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NT vs. Linux: Again
Jeff Molloy writes "The results are here
link " It's a
shame Linux didn't win, but it looks like the tests show where Linux might
have some deficiencies. Overall, it looks better than the original test, though.
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Wouldn't more people benefit from MS management seeing to it that some QA/testing people get hired?
How about fewer new "features" and better implementation of those that are already there?
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
99.9% uptime would be an MTBF of a bit over 40 days. Not exactly space-shot quality, but acceptable for e-commerce. It will have to do better to work in a telco CO, but I would bet that NT-embedded, with the unneeded bits removed, would do pretty well. It looks as if each OS has its own deficiencies, among them: NT clustering is way behind, and Linux has some key kernel bottlenecks for high volume transaction applications. Is it that surprising to find that operating systems put their pants on one leg at a time?
I wrote parts of this stuff
They have pointed Linux weak points, So, now open source community can fix it.
Let's get real: how many of us has the chance to do a similar bechmark?
*** Competition only makes the things better ***
>Currently the VC++ from microsoft produces far superior x86 code than GCC. I'm surprized that nobody has commented on this fact yet.
Why should anyone? VC++ is basically a one-platform solution (x86) while GCC pretty much runs on everything under the sun. GCC runs on the Amiga. Does VC++? Nope. When you are dealing with a complier that runs on multiple platforms/processors the kind of optimization you are talking about can be a *REAL* headache to deal with and should be steered clear of...
It's a strategy for choosing which requests to serve and which requests to ignore for the time being- and if this is so hard to understand, I imagine the tested version of NT _is_ doing this because (a) Microsoft people are _not_ stupid, and (b) Microsoft people will always cheat given the opportunity
This is a pyrrhic cheat- you can't use it on a real web server. It has nothing to do with CPU scheduling and is purely a hack to optimize benchmarks for intranet requests
How do you know MS are doing this (cheating) - can't you just say, oh, well, our tcp/ip stack needs to be multithreaded. It seems like you are trying to mislead - introducing little hints here and there that this was all faked.
and that CPU scheduling is the only consideration in doing this, because the only algorithm that exists is serve-upon-request?
In that case, it would be interesting to see Linux against NT running a different web server. We've already seen that the bottleneck exists in Linux, even when using a different web server. Certainly, if we were to see that say, solaris kicked NT and Linux's ass, you wouldn't suggest it had something to do with sun running round cheating.
Since it was shown (dispute it as you wish) that Linux's bottleneck is it's tcp/ip stack - I don't see that your argument about algorithms has any relevance in this thread.
I'll neither agree nor disagree with that as I have no knowledge in the subject. What I will do is to offer this thought:
If this hardware really was where NT shines, what happens when linux gets tweaked to take better advantage of it? The Microsoft folks have nowhere else to go.
So, I say to you folks, take heart. Accept this setback for it is not defeat. Remember, that which does not kill us...
Give a man a match, you keep him warm for an evening.
Light him on fire, he's warm for the rest of his life
I don't care how sunny and bright and beautiful your little M$ world is. Enjoy your job fucking people over for a living and being part of one of the most greedy fucked up organizations in the world.
Why don't you just stay at winfiles.com and stay the fuck away from slashdot?
support gun control: take guns from cops
I have a relative who works with NT box as a system server, and would swear by it, and was dead set against Linux, but last I heard he was excited and ranting and raving about Linux, and his work is supposedly going to change over. Its interesting to me, although I am not an server admin, I find Linux to be good for other things too and its definetly going to be my next upgrade, I do not feel like going through another MSOS, I'm saying no to win2k, yes to Linux.... and I am going to develope on it, and if I ever get spare time I will study the Source Code to it :)
The reason for this is that the most Linux users does in fact just have one CPU. In this open source world it's the needs of the users that drives the development. I guess there are very few Linux users that is using 4 CPU's, 4 NIC's for running a webserver.
I am a bit disturbed that Linux is considerd a server OS when in fact it does it's best job as workstation.
At work there have been discussions about how to use Linux and I allways say 'build the servers with FreeBSD and the workstations with Linux' then you will get the best from both worlds.
It would be better if Linux specialized itself as mainly a workstation OS and didn't try to chase Microsoft and it's server benchmarks. Please don't bloat the kernel just for a benchmark. This might be exactly what Microsoft want's.
FreeBSD is great on the server side with the UFS journaling filesystem and tremendous performance. This are the guys that should take care of making the killer server OS. They have allready done that for single CPU servers and might do it again with multiple CPU:s.
I remember a project where a person did a clean install of NT on a totally fresh harddisk, put it in a room by itself, unplugged the keyboard, mouse, network, etc. and did basically NOTHING on it. Guess what? It crashed after 53 days (or something around that). As long as you don't use an unstable kernel driver, and don't do everything as root (as some people appear to do, I must admit I do it myself...), Linux is dead stable. At least it won't crash doing nothing!
/* Steinar */
(This comment is of course GPLed.)
The argument of threads versus forking a process is futile. As the zdnet article said, the limitation has to do with the kernel and ip stack. Give up. Linux is stable, but not fast.
Microsoft will just keep inventing benchmarks that happen to
make NT look better. Nothing can be done about it, other
than observing that those benchmarks will become less
realistic every month.
The only way arround this would be for Linux (Apache and
Samba) to copy the same "unapproved benchmark veto"
clause which makes the publication of truly independant
benchmarks unlikely.
I'd rather do it with a human being(female of course). I wouldn't trust a guy touching my internal organs
Very interesting comment.
All I'm saying is that saying that Linux is free and NT costs $$$ is NOT a very good argument.
>Linux uses the forked process model to provide services to multiple users. This modem achieves stability in that if one process dies, the others continue as if nothing had happened. Both Apache and SAMBA operate in this way I believe.
>NT has chosen performance over stability.
I wouldn't put it that way... Perhaps a better way to phrase it would be: Linux has chosen a pessisimistic approach to application stability over general performance.
Linux's use of processes vs threads only has merit if you assume that the processes you are running have bugs (and will crash). It really seems to suit the open-source model to be more optimistic concerning application code and give it the benefit of the doubt along with a hefty performance boost (in the form of threading). Does anyone doubt that Apache or Zeus could use the thread model, remain stable, and thereby match NT's performance?
Oxryly
Many of us met and listened to Redhat last night at the Miami roadshow. They accepted the benchmarks as accurate. They also reminded us to be like Linus and keep a sense of humor and pespective about the whole thing.
To paraphrase Mr. Torvalds....
Microsoft is just being a good Linux user and reporting bugs. The same can be said about ZDnet.
Getting your butt kicked every once in awhile (metaphorically speaking) can be a good thing. It keeps one from becoming arrogant and complacent. It can motivate you to do better and try harder.
Just think how bad American cars would still be if the Japanese hadn't come into the market. (Not to say they are the best, but they are a hell of a lot better than they were 10 years ago).
Last night at the Miami Redhat roadshow, questions were asked about the Mindcraft benchmarks.
They said one very important thing. Mindcraft was not able to duplicate their results.
About the the ZDnet benchmarks. They happen to agree with them, but not in a negative way.
They reminded us to be like Linus who has kept a sence of humor and perspective about all this.
Accoring to the folks at redhat, Linus said....
"Mirosoft is just being a good Linux user and reporting bugs. You can say the same about ZDNet."
I beleive that ZDnet was trying to be as fair as possible. They firmly believe in the future of Linux, and have stated that publicly several times. They are doing their part in helping it to become a better OS through constructive critisism.
IMHO MS is going to lose out in the long run as long as the Linux community remains honest about it's shortcomings. No multimillion dollar spin masters to hide the warts. No FUD. Just keep getting better and better, and Linux will win.
Things have changed after these Linux-NT test ...
I would never expect anyone on Slashdot to write "
If raw speed is your monkey, then NT is the tool. "
Hehehe... Well, but we can't dispute that. Right know NT is faster.
I run W2K 24x7 as a desktop OS for development. The only crashes I've had were due to an immature NVidia TNT driver (video drivers bypass the HAL and can therefore bring the system down). I've recently installed NVidia's updated driver and the crashes have disappeared. I think M$ may yet pull it off w/ W2K -- at least they'll put out a kernel (VMM, FS, net stack, etc.) that will be stable and high performance.
Oxryly
After hearing countless marketing attempts of microsoft, I don't for a second believe that their
99.9% uptime would be the same as ours or of an IT
person. Linux and Netware kick butt over NT in stability and security. I have no faith in what M$ claims or in NT itself.
Great enthusiasm - You sound like Steve Balmer :) The problem here is that you're wrong on several key points
;)
:P).
;) I presume the W is for widechars. ;) *side note* Microsoft is such a fascinating company to follow...it has such interesting people, like balmer, gates, allen (who has dissapeared off the face of the world recently) etc...a bunch of geeks (some more than others) becoming billionaires.
LOL
1. Win2K's interface is not improved. It sucks. NT4 was good. I get paid to admin NT4. I like NT4. Win2k is a major step backwards in usability. The ungodly number of wizards in NT5 (oops win2k) makes it impossible to do any real work. Sure you can turn them off, but the mere sight of them drives me nuts - it's like having 4000 of those fscking dancing paperclips. This is supposed to be a server os - wizards don't belong on a server os.
I have to disagree there. I think the W2K gui a slight improvement (GUI here, not tools). The new MMC is great. You can administer everything from one program (including add devices, read event logs, add users, make shares etc). What's more, you can do it to remote machines...seemlessly.
2. Win2k's performance. This sucks too. Win2k takes ages to boot. Once it's up, using office 2k takes far longer than NT4 + Office97 ever did. My box is a PII 450 128Mb of RAM, I know that's not enough for the 2k products, but the company won't splurge for an upgrade.
I think it's wonderful!!! My W2K box boots in no time, and it boots in even less time when i use the cool new hibernate (memory to disk) feature. yummy. I'm running a K6-200 with 192MB ram (did have 64MB, but it was a bit sluggish with all the services installed).
3. Stability. This is anecdotal, but I've had more lockups (5) and blue screens (1) with NT5 than I had on the same box with NT4 (3)lock and (0)BSOD - Admitedly it's still in beta
Wow, I haven't had any bluescreens except one where i installed an unsigned NT4 driver i was warned not to install..after that, everything else was perfect...been running for weeks with no problems with BSODs (it's more purple now tho
4. Ease of development. There is a special place in the most fiery pit of hell for someone who names a function RegisterServiceCtrlHandlerW() Don't tell me that Win32 makes life easier for developers. It spawns carpal tunnel is what it does Again i disagree, Windows is the most develop friendly OS...even 90% of *those* java developers use Windows. It's got brilliant IDEs, which make up for the long API names, but remember, VC++ has intellisense, so you don't have to spend too much time typing, or going round documentation trying to remember what arguments you need to pass.
I'd glady have long function names, than horrible IDEs without intellisense! Besides, RegisterServiceCtrlHandlerW makes perfect sense
as for your experience at MS...uh,
Its time us non-M$-haters come out of the wood-work on /. Don't get me wrong... I love the open-source movement and approach.
But meanwhile though I run W2K beta 3 as a development system to be productive and it does everything I need it to do, quickly and without bugs or crashes. Harrumph.
Oxryly
How much admin time per week is needed for Linux versus NT? I'm not sure how you would benchmark this, but if someone can figure out a way to do it, a lot of ears would perk up.
Linux can't come close to NT. hahaha That is sad that Linux got the shit kicked out of it by that silly ass OS called NT. Hell OS/2 can do better than that at serving web pages and files to PC clients hahah.
Get a REAL BOX FreeBSD or a SUN Untra Sparc. or be like me and get a E10000 ENterprise server with the 32 CPUs. But waite don't use Linux on it because it can't begin to scale up to 32 cpus. blahh how lame
btw if you want to flame me see me on:
irc.linuxnet.org in #linux
Karl Osha
irc.linuxnet.org
#linux
Yeah irc.linuxnet.org in #linux is the best place for newbies alreight.
Now we know that if that crappy NT OS can smoke Linux 3 times, then I have no business even thinking about recommending it to my MIS managers.
blah blah NT kicked Linux's butt hahaha.
Stick with SUNOS on the Sparc boyz
Actually, Linux has been discredited in my company now. And my company is a Fortune 100 company that had considered using Linux on the low end servers. But not now, I will make sure of that. If NT can kick Linux in the ass considering how poor NT is, then I can't even come close to recommending it to my boss as a file server/web server. We will stick with Solaris and BSD based systems. FreeBSD rox btw.
I do remember. Microsoft was right about that one...
Actually, Microsoft does not fear re-use of old PCs with Linux. If anything, this reduces the culture of software piracy in the developing world. This is also a tiny subculture compared with 10 million new PCs manufactured every month (more than TVs now). This is, as far as I can tell, the central story of Linux. It has been covered. And it is well known by most people. Microsoft should fear, and does fear, anything that might catch up to them in terms of the total value proposition, including performance, reliability, capabilities, available applications, etc. in markets where money can be made.
I wrote parts of this stuff
Nah, that's the wrong way to go... Notice that the 'low-end' system was still spankin' new hardware which probably ran well into four digits. The lovely thing about Linux is that you can run a web server (not slashdot, I'm sure, but a web server) on a sub-$1k box. Obsolete hardware is obsolete no more. _This_ is Linux's main source of strength.
Of course, that doesn't mean it wouldn't hurt to beef up the scalability, and that's what's planned for 2.4/3.0 anyhoo...
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Well, I've found Linux/samba to be faster then NT4 sp4 (5 wasnt out yet). The system was:
PII 300
128meg SDRAM
Adaptec 2940 SCSI PCI
2 9.1gig 7200 RPM SCSI HD (Not RAID)
1 4.5gig 5400 RPM SCSI HD
100baseT ethernet connection.
It was a network of roughtly 100 clients, the networked drive contained Microsoft Office, and documents (MS Access databases).
