't know as much.
If some of the big shots helps you out on something, remember what they told you and pass it on.
This sig is false.
How can you say "Linux really could lose" without defining what you mean by losing?
What piece of software someone else uses in the privacy of their own home does not matter to me. I don't need commercial support, since I can write software for myself.
I'd say Linux hasn't lost anything as long as there are people writing patches for the kernel. Can you really imagine Linus Torvalds giving up on the project?
--
Dan
I could go on, but why? VB is a fine programming tool for RAD GUI development. I use a similar tool, RealBasic, to develop GUI apps on the Mac. But VB/VBScript is not as powerful as Python by a long shot. I am not a Perl expert, but I'd bet that someone who is more knowledgable than I in it could make a similar argument for that language.
- Vincit qui patitur.
Well, the real issue is not the browser, it's the fonts included with the system. The lack of good fonts included with the software is probably my number one gripe against Linux.
In field testing on an Apple Power Macintosh G3, Netscape, Internet Explorer and iCab [a new Mac only upstart] displayed the page quite well, with precisely equal readability. So your argument that Windows is the one true platform capable of displaying MS web pages is demonstratably false. In addition, it is clear that it does not take Internet Explorer (or any other specific browser) to display the Microsoft web pages well.
On my SGI Irix system (which represents Linux and other Unix variants), the Helvetica on the Microsoft site is very hard to read using Netscape, the only major graphical browser available. One of the reasons I use an Irix machine is that, with the exception of Helvetica, their fonts are very nice. But, alas, helvetica is a terrible font on any Unix machine. Some day, I will have to learn what's needed to fix that.
I will say, though, that since Microsoft should have anticipated heavy use of that specific page by the Linux/Unix community, it would have been better for them to have used a font readable on a typical Unix system. This is just common courtesy.
D
----
I believe one of the major advantages of Linux is that the GUI isn't integrated with the kernel, so even buggy display drivers can't kill the system. In fact, on a server, graphical display drivers aren't even running, so they don't have a chance to kill the system.
D
----
One of my favorite parts:
Wouldn't it be more accurate to say:
That would be more in line with a company's asking for $60+ for a BETA copy of their product (how much yah wanna bet you get donged again once the ``official release'' is shipped?) Let's not even mention the ridiculous situation where some OEMs are pre-loading the beta software on new systems.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
What MS is trying to do is say, "Look, this version of Unix doesn't have a journalling file system, so you shouldn't use it." They're hoping that it won't occur to anyone used to the Wintel world that in the Unix world you have _choice_, so if one vendor doesn't support something likely another one will (if MS doesn't include a feature in NT, you'r SOL). NT doesn't provide you with this flexibility; it neither scales down nor all the way up. There are operating systems for every situation, but "NT everywhere" just doesn't cut it in my book. And since Microsoft hates open standards, once you get NT, you're locked into it.
In the computer industry, those who are flexible will eat the lunch of those who aren't any day of the week.
I always thought RMS has a real point here. Good performance is cool, but not the central issue. The central issue is that software should be FREE. I would say the priorities are freedom first, then robustness, then performance. Oh, and point-and-drool^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H ease of use.
JMH
Bite the hand.
Look, I grant MS may be satan incarnate, but get a clue before you attribute every little problem you have to them.
I can view that page using Netscape 4.51 just fine. Being on Linux doens't mean you should be using out-of-date software.
Yes, it is a bizarre strategy to say things like "Linux has yet to post SPECWeb results", when "Linux" is really nothing more than a mailing list and some FTP mirrors.
I guess you can file this with the No Roadmap FUD - non-sensical to anyone who understands what Linux actually is.
It would make more sense to post "RedHat has no roadmap" or "RedHat has yet to post SPECWeb results", because RedHat is actually an operating system vendor, who at least in theory competes with the big boys, and therefore is going to have to (at some time) start doing the same kinds of marketing.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
MS says:
Overall, 37% less expensive to set up and operate than UNIX.
26% less expensive to set up and integrate than UNIX
27% less expensive to administer than UNIX
Note that this may all be true, for regular commercial Unix, but the difference for Linux is certainly not that large.
I'd like to see a real (objective) comparison between the operating costs of NT versus Linux in various roles. Note that I wouldn't be suprised to see NT come out on top (even with the licences), because the most expensive part of any server is still the system admin.
(If you've got a good Linux admin working at your site for the same pay as a good NT admin, count yourself very lucky!)
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Can somebody with authority finally cut the f... etherstripping crap.
NT, Solaris (if tuned so) and other systems with more than one interface answer randomly from one of them. Linux answers where called. So as a result a server with 4 ethers on the same subnet will be lower under linux than any of the Mind... ZD benchmarsk.
If somebody needs that speed use a gigabit ether and a switch. Than we come to where we should be:
NT - 460MB/s
Solaris - 850MB/s or better
Linux 2.2+ 900MB/s or better.
So can somebody with authority suggest THIS test so this crap is finally over.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Feast your eyes on that Microsoft page, folks. This may very well be the largest, most unsubstanciated collection of FUD you will EVER see in one place.
The "rules of the game (and the model used in setting up the evalution)" were not based on common business practice, they were specifically chosen by Microsoft, at Microsoft's lab, because they show the greatest performace differential in their favor.
You can't pretend this is a fair setup. The "unbiased" hardware used in the first Mindcraft test is just as suspect as the rest of their test has proved to be.
A more fair test would involve either Microsoft and the linux team (whoever that turns out to be) agreeing on a neutral configuration, or alternatively a number of tests on different configurations.
If MS is choosing this battleground, why shouldn't linux testers choose one of their own?
-OT
....they feel they have stacked the deck enough to make this challenge. Like most of the comments in the previous article about Mindcraft wanting to run a third bench, they're trying to fabricate a test that makes them look good to the general business public.
Inveigle, Deceive, Obfuscate
How in any way does my nickname have anything to do with ignorance? The FUD that I speak of is clear through the responses to this story, at least two of which I reiterated: Linux's supposed superior performance and the supposed lack of reliablility by NT on /. Others are "I just know linux is faster, it was for me" without anything objective, like performance numbers, to justify the claim. Or "NT may beat Unix in TCO, but Linux has to be lower". How bout "ZD Net is another division of MS"? Or "All benchmarks are biased against Linux"? This one kills me "We need a P2-450 with 256 MB of RAM just to get Exchange to RUN on NT." Should I start compiling a list?
The is no irony here. What is clear is that you missed the point of my original post, and subsequently my reply. I pointed out two examples initially and several in the reply of claims or statements that people have made without backing them up. You assume I believe, simply because I list quotes as examples, that I support the opposite of those quotes. I have made no claim that I support or refute any of the quotes I used as examples of FUD for the reason I listed them as FUD in the first place: the opinions are unsupported. When opinions are rendered in such a fashion, they raise uncertainty in the minds of readers as to their truth. Readers then fear they are missing out on something or have not made good selections in the past because the truth of the statements cannot be verified. Readers then doubt what they already have in place, either physically or mentally. Those on /. use the term FUD with a derogatory connotation, implying that FUD is inheriently evil. Since that is the prevailing mindset, I asked the community to stop the hypocrisy of slinging unsupported FUD when they so readily accuse MS of the same. Every opinion piece potentially introduces FUD. Marketing is meant to introduce FUD in the minds of the target audience. New opinions raise FUD by challenging the opinions and beliefs the reader already has. Opinions change through FUD or proof, or a combination. I want the proof, which is sorely lacking in many of the claims made by those on /.
The ugly truth is that the community, through forums like /., sling just as much FUD about NT as MS does about Linux. If NT's reliability is so much worse than Linux's, show us the numbers? If Linux performs so much better than NT, show us the numbers? Singular personal experience statistically means nothing. Accept the MS challenge, learn from the results whatever their outcome, and stop slinging FUD. It is time to put up or shut up.
Actually, they are making their pages readable by browsers that the intended audience is using. The intended audience is not the Linux market, as it may seem. They know that posted a web page telling about how much better NT is and how it costs different and is supported differently isn't going to cause Linux supporters to change their mind.
I perceive from that page that they consider Linux a threat. Otherwise they would have ignored the whole thing and just been content with the results that they paid for. But now it has backfired on them by creating lot's of good publicity for Linux and bad publicity for NT. So now they create a web page targeted for those how are considering Linux full of tables and tables of useless figures promoting NT, with a little blurb at the top fingering Linux developers.
Did reading the piles of figures change you mind? It didn't do much too mine. Especially where they talks about paper MCSE's and how much more it cost to run a Unix server. Unfortunately, it failed to talk about actual software costs. NT probably isn't cheaper then Linux after you add the costs of extra hardware and licensing fees to the amount you saved by using paper MCSE's who you can afford to pay minimum wage. It makes my glad that I got out of the Microsoft market, to a market where employer's can afford to pay *me* what I'm worth, because they don't have to pay Microsoft.
Now take a look at that link.....
Check the link on the M$ page to "Comparing Windows NT Server Security to UNIX Security ".
It points to "linux weekly news"!
I sure hope no one hacked their site.
Linux, coming to a desktop near you!
Beyond certain minimum requirements, # static pages served per second really doesn't matter in real life, and SMP performance is also much less important in Linux environments than in NT due to the different way those platforms are deployed.
And the study doesn't compare costs, it compares performance. For the cost of a NT server license (not to mention all the extra software NT needs, plus the on-site handholding), you can buy a lot of extra Linux hardware.
Besides, performance is only one of many factors in picking a web server platform. Linux has an easy upgrade path to other, high-end UNIX systems. And NT has some big strikes against it with its iffy security, proprietary APIs, and difficult remote administration.
Mindcraft's study is intrinsically biased towards NT. I'm quite sure NT will shine in it no matter what we do. I think people should not participate.
Microsquishy has turned this into a huge PR deal. If I knew how to set up web servers could I would offer to participate in the new benchmark. But I dont. But I know there are plenty of you who do, why not offer your services. This is a great opertunity to give M$ what for.
