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PCMag's PCTech Reviews Linux Kernel 2.2
Gryphon writes "PC Magazine has published a pretty level-headed 8-page review of the Linux 2.2 kernel. Mostly a features review, compared to Windows NT. I think this is pretty significant, considering a lot of Windows users (including me in years now past) read that magazine! "
Please wake me up, I must be dreaming that my PnP sound and network cards configure themselves...
;-) ]
:-P ) :-) ) I've rebooted it other times, mainly to play with the Hurd, but unless I'm playing with things marked "do not install unless you really really want to risk your stability" it..just..never..dies.
[ On filesystems: The reason it was stressed, I suspect, is simply that Linux supports more. Lots more. Lots, lots more. NT supports, what, FAT16 and NTFS? I believe I found a Win95 program to read ext2 partitions but that hardly qualifies as 'support' -- in particular, I can't mount them as proper filesystems. A quick scan of my kernel config shows 13 possible foreign filesystems, if I compress all the offerings from Microsoft into one entry. And I'm not even counting the network filesystems. AFAIK NT only supports NCP and SMB natively. If you want to include 3rd party drivers you should also include all the 3rd party kernel drivers floating around, which include a number of versioning and journaling filesystems...I think at least one of them compiles
AFAIK the Linux API does not change for 64-bit processors (correct me if I'm wrong); I consider it to be a sad comment that Microsoft even has to publish new interface specifications. (I guess hardcoding variable sizes into their type names caught up with them?) Most well-written code should just need a recompile. (now that I've said that, I'm sure that all my code will fail on a 64-bit arch
I'm rather confused about the occasional assertions that NT is more stable than Linux. 'as stable' I can see. But the only time I had to reboot Linux lately was when the filesystem code freaked because of physical damage to a floppy. (I think this is inexcusable personally, just so you know
Daniel
Gee, that isn't a very wide range. How about "Palm pilots to clustered supercomputers"
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Your honor is perfectly understandishable.
An article like that might not seem like much today, 2 years later, but back then that was great press coverage. It's nice to see he's still on the Linux bandwagon.
Not bad... I only caught a few technical inaccuracies.
NTFS support is read only.
2.2 includes an experimental read/write NTFS driver.
DSL and cable modems are mostly unsupported.
Every DSL or cable modem I've ever seen has been an Ethernet device, and Linux works fine with them. If they're talking about phone/cable company support for Linux, that may be another story, but that's a PHB issue, not a technical problem.
They state that SMB is a networking protocol, like IPX, rather than a network filesystem, like NFS.
They missed a couple of ports and a couple of filesystems, but, hell, I can never remember all of them, either...
And they didn't include Slackware in the list of distributions.
I believe the term you're looking for is "geek".
Heehee... I run RC5 on all of my boxen, too... the 386-16 gets about 5000 keys/s. That's about 1 2^28 block a day...
My Celeron, meanwhile, will rip through a 2^28 block in five minutes...
I personally have Linux running on four different 386es.
There's eddi, a 386SX-25 with 4M of RAM and an 80M disk, which is my laptop. Not a blazing fast machine, but she was cheap ($20), she's portable, and she's sufficient for carrying work around with me. You don't need a lot of space or processing power for writing code, or even for compiling small projects. She's currently running 1.2.13, because she hasn't got enough disk space to compile a 2.0 kernel.
There's deliah, a 386SX-16 with 8M of RAM and no disk. She boots a 2.2.5 kernel off a floppy disk, then configures her ethernet and mounts her filesystem using BOOTP and NFS. I use her as a not-entirely-dumb-but-not-very-smart terminal for my faster machines.
There's gabrielle, a 386DX-40 with 20M of RAM, a 120M disk, and a 1.0G disk. She runs X, and I use her as an X terminal. Mostly I run stuff on other machines with the display redirected, because she hasn't got enough horsepower to handle X and, say, Netscape at the same time. I also use her as my guinea-pig machine. Because she doesn't do anything mission critical, I use her as a test bed for new kernels, new libc installs, and such things. If I screw her up, no big deal... I could wipe the system and reinstall it without losing anything important (I haven't had to do so much as a floppy-rescue yet... which is fortunate; gabi's got no floppy drives). She's currently running 2.3.5, and if I get sufficently bored today, I may download 2.3.6pre1 and compile it. Sure, it takes four hours, but there's no reason I have to sit around and wait for it.
The last one is leviathan, a 386SX-25 with 8M of RAM and a 120M disk that I'm planning on embedding in my dashboard as a CD player and radio as soon as I get the power supply for it built. It's currently up and running in a caseless heap on my card table.
I'm not even going to get started on the 486es I'm running Linux on...
I commend this review for at least getting
these things right for once:
1. Comparing Linux kernel features to NT kernel
features instead of doing another "Linux/Apache
vs. NT/IIS" snow job.
2. Pointing out that the Linux installation
process depends on the distribution you use,
and yes, the two remaining daunting areas
for newbies in each installer is disk partioning
and the video card and monitor settings for X.
3. Nice explanantions of why new features such
as IP multicast and frame buffers console are
important.
4. Pointing out the areas where NT will be playing
catch-up with Linux such as supporting Merced.
Aside from a few accuracy flaws, it looks like
ZD finally hired a reviewer who actually has a
clue about "this crazy Linux thing all the kids
are talking about."
The non-technical nature of the article seems to be due to the author's unfamiliarity with the subject. There are many lines that are either pseudo-typos or flat-out misunderstandings. A few examples:
I don't think I'll go beyond the third page...