I think thats a pretty generic office scenerio, well, Linux performed better. I cant really offer any numbers, but it was just "faster". I remember an employee walking up to me saying "Did they upgrade the network or something? It seems faster"
NT was pretty stable, as was linux... linux seemed to be i guess 10%-25% faster.
Note, that all clients werent accessing the shared drive at once.
The distribution was Redhat Linux 5.2, Kernel 2.0.36.
Rapid connection benchmarks are pretty stupid. NOBODY gets 5000 connections in a second, or a minute.
I may have disliked the tone of the Mindcraft test, but they did provide the documents for the entire test configuration. For personal satisfaction, when can we see the equivalent documents from this PC Week test ? I don't think PC Week is hoilding this information back for any other reason than they forgot how intrested most of us are in the details". PC Week... publish the details. Please. :)
Okay, try Interbase. I'ts much faster, and works on Linux/NT and others.
"...I think that it's safe to say that noone in the world gets more than 150 million hits per day of static content..."
and
"...Oh, if you're serving up >1800 files per second of 2k files, who are you?..."
Flying Crocodile, Inc. (www.flyingcroc.com). We have FreeBSD/Apache machines running at 27Mb/s. This is on off the shelf Pent-II boxes, ok, the have 1GB of ram and UW-SCSI drives... but single cpu boards. With the new FreeBSD 3.2-RELEASE the above mentioned box runs with a load of 3.3 and over half the cpu idle.
The numbers that you talk about are the numbers that I deal with everyday. We would never think of running NT. With over 130 servers we couldn't afford the massive staff to sit around and reboot the boxes all day and night... that and I would hate to have to wire a monitor/keyboard/mouse to each box!
The servers together do over 145M hits per day and thank god the Cisco GSR12008 is shipping next week, the three 7507's are hammered!
"...Oh, one more thing. If this is all on an intranet, you'll still need Gigabit ethernet if you're serving up the 10k+ files..."
More like 2 GE to Frontier and Teleglobe, with various other T3's get the job done. BTW: before you start crunching numbers, not all the 130 servers are cranking 27Mb/s, many are doing massive database work.
Another interesting number, at our peak in the day we route about 79,000 packets per second, figure that about 1/4 of those are http requests. Peak total for today was 419Mb/s using mrtg.
IMHO: I use to be a Linux nut, still use it for desktop work, but FreeBSD kicks ass when it comes to serving. If you think my numbers are crazy, Yahoo trucks twice the bandwidth, no wonder they use FreeBSD too.
The tests have been done by those who's bussiness is to crank out the hits. Most use neither NT nor Linux.
If you doubt this post, just do a looking-glass on 207.246.128.0/20... the connections exist.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
And the emperor (*place-any-ms-competitor-who-is-winging-to-the-go verment-here*) was really the bad guy.
Sometimes you come across a post that cannot help but convince you that the author not only does drugs but does too many too often...
It did mention that they did try zeus, the other web server suggested by linux advocates. But the cut off point was yet again present. The source of the performance block was the tcp/ip stack, not the web server.
God forbid that Linux might be to blame for the panics
HAHAHA!!!! yeah.
at my UNM, just the SRC computer pod with 16 clients seems somewhat confused if you do something rash on one of them, like dare to open netscape or something. NT sucks.
Juln
I get 40 days (41+2/3) for MTBF only assuming it will then be down for a whole hour: not a valid assumption I guess. Assuming a 5 minutes downtime results in the 3-4 days mentioned earlier.
Yes yes... this test did not consider every possible variable for every conceivable hardware setup for all time for all people etc. etc...
My point is this test only set out to show that given a certain hardware setup with excellent *theoretic* performance for an interesting task (web and file serving) the OS and application setup that gives the best *actual* performance is XYZ. In this particular case XYZ happened to be NT with IIS.
There are a significant number of supplementary issues that any potential OS customer must consider in addition to the information derived from the results of this test. That should in no way detract from the importance of the results of this test.
And importantly, as members and potential contributors to the open-source movement the results of this test give us an excellent report card on the progress of Linux development. I really don't think the test of the results should be excused away for any reason.
Oxryly
Well, whether the tests are valid or not in my mind might be somewhat influenced that pcweek has been on the MS bangwagon for too long to be objective. Moreover, I am not sure they really understand what a benchmark really is. Just look at their latest article about the intel 810 chipset where they are actually "surprised" that a Pentium-II 466mhz running with an IDE sub system is actually 10 percent slower than a 400Mhz SCSI-II system. These guys are so pro-MS that the only way they know how to test the usefulness of an OS is to determine if a version of MS Excell exists for it so that they can run their automated benchmarks on it.
They may have found one machine running Linux slower, they may find more too. However, there are too many people who can attest how much easier Linux is to keep running than NT for them to keep trying to pull that kind of BS year after year.
Multithreading is a good design -- sometimes. Multi-tasking is a good design too -- sometimes.
When two or more tasks legititmately belong in the same address space (e.g. must manipulate the same objects in memory), sure, multithreading is the way to go.
When you're just kludging a substitute for fork() because spawning processes is too expensive on your architecture, that's not so good from a stability or security standpoint, although spawning new threads.
None of this has anything to do with lack of multithreading in the Linux IP stack, which undoubtedly would be a good thing.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Well it was almost 3 years ago, but bsdi did this.
Tests were done on P133's with 64M ram and BSDi
walked all over NT.
http://www.BSDI.COM/press/19960827
Would be nice to see a rematch.
I just read a Web-Benchmark in c't (http://www.heise.de).
They used a SMP-Patch. And then Linux was in every test at least as fast as NT, if there is only one network-card in the computer. If they used two network cards NT was about 100% faster than Linux. NT was very, very slow when using Perl-scripts.
They showed also a test on Mac OS X. The results shows very good performance of the Mac OS X although the Mac hardware was no comparable with the hardware used for NT and Linux system (i.e. 128MB RAM in Mac and 2GB in NT/Linux-Server). But it seems, that Mac OS X has a bug which causes a "system panic" when using special CGI-Scripts.
Yes what about generating pages from JIT optimized Microsoft JVM (I saw it decompressing small MPEG in real time), vs Linux + Perl ?
forks suck! its a lame coders trick
threads are better and are NOT unstable, if your code is good, if its bad that its unstable then its just as likely that all your forks will crash too!
linux's threads support is crap, and its a pitty it lags behind, threads are the future and best way to make things fast
And also I think Linus prefers simplicity than performance. Simplicity==stability. I think he stated for instance that he wanted to keep filesystems monothreaded, so that filesystem developpers won't have to worry about locking... If you want to have performance, you can go with commercial Unices anyway.
Been working with NT (unfortunately) for five years now. SMB is integrated with the Server Service, which is in kernel-land. This explains the speed.
They claimed that if the Linux box were tweaked, Linux
/dev/null)?
would win... which it did not.
Has the full configuration and "treak list" been published at
all. AFAIK only the fact that the Linux team were specifically
forbidden from performing certain tweaks.
Also were any of the tests carried out with ordinary NT
which is a far better match to RedHat 6 than NT Enterprise...
Or maybe someone should have got them to build a
"RedHat Enterprise" everything compiled for these
high end machines. (And incapable of running on
low end machines.)
Another of the original issues was logging, if this is
being done properly then every SMB or HTTP connection
will generate a synchronous write to disk. This will
slow things down. AFAIK NT dosn't log anything to do
with file shareing by default. In the original tests IIS was
placed in a mode of buffering the logging information
and writing in chunks. (In the real world you may as well
turn off the logging all together as use this option.) Did
Apache and Samba have all logging turned off (or
directed to
Hi folks!
...), but the main findings of the Mindcraft study are true under the given test circumstances.
I think one has to accept that at the moment NT is slightly faster considering the maximum output of a web or file server.
But as German PC weekly "ct" found in their own benchmarks (issue 13/99, pp. 186), Linux is still a very good choice under real world conditions. They tested SuSE Linux 6.1 and NT 4.0 SP4 on a 4-XEON-450 Siemens machine. The main difference between their configuration and the Mindcraft one was that they just had one Ethernet card (instead of FOUR!)in the system.
They said it was not realistic (except for a few Intranets maybe) that a web server has to serve more than 100 MBit/s or even more than 10 MBit/s. Under these circumstances Linux was slightly faster with static web pages and much faster with serving CGI. However, ct didnt test MS IIS with ASP (hard to find a fair benchmark between Perl/CGI and ASP anyway).
Only when they tested the system with a second Ethernet card, simulating similar loads to the ones in the Mindcraft tests, NT was significantly better (and scaled the CPUs much better than Linux.
What they also found out is that NT was much worse with serving from the HD instead of the memory (maybe because they also used one big partition instead of smaller ones, which seems to slow down NTFS. The bottom line: Linux with Apache is a very suitable and fast system for real-world (mid-size) web serving needs, mainly if you have to deal with a lot of dynamic pages (like on Slashdot
And don't tell me to compile things
Whats so hard and wrong about typing:
Then checking the "yes" box for your soundcard?
Is it too hard to then type:
and finally run the kernel install script?
As for the modem and dial-up networking, it took me all of two days to figure it out buy reading the HOW-TOs and that's with no previous *NIX experience. None.
You'll only get out as much as you put in.
are there features from NT that make it inherently faster than Linux in these tests?
are there features in NT that make it inherently faster than Linux in these tests?
Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:
Why aren't they back-porting that multi-threaded IP bug thing to 2.2?
---
Put Hemos through English 101!
OK Kernel guys (And people who have setups who can
test this sort of thing). We now know where the problems are (OK We already did) Lets fix them and then challenge for a rematch.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
I think Linux will come out ahead in the long run. It's only a matter of time.
-- DuckWing
The fact that pricing was not included in these tests is disappointing. I just bought a fully server capable 5 disc distribution of linux (Suse) for a whopping $30. If I multiply that amount by the overall server benefit I get $45 to $90 dollars. Can anyone pick up a legal copy of WinNT server, with unlimited client licenses for that cheap???? You can't even buy Windows98 for that small a price, even if you're only upgrading from Win95!!! Pricing is distinctly important. That $30 will go a long way. The thousands of dollars one pays for WinNT, at even a small client license, doesn't come close to the dollar/value ratio of linux. PERIOD!
It does disturb me somewhat to see that Linux loses on the single proc box, but this seems to come down to the tuning. Out of the box, Linux is the faster (as other benchmarks have illustrated), but when tuned, NT is better.
I think they ought to make this an annual competition and see how they match up every year. I bet next year the results won't be so slanted in MS's favor.
---
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
If you can't help program then go out and test all this new stuff and send in bug reports. Let's have Linux set the standard again. It seems like, acording to the article, it was this way once and we lost it because Microsoft has pushed the bar a little higher and we lagged behind.
IIRC Linux once said:
"Linux has a micro kernel. There are only these things in it, which are needed".
If I'm not mistaken doesn't MS own a hefty percentage of Ziff Davies publications? Something like 20% or so... Or was that IDG?
Boing!
Gee, so if your anecdotal evidence on reliability is equally accurate as your scalability anecdotes, then NT doesn't have anything to worry about.
Remember, "only the paranoid survive." Don't get too arrogant about that anecdotal reliability advantage lasting forever.
Haha, And I thought I was the only one with a hdd which died at 41*C exactly ;)
Could you tell me what brand(s) they are?
I've got a Samung 1.0Gb here.
Posted by ChristianC:
The argument over whether NT or Linux is faster is completely irrelevant. The fact is Mac OS X Server is seven times faster than NT and three times faster than Solaris, so its bound to be faster than Linux.
How does having 4 disk partitions make a box a cluster? You're making no sense.
It's definitely a tuning optimization, but what else is new? Linux may need to do this too, once it gets a journal filesystem with a similar transaction log.
Seriously, trying to help a fellow newbie--have you done the pnpdump/isapnp thing for the modem and/or soundcard? worked for me (but I had to hunt for it) with RH5.2 and 6.0. RH6.0, btw, detects isapnp.conf settings during boot--you don't need to run any init scripts anymore. Just make sure that you pick the right resource settings (and telly your mb bios that you are NOT using a PnP OS or comparing your win irq/dma stuff will only confuse you).
---
Engaging a stronger enemy on his own ground??
Chinese tactician Sun Tzu would have disapproved.
Sure, we can explain away the specifics of why Linux lost, why the benchmark is flawed and/or what code fixes are needed to win the inevitable next confrontation.
But readers of Sun Tzu's The Art of War would know that defeat was to be expected in this match.
Red Hat's foolhardy strategic blunder has caused us all to lose face. But losing face is Ok, as long as we don't lose faith.
Let's fight a good fight. Let's code, and document, and design, and evangelize, and help newbies and otherwise do our part.
Let's not flame those who think different. Flaming makes the whole Linux community look bad, and doesn't change the flamee's mind.
Let's be nice to the Mac & Be communities, because they can be our strategic allies against the evil empire. We can settle our differences after we defeat our common enemy.
Sun Tzu said -- "He who knows his enemy as well as himself is assured victory in a thousand battles."
This defeat was nothing. We are up against a multi-billion dollar behemoth that's fighting for its survival. The beast will lash out fiercely in its death-throes. Let's not be disheartened by this apparent defeat. We will see much worse things before victory.
Just my two cent sermon.
PS: I have introduced over a dozen people to Linux and Perl. They are glad for having discovered how higly efficient they can be with these OSS tools. And some are showing them to other people.
First: that page doesn't work in babelfish. I hope you don't test your servers the same way you tested that claim.
Second: that test doesn't appear to be on the site. Granted, it's in German, but there doesn't appear to be a link to the test, only a reference to the story in the magazine.
Third: You are a whiner and a Linux fanatic.
I will guarantee the hardware will fail first.
HDD's don't live forever. Especially Quantum Bigfoots, they have bb's straight out-of-tha-box
fucking eggsuckers at quantum, I'm gooing back to seagate/wd!
Unfortunatly, I'm wasn't referring to anything so fancy. More just being sarcastic, because the throughput difference between Apache and IIS is hardly ever going to be the deciding factor.