M$ posted some harsh words about linux on their new page. Someone suggested making this alot more fair by setting a price ceiling on hardware and software. Set the limit about 100,000 and see what kind of machine you can build. They say NT is 26% more cost effective then linux is, make them prove that.
It's time for the Linux folks to step up to the challenge and prove that Linux is capable of achieving better results than Windows NT Server. After all, this is the real issue.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Linux:
Limited to 2GB of physical memory
Limited to a maximum file size of 2GB
...
NT Server 4.0:
...
NTFS provides a 64-bit file system which is capable of file sizes up to 264 (must larger than 2GB)
Bravery, Kindness, Clarity, Honesty, Compassion, Generosity
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...
Actually, since they put the page on the World Wide Web (as opposed to a private intranet), the best thing to do would have been to simply not specify anything related to fonts at all. It never makes sense to specify font types or font sizes, because browsers already have a place in the preferences where the user can select the font and size that looks the best to them. Browsers that don't let the user select fonts, probably don't understand the font tag anyway. Might as well just abolish the tag, since it is always useless.
Of course, the people who are getting coredumps (?!) while displaying that page (or any other page) should probably send the bug report to whoever supports the browser in question. When a web browser coredumps, it is never the web page's fault.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
One other key thing to note is is that all of the tests (including/especially ZDNet's) have all of the workstations plugged into a switch, in addition to the servers.
Is it me or is that not real world at all? Real world is (maybe) the servers are on a switched backbone with the workstations plugged into a standard concentrator.
I think that one of the reasons that NT is doing better in these tests than it seems to in the real world are that the environments are tailored to make NT work as well as possible by making it do as little as possible, eg, switches, smart Intel NICs, test data entirely in RAM (no disk I/O), and other boguns like that.
It worked fine for me - IE 4.01 (win98) and Communicator 4.51 (on RH 5.2).
... it's in MS's interests to have their pages readable by all, and Netscape and Mozilla's to ensure their browsers don't crash no matter what is thrown at them.
/.'s extended stay in "overload mode" recently isn't exactly an advert for Linux performance and scalability. Might be technically untrue, but perception is everything with marketroids, and it's the /. guys saying they're having probs, not MS.
Yeah, I can imagine your Mozilla-killer, but only if I put myself in a mindset of extreme and pointless paranoia.
Grow up
BTW,
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
Ah, but if it works on his machine and my Linux box with 4.51, it sounds like a config problem at your end, not something MS did. YMMV, but it's YOU that's having the problem.
;)
As for MS being Satan incarnate, I think old Nick would write better software
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
Remember that Microsoft always changes rules and plays dirty. They often reply with "similar tests" and "similar hardware" to challenges. So why can't Linus do it too?
In the end there can be a tie. Let NT win with that quad-processor beast. But if Linux wins with hardware that is more sensible for real world usage, then everything is just up to the decision makers. Some blow money, some want quality.
The key is to distract. Don't play by Microsoft's rules and don't complain. Just be thrilled by this opportunity and bring on the other setup too to make a service to all us customers. And remember to smile while doing it.
Why bother? We all know that Linux is infinitly better. Why waste time which we could be using to code?
If you think you know what the hell is going on you're probably full of shit. -- Robert Anton Wilson
jdube is who
Perhaps we, as a community, could organize an independent testing group (made up of Linux users, but no kernel hackers, Redhat/Caldera/SuSE/etc. employees, FSF guys, etc.) to issue this very challenge. Perhaps several categories: best $1,000 server, best $2,500 server, best $5,000 server, etc. Entries could be received from any operating system whose advocates wanted to play: Macs, Microsoft boxen, commercial Unices, turnkey solutions like Cobalt, etc.
:)
I'll volunteer my time to help coordinate this, though I don't have the financial resources to test any category beyond the best sub-$25 system.
On their page of FUD the have a refernce down the bottom pointing to Linux Weekly News to look at the security issues. Any stupid person would think the fact that all these vulnerablities that are told to us on the www.lwn.net site are a good example of Linux's/unix's insecure status. that is complete BULLSHIT. While all operating systems have holes, the best security is a well informed admin. MS dont tell there users SHIT about the MS vulnerabilites, and anyone with an iota of a clue knows that hackers dont really on the vendors posts to find out about security issues. By the time the vendor finds out of the insecurity then the "fun" is over. But then we are talking about microsoft vs linux here. Who was it that came out with a teardrop patch in hours after the issue was known... Linux. Who took MONTHS, let me repeat that... MONTHS to fix this problem. Gee i think it was MICROSOFT.
I think everyone here knows what this is about. Corperates pulling the wool over our eyes. Well UNFORTUNATELY thats a little harder to do to a world wide connected community.
Alot of people use MS products, I admit to it. But who runs the worlds biggest Email service in the world? Microsoft. What do THEY run it on? Solaris, Apache, Perl and Qmail. Fairly obvious what scales better.... MS or Unix?
meridian
me@tha.net
meridian at tha.net
Funny, how would I contact the linux community if I needed to? :-)
(There is a linuxcommunity.org, but the're not running a web server right now).
This is an unusually bold move for MS, though... I can't remember a time when they've out and out stepped like this. What could they be thinking? They know they're going to get whupped.
I think they're hoping that we'll be so disorganized that we can't formulate a coherent response--a potential weakness.
Come on Linus, come on Alan!
--GP
*Reborn Penguin Zealot*
I can believe it. If we assume it takes 5 minutes for an NT box to reboot, then you have 99.9% uptime if it reboots every few days, right?
Personally, I think 99.9% uptime is pretty abysmal.
Please pass the bong, this guy's had too much crack.
Sorry, I wont refute the words. We can just assume this is just another MS plant.
Damn Bill, at least get competant guys to spread your BS around. Letting the tech support interns in on it rather spoils the effect of your "grass roots support" for MS.
My browser (Nutscrape 4.51 on MacOS 8.5.1) read the page, but it displayed all text as flyspec-3. Took me like three hours to Increase Font Size up to acceptable dimensions.
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
Edit, Preferences, Fonts, Use my fonts, overriding document fonts, Reload page. That didn't take 3 hours, did it?
No, but I don't get to just hit Command-Uparrow-]...
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
In my paraniod delusional world they have discovered the magical machine / config / software / load combination where NT actually _DOES_ outperform linux. So much so that they are betting the farm on it.
One thing the Linux community cannot afford right now is this kind of credibility being conferred to Microsoft.
MindCraft 1 showed how bad linux performs when mis-tuned. I have a feeling that the stuff I've been reading on the linux-kernel list shows that:
a) we HAD a thundering herd problem under load ( I gather its been fixed. Yay. )
b) Apache is not the right tool for raw thruput of a webserver. Who would trust 2200 hits/second to a single box anyway, no matter what OS/Hardware combo?
c) Wake-one semantics on accept(2) is needed for heavy load web (and probably file) servers
d) channel bonding is more powerful than was previously assumed.
And last but not least
e) if you crash during a performance test, you get another try IF YOU ARE MICROSOFT. If you fold back performance and continue to work, even though heavily mistuned YOU ARE DISCRIBED as having "POOR SCALIBILITY", not "GREAT STABILITY"
-- Perl Hack, Web Hack, SQL Hack, Guitar Hack
There are 3 basic components to this challenge.
1. Database server - fair.
2. Web server - fair.
3. File server - unfair.
Benchmarking UNIX as NT-emulator via Samba is just not fair. I would love to see Microsoft clocking NT as an NFS server. And people - forget about the "low end" challenge, it is just not "sexy" (imagine Formula 1 being replaced by the race of truly stock cars).
Reading some of the posts here and the Microsoft Article leads me to question what the goals of the community are.
.. "hey.. do I need 400Mbps performance? Do I need a Quad Xeon?" If their answer is NO.. then perhaps with some positive press that Linux has received they should be asking themselves the question, "Why should I pay a couple of thousand to MS for NT when I can get Linux and support for a couple of hundred dollars?"
.. time to go to bed.. excuse the rambling :)
Linux will not be able to dominate the world today in its current state or perhaps in any state. Let us accept that, live with it and perhaps smell a few roses while we're at it.
What are Linux's strengths. Let us use those to get at Microsoft. (This is from my perspective as a poweruser and a suit.)
* Linux is a kick butt entry level and departmental server right out of the box. It provides VERY decent connectivity to Windows '95 and NT boxes out of the box with Samba. There are FAR more business using low end NT and Novell servers than there are companies using Quad Xeons. This is also where Microsoft makes its real money.. selling low end NT servers to departmental and workgroup users. Heck, my office in Hong Kong still has a 166Mhz Pentium as its main file server for 20 users running NT. We do not see any need for a P2, let alone an SMP box.
* Linux is a VERY good platform for providing Internet services to the same businesses. Again, with a little bit of tweaking, the same Linux box can turn into a mail, web and news server. Try getting the same server described above to run exchange and IIS. Not possible. (Ironically our Exchange 5.5 server runs on a P2-450 with 256MB RAM).
Performance is not everything. The type of box MS has constructed is used perhaps only in the largest of the large enterprises. Would any of the target audience seriously consider running NT on a $100K box? No, chances are they would opt for a SUN or an RS/6000/HP type solution, which ran their application/solution well.
Let us look at Microsoft's Annual Reports and see where they make money. Is it by selling NT on a Quad Xeon? Or is it by selling Workgroup / Departmental Servers with '95 clients and Office bundles?
My suggestion.. fight the FUD, but do not get consumed by it. The market is a LOT more than what MS has made it out to be. And look on the bright side of things... Linux is not featured on MS's pages. Departmental Managers, Small VARs looking at that page would go
Ok
Bill didn't write the OS. It wouldn't be quite fair.
This FUD is designed to focus the community into a producing small group to answer all their challenges.
DON'T fall for it. DON'T answer their challenge too directly. DON'T provide a focus for their attacks. If MS has a single target for their attack, then they can set the rules for the fight.
Keep diffuse. Attack from everywhere at once.
Let them swipe at a swarm of bees with a sword, until they get too tired to fight.