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
It seems to me that the average Joe computeruser, even the ones who are really into gaming or whatever, either has not heard the word linux or has no idea what it is. Sure, articles like this one help, as it appeared in a widely-read Windowsesque magazine. But to most, linux is still freak show material.
Some recent improvements have made things better. Though the actual distribution (IMHO) is about as stable as a drunk prom date, the Red Hat 6 installation process was fairly painless (I have always and still do run slack). Personally, I dont care about installation proceedures, but to sway sheep to the flock, it's got to be idiot proof.
Idiot being the key word.
Positive things are happening. I think that with time, the product will improve and 'sell' itself. We simply must be patient, and continue to hone linux into an even more robust and powerful OS.
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www.pcmagazine.com tuns apache
Check it!
Four-digit slashdot ID. Recognize.
Am I missing something or does NT4 really include IP masq? Didn't they say it will only be available in win2000?
Also, did anyone else notice that they were comparing Linux to NT4, win98 and (yet unreleased) win2000 at the same time? Win98 supports pnp better and NT4 supports RAID better...
They didn't make clear *which* OS they were talking about. Last I checked NT didn't support USB, couldn't read FAT32, and had no pnp or power management support whatsoever.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Level-headed, for sure, but it's nothing new for most of us.
;)
Decent article: my only complaint is that they don't talk about the emerging (!) GUI interfaces for Linux very much at all, solely relying on the "users have more control over their system" argument -- an apples to apples comparision would have been a little more handy.
Good article, though, for trying to convince familiy to switch over
Ok, quick question...
WHEN did Linux become a POSIX compliant Unix?
(As opposed to a unix-like system)
"That revolution is Linux, the POSIX-compliant
Unix operating system, now out in Version 2.2
--a significant new update."
First paragraph...
The comparison chart impressed some of the more "hardcore NT" users where I work. I guess they never thought something could support more hardware (processors) and have more features than NT :)
Even though it's nothing groundbreaking, it's still positive, mainstream press, and that is what we need.
2.4 been released by now, either. Nor has Win2k. What you say is likely true, but my point was that the article compared a released product with an unreleased product. The least they could have done was compared vaporware with vaporware and talked about 2.4's journaled file system and enhanced scheduling. (no, I don't know those things for certain, those are just two current hot topics).
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
It's disappointing to see the current proven functionality of Linux 2.2 compared against Windows 2000 in this article. I'm sure many admins are deciding whether to upgrade to Win2K or to Linux, and they would like to see this sort of comparison. But if we're going to compare a product which has been released and thoroughly used for months with a product which may not be available for months (unless you're a beta site) then we might as well compare against a future Linux release as well.
PCmag would have done better to compare the current Linux 2.2 kernel with the current NT4 release and Service Packs available in stores for the bulk of the article. Then at the end they could state that Win2K promises these additional features, and Linux 2.4 will have this other list of additional features over 2.2. That would be a little more honest of a comparison.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Remember the "unbiased" comparison table somebody put out several months ago, to 'help managers make an informed decision?' It was a joke. After going a quarter of the way through it, it was obvious to a reader with an IQ 60 that the author was slamming NT every chance he got. Nobody would ever take it seriously as an unbiased comparison.
This one is refreshing. It has yesses and nos on both sides, and gives both systems credit where credit is due. I think this comparison will be taken seriously by a great many people. Good work PC mag!
Vidi, Vici, Veni
What is the minimum requirement stated by Microsoft for NT? Ever tried to actually run it? I bet linux on it's minimum requirement of a 386 would beat NT on whatever it's minimum requirement is.
As a matter of fact, there's an old 386/40 sitting in our communications closet that's collecting dust. One of our users had it until he needed to run Xcursions and got upgraded to a more modern machine. I've been thinking of installing linux on it to use as a print server, file server, WINS, etc.
I recently had a 486/40 (SX-20 upgraded with DX2-50 chip) running NT and it was a pig (no offense intended to pig lovers). The same machine used to scream with linux.
Who else has noticed that slashdot is listed at the end of the article as a `recommended resource`? People are going to come here to learn more after reading that article. We ought to give them a good impression.
To everyone in here that is ripping the minor points of this article, calm down!
In comparison to past articles, this one shines as being quite fair. Remember that PC Mag might as well as been MS Mag a year ago. I don't think a Linux magazine would have been so friendly to Windows 2000. Further, PC Mag was NEVER as friendly to OS/2 as this article is to Linux.
I think it is OK to compare Linux 2.2 to Windows 2000. NT4 has been around for a while and most people looking to put a server into place over the next few months will be looking at Windows 2000 and Linux 2.2. 2.4 is very far away and should be not be considered.
It didn't bother me that the auther switched around between Windows versions. The article is not about which is a better server, etc. but just a general feature comparison. If you are in the Windows world, you get this, in the Linux world you get this. Most admins are not concerned about getting PnP on servers, but are very concerned about getting it on workstations.
The author did refer to features that are not available yet, but will be in Windows2000, but he did the same for Linux. For example, he said that IP tunneling on Linux only does IP, but also said that other protocols will not be far behind.
The author also didn't say Linux was lacking a feature simply because there wasn't a button to activate the feature. Never have I seen the flexibility of the sysctl stuff in /proc discussed in an article. This guy did even though there wasn't a point and click interface.
He even pointed out that even though Windows may be more user friendly, Linux users love the control they have with Linux!
In future, please calm down and treat an article that is decent as it should be treated. Just because it is in PC Mag doesn't mean it should be ripped to shreds. Otherwise, the media sees the Linux community as a bunch of religious zealots and not the serious group of users that just want a good OS that we are.
May the flaming begin... sorry Rob.