(In the largest NT/IIS setup I've seen, there were three actual web servers. They were 'clustered' only on the switch level. The assumption was that one of servers would be down at any given point in time. A desktop box was running software which checked if IIS was running, and if it had died, attempted to restart the service. If that failed, it rebooted the box.)
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
"how many times did they have to reboot NT during the test?"
None.
But, you wouldn't expect to either. Linux's stability advantage over NT is shown over weeks and months, not hours or days.
Steven, Senior Technology Editor, Sm@rt Reseller
Maybe. Maybe not. One thing I'm sure, is that any competent sysadmin, would test all the possible systems to get an idea of how they behave for his application. So I expect this information to exist.
I read somewhere that the number of people with english fluency is 1.5 billion (many in india, europe, US., canada, australia, and scattered around the world). There are quite a bit more english speakers than there are chinese speakers, and certainly more than mandarin chinese, which
is (I believe) a minority dialect, even if it is the "official" chinese.
Although I feel these results to still be slightly innacurate (the linux graphs seemed to wobbly for a good configuration). I feel that certain mambers of the linux community should take this with a little less dogma. One of linux great properties iot its ability to transform itself quickly and these results can be a tool for that.
I would also like to point out that MS didn't publish an uptime or reliability benchmark, as I do feel that in this arena there really is no competition.
What part of the GUI are you talking about here?
If you're talking about Explorer, you're talking out of your butt. Explorer doesn't not crash NT.
If you're talking about csrss, prove one instance where that has crashed due to an internal bug.
BTW, my NT servers do not crash regularly. They don't crash irregularly. They just don't crash, because I have at least half of a clue (and I'm working on the other half).
Chas, you're a goddamn lamer. Shut the fuck up already.
Yeah. Whatever. Great argument.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Please to be pointing out the PhD theses written by any of them?
And what in hell does this have to do with coding ability? Most of the best coders I know don't even have a bachelor's degree.
(And no, I'm not talking about @ Microsoft here - I'm talking about other people in the industry)
If you ain't got the spark , you may as well forget it. You can be a PhD in CompSci and not have a clue about how to code shit-hot stuff.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
If your BDC machine is locking up solid, you've got a hardware issue.
Or maybe not.
If your BDC machine is locking up solid, you've got a hardware issue.
You know, instead of claiming something sucks, why don't you investigate what you are doing wrong?
If you did that, I might hire you, as it sits now I'd rather hire a trained monkey... they'd be just as effective.
Well, duh. If you're doing development, of course you can crash it.
Besides, which version of NT4 are you talking about here? There are major differences among the different SPs.
Microsoft isn't even using NT for their hotmail servers. Nuff said.
This one's fun. Go to investor.msn.com and get the historic chart data for microsoft stock. Then click in the middle of the chart, hold down the primary mouse key and move your mouse side-to-side. Within 5 seconds you get taken to blue screen city. This is 100% reproducible on my W2K beta 3 box. I am not kidding. I thought MS servers were only supposed to crash your machine if you were running netscape ;)
Why spend more dollars on a NT machine if you can spend your dollars well on a low end linux machine (which doesn't crash)!
The thing would be sitting there with its monitor off and users would start complaining that the file server was unavailable. We'd turn on the monitor and sure enough, the machine was locked solid - only a power down would reboot it. And when the machine comes back up all you can do is look at the log files to see about when it crashed. Other than that you get no debugging info at all.
Wrong. The blue screen tells you exactly what crashed and why. If you don't know how to use that to fix your problems, you're just pretending to be an administrator.
I have five NT servers. One of them has crashed this year. This was due to a third-party software package; the manufacturer fixed their bugs in that package and it's been rock-solid ever since.
Of course you can't publish your results... Their entirely fictional.
It's the other way around. Microsoft alone paid over $2.6 billion dollars in taxes last year. How much tax revenue does Linux generate?
Of course! Having comprehensively *lost*, what else can they do?
But do not think that MS will stop and wait for Linux to catch up.
This has been a public information announcement.
NT workstation and server do have the same kernel (this remains true in win2000), but many parameters are different, such as quanta, file caching algorithms, scheduling algorithms, kernel paging, paging in general, etc. These have a major effect on the performance of the operating system. Workstation is tuned for interactive use, server is tuned for network or server application performance (depending on how the system is configured).
I also want to see vanilla installs of the two competing
operating systems... Commpared to when they both are
tweaked.
How about testing between
a) pre installed NT box
b) pre installed Linux box
c) Retail NT (bought anonymously) installed on blank machine
by NT experts. Only basic configuration allowed.
d) as c with Linux experts
e&f) as c&d using a retail Linux distribution.
g,h,i&j) as c,d,e&f but can tweak using only publically
available information, all sources and tweaks to be fully
described in the final report.
k) the NT team can do any tweaks they like subject
to a budget
l) ditto for the Linux people.
Despite the facts and fiction that have been said about the comparison of Linux to NT, something else has surfaced: most Slashdot readers seem te be reading only Slashdot. It is so strange to see how people seem to depend only on this otherwise fantastic source of info. It is only ONE source. (But it's OPEN! harr harr.) A few days ago I read an article in a German computer magazine - sorry, THE German computer magazine - and in it they showed that the tests Mindcraft (what a stupid name BTW) were everything but real-life. And because the guys at PC Week Lab's did the same tests, their tests suffer from equal non-life-realism (does this word exist in English? Nah, don't matter.).
In the German article, Linux did pretty well (on a 4CPU / 2GB RAM / RAID-5 server). Even SMP wasn't bad all the time.
I realise that German magazines, especially the dead-tree variants, are not as accessible to most Slashdot readers. But I still get the feeling that if I were to say "BOO!" on slashdot, ten minutes later all hell would have broken loose.
Now, the moral of the story:
- The Linux-NT comparisons of both Mindcraft and PC Week Labs lack realism.
- Slashdot readers: think before you send comments.
They didn't, however mention the fact that they formatted the
fileserving partitions into 4 separate partitions to improve
WinNT's performance on the front page, did they?
They didn't mention much at all about the set up. Assuming
this "4 partition" claim is correct then it adds to evidence
that the NT operates as a "semi-cluster". Therefore the
comparison is meaningless. Unless you pull out 3 of the
network leads, then do the measuring....
> I guess you didn't read the article at all.
> Linux has a problem! The TCP stack is single
> threaded and can't compete with NT on multi-proc
> systems
Actually, I did read the article. I'm just suspicious. For all I knew at the time, the explanation regarding the TCP stack could have been false or distorted. Later things that I read seemed to show otherwise, that indeed the TCP problem was a real and legitimate problem. Fair enough.
I read an article later at the Linux Daily News (6/27/1999) analyzing the results of not only the benchmarks in question, but previous ones, including those that had Linux 'winning', focusing on differences in the testing conditions. The number of clients really made a difference; with a large number of clients, Linux's performance sank due to some bottlenecks like the TCP problem, which is partly why the Mindcraft rematch came out as it did. Also fair enough.
The trouble was that it looked to me at the time that PC Week was merely detailing Mindcraft's results, which didn't tell much at the time since I knew Mindcraft had done hatchet jobs before and had a vested interest in the outcome. They could very well have made up a technical explanation as to why the results turned out as they did. To determine whether the results were due to dishonest testing or to real problems, or even both, requires having others look at the results (which has since been done). The point I was trying to make was that Mindcraft shouldn't have been taken at their word, since they haven't been all that honest before.
Hmm, actually, that could be an interesting strategy when combined with multicasting capabilities on busy sites with lots of static content (e.g. CNN).
Posted by ChristianC:
The argument over whether NT or Linux is faster is completely irrelevant. The fact is Mac OS X Server is seven times faster than NT and three times faster than Solaris, so its bound to be faster than Linux.
So, your saying someone with his/her PhD codes beter than someone without, that's funny, my boss thinks it's the other way round, he recently decided to hier only drop-outs with experience because all those PhD's keep whining instead of making something beter. e.g. my boss has a bachelors degree though.
And what in hell does this have to do with coding ability? Most of the best coders I know don't even have a bachelor's degree.
It has little to do with coding ability. But it has definitly to do with design ability, and more importantly about grasping most of the knowledge to a relevant to a perticular domain of computer science.
The very fact that Linux wasn't only written by PhDs student explain why there is little innovative in it (compared to, say, Inferno). This is a good thing, to get something working. But now we are talking about performance. I can assure you that PhDs (the one in contact in reality, not the kind that spend their time writing equations only), know much more than J.Random.Coder, about virtual memory algorithms (the one in Linux 2.2.x is lame [but simple]), scheduling process, compiler optimisation, network protocol design, garbage collecting, processor design (and processor optimisation), database design, performance evaluation and analysis, etc... You need much more that coding ability to make correct decisions about algorithms.
What the hell has coding ability to do with choosing/inventing proper virtual memory and scheduling algorithms ?
Microsoft wouldn't have started this, if the result wouldn't have been predictable.
I could write here a long list, why these simple brute performance tests are not appropriate to compare operating systems. We know now that Windows NT serves the Windows native network file system better on higly optimized machines and a
NT machine can flood your network with twice the amount of static web pages than Linux.
Microsoft defined with these tests the battle ground. Next time we should know the territory before going into the battle.
It is such a shame that MS (and customers!) put such little value on reliability. Only yesterday (25/06,) I had problems with my bank, who have gone completely to NT. Account records were down for hours! If it hadn't been for the irony of the situation, I would have been furious, as I had issues I had to resolve.
I'm dreading Y2K.
BTW, the bank was NatWest (www.natwest.co.uk.)
On Linux, if the gui goes away (but doesn't freeze
the whole machine) you can telnet in and keep the
machine alive, or safely shut down.
Often, an X lockup will lock the system but not
always...
Quake II in SVGAlib takes away the keyboard ALL THE TIME. I telnet in and reboot the machine
rather often because of this.
Mark
Similar experiences here... but if there is no BSOD, and the machine just freezes, although it should be hardware, and is generally solved by changing hardware components, why does Linux behave fine on the same systems?
Maybe NT is pushing the hardware more, maybe NT is more succeptable to being affected by certain types of hardware failures, but in my experience Linux is more stable than NT.
I've been toying with the idea that maybe linux kernel mode processes are statistically a "smaller target" than NT kernel mode processes. That failures in Linux are far more likely to occur in userspace... and leave the system perfectly functional. This is going way beyond the area of my expertise, it sounds positively nutty, but it's a working theory.
System lockups are almost certianly hardware related, but the same hardware failures just don't seem to happen on Linux. I can get a rock-solid linux box from almost any cruddy hardware. I just can't do that with NT.
Here's an experiment... Let's get a rock-solid computer, and generate a kernel-mode process which will randomly shuffle a bit somewhere on the system, simulating a botched memory cell or a hardware glitch of some form. Just for fun, and to make the idea clear, let's have this process available over the network. Let's call this thing "Splork".
On the left we have Linux, on the right, we have NT. Both NT and Linux are outfitted with user-mode processes which will trigger "Splork" on the opposing machine... lets's call this process "Bang".
Bang fires off Splork, if the target machine is still alive, Splork calls Bang and hits the the other machine... Eventually, one machine will stop shooting back.
Equip a third machine with a couple reset switches, and some monitoring software....
Let this run long enough to generate some good sample data... and see which machine is more tolerant of being Splorked by bad hardware.
Hey, it is no more strange than watching a machine lock up for no good reason... Don't rip this idea apart unless you really see a flaw in the logic.
Looks like the Linux world is starting to wake up the MS giant. We kicked their ass then they fixed stuff. All then have to do now is fix the crashes and their OS may survive. If it stops crashing and starts working then it will go somewhere. I will still use linux though.... More configurable.
The above is not worth reading.
At the end of the day, the smart companies have only two questions about IS technology:
1: Can I do more with this?
2: Can I do the same job cheaper with this?
All the other numbers are indirect data, trash talk. Management--especially smart management, doesn't directly care about MIPS, MTBF, or benchmark numbers. They care about the two questions above, and care about the other numbers indirectly because those numbers tend to be good predictors of the answers to the real questions. In this business, when almost everything is potential, these early indicators are very important, because you can't get good answers to the top two questions.
You have the same thing in sports. You can measure free-throw percentage, height, weight, slugging averate, save percentage, and a host of other details. But at the end of the day, only one question matters into it: How often do you win? All the rest are trash-talk numbers--good predictors, but not the bottom line.
In sports and business, you have to have those trash-talk numbers for people to give you a chance. If you weigh a trim 175lb, nobody in their right mind is going to make a nose tackle out of you--you won't get the chance to show the coach that you can topple the 325lb center. If a product has enough benchmarks damning it, the vendor will pull support and recoup its losses.
This is why Linux can ignore the trash-talk and go straight to increasing capabilities and lowering costs. Linux isn't a business; vendors cannot cut all support. Nobody has the power to tell Linux that it cannot enter the IS world. It can't get cut, and can only get discontinued if every Linux geek in Creation decides to spontaneously drop it. Red Hat and Caldera can go belly-up, Torvalds and Cox could be swallowed up in earthquakes, and Linux will keep on existing.
So long as Linux exists, it can win. With the development advantages it has, it can win well. It needs a foothold in some IS shops; it's getting that, or has already gotten that.
If Linux wins, it is going to start by revolutionizing an IS department. Some big gun like AOL will see the potential and let it start taking over the infrastructure. It will work. Forget the runtime, forget the performance, it will do the job for cheaper. In the business world, such success gets copied. People look at the company that pulls this off, ask how they do it, and see a room full of Linux boxen.
The IT budget will convince more smart managers than any amount of benchmarking will.
PR is still relevant, but only in the short term. Good or bad PR can accelerate or slow the rate of Linux installation. In the long term, however, the success of Linux will have nothing to do with the benchmark numbers and have everything to do with the budget numbers. If Linux can do the job cheaper, it will win. If it can't, it will remain a hobby OS.
But the good news is that, unlike a corporate product, short term effects cannot destroy the long term picture. Linux will have all the time it needs to fit into the corporate structure to its best abilities.