If big businesses are interested in Linux, they should come on our terms. Don't bow to pressure to soften the open source stance. We'll be here regardless of what they do, if they want to join up and help, well and good. If they want to fight, eventually they'll lose.
Choice of masters is not freedom.
NTFS provides a 64-bit file system which is capable of file sizes up to 264 (must larger than 2GB) ^^^^
I was hoping I'd be the first to mention that one, I was beside myself laughing when I read it.
You've got this big gun-ho web-page exagarating the size of Bills testicles and their complete superiority. And Microsoft Office 2000 can't even pick up a simple grammar error. (yeah, simple things - simple.. etc).
BUT SERIOUSLY
I honestly think they are trying to set Linux up for a fall. If(/when depending on your viewpoint) Linux beats them in a benchmark. They can still claim a victory? Why?
E a s e O f U s e.. (I hate the phrase too)
If they win, they win. If they lose, all they have to do is say look; you have to hire the top-wiz-bang linux hard-core widget-builders to get Linux to outperform WinNT. And, they win.
--- "If a man speaks in a forest, and no woman hears him, is he still wrong?"
moviefone.com runs Apache 1.3.6. on Solaris.
You would think they would be running Zeus, though...
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
Now how about explaining why they're all false?
1. NO back compatibility for a.out binaries
Oh really. I suppose that's why the kernel has a "Support for a.out binaries" option in it.
Plus, Slackware at least has the entire a.out compatibility libraries with it. I'm sure there are others.
Frankly, I don't see why this point is relevant at all, since Solaris is ELF, the BSDs i believe are using or moving to ELF, etc...
2. No international support
And that's why X has Japanese and Cyrillic(sp? Russian) fonts. Plus you can use all those nice ISO-4digits-moredigits fonts to get all those funny little accented letters, should you need them.
Oh, wait, they meant the OS has to understand Unicode. Just more "Our way or the highway" thinking.
3. Poor support for Java
http://www.blackdown.org. Nuff said, except Sun themselves have endorsed them.
4. MORE PRONE TO SECURITY BREACHES
Actually, that would be "less" since security breaches are fixed instantly (more or less) by the sheer number of coders out there. This is in contrast to Microsoft's model where it takes forever (in Internet terms) to get a fix.
Yep, you know what come next after "They fight you..."
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
I must admit that I had no problems under IE5. But then again I had problems loading this reply form here at Slashdot. Could be the proxy on my end, though.
-The Avatar
Here's an idea that may help us to fight back against the evil spectre of MS-HTML. Write webcrawler software that searches the web for MS-HTML masquerading as HTML. Build a database of noncompliant web sites, along with a list of e-mail addresses of the authors. E-mail the authors of the web sites to alert them to the problem, and provide solutions.
Most people are unaware that the nonstandard HTML known as MS-HTML even exists, so if people are made aware of the problem they can fix it.
"Proprietary standards" is a contradiction in terms.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
BUZZ....
Who is Engelbart?
This is a complete tar pit --- MS has set the parameters in advance knowing that they've picked a forum where linux can't match them. Once they've got the data they want, they'll crow about how NT is faster than linux for the next decade, regardless of any improvements on either side (remember the NT C2 security farce?) The 'linux community' whoever that is, should concentrate on improving linux. Getting involved in silly fights with MS simply isn't worth the hassle. After all, we're going to win anyway in the long run, so why have the battle now? :-)
nosig
I have to say that I generally agree with this. I think it would be far better for the Linux community to do its own benchmarks using more typical hardware configurations and a realistic mix of applications.
In other words, forget about competing with NT in an artificial playing arena. Benchmark Linux in a realworld scenario.
This is something that Linux vendors like VA Research should be doing in conjunction with Caldera, RedHat, et al.
--
Michael Dillon - E-mail: michael@memra.com
Michael Dillon - E-mail: michael@memra.com
Check the website for my Internet
Guys, deal with it. Netscape should not crash anyways! Give me a break... Should parsing incompatible HTML code force a browser to pagefault or core dump? Obviously not. Guys, I love NS, but don't be so immature about it!
Corndog
Heck, not just scared, terrified.
The whole tone of that page is of someone desperately trying to counteract FUD. When was the last time Microsoft was the one fighting FUD? (Of course, they were doing it by spreading some FUD of their own -- but the very existence of this page shows how MS is sweating bullets over Linux.)
Sure, in some carefully selected set of benchmarks NT might beat some carefully chosen aspects of Linux. You can prove anything if you design your benchmarks carefully (witness the first Mindcraft test). So what - Linux (and other Unixen) give you enough flexibility over hardware configurations that if the software isn't fast enough, you can fix it in hardware. Last time I looked, NT just wouldn't run on an array of SPARCs or an IBM 390 (even if the Linux port to the 390 isn't done yet (I don't know) I know there's a Unix that runs on it.)
What's really funny about this, because it's so frustrating for Microsoft, is that there isn't any one person or company they can target. They can't buy Linux out, they can't "cut off [Linux's] air supply" (on the contrary, that's what Linux is doing to NT in the small server arena already).
The best way for "the Linux community" to respond to this challenge is to simply ignore it. Don't fight on MS's turf. Just go away and keep quietly working to improve those areas at the high end that might need improvement, and keep improving things at the desktop end too, quietly stealing MS territory a piece at a time while MS execs give themselves ulcers fighting a two-front war where the enemy refuses to engage them directly. (Remember the analogies to guerrilla warfare a while back?)
Meanwhile, take this "challenge" as yet another sign of approaching victory: "...then they fight you, then you win".
-- Alastair
Let's think outside the box a little and quit letting Microsoft set all the rules of the game.
Precisely. That's how we've got where we are. There is no advantage in playing Microsoft's game. Even if Linux/Apache/Samba wins the benchmark (certainly not guaranteed, given known issues), MS will spin it that the only way you'd get that performance yourself (if you went Linux) would be if you hired Torvalds, Cox, etc to tune your systems for you. If we lose, even if the margin is tiny (compared to the original Mindshaft tests), MS will trumpet that as 'proof' of NT's superiority and continue to quote the first set of numbers. (We haven't heard the results of the second benchmark, have we?)
If we simply don't show up, Microsoft can say what they like but folks out there will remember how they skewed the first benchmark, and knowing how trustworthy Microsoft is (ahem!), will as like as not say "hey, I don't blame them, why get screwed over a third time".
Microsoft is running scared on this, they don't know how fight something they can't buy out or bury. Let's just keep them off balance, and ignore this particular challenge.
Given Linux's ability to run on many different platforms, it might be interesting to spec out what configuration would deliver benchmark numbers an order of magnitude higher than anything NT is claiming. I doubt NT would even run on that hardware, and the hardware might cost more than the quad Xeon of this test. But so what? If Microsoft wants to get into a price/performance match with free software... Well, I don't think they'd really want to go there.
-- Alastair
Personally I would love to see this (I would even pay good money for a ticket for such an event, maybe we could get big Sony screens up and everything)-
:-) I know, I know real neutral, I can see us throwing live penguins at the M$ guys, so maybe somewhere else). You could then give each team their computer to load up their OS(they would have no idea of the system they would be getting). Give them say 12 hours?? and at the end of the day run the benchmarks.
Have Linus pick 9 guys and M$ pick their 10 guys. Have them go into some neutral place(like a stadium near Linux Expo while it was going on so we could watch
It seems like that would at least remotely resemble a real world situation someone might face at a business. While a day isn't that long I think that is the only way it would be fare for the Linux team. I know both teams would modify their kernals, which is good, but the Linux guys could do it easier thus making the day time period very important. The day time period would keep M$ from putting 300 engineers on the task of optimizing their kernal. If a business finds a bug in the NT kernal does M$ do anything about it to optimize it... NO. The Linux community however does that almost everyday.
I could go on all day about the rules I think should be in such an "event" but I am sure everyone gets the idea. Probably never happen but it would be fun to watch all those Linux genius's work in real life. Not that we would care but of course we couldn't see any of the M$ work on the Sony screens... secret secret. That would make yet another point.
MBrod
Just for grins and giggles lets go back in time. I seem to remember a certain MacOS X that beat a certain NT in a lot of network performance tests...right at one of the Big MacWorld ToDo's with Steve Jobs. Oh yea...OS X runs on top of BSD 4.4...oh yea it runs apache too.....it's all very similar to flavors of Unix and NeXTStep, yea i can almost trust those benchmarks from mindcraft
Let's not forget the MacOS (i do agree the MacOS prior to X really sucks so don't flame me for that)
OS X takes a huge step in the right direction (Open source) and it's fast as hell i run it, it's stable and i'm impressed on a large scale with it (yay a shell) Never take MS's word on anything they are just retarded
...to see how a GUI should look. But then the hours at the office will begin to appear enormously long and you'll only think of the moment that you'll be home again to type the magic word 'startx'.
The last significant M$ fortress is the office suit. And if KOffice turns out to be what it promisses... Oh boy, I'm getting dizzy again.
I'm telling you, the ship is sinking. Go for the life boats fast!
As far as the years go I think that Linux came out in the open in 1991 which means 8 years exactly. But it became 1.0 in the spring of 1994 which gives 5 years actually. It depends how you look at it.
Look, I don't think that the coders in M$ are idiots. But because they have to comply with decisions that are sound only from a marketing point of view the end result frequently is a technical idiocy.
First, let's take IE. Which is easier for you to admit: that it isn't part of the core or that it is a childish thing to do to incorporate an application in the OS every time you feel threatened by a competitor's product?
Second: registry! I won't even begin to describe the mass of instability that it creates. But when the code police come to this office, the registry file will be their biggest friend in finding every single app that was ever installed in Windows. OK, call me paranoid but don't tell me that even a designer with half a brain would dump such stuff for any other reason.
I'm not saying also that Linux is perfect. But it's at least on the right path because it is driven by necessity, not by tycoons' visions.
Take AutoCAD for example. There's a possibility that there won't appear a free alternative of it in the comming millenium. But how many users it has and how many of them are geeks at the same time?