--The basis of all love is respect
You can believe what you want. But its put up or shut up time.
NT is faster than Linux.
Or... specific quantified results (i.e. reality) is for scientific minds... slashdot fantasy and self-delusion is for would-be's that still don't understand multithreaded programming.
NT is so intrinsically multithreaded and asynch I/O from the kernel up, from first design, that UNIX has one deep problem to compete in design or sophistication with it in this realm.
> And no more excuses. Linux is not the fastest. Deal with it.
;-)
khmmmmmmmm; two points:
* I do some tests from time to time; one of my jobs is to select hardware/ software for our university labs; I remember my disappointment when I realized linux kernels 1.2.* are slower than 1.0.* (in some tasks); this was due to some bugfixing
* did I missed the software configuration description of the tests? after the Mindcraft tests I did some tests for myself (we do have Dell with 4xXeon400 and 2GB of RAM running Linux); I optimized Apache for large load (1000 of subservers running paralelly, large file limit, etc.); this seemed to work fine even when the number of simultanously running sessions exceeded 2000; I can be wrong, I had no time to make those tests properly and documented; but I would like to see their setups...
best,
robert
Go read the O'Reilly paper again before you resort to obscenities. Yes, you can get a server from a workstation by changing two keys, but doing so causes the system to set a number of other performance-related keys differently, as the original poster stated and the paper would confirm, if you actually bothered to read it.
Whether or not Microsoft bought the test, I think it would make sense to do what lots of people are saying, and that is tweek the Linux kernel etc. so that the Linux community has both stability and speed on it's side; that way, it will become increasingly harder/impossible for MS to buy it's benchmarks.
I'm not a coder...if I was I'd have some solutions to match my ideas.
Small nitpick. FreeBSD doesn't have a journaling filesystem.
SoftUpdates != Journaling Filesystem
However, for most people, SoftUpdates can pretty much do what they want a journaling filesystem to do, so they don't care that it isn't technically a journaling FS.
Also, SoftUpdates I don't think has the blessing to be of production quality code yet, though some people do use it in a production environment.
Wow... It's taking Microsoft, 4CPU's, 4Gb of RAM, high performance RAID controllers, quad NICs and a team of MS's top software engineers dedicated to tuning the system to beat Linux.
:)
Who in real life will have this kind of hardware and get that kind of support from Microsoft?
Boy are Microsoft in trouble!
Deleted
just make up something , as long as alotta people
agree with you it doesnt matter. so if BSD is great
nobody cares. they are drown out by redwhore
selling her ass to the media at 200 decibels.
Come one now. This test wasnt any better then the first one. There are very few facts in it. They didnt even say WHO set up the Redhat box's. For all we know it could have been a 18 year old Redhat PHONE TECH!.
How many hits did the Linux server and NT server drop?
Did any of the servers crash?
What Kernel/Server versions where they running?
Can we see the config files?
This test is WORTHLESS and is only good for making FUD. Maybe NT can realy beat Linux..OK. But they could at least give out some info on what Linux realy fell short on so it can be fixed.
And again, version #'s would also be nice. They could have been running kernel 2.0.30/Redhat 5.0 and some old ass version of SAMBA. FOR ALL WE KNOW!
I have to return some videotapes...
I personally find it amazing that MS people are out cheering in the streets, this was a very weak and narrow victory for NT, on the single processor NT was only 50% faster and on the quad system less than 2.5 times faster. This for an OS built and backed by a huge corporation that has pumped billions of dollars into the creation of NT.
Let us all keep in mind that it was essentially MS that set the conditions of this test. The hardware was built for use with NT and was further tweaked for use for NT by using 4 ethernet cards. A neat trick but still a trick favoring NT. The quad processor test was very eye opening, for a price of 10 to 15 times that of a single processor server, NT's speed barely increased over 2 times. This is hardly a selling point for quad proceesor machines or for NT for that matter.
On the web server tests, an essential flaw was found with the IP stack on Linux. It is said that this problem has already been remedied in the 2.3 kernel. Also, Appache is being redesigned with a static page engine. Considering, the hardware used, the nature of the static page test designed to favor NT, and the above mentioned fixes MS NT's web serving speed advantage will be a very shortlived phenomena.
On the file server tests, NT also outperformed Samba underwhelmingly. Let us keep in mind that file serving is run on the SMB protocol - an MS protocol that not only MS controls but that they are less than helpful about when releasing technical info on it. Samba is entirely reverse engineered. In addition, they needed to run it off of 4 partitons to enable it to beat Samba. While the 4 ethernet card set up and the static page test make one gape because of a total lack of real world usage, I can not believe that ANYWHERE in the world that ANY NT file server was set up with 4 partitions prior to this test.
In addition SMP has been in the Linux kernel for less than six months and has hardly been run on such a high end system but was only outperformed by NT by roughly 2.25 times. Also weak points and bottlenecks were identified in the SMP abilities of the Linux kernel. These are likely to be ironed out very quickly.
So NT beat Linux not very soundly on hardware built for NT on a hardware configuration designed to give NT a performance edge. Congrats to all of you NT people out there. However, instead of enjoying your victory you should be wondering how this "hobbyists' OS" came so close to NT that has billions of dollars sunk into it on a test clearly designed to favor NT. In addition, with the knowledge the Linux community has garnered from these tests, it will obviously not be so long before Linux can beat NT even on even such unreal tests as these.
By raising such tests, MS has put Linux in the limelight and has given it credibility that it has never had before. In addition it has let us know how to improve Linux. Thank you MS for the help and if you think about it just a little don't you think it would have just been better not to have said anything at all?
GODDAMIT THERE ARE 10000 PRO LINUX POSTS WITH
JUST AS STUPID A POST BUT THEY DONT GET -1
HOW ABOUT SOME FAIRNESS YOU HYPOCRITICAL SHIT LICKING
FUCKWADS
Yes, that's fine with me as long as you guys over the ocean stop complaining about our grammar.
Not true. On June 24th (an example), CNN had 174,658,399 hits, and 19,724,133 page views. That's a lot more than you stated (posted anonymously in case anyone at CNN cares)
>If you're just talking software, dollars/*anything* linux is zero and will win.
Not necessarily. Someone may be evaluating a supported distro, such as RH6 boxed, in which case there is a price. However, unless you install via ftp or borrow a cd, there is always a price. Its just that for Linux the price is orders of magnitude lower than MS. But yes, I was just referring to price, since hardware is the same no matter what OS is installed (in this case), and Windows and Linux run on the same platforms.
UnixWare is supposed to blow NT out of the water on systems with 4 or more processors - it has very linear scalability.
Anybody tried it on these sort of tests?
Bob
>> but if the main process dies then all child threads die.
>AHEM, HELLO, BULLSHIT. This exactly DOES NOT
>happen under the windows process/threading model,
>and IS what happens under most other models. I
>personally consider it a FEATURE when the main
>thread cleans up the suboordinate threads when it
>dies. If the main thread dies, YOUR APPLICATION
>HAS QUIT. There is no reason to keep the rest
>of the threads around.
How does "cleaning up" differ from dying in the context of my statement? The child threads are still killed off right? All those users out there who were being served by the child processes still lose thier services... right?
>I defy you to show how EITHER model adversely
>affects system stability.
Stability is a loosely defined metric. If stability is considered to be defined as the ability to continue doing it's appointed task then the forking process model has obvious benefits; however, if stability is defined as the ability to remain in operation after a server/daemon failure then then both models have benefits. NT's threaded model cleans up by killing all the child processes and then the server must be restarted - forked process models just spawn a fresh daemon automatically and continue as if nothing had happened.
If the server's purpose is to serve then it should do it's job without fail. If a model can be found that ensures and defines stability as the ability to do it's appointed task within it's operating parameters then... that is the model to choose.
At the present time, it has been pointed out that Linux on a single processor PII class machine equipped with 256MB RAM is capable of maxing out a T1 connection and is still stable enough to take a pounding while running multiple services. I'd call that a realistic expectation from a machine designed to do a specific job.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
that's not really a decent comparison, because the win32 port of apache was only recently completed and is still not considered stable.
also apache is built around unix and unix like systems, so architectural decisions made to improve performance on unix like systems mean it takes a hit in a lot of areas on win32 platforms.
that's really no more fair to windows nt in benchmarks than it would be to use iis on linux (assuming it existed), and most people here would probably start a small riot if they tried to do the tests that way.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
Well, well, well. So all the slashdotter kiddies who have claimed that NT was a snail compared to Linux were talking shit huh?
Amazing how we rationalize when real facts come out.
not in Linux case, fork() is just a special case of clone().
>Especially when you have to start communicating across processes.
Not the case to serve static pages, right ? Not to mention IPCs aren't for free between threads either (locking).
>Threading isn't just a nasty hack to get speed, it's there cause it's a good design - why do you think a mutithreaded ip stack is going to be incorporated into linux soon?
What's the difference between processes and threads ? Share of memory space, no more, no less. And no better, no worse. Linux IP stack won't get "multithreaded" as you say, it will be de-serialized. And if you don't see the difference, get a book on "standard" (not microkernel one) Unix architecture.
>And I wasn't saying that Linux IS guilty, I was saying that it's more likely linux would be guilty of leaving requests idle than what you said about NT (eg. don't make stupid claims about NT).
Same thing about Linux, I don't think the choice of processes/threads influence the equitability of the scheduling more than the scheduler design (hint). NT and Linux have different schedulers, but I don't think either is significantly "unequitable", right.
I am surprised by the reactions from the Linux people on the board. I feel compelled to play devils advocate and point out that Linux has been beaten on 3 proffesional tests. However the only reactions I have seen are storys about how the had one seen NT crash or that "in their experiance" NT was slow. This may very well be true, but benchmarks do not bear it out. If Linux is to compete for mindshare it has to be faster on the benchmarks! Maybe their was something wrong in the tests, but in the end, people listen to these big name mags. ZD may not be the most trustworthy (I'll never forget how they said that the i740 was faster than a Voodoo 2 and that a Rage Pro was faster than a Riva 128) but people listen to them. Instead of complaining about how the benchmark is bad, try looking to see if their are actually problems there. And remember, PC Mag WAS trying to make an effort to be fair, they wanted to come out of this looking like the objective king, so Linux did have good support. Also, they did point out cases where the Linux people said package XYZ would change the whole benchmark but it didn't. Lastly, even if NT is 50% faster, if your job isn't mission critical (and you don't trust that to NT OR Linux) then 50% is a lot. So is 200% I bought a Voodoo 2 even though it was ONLY 70% faster than my old card, but it made a differance.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Not to mention NT has way to go before scaling against *all* commercial Unixen (many benchmarks around, pick yours)...
It would be better if Linux specialized itself as mainly a workstation OS and didn't try to chase Microsoft and it's server benchmarks. Please don't bloat the kernel just for a benchmark. This might be exactly what Microsoft want's.
Correction, this is exactly what MS is doing, why do you think their systems are crashing constantly? Their systems are just optimized for the benchmarks...
The fact remains, if the free operating systems are so horribly bad, why is it so many private users and corporations that use them FEEL like they are more stable and better performing? Oh well, just my righteous two cents. :( ).
Because it doesn't match our day-to-day experience ?
Since I moved our accounting database from local box (PII NT workstation) to the server (P233MMX Linux), the guy on the NT workstation said he observed an *increased* speed. And yes, the files are shared thru Samba (I know, some client-server architecture would be better, but hey, the stuff is not exactly OSS
Agreed, that's a small LAN with few clients (mix of NT workstation and Win 9x boxes), so even if I believe the benchmark figures are for real, I can't reproduce the tests.
But I can say that in my real life case, Linux is a much better solution that NT. I feel like this benchmark is totally irrelevant because it doesn't grab the cases when Linux is used (at least right now). It mostly shows that NT features that Linux lacks, like 0-copy networking, are nice to have sometimes, that is mostly during benchmarks.
1. They claim that best hardware for Linux was chosen.
I claim that I own the world, do you think I'm right?
2. This configuration isn't 'exotic'. AFAIK It is _typical_ for big network server or web server ( not the one you use in your garage )
Bull, just bull, name me a company using 4 NIC in one machine used for webserving.
3. NT IS faster than Linux, even on single-processor machines -> TCP/IP stack problem isn't the only one.
Again this is not true. If someone shows me a benchmark that shows me that NT outperforms any unix on my k6 300 64 MB I'm going to jump out of the window.
4. Mindcraft tests were biased.
First truth in our post.
How can we fix it if we don't know whats wrong? They gave out very little info about the 2 setups. For all we know they are running a NT verson made JUST for this test VS. Redhat 5 and some old ass version of SAMBA.
I have to return some videotapes...
spurt that jizz! spurt it, queercakes!
pull your finger out of your ass and stop
jizzling yourself over how much power
you have as a moderator and put the fucking
post back up out of the -1 range...
or else ill engrave 'hypocritical asswipe' on your buttocks
with my sword of journalistic truth and integrity
It doesn't crash daily. That's Linux FUD.
:p)
NT4sp3 *NEVER* bluescreened me after runningit for a year on my desktop.
I don't have to sit in front of an NT box anywhere anymore. But at my last job, about a year ago, I had a dell ppro 200 with 64 meg. nt4, sp3. And I'll agree, it didn't blue screen often at all. Also, I didn't use this machine very heavily. IE 3, 2-3 3270 emulators, and lotus notes. You could watch my memory usage in performance monitor and watch my free memory drop by 5-10 meg each day(I only shut down once a week, who wants to wait for an NT box to boot in the morning?). By a little over a week, it'd freeze(no bsod though
"Any software which causes Windows NT to blue screen is a bug in Windows NT." -- Steve Ballimer at the release of WinNT 3.51
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
i started this..so i'll end it. i've had crashes with NT sunder the following SP's :
SP1, SP4, SP5.
i've not tried SP2/3.