M$ on the other hand is concentrated on the mass consumer market. That was its greatest advantage and it will be the reason for their fast decline. And there isn't enough time now to place the eggs in another basket. The tide is coming.
Smart people won't invest in M$ anymore.
Not on my work Mac, it didn't. I put my resolution back to 832x648, and it was still pretty illegible. I suppose I coulda played with it more, but oh well.
This is kind of interesting in itself. Why would someone -need- to guarantee such an uptime? If I make some sort of an average for my computer, it gets a 99.2% uptime. For a client I've been doing some work for, it would be 99,86%. And those are both servers who see some fair amount of tasks. The first one even doubles as a console for me and runs X on occasions (which people tell me would make it less stable).
> Sure, NT may win. But if it is going to, the playing field had better be level.
So what we need is someone with the resources to set up a level field. Set up lab space and 10 servers ranging from low end to high end, restricted to platforms and peripherals that both OS's support. Invite both sides to send a team to come in and give it their best shot. Let the media be present in swarms to make sure no one weenies out of it afterward.
I hereby pledge $100 to help defray the expenses for any respectable organization or individual who can set this up, and if they go through with it I'll pay even if Microsoft doesn't show.
Fine print: Sorry, but my definition of "respectable organization or individual" excludes a priori Mi*ft, their employees, and any publication that gets a substantial portion of their income from Microsoft.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Ok.. -1 me.. That's pretty damned pathetic.. 'Let support linux.. blahblahblah' and you moderate me down to a -1 so people can't see that's i'm trying to create a group using the resources of /. and freshmeat in hopes to help progress the movement of the linux communinty. That's pretty sick IMO.
"Windows 98 Second Edition works and players better than ever." -Microsoft's Home page on Win98SE.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Thank you.
"Windows 98 Second Edition works and players better than ever." -Microsoft's Home page on Win98SE.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
I feel that they are trying to make it compatable w/ everything then make it so stable, then try to optimize the code for speed, size and low resourse consumption.
Try running NT on a 486 w/ 8 meg.. Ain't gonna happen.
Linux is more than happy on an 486 w/ 8 meg.
"Windows 98 Second Edition works and players better than ever." -Microsoft's Home page on Win98SE.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Ack.. ICK ICK ICK..
Actually one of my page servers was on os/2.. The admin finnally switch to linux.. Os/2 was sooo slow from what I saw... I have seen a ton of NT boxes out perform OS/2
"Windows 98 Second Edition works and players better than ever." -Microsoft's Home page on Win98SE.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
I could get the IIS stuff to run worth a damn.. FTP didn't allow anyone to log in and the settings and all that were correct.. Websever.. Well that hoggeg up so many resources... I thought I was running a Amd 5x86 w/ 16meg again.. But I was running and AMD 233 w/ 96 meg....
"Windows 98 Second Edition works and players better than ever." -Microsoft's Home page on Win98SE.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Well I have decided to do the /. supported Linux distro..If you want to help email me at cisco-kid@cybermail.net or icq me at 1763538
Hopefully we can get Rob to support it!
"Windows 98 Second Edition works and players better than ever." -Microsoft's Home page on Win98SE.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
I think accepting challenges from Microsoft is playing with fire. Why don't we as a community use some of our corporate muscle (Redhat, VA, Linuxcare, Penguin Computing, Ect.) and offer up a challenge to Microsoft.. A sort of "may the best OS win" deal. I say we find our own "independant and unbiased" benchmarking firm and employ kernel hackers and Samba developers to tweak our machine. But instead of just pulling an NT system out of the box and testing it we invite microsoft personel to tweak their system under independant observation and let the bits fly. If we win it's great press, and if NT wins it's great press for them and then they can chant all they want because it was a fair test under *our* circumstances. We need someone to sponsor all of this for the Linux community, I suggest Redhat. Afterall Redhat is our "flag ship" company within the linux community and if anyone can use good press against Microsoft it is them. Perhaps VA could step forward and help also, they hold a great importance within the community as well. If we win there is nothing but good press to be had for the companies involved.
--Aaron
----------------- Who is Jesus?
Of course now I cannot remember where The link was, but it explained NTFS in good detail. It so happens that NTFS only does partial journaling. Can't remember details right now... ugghh (just woke up)
Sorry man I don't controll the aliens.
Linux does more with less. It's that simple. For the ammount of money they spent on the High end test we could build a Beowulf cluster. I'd like to see NT do what Avalon did for $150,000. Linux Scales. From the Itsy to Alta Clusters. NT only works well on Quad Xeons with 2gigs of ram. I can spend 3,000 and get a Kickass webserver with linux (dual p2400 RAID5 3x4gig UWSCSI Ethernet 1/2GB RAM) or 4,000 and get an ok webserver(same HW) with NT (or 40,000 and get a Sun E250 with External RAID)
Argh.. I am doing nothing to help the situation by venting, but I feel better.
Sorry man I don't controll the aliens.
If it were exactly 4 years, with 45 min of downtime, it would be 0.9999996550087% (including 1 leap day, 4 solid years)
now THAT, my friends, is reliable.
Lowmag.net
It's time for the Linux folks to step up to the challenge and prove that Linux is capable of achieving better results than those published in the Mindcraft report. After all, this is the real issue.
It's true. It makes sense. And Microsoft said it. A first!
Someone had better make a damn good job of tuning up Linux/Apache - this will get a lot of publicity if Linux gets trounced again...
According to the Mindcraft web site, the offer has been posted since the 7th May. And no-one has volunteered a week later?!
Well, 99% uptime still means that you have one hour and 41 minutes of down time every week! That sounds about right for NT. (My linux server was last rebooted 71 days ago, and that was because someone pulled the plug out of the wall).
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
Microsoft talks about the Linux community as if it's something monolithic like a competing company. I understand that that's probably the only way they know how to respond to something, and even if they did understand us it's still in their interest to denigrate linux I guess.
It's mostly interesting to see how threatened they apparently are by linux -- the OS that just won't die!
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
So Microsoft's prepared a big page with some truths, some nonsense and a few inaccuracies.
The major Linux vendors needs to run some public price/performance benchmarks of their own through various respectable organizations. I bet Pacific High Tech can do something useful with clusering, for example.
But overall, we should thank Microsoft for providing such valuable feedback. ;-)
Would it be cruel and unusual to throw in a few other OSes?
I for one would like to check out how BSD networking compares
Lets do one set of bench marks, using a variety of oses each tuned by some celeb/pit crew? let's see' what OSes run on INTEL? Perhaps it should even be made a annual event. (kind of like the olympics)
I read their configuration and I noticed something quite odd with their comparison ...
... .... ... it was generating the dynamic pages for each request ... its pretty cool that it was as fast as it was compared to a proxy server.
it looks like they configured the NT box as a cachine proxy server so it cached all the dynamic pages with a ttl set to infinity
so the dynamic pages and static pages were then cached
I didnt see them do the same for linux
http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/nts/news/msnw/ nt4vLinux.asp
NT: PC Magazine (e[commerce - SSL) - 250 Requests/sec (680% faster than Linux)
Linux: PC Magazine (e-commerce - SSL) - 1950 Requests/sec
Microsoft Maths in practice! :-) ... uhm ... So, I think this means we swap all those benchmark figures around ... This must be a clue!
Never mind being Slashdotted, that page on MS' web site killed my browser (Netscape 4.07).
If they really want Linux people to step up to the plate, they really ought to make their pages readable by browsers their audience are likely to be using!
--
Dunx
Converting caffeine into code since 1982
Why was this post moderated Down? This is not full of profanity, nor does the comment come out of left field. IMO I think someone must just have a axe to grind or a stick up thier A@#.
c'mon people save the -1 for the AC potty mouths, "first Post" comments
Mindcraft has added a "low-end" configuration (single processor, 256MB).
Wow, when you shift through all the FUD and M$ propaganda, this seems to be be the real jewel of the artical.
While I believe Linux will probably be out performed on the absurd high end server, we have always voiced its superiority on lower end equipment (well not low end, but not this M$ box).
But then again, this is M$ (regardless of ZD labs participation), and they could still pull something out of their A$%
Seriously, what's the worst that happens? Windows NT wins. Big deal. The hackers make it faster, we test again in six months and knock their shorts off.
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
I don't know if vi and TeX are the best examples of Open Source goodness.
I think more people would agree that the best examples of quality Open Source projects include (but are are not limited to) perl, Apache, and Python.
Mike
Accept the challenge on one condition -- that the test be redone in 6 months. Watch and see whether NT or Linux shows the most improvement.
Doubt MS will go for it tho. *Shrug*
Let's figure this out:
365 days in a year
24 hours in a day
8760 hours in a year
So 0.1% downtime of 8760 hours is 8.76 hours
Thats over a full days work of downtime!
Now, if a reboot takes about 3 minutes, thats a stellar 175 reboots per year!
Ok, I can see NT having 99.9% uptime.
I've got to disagree here.
1) I find it hard to believe that Microsoft was able to tailor their kernel (which was essentially rolled out in 4.0 beta 1, back in, oh, 1995?) for benchmarks tests that didn't even exist yet! (And if they did, we should be afraid; very afraid).
2) PC Week just got similar results in THEIR test. I'm just not enough of a conspiracy person to believe the world is against us.
3) In that PC Week test, Solaris 2.7 was found to be the strongest in several areas. Does that mean Sun has also been looking into the crystal ball to try and optimize to beat Linux?
The fact is, a number of the things that make Linux SO effective and practical to run on low-end equipment (I'm damn proud that my 386/33 has run Linux since 1994 and keeps on trucking -- albeit with a 2.0.36 kernel running on a Slackware 2.1 distribution) are the precise factors why Linux doesn't do as well in the enterprise environment.
And yes, given the choice between hiring another system admin, or spending an extra $2,000.00 for a quad-cpu NT box, many, many departments are going to go the NT route.
World Domination is still a ways off, I'm afraid.
The inflamatory wording of that page is shameless. Perhaps Microsoft should be reminded that their first attempt was such a hack job that it could only be filed as "incompetent" or "deceptive". My (as well as others) suggestion is to simply ignore them. They had their opportunity and they fumbled it. Hard. In fact it's safe to say they tried to juice the ball.
And to the MS droids that undoubtedly monitor this website, here is a message...
I talk to perhaps five or six dozen people a day, mostly because of your half-assed OS. Assuming we accept the posit of each negative comment getting passed to a few people more, your most recent FUD tactics have just earned you a few thousand black eyes from me alone because each time their box locks up, each time your memeory management horks what they've been working on all morning, my explanation will be simple:
Microsoft has tricked you into buying an incompetant Operating System. Expect this loss of data/time to happen again. Adding insult to injury, they made you pay for the patches. And there is an alternative...
Hugs and kisses,
Quux26
My
Quux26
www.crashspace.net
Despite my protest of the website and my call to ignore them, you've made some really, really good points.
.02
I don't think 'leadership' is one of them tho.
I agree that MS is banking on the Linux community shying away, but it's safe to say they're mistaken. I don't think there is a single Linux user that doubts for a second that Linux would beat MS' OS like a redheaded stepchild.
We need to make darned sure that this test is on the up-and-up tho. I don't trust this situation.
My
Quux26
My
Quux26
www.crashspace.net
If NT sucks so bad, how come the page hasn't gone down yet assuming everyone here has looked at it. And why is it that
Tell you what genius...
I'll give you $10. You can buy ten bucks worth of steel. I'll remove $10,000 to purchase some wood. Now let's build something and compare strength.
Ya know... I hate to be so vulgar and call someone an outright moron in such a forum, but...
My .02
Quux26
My
Quux26
www.crashspace.net
MS says the Linux community is slow to respond?c raft/index1.html?
Everyone remember the recent Salon article at
http://w ww.salonmagazine.com/tech/feature/1999/04/27/mind
Read it again to refresh your memory on how cooperative Mindcraft has been.
Couple of quotes:
"I've traded a couple of e-mails with Mindcraft people about this," says Alan Cox. "They seem solely intent on trying to re-create their existing pro-Microsoft results and hoping, by attaching some kind of 'Linux top mind' credibility to it, they can do more damage."
"The whole thing has been fairly painful," says Torvalds. "Mostly because these people don't actually let us know what the hell they are doing. We've been offering to be on site to see what the hell is going on, but so far they've refused."
Why dont they check how much WIN NT costed to develop and how much Linux costed and compare THAT!!!
What we should do is do a Microsoft on Microsoft. That is we run a completely different test on a different system and then we claim that we have fulfilled their requirements, just as they did on the Oracle Challenge. That will certainly be a laugh!
Two column A vs. B product comparisons are always misleading, because whoever puts together the table gets to pick the topics. Don't fall into the trap of trying to refute it point by point. Instead, "The Linux Community" (whoever that is) should decide what it thinks is important, not what Microsoft thinks is important, and focus on that.
I remember a particularly misleading Atari ad from the days of the unfortunate blood fued between the Amiga and the ST. A Commodore magazine spoofed it with an equally valid comparison "proving" that the Commodore 128 was superior to the ST.
Nevertheless, I haven't used Linux in years, but this "comparison" and other recent experiences with Microsoft make me want to contribute some of my own programming skills to improve Linux. Is there a site that tries to coordinate new development efforts that I can check to find something worthwhile to work on?
I haven't found any (at least, I couldn't when I was in that part of the market - I don't have any difficulty finding British English dictionaries and the like [which are actually the 'right' ones for Australian English, mostly] for open source stuff). The only good thing about MS software in that sense is that they actually allow you to change the date format around to the non-American way. There certainly isn't anything put out by Microsoft specifically for a market as small and insignificant as Australia (a mere three or four million users . . .).
But then, I'm sure there are plenty of people in America that think that Australia is exactly the same as America, culturally . . . which is as much of a joke as saying that we're just like the British.
himi
My very own DeCSS mirror.
Since Microsoft is so willing to test on a low end system, lets make this low end system actually do some work. Let it be a file server. Let it be a print server. Let it be a web server. Let it be a ftp server. Let it be a mail server. And let it be all these at the same time. Then figure out how much it would cost for this low end system to do all this on a 100 user network.
Now do this same test with NT. How much will this cost now to have the same capabilities?
Finally lets access this server from another location to administer it.
Hell, these low end systems are what we buy. And I work in the I.T. department for a medium size city (200,000). We don't own a single quad-processor server. We do have one dual-processor server with 512MB's of ram to run a n Oracle database we haven't implemented yet. I'm still trying to get it switched from NT to Linux.
We'll be switching from a mainframe accounting system to a ERP in the next two years and I guarantee you it won't be running on NT. For that we'll probably get a Sun system. So NT loses on the low end and high end. It may have the edge for middle-tier systems, but I'm sure the Linux community is more than capable of closing the gap in the next year or two.
Who would even dare to guarantee such a thing as a 99% uptime for NT? I wonder why the article never mentioned WHO guarantees it, that would be interesting...
Wow, so, Microsoft NT Server talks better to its own Windows clients than a free alternative. Nice one Microsoft.
;)
What a great bit of publicity, I think I'm going to delete all my ext2 partitions immediately and install NT now after reading this. Hmmm
I seriously almost got angry at the way MS treated this whole entire Business. Of course it does not really matter. Benchmarks are meaningless numbers to begin with. MS will try and make Linux look bad. Just another game high powered Money driven people can play very well with the 'Linux Community' (as if we are a corporation) In the end the better OS wins. It may take a while. And we may have to get MUCH better. But at a point it will become evident that Linux can beat the pants off of NT. It may or may not be able to now. In the future we all know what will be the end result. People will wake up from the stupor of the MS media poisoning and realize that Linux is not so bad. Hopefully that day comes soon.
You make an excellent point. The wording seems to characterize "The Linux Community" as a competing corporation
"The Linux Community, Inc." -- trademark it and reserve the domain now!
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
I would deny such empirical evidence because I have seen the evidence myself. I run both NT and Linux, and work with access servers of both types. The Linux box does more with less hardware. It stays up longer.
If NT were faster, I wouldn't need Microsoft telling me so. I'd have seen it myself. For at least some (I suspect most) of us Slashdotters, we don't like Linux because it's cool, hip, or countercultural. We like Linux because it works better than anything else for most of what we need to do.
Show me numbers telling me that NT outperforms Linux in reliability or speed, under all but pathological cases (and the Mindcraft test is pathological--perverted beyond any real-world applicability), and I will deny them. Unlike a fundamentalist, I do not deny them by faith. Like a true hacker, I deny them by experience.
All the uptime figures in the world don't change the fact that I have to reboot my NT machine every week while my Linux box stays up until the chips blow. All the feature set listings don't change the fact that I can easily administer my Linux machine over a 28.8 modem, saving me an hour in driving time. All the performance numbers don't change the fact that my sizeable network now relies on a base Pentium with Red Hat as the augmented FTP server, where a P2/300 would be minimal for a similar NT solution.
When statistics deny reality, I will deny statistics over reality any day. When NT stays up and does its job quickly, I will be duly impressed. I won't need a page of figures to tell me, though; just an upgrade.
--The basis of all love is respect
So NT beats linux on a particual hardware config (4 CPUS, 4 ethernet cards) in a particular test (static web and SMB file serving). I am sure MS went to great lengths cramming support for this down in the NT kernel so they could get those results... but at what expense? Just like a dragster, they now have a machine that goes fast in a particular setting... but sucks even more for general use.
Listen. We could no doubt hack the Linux kernel to do the same tricks as NT, do them better, and trounce all comers in these benchmarks... but why!? People don't buy servers to win benchnarks, they buy them to do real work. We need to cut through the FUD and remind everyone of that. We should continue to work on improving linux performance (SMP does need work), but not at the expense of flexibility or stability. We need to counter these slanted benchmarks with our own tests that more closely appoximate the real world demands placed on an enterprise server. This is where Linux mops the floor with NT.
Thad
The Bolachek Journals
The first 'beta' release of NT came out in October 1992. The first commercial release (curiously version numbered '3.1') came out in 1993. When did the Linux 1.0 kernel come out?
I 'm using internet exploder 3 on a University box.......the whole thing hung the moment i left Slashdot!
"I hate Cthulhu, Cthulhu hates me, I kill his cultists, He eats worlds for tea"
than Linus himself? I think it would be wonderful to have Bill on one side, and Linus on the other.
Then again, it does sound a bit like a celebrity deathmatch.
Doesn't this remind you of one of those Halloween documents?
;)
Halloween IV: When Software Things Were Rotten
I had assumed it was just a joke, not a real 'leak'. Clearly I was wrong.
We use GNU/SunOS.
The one before "longer"? That means what follows is implicitly a non-restricting "which" clause. 1992 was before 1993. Therefore the original poster was correct, at least on that point. Feel free to disagree with the rest of his post. Linux in 1992 did not have nearly the same amount of momentum behind it as Microsoft was putting behind NT, so the actual quantity of years is not a good metric. Linux will certainly be surpassing NT any moment now, if it has not done so already.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
While I still don't think the Mindcraft testing was unbiased or accurate, I do think there is some validity to some of MS's claims about NT.
If you haven't read the PC Week NOS feature yet, run, don't walk there now and read it.
OK, Rob. I've seen a lot of multiple posts lately. This is at least the 3rd time I've seen this one.
How about when you are generating the Post Comment box, you embed an id code of some sort in it. If it gets posted twice, slash either ignores the second post or overwrites the first one.
It paused for a loooong time and I actually killed the window a couple of times before I decided to just let it ride. After hanging on the first 30K about three times it finally spat the whole page out real fast. This on a T1 connection so it wasn't a bandwidth thing...
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Check through the MS part about accessibility and internationalization. See this -> "Why don't we address the int'l and accessibility point?" -
/. I'm pretty sure I know where they got that data point!
LOL! Looks to me like someone made a comment or edit and it didn't get yanked before it hit the WEB! Considering that the int'l part was recently discussed on
Still, I hope Linux wins or at least makes a good showing.