I wish I could rember where I read this but it was about a year ago. I rember reading that MS products are designed to beat any comptitor in bench mark test but with the price of security. So OK if NT is twice as fast as Linux in web hosting and SMB network files. But the real question is how long will it work for, a day, a week, 2.5 weeks (My best knowtestable uptime for NT). Compared to uptimes in Months, Years, (I cant say decades because Linux is only 8 years old). I have done different benchmarks comparing a linux system to Win 95 and NT and in my test Linux out performed NT by a factor of 10, these are my rough results
A simple test to count and display 1 to 1,000,000 to the screen use a basic for loop and register INT
Duel Pentum 200
Linux text mode (2.0)kernel 58sec
Linux in Xmode (2.0)kernel 2min 30sec
Windows 95 Graphical mode 10 Minutes
Windows 95 in dos mode 30 minutes
NT 4.0 Graphical 7.5 Minutes
NT 4.0 Full Screen text 27 Minutes
Well I say in this benchmark test Linux won. But I could of had flaws I used GCC for Linux and Borland Builder for the Win32. I should of had 50 xterms open to simulate the system load of nt (I did that and got around a simular time). I should of taken the fact when Linux displayed the numbers to the screen The screen flicked every couple of sec while NT and 95 the display moved smothly and no flickers or small pauses.
Just to proove my point the benchmarks are the proof of the better system.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
SHITVILLE, NC - Bob "i like to fuck em" Young announced
today on the corner of shit farm and chitlin drive in down
town shitville NC (headquarters of RedSlut inc.) that
his company will be discontinuing linux products in the wake of the
devastating benchmarks released by pc labs this week. "It really comes as a shock
to those of us who care most about speed and money that linux just can't give
us the steaming-hot-bucket-of-semen like satisfaction that we desire from computer hardware. we want
a hot bitch in bondage but we are getting driving miss daisy. thus we have decided to
offer our rectums up to bill gates and our shareholders and will begin shipping redhat Windows NT. we will be starting
this fourth of july day, to celebrate our independence from all this idealism bullshit."
you know, i always wanted a nice career in
the forestry service. argh they are probably
running NT too.
I have been running W2K Professional Beta 3 since it came out in March on both my home and desktop workstations. It has not crashed. It is faster than NT4 SP5. It configured everything in my box perfectly without intervention, except the ZIP drive. That requires a registry hack to enable. That I believe has been fixed. It has run every app I have thrown at it, except games. Any game that ran on NT4, like Half-Life, runs on 2K. The NVIDIA TNT driver is not mature enough yet to run stuff like Star Wars Episode 1: Racer, but the Beta 1.88 NVIDIA driver is starting to show some promise. If MS continues down this path, W2K will be a great OS for the desktop. Haven't done enough on Server to comment. I thank the Linux community for the state of W2K. Without the challenge that Linux was the best and Windows NT, Microsoft's bread and butter for the next 10 years, sucked at everything, I doubt MS would so vigorously be persuing stability and reliability. Long live competition, arrogance, and fear to deliver the best products into consumers hands!
I think that they should do the test with a freebsd server and samba/apache. Freebsd is much faster in response time than linux. I was also thinking, isnt apache ported to winblows? Why not try using apache on a NT server?
Ok, we see where the weeknesses are in Linux, and we know what to do about it to make them go away.
DONT SIT THERE COMPLAINING ABOUT LOOSING! FIX IT GODDAMNIT!
Nobody likes a whiner least of all the corperations or the general public. It doesn't matter if the tests were rigged in favor of M$ or not. we know where our weeknesses are and we can fix them. if the results are wrong or padded or something then fixing the weaknesses with just make linux that much better than NT or any other OS.
denial or even functional denial does not serve a perpose.
If you want a system to work then make it work and fix the bugs too! don't point fingers and say. "He's lied!" or "The test was rigged!" or even "They were paid off!"
take a look at your failures and fix them!
If at first you don't feel good.... suffer like the rest of us.
And also I think Linus prefers simplicity than performance. Simplicity==stability. I think he stated for instance that he wanted to keep filesystems monothreaded, so that filesystem developpers won't have to worry about locking... If you want to have performance, you can go with commercial Unices anyway.
I think this is an important point. It's not clear to me that it is good for Linux to take on SMP. Most weekend hackers don't have multi-proc boxes to test this stuff on. And getting SMP code right, is hard.
This is something I think the Linux community should discuss. Should Linux try to be the best at everything and take on the commericial Unixes and NT on the multi-proc machines? Or should it try to be an easy to understand single-proc kernel that's fun to hack on?
How about not for an internet site? One of the tests was for a file server, which is usually not on the internet... throwing them both up "out of the box" would be a good test... how many people really spend a lot of time tuning their NT box? Not many.. they throw it up, and let it run (and BSOD)...
That would be a good test, IMHO...
Tangents are common in discussions among humans and that's not a bad thing (TM). However, I don't think we should lose sight of the fact that this discussion was over the fact that Win NT beat out Linux in a high-end server benchmark test. What the hell is Joe user doing with a quad Xeon 2GB server with 4NICs and multi-OC3's worth of bandwidth? Not much regardless of *what* OS Joe is using. In addition, NT 'won' this one with alpha level NIC drivers and lot's of low level tweaking; not something for Joe User.
2 years ago I was a wannabe Mac power user. I was introduced to Linux (via the web only), learned about IBM Compat. hardware and windows and quickly moved to installing linux. less than 1 year later I had a well configured linux graphics workstation and an old 486 serving as an IPMasquerading proxy server over PPP modem to my ISP. I configured it to auto dial on command, download email via POP and forward to the workstation as well as sending out email via SMTP. It would have been much shorter had I not had so many hardware delays (I had next to no budget for this hobby) Oh, and never had a crash.
I absolutely agree, windows has it's place; just not in any environment that requires stability.
The time spent in a little linux education more than makes up for downtime recovering from BSOD's.
Dave-O
Are you updating your NT server with SP without reboot? Service Packs released with less than a year period between them. How can you keep your NT up continuously for a year still following service packs?
What have you been done to track the reason for Linux instability. To have server crashing every 5 days is a bit annoying IMHO, so you'd have something to be done with it. Many people said what Linux is stable for them, so maybe it is the problem with your setup?
FreeBSD has its problems too. Read the freebsd-stable mailing list and see what kind of problems FreeBSD users have. There is no perfect OS!
Exchange server is not a joke. It's the saddest story any software company ever delivered.
You shouldn't be able to crash NT from userspace if the box is correctly set up. Problems are:
1) Too many settings and file areas have too unrestricted access level by default on NT. Try restricting access according to recommended settings.
2) NT users have Win9x at home. They demand the same access level at work, and "helpful" admins cheerfully add users to the WKS' administrator group. You would expect more Unix crashes if everybody had root access all the time, too, eh?
I really could care less if you believe me or not. I have produced and re-produced these results over and over for the last 8 months. If it were NT that was actually more stable, I would be praising NT. But that is not the case.
stick that in your dick and rub it!
NT is faster than netware -- look at (who else?) mindcrafts benchmarks. NT is also faster than a cray SV1 BTW...
A benchmark is only a number, it's about real life performance. Numbers are for suits, the real life is for techs.
We lost, so now we'll pretend we don't care.
i've written multithreaded stuff on OS/9..its crude and primitive but it does give you real time performance out of the box. its kinda like CPM + UNIX combo...
Let us know when those machines start to crash and when your boss decides to switch back too.
Without going into details that I should not go into, we do not develop new hardware, but we do develop solutions using existing products/technologies. Products know to work with NT, just put into the mix with other existing products. So the fact that NT crashes under heavy load when Linux does not shows the stability of the OSs using existing technologies.
SP4 and we are revising our test plans to include SP5. I have not started reliability testing with SP5 yet.
its cost. theres no one out there to pay for the tests to be run. would you like to contribute ?
Just think how bad American cars would still be if the Japanese hadn't come into the market. (Not to say they are the best, but they are a hell of a lot better than they were 10 years ago).
Agreed. Upstart competitors are good not only for those that use them, but (eventually) for those that use their competition. In that sense, Linux is good for Microsoft, and vice-versa. I know a Microsoft employee who was saying this very thing the other day -- that Linux will keep MS management from getting complacent and cutting development.
This is exactly the problem, NT is good at doing individual tasks. Try to get it do do alot of things well or at once and you definitely have a problem.
Are you honestly saying that speed, price, stability, apps, and support are not important for an OS? In your mind what is then?
Nice name you Bill Gates, money lover! Have many pleasant dreams in his arms at night?
You're assuming we get the famed BSOD. We don't. We get what looks like a normal GUI desktop, but everything is locked up. This has even happened overnight with no users logged on. Perhaps directory replication was taking place with the PDC. But if this is so it casts serious doubt about NT's place in the "enterprise" - a big network will have several servers and the normal housekeeping shouldn't cause problems. Also, directory replication is a built in part of NT, not a third-party add-on. Shouldn't it work flawlessly?
And regarding your story about a third-party software package, this highlights one of the problems with NT: poor separation between kernel space and user space. If you can't run "third party" software for fear of causing system instability you've got a pretty useless OS in my view.
By contrast, I've been using Linux for a little over a year now and I've never seen a stable kernel crash. I've beat on it pretty hard, too. I do alot of programming so I'm always debugging software, much of which uses pointers extensively. I've built several beta software packages. I've reconfigured and recompiled my own kernel several times. The worse I've ever experienced with Linux is having to log on to another terminal to kill a runaway process - never a crash.
As for my "pretending" to be an NT administrator, that's just a silly statement. It's a job position and I currently fill it. To be perfectly honest, though, I'm only self-taught as a network administrator, mostly OJT. I'm a programmer by education (Comp Sci) and a pilot by training (USAF). I am studying, though and am pursuing an MCSE.
But then, I thought NT was supposed to be so easy to administer?
I've had linux lock up solid a few times. Once when repeatedly adding and removing entries from the kernel routing table (2.0.34) and once or twice with shaky hardware that actually likes Windows better (unusual). I've had NT lock up for no apparent reason hundreds (no joke) of time on all brand name hardware. The other day our Exchange server decided to dissasociate a mailbox from its NT account for no reason at all. Easy fix, but WHAT THE HELL? Boy does NT suck. Still can't clear the cache on the Browser of that server either, locks up IE. Piece of crap.
Chris
Are schools profit making institutions? No.
Do Apple and MS make substantial profits from their involvement in public schools? Yes.
How much of that 2.6 Billion went to your local school district? Only chump change.
Did MS pay enough taxes to cover the cost of a multi-user NT site license at a school in your area?
The rest of the world's schools are moving towards Linux/BSD due to sheer practicality. You'll see the results in years to come.
Yes i beleive these tests show NT to be faster. but i think the point has been missed. Microsoft are smart. They knew the bottlenecks and pitfalls of the OS, If they knew that they would lose THIS test they wouldn't have gone through with it.
This Bench is pretty irelevent because it dosn't say anythinh about the OS as a whole. It just says that NT runs faster in a CONTROLED lab experiment. Also the kernel used in the NT test i belive was a highly TWEAKED kernel/OS(donT flame me if im wrong) and not a kernel people would by off the shelf.
My school has uses NT for the internet/file server for a 32 desktop win98 machines in a computer LAB and from what ive seen reliabilty and performance wise. This maching reboots itself because it runs out of memory(with 128megs) when two people use a shared CDROM drive at once.
Sorry.
This study has just proven to me that linux is more than fast enough. PC week said the linux box put out 1800 requests/sec to 3500 for NT, however after I did some calculations I realized that there numbers are way higher than they need be. 1800 requests/sec comes out to over 150 million requests / day. I think I can count the number of sites on the internet that need that kind of static web serving on my right hand. Oh yeah and then only 13.4 terabytes / day of data. Hmm. I really think this test shows that they both put and more than enough. So now we need tests showing stability. Let's see what the actual output is for a week, or even a month at these speeds, I am dying to know.
javac
That's funny! As you have pointed out before! Who the hell are you!
Whilst the test have highlighted some 'limitations' of Linux in a lab, and whilst this looks bad for Linux, and is something that we the Open Source Community should address seriously if we wish to gain widespread acceptance in the business world, it really fails to represent reality. My company is using a Dual P90 as it's main webserver, not a quad P500. If we got 1000 hits a second on our webpages we would probably die of heart failure. I saw a report that suggested that even the Charles Shwab e-trade site only gets aprox. 642 hits a second. Looking at it one way, the test showed that Linux for $0 is perfectly capable of performing the same job as NT for $1500 (once you add in mail etc..). Whilst NT might be faster in _HUGE_ volume tests, in the real world, there is probably little or no difference except in the area of stability.
However... for very small organisations, I run an ftp server, web server internal DNS, NIS, SMB (there is one Win95 machine) etc... for a small network comprised almost entirely of old 486s w/16MB mem, and 400MB HDs, Linux is the _only_ choice. NT wouldnt run on these machines and 95 isnt pretty! My home LAN which cost me less than $300 for 6 machines hub cables and all, plus $1600 for my main system (which I bought new and is now rather an outdated P166 w/8.4GHD+3.5GHD 64MB RAM) (7 machines in total). It performs great for my needs. If I were a small business, I think that I would have to think twice or three times before outlaying large sums of money to M$ for a system that was so over my needs, instead of using a system that would cost me so little.
Linux offers computing 'solutions' where NT offers computing 'problems'.
Bang/$, Linux will always win. Cost of upgrade since Linux 1.x software and all... $0
Cost of upgrade since DOS for M$ softward and all?...
anyone care to speculate?
Do we need to improve Linux' high end performance just for the sake of benchmarks? possibly not, but It wouldnt hurt.
Everyone is living in a personal delusion, just some are more delusional than others.
Yes, I know. Lets see, NT does not have any of the Microkernel's alleged stability, so to argue that a microkernel is inherently more stable and then site NT as an example is rather dumb. Mac OS X is only out in a server edition and looks OK but hasn't proven itself. BeOS is single user only and still beta though quite impressive. Show me a serious operating system that A) is a microkernel and B) has superior stability as a result.
So who has any real track record with microkenels? Microsoft. Hmmmmm....