I'm new to Linux and still learning (damn RH6 won't recognize my NIC and RH 5.2 did!)but if some of what MS said is true then it would seem they've helped identify areas that need work. The beauty of this is that those points will get worked out far faster Open Source then they would in the closed offices of Microsoft. A nice GUI for admin and Kernel compiling would sure help me out - and no Xconfig isn't what I mean! I only wish I had the programming skills required to help...
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Hey,
- ---------------
The way to beat this is to fight it properly.
1. Show how the Microsoft benchmarks are flawed from a practicality standpoint. Find a listing somewhere of a "common" piece of hardware (like, say, the best selling Dell or IBM server that ships with NT.) I like the $ limits on hardware that someone else proposed. Slap Linux and NT on the same hardware for a $2,000, $5,000, $10,000, and $50,000 server setup. Set up a deal with ZDNet before testing that all results of the test are free to the public and open source. No backroom tweaking crap. Do it all in the open with virgin systems.
2. Show how the premise of Microsoft's assertions are flawed. Get a consortium of people (Linus, Perens, Raymond, etc.) to come forward and say that Linux is a free community, not a corporation or entity. There is no entity to "challenge" Microsoft. Get this sent out and released as an open letter. If possible, get ZDNet and others to post the open letter in their various magazines.
3. Use Microsoft's own tests against them. You don't need to actually challenge their numbers. They essentially proved that Linux is a good, viable piece of software that maybe isn't as fast. If Linux was crap, it wouldn't have run in the first place. Taunt Microsoft. Say, hey a company with billions of dollars in cash and hundreds, even thousands of developers can only do twice as good as a bunch of disorganized hackers who code in their free time. Say, "sure, if your application needs to serve 3,000 requests a second, go ahead and get NT. For everything else, Linux will do!"
Now, how to get the word out? Well, letters to the editors, open letters from the big wigs, etc. Get a slogan... "Linux, it's fast enough."
---------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------
In the wonderful world of cats, Mr. Fus
Ok, I have looked over the list and barring a few points here or there, generally what they say is true.
I think this should be taken as a challenge.
This list here points out what MS thinks as Linux's weaknesses with the OS when compared to NT. If the OSS community erases most or all of these weaknesses, then we will have won. This list is a lot of what Corporate America (which usually runs the company, not the techs) wants when they look to purchase a system. If we can provide that to them, then they will switch.
Everyone here should consider this the wishlist. Look to trouncing the numbers that they say NT puts up. Find ways to overcome the weaknesses. When we do, and we will, Microsoft will have nothing to say
Competition is good. We should thank them for an eye opening to what is wrong with the system that we love. We like to win and they have set the standards on which we can.
RB
Yes, but crappy code, or a poorly-written application should not take the OS down with it.
:) Of course.
...in the Windows world, there are vast constellations of officially undocumented interfaces & system calls...
;)
It won't. The app will die, the OS lives. A poorly written NIC or graphics card driver _can_ kill NT because they run inside ring 0.
Sez you. A divide-by-zero error in a s/w application brought a US warship to a dead stop.
And this relates to NT how? Oh, right, the app was running on NT... therefore it's NT's fault the app was coded by a gerbil
The only _officially_ undocument calls in NT are executive functions in the NT Kernel. Nearly all of these are exported as Win32 API functions and so don't need to be documented as kernel calls.
On the other hand, don't get me started about _unofficially_ undocumented calls...
Cheers
Alastair
-- "I believe the human being and the fish can coexist peacefully." - George W. Bush, 29 September 2000
Here's a common scenario that I face every year. I'm visiting San Francisco and I want to recompile, install, and configure my web server in Boston. I can do this very easily in Linux with telnet. How would I do it with NT?
You're using Apache or a similar open-source web server with gcc, right? Then you can do exactly the same thing on NT.
Use ORL's GPLed VNC remote-control app to gain remote access to your NT box, log in, hack the Apache Win32 code, recompile with gcc, and you're done. No worries.
Cheers
Alastair
-- "I believe the human being and the fish can coexist peacefully." - George W. Bush, 29 September 2000
"Even though their requests have been met, the Linux community has not officially accepted Mindcraft's offer."
I'm curious...how does a community of hundreds of thousands of people "officially" accept a challange? It seems MS knows how to attack a copeting organization, but they have no clue how to deal with a community.
Certianly bashing the Linux community isn't going to help, becuase these are *users* being bashed. How can you hope to win over users by attacking them?
A sales visit from a Microsoft rep must be interesting. "I see you have a Linux box. You must be a moron. I'll condescend to sell you this NT box instead, even though you will probably have to put an X here on the contract, as you clearly must be an illiterate. Please don't drool on my Armani shoes while you're signing..."
Does anyone know what kind of servers moviefone.com is running(what OS)?
I read somewhere that they increased their capacity by 10 times for the Star Wars ticket sales. I tried off and on for the last 24 hours to connect and have still been unseccessful.
If they are NT, could a Linux/Unix server take this load any better?
Let M$ beat Linux.
It doesn't change the fact that Linux is a freely available worldwide effort.
It's helping bridge the gap between the information rich and the information poor.
We're not just thinking about lining our wallets!
"How much truth can advertising buy?" - iNsuRge - AK47
I am pretty sure that Microsoft will win. That aside, why should the test be done on some rubbishy machine and not a dual or a quad ?
Has the linux commmunity forgotten that just MAYBE people want power now not 486s ?
Linux can and will beat microsoft only with some might ( much more of it ) coming in the shape of money and less cheating by microsoft.
Hey, wait a minute. MS BASIC was truly a great piece of software. One time I got the syntax of the RENAME command reversed, and renamed every file on my hard disk to the same name (and I think it was *.*). Let's see you do that with Linux.
M$FT has been anti-standard from the beginning (e.g. they got the "/" backwards).
As for Linux vs Windows on the desktop - I just did "uptime" on my linux machine: it's been up for 25 days. I think we had a power outage then. I just rebooted my Win95 machine for the second time this morning ("reboot early and often" is my motto for any WinXX machine). And, BTW, I do most of my work on the Linux box, leaving the Sin95 box for menial tasks like internal email.
There is a bullet point in the article indicating that this was a document passed around (obviously). The below was somehow left in
Why don't we address the int'l and accessibility point?
under the section
Integration of system services
and applications to reduce
complexity and management
costs
interesting.....
Windows NT has definately changed since it's release. Service Pack 4 brought many core operating system changes. Not as much as a complete kernel change by any stretch of the imagination, but saying it hasn't changed much is a false statement.
ALG
The fact is this response from Microsoft is exactly what was asked for by Eric Raymond. Read back on Slashdot and you'll find (in the article titled "ESR and the MindCraft Fiasco") that not a single thing was said about the benchmark itself, only griping that the test configuration suite did not give Linux a fair chance against NT and so all results should be disregarded.
Now you have it - Microsoft has responded with the fairest of terms for this benchmark: Configure a RH Linux box any way you want with anything that was available on that date and they say NT will still beat the socks off Linux.
You had your chance to say that the benchmark was not relavent, to say that it wasn't real world, but all you came up with was that the Linux box wasn't given a fair go. Now you have to put your money where your mouth is, and from the comments in this group it seems no one has the guts to do it.
As stated elsewhere, you have to go through with it and admit that NT scales better than Linux for Web and SMB file sharing. Microsoft has won this round hands down and you all have to choke down that bitter pill and come back next time a little more battle hardened. The fact is that Microsoft plays the PR game better than any other organisation in town so you will have to pull finger out if you want to beat them.
Face it - you asked for this (well, ESR did anyway). Now you've got it don't cry that it isn't fair. Do the benchmark or be branded as cowards.
John Wiltshire (Rabid NT advocate)
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Cool - name calling. Just what I need to start my Sunday. ;-)
The 'source' you are looking for is on the Mindcraft web site - they documented all their tests quite well which is what caused all the problems a few weeks back when the Linux users looked at the tests and claimed that they weren't fair because the Linux machine wasn't configured properly. Well, now Mindcraft offers the chance for Linux users to configure the machines properly and rerun the tests and what do you know - none of them are game to put their money where their mouths are.
If you are going to call someone a pansy, remember the old adage about people in glass houses...
John Wiltshire
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Even if Linus gave up, there'd be a whole gang of people willing to take over his position.
Linux cannot loose, yet it does have the capacity to win.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
I'd like to see Zeus web server running on Linux in this test.
Zeus doesn't rock, it shakes continents. Go to www.zeus.co.uk and see for yerself.
Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
Most people missed the significance of IBM's announcement last month when they introduced a naked laptop. This was a direct assault on Microsoft's 100% monopoly market: the laptop. Do not expect Microsoft to go quietly into the night. They will fight back with everything they have to protect themselves.
What will they do next? Reread the Halloween Paper. It details some of Microsoft's options. Don't be surprised if they file a lawsuit against some Open Source developers.
I feel like picking a fight with everyone who thinks they are right. - Rainmakers
Microsoft really isn't that bad, but MAN are they sore loosers. I think that they've realized that Linux is a threat to their business...and whant the banchmarks to keep the comercial developers. Games are coming to linux, and soon 'real world' apps such a Lotus Notes and AutoCAD will be linux apps (cause even linux betas don't crash half as much a windows final releases so, they just segfault.)
I say this should be a bet...If MS looses, they have to integrate an Xserver to Windows (so if you're at uncle bob's over in alaska and he runs Windows, you can always login to your server and play quake3,) and release a driver interpreter so Linux users can properly use their nifty new hardware without waiting a couple of months for some beta drivers.
If linux looses, then...well I don't know what bill gates would want? THE WHOLE FREAKING THING IS FREE!!! hmmm...
Anyone who has ever taken a stats course knows that statistical figures are 100% unreliable.
Microsoft has obviously spent alot of time working this so that they will win! I was singly impressed by the way they admitted to providing an unfair testing environment...and then turned around to start giving points to why NT is still better.
Linux works, and it's cheap. Most people don't care about quad CPU fridges...they arn't even an elegant solution to high load websites due to I/O bottlenecks. Far better to run a small cluster of servers mirroring each other.