Understand I don't mean any direspect to you, BeOS or Mac OS X but there's a whole lot more out there than just the desktop and right now microkernels are not necessary or worth the porting effort just to get enterprise stability. Linux, *BSD, AIX, Solaris, VMS, Tru64 Unix, HP/UX, OS400, OS390, they're all rock stable; NT, a microkernel, is good 23x6. Thats not much of a track record.
I browse with my threshold at 2 so I can't read my own comments :-)
maybe if there werent so many elitist assholes
such as yourself with a stranglehold on what
can be said in public, there wouldnt be so many
people who felt like they had to hide to say
their feelings.
there is still justice in this world
you know, it makes me bust a vein in my dick
with happiness to see a post with the beautiful
word 'fuck' in the subject line, but i still
have no idea what the hell you were trying to
say there little buddy
The test proves that a Linux box talking to NT
clients. Is slow. Hmm, and the point is?????
How about testing Linux boxes talking to Linux boxes? It like trying to talk to little kids
about rocket science.
Regardless it is outstanding results for something
put together in peoples spare time, for FREE!
Microsoft has an entire empire to make their stuff.
Actually, I took a look at the memory dump, and this definitely is a video driver issue. I installed an unsigned NT4 driver, and it just took its time biting me on the ass. That makes this a "stupid user" problem. This will teach me to post on slashdot while drunk.
--Shoeboy
Your company would FIRE you if you ran a browser on a server machine? Would you mind disclosing where you work, so I can take steps to ensure that neither me nor any of my friends ever, ever go to work there?
-Graham
With all the wankers arguing about "threads vs. processes" on slashdot, comments like yours stand out much more. Thank you for knowing your "sheet". Thank you also for taking the time to make your post readable and informative.
Folks, here's a hint: if your post basically amounts to "NT sucks" or "Linux sucks", you're just generating noise. If all you know about multithreading comes from your MCSE course or Linux Journal, then please shut up.
I'm getting tired of these partisan arguments from people who know one OS well and automatically assume that its way is the best way. I'm also getting tired of programming tips from people whose experience can be easily measured in months (assuming you count class projects).
W2K Professional Beta 3.
This says it all Win 2000 is still beta. Vaporware. In addition, several promised features are being cut so that it can be released sometime in the next year or so.
Also, MS always promises better, more reliable software and NEVER delivers. EVERY MS OS release has had more bugs in it than previous releases. Just look at Win 98. Nothing like shelling out a couple hundred bucks ever year because every year because MS failed to live up to past promises.
Today Bill Gates came out and said today because of the results of PC weeks tests the focus of Win2000 will be reorganized. Due to the real world conditions of the tests MS's webserver will be designed to only handle 2 kb static web pages. In addition to gain MS's seal of approval all servers must ship with 4 bounded ethernet cards and 4 disk partitions to optimize MS software.
MS deserves your money.
I don't know if this helps, but I've been able to trace a couple "solid lock" NT problems to SCSI cabling problems. One of these was on a new Dell server that shipped with a loose cable. NT doesn't seem to handle SCSI issues very well.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
IIS has a cost (as in WinNT). :P
Hey, can you get me a job at MS too?
When Bill said that did he mean just was he talking about just Linux at MS or also the BSD boxes and Solaris boxes at HotMail too.
Loser.
Besides from the basic fact you refuse to post your name and your company - leaving you little to no credibility. Throw in the fact you have posted this same message in about 5 different places. Let's look at the costs this decision would incur if it was not entirely your imagination.
1. New NT licenses.
2. This test used a 4 partion system thus
a. the cost of backing up all data
b. the cost of partition software
c. the time of an admin. to do this
3. The cost of an admin. to install NT
4. The cost of new computers and hardware (unless you somehow think you can get the same performance from those P133 machines now running Linux when you switch over to NT)
5. The cost of lost data when transferring over
6. The cost of lost work hours when people can't access their data because you are switching over to NT
7. The cost of 3 ethernet cards to match the setup of the test
And if you don't follow all of these guidelines, how will you explain to your boss when your expensive new solution is slower / less reliable than your old free one? Admit it you are certainly no system administrator.
Last Post!!! Woo Hoo!! Number 794!!!
This artcle is officially closed. No further posts are being accepted. Thank you.
that I can find a configuration of machine that Linux can beat NT on if I want to.
Boss: What do the numbers say?
Accountant: What do you WANT them to say?
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
I've worked with the same people and the same benchmarks and your claim makes no sense. In the case of NetBench and WebBench there is no code running on the server; it's just file requests. How can that possibly be Intel-biased?
It doesn't crash daily. That's Linux FUD.
NT4sp3 *NEVER* bluescreened me after runningit
for a year on my desktop.
I am running Win2k b3 right now and it hasn't
crashed since I got it a month ago.
However, it did crash on one of the other computers, which I suspect is a faulty video card driver (I installed a non-digitally signed driver)
They say the OS was the problem and not Apache or Samba so how about giving FreeBSD or some other BSD a try. Linux isn't the only open source operating system out there. On the bright side it is good news for Apache. It is as fast as Zeus.
Regards.
Ken J.
Seriously. This shows exactly where Linux needs work. Tests like this should be conducted often.
I would donate money to and support any organization which would do tests such as these and report their findings on a regular basis. Red Hat are you listening?
This can only make Linux better.
Linux vs M$ is not the first heated battle over performance and it will not be the last. One thing is for sure in this industry, the performance leader today will not be the performance leader tomorrow. I will personally have to endure days of the "I told you so-ers" in the near future. Does it matter? Not really. I still have an elephant to eat. And what is the best way to do that...one bite (err server) at a time. There is a lot more to selecting a platform(s) for developing/running large enterprise operations than simple benchmarks.
Keep in mind folks, we are the technical brains that keep corporate America running. With the very obvious shortage of experienced talent out there I dare say we will always have the upper hand when it comes to selecting who we work for and what platforms we do that work on. To that end, if management starts trying to define implementation based entirely on benchmarks...well I hope they have been taking some night classes.
**** Sworn to Fun, Loyal to None. ****
ambiguous words such as these in a benchmark kill their credibility.
It's so nice of Microsoft to pay for this apache advertising. Just as a point of reference, 1800 hits/sec is the same as 155,520,000 hits/day. I think that it's safe to say that noone in the world gets more than 150 million hits per day of static content. Wait, there's a better way:
1800 hits/sec * average 2k/hit * 8192 kbits/kbyte = 29,491,200 bits/sec, or 29.5 MBits/sec. What's that now, a T3 line? I know that a T1 line is 1.5 MBits/sec. Ok, so apache on one of these boxes can fille the equivalent of 19.6 T1 lines by itself. If (a bit more realistically, how many 2k files get those types of hits) those are just 10k files (let's not get into pictures), that's 147.5 MBits/sec, more than filling a T3 line, IIRC, and definitely filling up aapr. 98.3 T1 lines.
What's the problem with Linux/Apache, now?
May I suggest, if you can afford this sort of bandwidth, that you buy one of those 32CPU sun E10000 servers and call it a day? (or a server farm of linux boxes, since you're serving up static files.)
Oh, if you're serving up >1800 files per second of 2k files, who are you?
Oh, one more thing. If this is all on an intranet, you'll still need Gigabit ethernet if you're serving up the 10k+ files, so the sun box still applies to you.
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
It doesn't matter how much of a pounding you give the OSS community. We'll ALWAYS be there for the NEXT round. Better, stronger, and faster than before.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
very big big difference.
there's a lot of new, innovative stuff inside that OS.
The NT guys tweaked their system, and linux was
tweaked by some linux uber-geeks. Out of the box, Linux still beats NT.
That's the second comment I've heard in this thread to that effect. What you and the other guy fail to realize is that the reason many Linux people objected to the original Mindcraft survey is that the Linux box was NOT tweaked while the NT box was. They claimed that if the Linux box were tweaked, Linux would win... which it did not.
BTW, I'm still running NetWare 4.11 at work and I have to say it's damn dependable and it handles a heavy load (80+) of users with appreciable elan on VERY minimal hardware (P166, 96MB RAM). Linux is our web server, though, and it goes down even less than Netware and suits all our web needs.
MC
If Linux's bottleneck was a non-multithreaded IP stack, wouldn't FreeBSD have similar problems? IIRC, the FreeBSD kernel is not multithreaded, so it would scale even worse than Linux on a multiprocessor server.
Does anyone have any FreeBSD web serving benchmarks?
cpeterso
OMG! You said something good about Windows and bad about Linux. That is punishible by death on Slashdot! I swear, some of you Linux people need to get a grip. I admit, I have never tried Linux (though hoping to pick up a copy tomorrow at a computer fair) but the way yall act is pathetic. "Linux is SOO much better than MS. EVERYTHING MS makes absolutly sucks. MS has NEVER made a good product." And if Linux ever gets bad score, like this case, then it's always "ZDNet fixed it so Linux would lose", or, "They should have tested it on a 386 with 2 megs of RAM, yea, then Linux would win" They forget that NO server even uses anything close to that bad. I'm a Windows user, and I like Microsoft products. If that makes me a rebel and an idiot in your eyes, then the heck with you!
linux lost, oh well. just remember that while half you people are crying about linux, and the other half saying that Open source stuff doesn't work, there is the shining example of what OSS can do sitting there serving up cdrom.com. I've yet to see Microsoft pull that kind of throughput and uptime (at that cost). But it just won't be thought of as much, because the mood still seems to be "if it's not Linux, it's crap!", and evidently, the *BSD stuff just isn't as cool. Whatever.
It all depends on what kind of dynamic content you want to serve - IIS has some built-in modules that do some Microsoft-specific type of CGI, and NT does it pretty well.
The main problem with Linux is that it doesn't scale very well to more than 2 CPU's. Linux needs to minimise I/O by getting rid of the big kernel lock around the filesystem, although the networking code also needs to scale better.
The Apache guys are also considering a multi-threaded model, so along with the relevant OS changes it should be enough to beat NT.
Can you read?
The point is, by going with a monolithic kernel, you trade off stability for speed.
That is, Linux is LESS STABLE than microkernel architectures because a bad driver or module can't bring down the system. Linux performs better than microkernel systems.
You people are complaining about NT trading off stability for performance (from NT3 to NT4 they moved video into the kernel, because it wasn't fast enough)
at the same time, you don't realize the tradeoffs Linux made.
For a desktop system or workgroup server, I think Moore's law should be taken into account and stability maximized. That is, don't worry about slow video. Just count on faster CPUs and video cards gain acceptable GUI performance.
I think the real danger is that the community will feel pressured to "fix" the problems before the fixes are stable.
I really don't think that will be too much of a problem. After all, that's what the development kernels are for, anyway (and patches won't get ported back to 2.2.x until they're relatively stable). If a business insists on running a development kernel on a machine, let them reap the rewards as they may be.
Because those are IIS servers and you can't bring them down..
;).
Well, consider the fact that there are 96 Compaq Proliant 5500 (quad ppro boxes) running microsoft.com on a fiber optics backbone... Check it out for yourself. It must be nice to have the cash to fix software shortcomings with hardware
--- A Jesus Fish eating a Darwin Fish only proves Darwin's point.
NT probably COULD run Hotmail, it wouldj ust require a much larger investment of time and money than they want to put into it. microsoft.com runs 96 Compaq Proliants and has a good deal of files to throw around, Hotmail would be about the same size, so it would require another 96 Proliants for Hotmail, an investment I dont think M$ is going to make. AFAIK Hotmail uses FreeBSD not Solaris.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I realize that this comment will be moderated down for being off topic, but I feel the need to digress in response to the increasing criticizm of those who submit comments as "Anonymous Coward".
/. here and there during the day. I don't want to log in from every computer I use, simply because some of my coworkers also read /. from some of the same machines, and it's just too much trouble to log in and out all of the time.
/. comments that automatically come out with a score of 2 or greater. The algorithm would be something like this:
When I'm at work, I sometimes have a few minutes to read
I know that it isn't often the case that an AC's comment gets favorably moderated, but well, neither do most of the bold individuals with names who submit comments.
As for flames, they happen.
I'm thinking of writing a program to generate
// begin post
[mention obscure fact about issue]
[predict that post will inspire flames]
[express disregard for above prediction]
[take 6 or more words to express linux community solidarity]
[talk about how this topic relates to something at work]
[claim not to be surprised by results/information/story]
do one of the following {
[mention a famous OSS advocate]
[comment something to the effect that "linux will win"]
}
use several of the following {
[IMHO]
[AFAIK]
[M$]
}
do not use [LOL]
// end post
One of my CSE professors at the University of Washington worked with Dave Cutler at DEC. He said Cutler was the "best programmer in the world". He said Cutler would always have two piles of printouts on his desk: a very short stack of his code and a tall stack of all his test code.
Unfortunately, Cutler is now in his own little world, racing cars and working on a Win64 project (codename "Sundown" harhar) that will probably never stabilize..
cpeterso
Yeah, but that kick-ass Amiga will just be beat out by Radio Shack's TRS-80 Model 2000, who's CPU would really be 1024 Z-80's in parallel. THis itself will be whomped with a new machine consisting of 64k parallel Intel 4004's! ;-)
"charachter...definately..." ?????
Is that really a quote of Rob? Or is it "...character...definitely..." ? You may think that this is pedantic, but if you quote someone with only two words, I think it is important that you spell them both correctly.
Pedantically yours,
Mr. A. Coward.
We must look at this this way: The first tests MindCraft did returned very little data to help in fixing the problems and it was 80% NT marketing. This was bad for Linux because we got nothing from it. We were able to get a rematch where we get reams of data on what/how/why the results fell where they did. Linux still did pretty well when you consider it can run on a 4MB 486 router up to multi CPU servers in a cluster to rival super computers. We got tons of data from this and can only make things better. This wouldn't have been posible without this test. We should thank MindCraft for working with that Linux group and get back to fixing/testing Linux.
I don't think Microsoft can scream as loud as it wanted the first time the test were run. We win on these two issues. IMO.