Pardon the rambling
James
1) According to the page (put up Yesterday (12th)) The Linux community have been slow to respond. Jeez guys, it was only made known yesterday. 2) MS/Mindcraft definition of a "low-end system" 1 processor / 256 Mb of memory ????? And what will that processor be, pray tell ? Lets see NT run on a DX/2-66 with 16Mb. Now *that's* a low-end machine. A.
-- Twelve|71
Microsoft has invested how much into NT? I have no Idea but I bet its enough to feed an entire 3rd world country. How much has been spent on Linux? Imagine what linux would be with that amount of financing? Want to put Linux and NT on a fair playing field throw the Linux community a few million. Even if NT could beat Linux in benchmarking it couldn't even compete with the community that Linux has. How many diehard NT admins do you know that truly LOVE there OS?
I've got quite a few thoughts on the Microsoft challenge. I don't have the technical background (yet) to determine whether particular configuration tweaks are fair or not, but I didn't get a degree in philosophy for nothing. I'm going to try to map out the challenge for strengths and weaknesses of claims and arguments Microsoft makes.
In the first paragraph labeled "The Mindcraft Report", the author writes that PC Week and PC Magazine tests have corroborated Mindcraft's findings. If true, this is significant because it has been claimed that Mindcraft's study (and its study alone) contradicted prior studies. To show it's true, however, these questions (at least) must be answered:
1) PC Week and PC Magazine tests must be replicating equivalent conditions (per each other and Mindcraft) to be said to "corroborate" the original study.
2) Each set of tests must be "fair"; that is, they must not suffer from the same kinds of fatal flaws Mindcraft is accused of incorporating in their methodology.
Furthermore, even if the two studies check out with the two above conditions, that alone does not validate the original study. The original methodological concerns first raised must be satisfied (as they presumably will be should this now-hyped "open benchmark" test take place.) In short, the two new sets of tests do NOT "prove" the first Mindcraft study; at best, they provide a bootstrap to give further credibility to a presumably pro-Microsoft (in terms of winning) verdict in the possible future Mindcraft open benchmark.
Moving on, the Microsoft paper commits a subtle slur against the Linux community in intimating that the Linux experts are "dragging their feet" in responding to Mindcraft's new challenge (implied to be a quick, fair response.) Three things here: (1) Mindcraft submitted its original report on April 13. The open benchmark challenge was first issued May 4 and revised May 7. Given that the second "release" is the one that might be taken seriously, it's now been one week since that challenge went out after it took 3 weeks after the initial report to issue it. The "slow-to-respond" charge doesn't seem to take this proportionality into account. (2) Mindcraft is a single company, and this is work-related; they can do this "on-the-clock", as it were. Linux community experts are dispersed worldwide and by-and-large have jobs that demand their time and effort apart from their Linux roles. It's a major effort to collect all these people in one place for a conference planned months ahead, let alone a benchmark test in four weeks or so. (3) This charge is deliberately made because there is no way to decisively refute it. All it takes is one person answering late or refusing to participate, and one can paint the "community" as being recalcitrant. This is a barbed challenge, make no mistake.
Now the "track record": take it one point at a time. The TPC-C part is, frankly, very weak; I think it was put there in the hopes nobody would check it. The actual study primarily measures two criteria: throughput and throughput/cost of system (as determined by an entire, integrated system.) In the link Microsoft provides, the TOP throughput number is 24328. However, the _10th_ best in pure throughput has a score of 48793, just over twice as much as the "top" MS solution! (Number 1, by the way, is a Sun Starfire system with a throughput number of 115,395!!) By and large, the throughput list is comprised of high-end UNIX flavors whose price tag keeps them off the lists Microsoft so proudly displays.
In short, Microsoft's accomplishment here boils down to being the best cut-rate solution running on PC hardware there is. And the competition here is....? This is the whole point of the DOJ trial; MS just narrowed the field down until it hit its monopoly chip and then paraded the results. It is true that Linux vendors have yet to submit these kinds of benchmarks. Of course, what was the state of Linux vendors one year ago (how many, how successful, etc.)? I submit that the up-and-coming players today have been too busy trying to take the market by storm to worry overmuch about benchmarks.
As per the SPECweb: MS makes the claim that they have the "best dual and quad processor results." Well, according to the single page they link to, they must mean that IIS5.0 on a HP Netserver 8000 beats Apache & IBM on HP Netfinity 5500/7000 for 2 and 4 processors. IIS4.0 doesn't do all that well, and HP 9000 with Zeus absolutely beats up on MS's results. The "best" claim is optimistic and near-sighted at best. Again, Linux isn't in this--yet--and I'd suggest the people to talk to are the HPs, the IBMs, and the Suns represented in this particular benchmark. (Again, Linux is NOT one company!! Actually, in light of this fact, the claim "Linux has yet to post SPECWeb results" is a little bizarre.)
Re SAP: again, SAP has but recently made a Linux decision. (This entire process, by the by, is somewhat akin to the local bigwig claiming the new kid in town doesn't deserve respect because the old families haven't met him yet. The answer is both cases is, "Give it time.") As per the technical SAP evaluation (if you can find it), I'm punting on that one. If you're an expert, think of critiquing this claim as a module to plug into my larger argument.
THE REST: I'm about to beg off because I've got other things pressing. However, I've got some remarks that I think will cover most of the remaining claims that MS makes. First of all, the NetBench and WebBench tests use results purely from the Mindcraft, PC Week, and PC Magazine tests. My above comments should be kept in mind when evaluating these numbers; furthermore, these other two studies are brand new. I think it is not at all a coincidence that the studies and this gauntlet are so close together. It doesn't quite smack of collusion, but it does suggest that the marketing folks over at Microsoft instigated this document to capitalize on the prima facie positive results. By the time solid critiques of these two studies (coming out on the same day, no less) can be made, the marketing machine will probably have moved on. This doesn't imply that the two new studies are flawed; I simply suggest that whether they're flawed or not won't ultimately matter in terms of that new god of mass media, "perception."
The "Performance" section has three main flaws: (1) The points often don't match up against one another, (2) The lack of a centralized, bureaucratic command policy is always presented as a negative with a corresponding (false) positive always placed on integration and command decisions, and (3) many of the claims are either false or only true in the most trivial sense (see the security section, for example.)
To conclude, a shrinkwrap blurb does not an argument make. Of the "track record", two sections are really meaningless, a third is likely so, and two others need to be evaluated before proper judgment can be passed. Of the "performance" criteria, almost everything is a comparision of one paradigm element to another (and as such aren't suitable for comparision).
To response to Microsoft's "challenge", I think that the PC Week and PC Magazine tests need to be scrutinized. I think the Mindcraft test in June _might_ be a good response (although almighty tough to win in terms of PR), but it is VITAL to establish the significance of the test BEFORE it happens. I think it is a mistake to have a "wait-and-see" attitude; that is, it would be foolhardy to wait until you've "won" or "lost" before you say the test is meaningful or not. Finally, there is one part of the challenge that I think MUST be taken up: the response to MS' criteria for performance. That's an attempt to define the battlefield and absolutely MUST be countered.
Haste makes waste when it comes to the first half; knee-jerk reactions to benchmarks studies or rushes to establish benchmarks (like the first three tests they cite) for the sake of having your hat in the ring are ultimately detrimental to my mind. But when it comes to the second half, "he who hesitates is lost." Think of it in terms of warfare. Microsoft is a cadre of armor-clad knights, the heavy infantry of medieval times. Linux advocates are hill warriors (the Scots, say). Hill fighters don't work well on plains, and strong horses are useless going up mountains. Where are we going to fight the battle?
To do well, we must fight in the hills. Integration? Centralized control? No, no, no. Choice. Flexibility. Education. Openness. This is how we establish where the battle is fought and how ultimately the challenge is met and surpassed.
I really know very little about Linux, I'm really just getting started with it. But I know enough about Microsoft to believe everyone when they say Linux is faster than NT. I also think MS wouldn't have posted that page unless they thought they would somehow come out on top. I honestly don't think they are expecting the Linux community to answer this challenge. Microsoft undoubtably thinks that because there is no clear leadership to the Linux community, it will be impossible for it to elect techies to answer the challenge. So far, it doesn't look like it will.
Reading these first few comments I've seen a lot of counter-challenge proposals, but only a few nominations for the super techie to actually accept the challenge. And once that person is picked, how can we truly say that they represent an entity as large and abstract as "The Linux Communtiy?"
Slashdot poll perhaps? =)
The good thing about all this, is we all have a choice.
Personally, I am not anti MS or WinNT. The other good thing is bringing the shortcomings of both OS's to light. The only result(hopefully) is that both sides respond to critisism by making their respective OS's even better. I get the feeling that's what is happening with Linux, not so sure about MS.
Linux, because it is free or low cost can answer critisisms with "okay, we'll fix it". At the moment Linux doesn't have to justify a corporation spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to license their software.
MS would get into deep trouble admiting they needed to fix things, AND charge you lots of money while they're doing it. So, instead of honest and open discussions about WinNT shortcomings, they use FUD to preserve their revenue streams. Remember (if Alex St. John is to be believed) MS is no longer run by Techies, but by "professional" managers trying to increase the value of their stock options.
M$ has an advantage here that linux can never overcome. CIFS is anything but common. The "standard" is a Microsoft brainchild. Running Samba on linux is an unfair test. The semantics of SMB match those of a windows environment, and do not align at all with UNIX filesystems.
I would like to see NFS performance benchmarked. As much as can be said, NFS is the native network file system for Linux. I'd like to see how NT stacks up, regardless of hardware, when being pounded on by a network of Linux boxen.
I would like to see Linux based web clients. Maybe a million win95 machines can open a ton of connections to a web server. But what about a few clients with highly optimized stacks that can saturate an OC-12 or GigE on the server?
Maybe Linux does not play as well in the windows world as windows does. (I actually think it will win... How embarrasing, to be beaten at your own game!) But it is king in its own domain, where NT can barely operate.