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
> How does Linux compare to Mac OS X?
There haven't been many comparisons yet of Mac OS X's overall capabilities to the other major OSs, partially because OS X is still in its infancy and partly because there's still some lingering doubt over Apple's long-term plans for the system (the scientific term is Coplandophobia, a fear of dead-end business decisions spurred on by a lack of a clear strategy; not fatal if caught in time).
It appears that it will improve (eventually) over AppleShare IP for file/web sharing, although granted that's a long way from replacing NT as your server of choice.
I know, I know, MacWorld looked at it in their July issue. However, IMHO that review shouldn't count for much; I find it troubling that they had to compare it with a multiprocessor IIS/NT box because a machine comparable to the G3/400 used in testing wasn't "available at press time". Sigh. Not that one necessarily expects much from the magazine that over-trumpeted its exclusive coverage of Apple's purchase of Be, but why bother testing it if you're going to stack the odds like this? It would be like testing X Server against netBSD on an SE/30; they both work great, but one is obviously going to outpower the other.
Hopefully, by the time major publications and organizations get around to looking at OS X and/or Darwin as an option along with the other BSDs or Linux or even NT, the hardware will have caught up to the promise of the software (viva la AltiVec, baby, yeah!) and Apple will finally be a viable alternative to Windows in the higher-end again.
Please, no flames about the netBSD crack; I'm shopping for an SE/30 on eBay even as you read this for the sole purpose of proving to my nonbeliever friends that a 10-year-old computer smaller than a 13" monitor can still be useful to society.
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
Yes, it appears the test is a fair comparison this time. Even the reviews are worded nicely.
I have no trouble believing that NT can outperform linux on said tasks, on high-end systems. I'm sure linux has it's share of plateaus. But the fact remains: My P200 w/128MB Ram can kick the snot out of an NT machine running the same.
The fact that Linux performance doesn't scale to huge systems doesn't concerne me. When I want to serve out files that fast.. I don't chose NT or Linux.....
This is now the chance for Linux to show its true strength - the Open Source Community. Even in the midst of the Mindcraft controversy, the kernel and Apache developers were busy using the Mindcraft tests to identify and fix the real performance bottlenecks that Linux has. Don't worry, we'll catch up.
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
I am sorry, but I am a linux(still pronouncing it lie-nucks...is this wrong?) newbie and you all scared the hell out me when the mindcraft thing aired, with all of your evanelism and fanatisim. I never believed any one was faster than anyone else, just which was better. I get a whole lot of goodies with my cheap linux cd's, things that cost $$$$ in the microsoft world. I cursed 95 everytime it crashed, and it put one more nail in it's own coffin. I refuse to buy microsoft procucts, their mcse, anything!!!!
One would hope that somthing that cost $450 or more per license was faster than another thing that was free, but who am I to judge? IT's all about who wanted to win more. Microsoft needed to justify it rates to it's customers, they needed this badly and they got it. I congratulate them on their victory and hope to meet them in the field again.
Afterall, it is competition that will improve both operating systems.
Joe
All of your stuff is completely relative.
Price/Performance
It's all related to how much you pay your admins and how well they administer your system. This isn't a function of the OS. Yes, Linux costs less out of the box, but an NT admin is going to have a harder time (and thus charge more) to set it up than he is an NT system. If a business currently has functioning NT systems and competent NT sysadmins, why should they switch to Linux?
Clustering
How many small businesses who are choosing between Linux and NT need to, want to, or care about the ability to cluster? People who care about this benchmark are not the same people who need to run clusters.
Other Hardware Configurations
How much would it cost for a company to build a Linux-happy system? Most systems built today (and the systems that we want Linux to run on) are built for Microsoft. You'd need a custom-built, custom-designed solution to truly grab all of Linux's power, and that costs money, either in man-hours or purchasing power. The results of this test would've been far more atypical if they had built both machines finely tuned for Linux. At least this time around, they weren't blatantly geared towards Microsoft.
Security
Security, I'd say, is 75% system administration and 25% OS. Linux has its security problems as well, most of which can be plugged up with effective network management. Many of NT's can, too. MS may be a lot more apathetic to security concerns, but they don't run the systems, they sell them. I don't consider Linux or NT any more secure than the other.
Stability
Stability can be completely a function of management. I've heard stories of Linux systems stay up for months or years. Guess what, I've heard the same stories about NT as well. I've also heard stories about unstable Linux systems. I've seen no long term studies done on system stability, so everything I hear about stability I file away under anecdotal evidence, not hard verifiable data.
Change real world needs
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. I don't see how this benefits Linux. Change the system and, whoa, Linux might perform worse under that setup. It happens to both types of OSes, and before you say, "It happens to Linux less!" find some hard data, not stories.
The Future
Past trends do not determine future performance. I doubt Linux will keep up its 212%/year growth and Linus has already said that upgrades aren't going to be as drastic as 2.0 to 2.2. Don't assume that Linux will advance in the next three years as it has in the past three years.
Does anyone know which version of the kernel was used? I'm assuming that it's the same version as in the Mindcraft tests. If so, I wonder how the latest kernel (stable) would perform. Maybe not much better because of the TCP stack limit they found, but I'm still curious to know if it would.
Steve
Who the hell bothers with their own T1 anymore?
Anyone who isn't running a half-assed website will co-locate their server at a place like Exodus or Above.net where you have 10Gb/s available to you if you need it, and are 1 hop away from almost every machine.
> So Bill's penis is larger than linus'?
:-)
Bill's penis is *smaller* than Linus's.
It's small and soft. Microsoft, to be precise.
No offence intended.
Heck, even server-level SDRAM (ECC, CAS2) is going for ~$1/mb.
The command line will always be there, it just may not be part of the standard install or on the same CD.
I believe Apple wants to be sure (for good reason) that developers don't use the command line as a crutch and force newbies to 'tar|gunzip|make|make install' stuff.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Yes, Kurt, you hit the nail on the head.
/.'ers who could take Linux and Apache and merge Apache into kernel space, compromise everything else, and personally release an OS/Web Server combination that could easily beat NT in Webbench. The same goes for Linux/Samba. What they would have created is an O/S with dedicated application functionality.
There are probably a hundred (a thousand?)
Funny you should mention it. There are some kernel developers involved in writing khttpd, a kernel thread that serves static webpages. Last message I read about it on klm says that performance has recently matched apache.
Avi
At his pre-COMDEX address at Fermilab earlier this year, Linus addressed the issue of "mine's bigger than yours is".
What he said basically boiled down to this.
He doesn't care what runs "fastest". He wants it to run well, be stable, and generally hassle-free.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Damn lies. It's a concpiracy I tell you! Bill Gates agreed to take Ziff-Davis's mom out for a week if ZDNet made NT look faster.
... you'll be getting a whole ton of spam directly from the Church of the Penguin.
How could Linux be sloweR? We have the Holy Pengiun on our side! And the Holy Book of man pages! Pope Pengiun II will be making a holy statment on the Holy Linux Channel at 4:30AM today regarding the sins of Bill Gates. I'm sure this incident will be included.
I have recieved word that the Penguin has declared Jihad (Holy War) against Bill Gates and his evil parterns in sin. Watch out, Henry Baltazar and Pankaj Chowdhry (the guys who wrote performed this unholy deed)
In related news, Bill Clinton has recently declared that all Microsoft Employees will recieve free admitance to mental institutes, nation-wide, under the new MediCare reforms.
When the price is not a concern, why would you use NT. I'm sure you could find a sun that would easily out perform a top of the line NT/Intel box.
Microsoft has tried to prove that it can handle the enterprise by running their own site on NT4 and IIS. Just the web site is run on 36 Compaq ProLiant 4500 machines, with four-way P6 processors, up to 512 MB of RAM. After hardware, licencing, and administration, the cost is significant for any company. I'm still laughing that microsoft said that Suns were crap because if you weren't careful you could crash a sun when hotswaping a motherboard.
The majority of the sites on the internet are run off machines similar to a home computer. In this area linux has showed its superiority.
oh yeah and what about the sites that don't run NT. Yahoo! and Hotmail come to mind.
Linux might not be ready for the enterprise, but neither is NT.
Oh yeah, i fully installed rh linux on a 2 way p400 in under half and hour, it took twice that time with NT.
Hum doesn't look like you know too much about the real world either
what we need to realize is that although uptil now linux has been designed for lower end machines(mainly cause the main developers and users till now could only afford cheap hardware), we ARE trying to move in to the enterprise, and there, the price of hardware, or for that matter, the software, hardly matters. even the regular upgrade cycle that M$ forces on them corporates is of no concern to them(after all the IT dept need to justify its annual budget!). So if linux has to make any inroads at all in the Corporate world, we need:
After all(and PLEASE, no flames, for once we should be ready to aceept the truth):
So what market are we aiming for? I think, THAT question really brings out THE central problem with the whole of linux. It is great for the folks who know what they r doing, and what they want (us!), and so it also targets us. But get out of the slashdot community, and the reasons for using Linux just start fizzling out. Th only real reasons u can tell to a non geek are that its free, and it performs better than windoze. Of course, RedHat Linux is not free(and to a geek, the option of downloading linux and installing it doesn't really appeal. frankly, even i, with my 4y+ experience with linux won't really try that), and these tests(which i am sure M$ is really going to tout al around) would show that its performace isn't really that great. Why should (s)he change, and give up most o' his/her favorite apps in the bargain? As of today, linux does not even have a stable browser, which can do java well. I hate Windoze, but i have to go to a Windoze machine(i don;t have any microsloth thing within 100 meters of my office) if i want to check out a java-loaded page. Want to quickly develop a GUI Application? A person who does not care about the OS, is definitely gonna chose VisualBasic over EMACS/GCC/Qt.
All OSes have specific aims:
BE: Multimedia...does great at it. no body even compares Windoze to Be in this area.
WinXX: ease of use, integration. integration, to what ever levels M$ carries it, does have a problem, but most people would take a frequent reboot, rather than give up the tight integration.
Solaris: Server, computing
IRIX: graphics, scientific computing
Linux: ?????
Where Is Linux? Where is it Going?
These are important questions, ANY movement must ask itself. If we find we cannot answer these, we would just turn out be Rebels without a cause. and linux would just end up being a note in OS history. Don't get me wrong...i work(about 8 hours a day at work, and another 4-8 hours/day at home) exclusively on IRIX and Linux, and have not even touched a WinXX machine in more than six months, i have been really thinking about the future of linux, and to me, at present, it doesn't look very bright. I would continue to use it, no matter what, but linux developers really need to do some kind of serious thinking about what they want from linux.
LinuxGhoul
Sigura Non Grata
I was (and still am) a little bummed that NT won. But I'm excited to see the rematch in 3 months, when a pumped & primed Linux, Apache & Samba combo wins with a KO in the first round. Microsoft is a beast, and it'll take 'em forever to update their server. They'll rest on their laurels for at least 18 months. We, on the other hand, will always be competitive.
I also want to see vanilla installs of the two competing operating systems... Commpared to when they both are tweaked... I wonder how much of the Window NT 4.0 server is really in from the distro CD or is it highly optimized code that can do only a couple of things really well and do the rest poorly?
Jason Wieland
EVERY company wants world domination. They are in business to make money and nothing else. And I be dammed if they aren't doing a great job at doing that. And if world domination, as you so well put it, achives even more money, than ANY business would want that. I bet if Linux was in everything, you would be quite happy, wouldn't you?
He is a M$ employee, or a contractor, ask him how much he gets paid for saying this. He knew how it was going to end up because it was all engineered. ;)
;)
Ok serious now. Why do you want to take this to a persona level? "LINUX IDIOTS"? Come on now, your mother HAD to have taught you better than that. If not mebbe you should have been beaten more as a child..
As for old hippies, I aint old. I still can't get my Linux box up proper (due to my own lack of knowledge, not the OS) but from the second I installed it I knew this (the win box) had numbered days.. Linux doesn't crash. Never has for me. Win crashes a *MINIMUM* of 4 times daily. And before it's said, it isn't 950a.
Let M$ have a field day. They'll be buried soon enough under their own loads of BS.
You fool! How can you give out the formula like that!? Now we'll have nothing but posters with high default scores! :)
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
.
cpeterso
ok, so linux doesn't have support for it for the nic you mentioned... they should. I agree with the earlier post which questioned how realistic this was. A real world, real situation test needs to happen. One where issues about realistic situations are dealt with. I know what I experience. When ISP's switch to NT from linux, latency becomes a major problem. I've seen it several times. Not only that, but I say lets make it truely fair. get a team from microsoft and a team of linux techs together. Give them $5k to buy equiptment, and to pay full retail for software (i.e., microsoft not giving itself a price-break). Then see who wins. Linux is more stable, and can be more easily administered remotely. There is less of a constant maintanence cost. and exactly how reasonable -is- 1800 hits a day? as far as "linux" pronunciation is concerned, looong ago I had a sound clip that was supposed to be of Linus Torvalds pronouncing "linux." he isn't american, so don't say it the way an american would. its pronounced Lee-nux : )
I would like a temperature reading on the processors durring the tests... I know that when I run my windows machiene and Linux machiene at idle I get a 5-10 degree temperature difference (In Linux's favor)...
jason wieland
I picked up a Damaged/Discontinued Compaq Pressario Pentium 166 for $300 (chip on the modem was burnt -- removed the modem -- computer boots).
I purchased Redhat 6.0 from Cheapbytes for $2.00+S/H.
I registered my domain (not infidels.org) for $70 for two years.
Other than the ISDN price, my entire domain/dns/mail/web/listserv-lite/workstation/etc cost me less than $400.
MS now sells Windows NT Services for UNIX for $150 to give NFS/Telnet capabilities on NT. Not counting the base price. Plus CAL's. No additional software.
I'd like to see a $400 server comparison.
A friend mentioned PGCC, which is much better than GCC from what I've seen, but I haven't been able to find it.. Anyone know where to get a copy?
Direct link to the file(s) preferred..
Let's take a look here...