I work for UUNET Infosec. There is another concern here. My Linux based web server will still be here tomorrow, with MY content on it. And the day after, regardless of who does what to it.
NT, IIS, and CIFS are a block of swiss cheese. There are so many holes, so many ways in.
Perhaps they should run a set of tests against a web server while it is under DoS (denial of service) attack, run some real world traffic across the link while the test is running. Benchmarks are pretty useless if the machine does not survive the test....
Eric Brandwine
An engineer is a person who solves a problem you did not know you had in a way that you do not u
I find the Slash/Dot site to be attractive, informative and conducive to feedback: something that is lacking on the Microsoft/Mindset pages (spelling error deliberate).
I am willing to bet that SlashDot is not using a $100,000 server and their hits/$ ratio blows any NT4 installation away.
Perhaps a little perspective is required.
Just one guys opinion!
Brian
I Agree:
If Microsoft wants the top 1% of the websites, let them have it, if they really can do it!
I can't count the number of times I have not been able to view one of the heavily loaded MS sites or been unable to download something from their subsiduary download sites because NT was having a breakdown!
NT4 is a total pig without a massive hardware suite to support it and is subject to massive hemoraging when run on systems that Linux is more than happy with.
And, I do not conceed for a moment that Linux could not service those sites using mutliple boxen AND still come out with a better performance/$ ratio.
Just one guys opinion.
Best regards,
Brian
Agreed:
Even considering a Peak Traffic to Quiet ratio of 60 to 1 (not unreasonable), we are still looking at a hit rate of over 5 million/day.
What site does that???
I know that Microsoft's own sites go down on a regular basis and their FTP sites are subject to amazing un-grace when heavily loaded (my favorite is a long slow download that peter's out and stops just before the end - a Microsoft Feature I bet).
Just one guys opinion.
Best regards,
SubDude
Well, there is Reality and then there is MACophile Reality.
Totally Agree:
In the Real World on Real World equipment, NT4 is a Real Pig!
Dollar for Dollarn NT4 performs very poorly compared to Linux/xBSD Real World platforms.
Look how often HotMail crashes and burns! Look how often Microsoft's own sites crash & burn. Look how often Microsoft's FTP sites grind to a halt! The fact they are overloaded is beside the point!
NT4 sucks under pressure in Real World conditions!
Microsoft shouldn't be throwing any rocks!
Best regards,
Brian
Their are? (sic)
NT4 is less intuitive than Linux.
NT4 requires a very expensive learning curve.
NT4 can't support most Linux utilities.
NT4 doesn't support most hardware.
NT4 certainly doesn't gurantee uptime!
NT4 nobody to blame (but yourself) when it doesn't work!
NT4 runs very poorly with different apps.
And thanks to the MindSet (AKA Microsoft) report, we now know how scared Bill is of Linux! He is soiling his drawers!
Prove ME wrong!
Hi Everyone:
I skimmed the Mindcraft report and the first thing I saw was a highly optimized hardware package specifically selected to favour Microsoft.
I have run the identical Microsoft software package on a client's P200 with 64MBytes of memory and an 6.4 Gigabyte IDE HD and it was a pig. The software was replaced by Slackware 3.6 with a 2.0.35 kernel and Apache and it runs
like a champ. That box NEVER sees the kind of throughput that is contemplated by the Mindcraft/Microsoft test but most applications don't.
If you can consider that most small commercial webhosting sites won't be seeing 1000 hits an hour, let alone ~3800 request per second.
I have run into overworked and underpowered NT4 sites and it is pathetic because they are so ungraceful under pressure.
Sure, it is easy with an unlimited hardware budget to get NT4 to run but that is not the real world!
The real world is $5,000-$10,000
hardware/software/consultant budgets running on 10Mb/s Ethernet connections. Linux and Apache are about the real world, not the fantasy world concocted by Mindcraft/Microsoft and their team of engineers working behind closed doors.
I suggest to you that with hardware/software budget Mindcraft/Microsoft used and a free hand given to Linux/Apache techs would result in a faster, more reliable, more graceful solution (four distinct servers perhaps).
Here is my challenge Microsoft/Mindcraft:
Who can build the best HTTP server (hardware & software) with a real budget of $5,000US hardware/software/consultant fees total!
Just one guy's opinion.
SubDude
Did any one notice on the last row of the table they state that:
PC Magazine (e[commerce - SSL) - 250 Requests/sec (680% faster than Linux)
But on the linux side:
PC Magazine (e-commerce - SSL) - 1950 Requests/sec
Wait a sec here?????????????
... you gotta answer these sorts of challenges.
The very fact that Microsoft can organize a position paper like this is important to the sort of folks who buy quad Xeons. If there's nobody home to answer this sort of stuff from the Linux side, that's a decision-maker right there.
MS is interested in folks with business cases that prove they can afford to buy hotter servers than P200s. Anything below $5K or so is very much a low-end box to someone planning a dollar-generating project... so their choice of playing field seems quite reasonable to me.
Bottom line: sure, it's Microsoft's bat and ball, but you've got to accept that if you want to play their game. If you don't wanna play, that's fine too... but ripping MS on slashdot is really a low-class way to decline the offer.
"Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer." - Linux Advocac
One thing that strikes me when I see the NT vs Linux FUD on Micro$oft's site is the following: I've been using NT 4.0 for a while now at the office, and I've installed only a few minor upgrades to the OS (Micro$oft Service Packs). So basically, NT 4.0 (server or otherwise) has stayed pretty much the same since it came out a while back.
However, this is not the case with Linux. I installed a RH 5.0 box about six months ago, and within those six months, I've upgraded kernels twice, up to 2.2.1, with noticeable results. This is a critical difference between the proprietary/commercial model and the open source model. The evolution isn't the same. When Micro$oft finally releases Windows 2000, it's evolutionary curve will be the same as NT 4.0: a few service packs, and possibly some patches for other stuff, but generally, Micro$oft OS's stop evolving as soon as they are born. Linux evolves continuously, and because of this, has a much easier time dealing with all the so-called 'issues' Micro$oft claims are crippling it.
You're obviously either misinformed or a Micro$oft lackey like my brother. Microsoft constructed a set of benchmarks, their only goal being that the benchmarks show NT outperforming Linux. Each OS has strong and weak points, but what Mindcraft and MS did was build a series of benchmarks that a well-tuned NT machine handles really well compared to a vanilla Linux installation.
I don't understand your opinion about the kernel... what do you mean, stuck everything in the kernel to get this performance? What are you talking about?
- The Mindcraft benchmark, while flawed, did show real performance problems in Apache on Linux.
- The worst performance problem was probably fixed by 2.2.7.
- Another performance problem is scheduler overhead (the current design has trouble handling 200 running processes). A fix is in the works.
- Dean Gaudet thinks mod_mmap_static should be able to give a significant performance boost.
- Apache 1.x's process-per-client architecture probably prevents it from achieving the highest possible performance on static files.
The proper response to the Mindcraft challenge is to accept, but only after fixing the bottlenecks in the Apache/Linux combination that prevent it from achieving good SPECWeb96 scores. We shouldn't aim to beat IIS on NT; instead, we should aim to make Apache on Linux as good as it can possibly be. After all, SWS on Solaris beats IIS on NT on the same hardware; no need to set our sights too lowSee http://www.kegel.com/mindcraft_redux.html for support for the views stipulated above and continuing updates on the linux kernel team's response to the Mindcraft challenge.
Some points they made and my responses to them (MS: for things in the windows column, Linux: for stuff in that column):
MS: "GUI-based tools" It seems having a powerful,flexible command line interface is a weakness. Hmm.. That's news to me.
and along the same line:
MS: "Wizards to simplify complicated tasks" and complicate simple tasks...
MS: Binary backwards compatability, but at what cost? Some would consider that a weakness in Windows, as it requires large quantities of legacy 16bit code.
another similarity:
MS: "Extensive internal and external beta testing to ensure binary compatibility across services and applications" Except when you change memory allocation routines between SP3 and SP4, causing many programs to cease to function... (This should also be in the "binary compatability" section)
MS: 99.9% uptime guarantee. Lets see, how many Linux boxen have I seen stay up for months/years on end, only requiring a reboot because of power failure or hardware/kernel upgrades? Even on cheap 486 parts. Sounds reliable to me...
MS: Support for the latest hardware. It helps if hardware vendors like you and write drivers for you or at least give you the technical info you need to write them yourself...
MS: "160k MSCE's". Um, OK. I work with a guy that is Microsoft Certified and let me just say that if he can get it, anybody can.
MS: Scriptable administration on NT? And Linux has no scripting capabilities? I thought we had sh/csh/ksh, perl, python, tcl/tk, and numerous other script languages that can be used to administer Linux boxen...
MS: "OS services and applications designed to integrated and work together" besides the incorrect grammar, it helps if you write the OS and distribute large quantities of software for it yourself. Nobody can do a better job of integrating with your software than you can.
MS: "Clear longterm roadmap based on a customer focused vision". My vision isn't focused on having to buy a new computer when Windows 2000 comes out because my brand new 333mhz box isn't fast enough...
Linux:"No application framework for developing distributed or Web-based applications" Hmm, Apache, PHP3, PERL, python. Seems you could make quite a few nice web based applications from those...
MS: "End users forced to integrate (i.e., Web server, database, application authentication)" I look at it more like, "Linux users NOT forced to use the entire pre-packaged 'world domination' software kit. I run Apache because I chose it, not because it came with my operating system...
Took a while to write this, so if someone else said the same thing while I typed, oh well... =)
Yes this is troo.. billy's been a bad boy. He's not a computer nerd at all but a good business man. Whereas Linus is a troo paragon of Unix nerd legend. :P As my friends say.. Linux is the OS deserving of the exclamation "yeeee!!".
At least Linus coded the original Linux and still develops for it.
lynx read it fine. Upgrade your browser to lynx :-)
But wait till you tell W3C's HTML validating service to read the page; it spews out 82 syntax errors. Apparently, Microsoft doesn't even know how the "ALT" attribute works.