After a tortuous five days of tests, audited by the best and the brightest from Mindcraft, Microsoft and Red Hat Software Inc., and despite significant tuning improvements made on the Linux side
Hmm...
They forget to stress that NT was tuned by Microsoft employees who have access to NT's source code!
Ok, well, this is how I read it at least.
Hmm... This is interesting.
When was the last time your company had access to NT programmers who could tweak the NT OS for your bidding? On the other hand, Linux? Well, we all know how easy it is to get Linux tweaked! Hmm....can we say bug report?
Therefore, this whole test would be irrelevant, right? Because- for an IT department to get this type of performance, would require a miracle!
Hmm.... what was this about real world performance?
Although, this does give us a window into the world of what to expect with Win2000....no pun intended...of course......
Dunno if anyone else notices this, but it seems that alot of Linux-fans are poo-pooing the fact that the benchmarks were "run on systems that NT is designed to run better on" or "Run on systems designed for NT." Then they turn around in their next post and suggest running the benchmarks on a 386SX/25 with 4 megs. Umm, how isn't that doing exactly the same thing -- tailoring the hardware to a system Linux is designed to run on. Hell, we don't even support 386s.
Perhaps, while you are creating your new law, you would take the time to spell "Beowulf" correctly? I usually avoid spelling corrections (although lord that's difficult some days) but if you're going to call someone a "dumbass" and a "moron" then perhaps you should be concerned with how you appear as well.
This spelling flame contains no tyops :)
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Obviouly, you know nothing about pricing in the real world. The OS price is vanishingly small compared to the hardware and staff costs to support the machine. The price of the OS simply IS NOT A FACTOR. Except for college students working at the bookstore.
Clustering: NT can cluster too. Anyone can cluster at the DNS or Switch level. But where as commercial OSes have failover capabilities, Linux doesn't except for unreliable hacks. Commercial systems also do multitier clustering by multiplexing the middleware and database backends, and using distributed transactions. (ala Kiva's no-bottleneck architecture)
Security: Come on, any Redhat box less than 6.0 is ROOTKITABLE out of the box. It is far easier to hack into a Linux box through the latest and greater buffer overflow than it is with NT.
Stability: NT4sp5 is plenty stable. Only Slashdot FUD claims it isn't.
How about these?
Ease of setup.
Ease of maintainence.
Staff training.
Access to a large base of experienced workers.
Much wider array of software available.
For the price of NT you can get better hardware, and outperform NT.
It's easy to write fast software. Just don't do
any checking. I have written small, very fast
code. Unfortunately, if the user types something
wrong, it crashes. But boy is it fast!
Yeah, two hours?
Download, unzip, run.
Its as simple as it would be in DOS or any other OS.
Maybe tweak a couple things, but you don't need that to let it run flawlessly.
Well, I'm guessing you were installing Linux on a Windows machine and wanted to run both at the same time.
If you just wanted Linux (like you just wanted W2k...etc.) it would be pretty simple. Make main partition, make swap, install, and when you boot up the web server is started by default with RH.
>And no more excuses. Linux is not the fastest. Deal with it.
Head to head with MS-gurus? How about a normal setup? Look at the "old stories"..:
ZDNET: The Best Windows File Server: Linux!
It is no surprise to see an AC posting such an article. I think that it was just a couple of days ago when I saw some of the stuff that was posted on Mindcrafts site (linked to by /.) where people were bad-mouthing them because of the tests. It is posts like this that give the Linux community a bad name. It is one thing to call a foul, but it is another to act like a immature jerk and start bad mouthing a test that was conducted in a much more controlled environment. I think that ZD would have learned from Mindcrafts mistakes and corrected (most) of them. They are people too, and they DO make mistakes. Linux is not perfect, yes it is better than anything that has come out of Redmond...but it still has some maturation. Not unlike some of the people who post here. A true sign of maturity within the Linux Community would be to accept the loss _GRACEFULLY_ and go out and build a better OS. Then the next time that there is a test we can go out and show eveyone who is best instead of sitting on the sidelines pointing our fingers at the referees. Take the loss, no matter how hard that it is, and make what you feel so strongly about BETTER. Bitching about it ain't gonna build a better OS.
--------------------------------------------
Please give your mod points to others, Im at the cap. They will appreciate it more
... but we all know how the story ENDS.
The Micros~1 drones, PHB's and hunter killer slashdot troll-warbots are going to have a field day with this. Pay no heed.
support gun control: take guns from cops
Yep NT has all that support and even more. Our costs for NT is much much much less than the Free OSS crap because the cost of trainning and the headaches envolved.
so P/P is not a question NT smokes Linux at that too in a large envirament.
Or a small one for that as well.
This is the one thing that Microsoft would love to keep quiet, I'm sure. How relevant is two times the performance if you have to pay 10x as much to get it?
What's a copy of Windows NT Server run these days?
-Michael Pelletier.
You bring up an interesting point. This survey would be alot more interesting if more parties were involved. Perhaps they should take all comers? I would love to know how Solaris and other nix OS' measure up in this respect.
Pretty much everybody has eschewed the microkernel model at this point, not just Linux. For a while HP, IBM, Sun and DEC were all paying lip service to microkernels and saying that they would one day move to microkernels, but none of them have. (Yes, I know Digital Unix is based on Mach, but its Mach kernel 2.5 not the Mach microkernel v3.?)
While microkernels may be more stable in theory, in practice good APIs and coding count for alot more.
I browse with my threshold at 2 so I can't read my own comments :-)
Although Linux doesn't have a PR agency, there's still the same kind of spin happening in this thread. Which (among the 2+ responses) is "MS has sacrificed stability/quality for performance". Lots of discussion about bypassing the HAL, super-secret internal MS interfaces, etc...
But we need to be careful. If you'll note, the article notes that Samba won in the earlier SMB tests tests because there was a performance hit in NT due to the transaction log. Which is a stability / robustness feature that Linux simply lacks, and would be better off having if availability and fault-tolerance are the primary design goal.
We're treading on dangerous ground... PR is like a game of chess, and the community needs to be careful about spouting out this kind of spin which can quickly become a rallying point and then proven foolish if it isn't well-though through.
The ftp is run on 4 of those compaqs, and it doesn't even come close to wcarchive's thoughput.
Yeah i know it's freeBSD, but they are both free unix
Beowulf and SMP do not solve the same set of problems you dumbass.
The fact that you brought this up is a sure sign that you don't know what you're talking about.
I'm going to christen a new law, like Godwin's law deals with Hitler being mentioned.
Let's call it "BeoWolf's Law"
If a moron on Slashdot mentions Beowolf in a context that is not related to a problem which is easily horizontally scalable, then that person is not credible.
Right after installing Win2K on a new machine, I tried simply to move the mouse and it crashed!
That was enough for me. Maybe I will try Win2001.
How many nt boxes?
This is all still using the old 2.0 kernel. One of the stips for the test was that no software released beyond the date of the original Mindcraft test be utilized.
So, a more scalable kernel is already out. Apache's had a couple revs. Keep hacking people.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
There are some very important lessons to be learned here.
IMHO, this represents a huge step backwards in respect for the Linux crowd. After seeing the vitriolic comments about Mindcraft and anyone supporting MS, well, sadly, this tells managers that Linux advocates are simply ABM folks.
I'm not arguing ABM, but from an MIS standpoint, when you've got someone whith a huge, working MS investment, too many people have acted like children over the past few weeks.
And for those saying "we've got a fix in the works," let's not forget that MS has a fix in the works as well. I doubt it will be a cure-all, but certainly we should expect the bar to be raised.
>Some of you still feel the need to whine
Who's whining? By winning NT and Mindcraft still lost. You actually think this helped Mindcraft's reputation any? Nope. All it showed is that they are really only familar with Microsoft products, and doesn't seem to want to take the time and effort to learn about other products. Not a company to turn to if you have questions concering non-Microsoft products. As for NT the fact that this test proves that the numbers Microsoft were orginally claiming concerning NT's performance vs linux (remember their WWW page advertising this "fact") was pretty much bogus doesn't help their credibility all that much either.
With all this buzz going around about how BeOS seemed to be the best at PC Expo, why doesn't somebody run some BeOS server benchmarks?
Think about what Be has going for it:
- Very well multi-threaded
- Integrated with TCP/IP
- Takes advantage of all of a PC
That seems like a recipe for a great server, no?
Be comes with Poorman (generic server), and now there is RobinHood (free, semi-GUI server), and when Apache 2.0 comes out, Be will be supported (it already is, sort of).
What'd think?
As schools/libraries become wired across the U.S., the first choice for tech purchases is NT, then Novell. *nix is usually not an option in most cases.
This bias in these public institutions raises some interesting questions:
Do we want our school districts blowing tax money on MS/Apple site licenses instead of getting decent hardware for kids?
If schools across the U.S.(which are dropping billions on networking these days) used only Linux boxes, they would get all the tools necessary for administration, network access, word processing, including those necessary for teaching CS. (MSVB or MSVC alone could equal a new network ready linux box). Get the idea? Push linux in schools by the motto "saves tax payer money", then a few years later, kids grow up knowing X-windows and the c-prompt.
Sadly, most school district purchases model the IT purchases of large corporations, yet they should be acting as the little guys in the interest of taxpayers. This general IT naivete in K-12 schools results in an enormous waste. They don't realize that they could unify the schools across the district for the $50 cost of a few Enterprise Linux CDs and a couple of good IT administrators (who are willing to teach). Email for each kid (qmail, sendmail), print servers for each classroom, and webservers for each classroom, real (license free) porn filters via Squid, even dial-up from home, text processing in foriegn languages, etc.,-- it could be beautiful.
An example of this waste:
I'm certain there are several schools with a $5000 server in the Main Office with NT that is incompatible with the majority of legacy computers in classrooms. Yet if linux were running, they could all be talking.
Put Linux in schools and businesses will later follow. Leave everything as is and Apple/MS can call the shots in schools for years to come. Personally, I don't give a damn about Linux taking over the business world. Let the money flow down the drain. GPL offers a lot of benefits to public schools world wide.
my 2 cents.
Tom Ellis
tom.ellis@mail.utexas.edu
Dept. of Instructional Technology at UTexas
Your are all so right. NT is run on all the supercomputers around the world. Microsoft sure is right when they say that NT can support up to 256 processors. I have a cray supercomputer and NT can kick ass on it. YOu should also mention that 98% of all computers on the net including hotmail, yahoo and slashdot.org all run IIS/NT.
Boy those guys at microsoft sure know how to make great software. Revolutionary products like ms write and ms bob are so popular and are standard on every desktop today and will be for quite some time. Failure is one word that microsoft never hears.
:-) Had your fun troll boys?
Now scram and get a real OS that doesnt crash.
Even if you actually did do a professional-type benchmark (and I don't see how you could - you wouldn't have the resources to do it) - let's say a couple of months ago, it'd be irrelevant because Linux improves DRAMATICALLY faster than NT could ever dream off. Your benchmarks are obsoleted even before you have the time to write a paper on them.
Lastly, something that cost more is not neccessarily better. Never has, never will. It's really a pretty common sense rule, and it doesn't even apply to only the software field. It's pretty much true for everything. It does take an idiot to believe that more money == greater quality. (sorry, I don't usually insult people, but the temptation in this case was just to great. he asked for it)
I could go on why linux is better than NT (and speed is not a factor) but it's really not worth doing in this thread.
And of course, the forked process model is not scalable compared to the SMP thread model with asynchronous I/O
:-P ]
Could you expound on this? In the first case, lots of processes run on lots of processors. In the second, one process runs on lots of processors. Unless there's a whole lot of memory that needs to be shared, threading and forked processes would seem to me to be about equivalent. [ I'm not quite sure what asynchronous I/O has to do with this since it can be done in both models so I'm leaving it out
Daniel
> What is this, stream of consciousness writing?
It's entirely possible some people speak English as a second language.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Being that you are an expert in these things (so it seems). What would the appropriate Linux solution be? How much would that cost? You get roughly $50k to play with over Microsoft. Difference in NT -> Linux pricing, estimated at $500 (Bulk Purchage) x 96 ~= $50k. Use a better figure if you have one.
The point - High volume servers will always be expensive. Witness half million Oracle servers.
If a business currently has functioning NT systems and competent NT sysadmins, why should they switch to Linux?
:) Linux is not winding down to a dull has-been OS anytime soon, and I would think that all Windows and Linux users would want it that way because it will make both better.
My company is a Windows Solution Provider. We have thousands of NT systems, scores of NT sysadmins, yet we are switching to Linux (and many are not happy about it). Why? Because Microsoft doesn't want us to provide the kinds of products and services we want to. They left us no choice. We decided to move in a direction that allowed us to achieve our goals, and decided on Linux. Nearly all of the products Microsoft has ever made support only one platform, and they will do anything to force others down that path. They tried to define who we could be, but we decided that to survive in the industry we had to keep our options open instead of closed. Microsoft decided for us that we had to move in a new direction away from NT systems.
Regardless of the reason, this should not be surprising to you. Have you heard or read of even one company that switched from a Linux or FreeBSD solution to NT? Name just one. The reverse, however, is true for many companies. Ever wonder why? Have you ever sat at a table with half a dozen Microsoft lawyers dictating your future to you? It's not pretty.
I doubt Linux will keep up its 212%/year growth and Linus has already said that upgrades aren't going to be as drastic as 2.0 to 2.2. Don't assume that Linux will advance in the next three years as it has in the past three years.
All indicators I can find state that Linux growth is merely beginning to mushroom. Linus in fact said that incremental kernel upgrades will come far more quickly. It took over 2 years to get from 2.0 to 2.2. In the next 2 years I expect even more drastic advances because companies like SGI, Veritas, IBM, HP and Compaq are very supportive, and even Microsoft helps out with testing dollars.
don't you want to use a product that was created to be stable and work efficently, rather than to help gain world domination for it's creator. why don't you actually *try* linux before stressing how good windows is.
The best part about OSS or Linux or FreeBSD is it provides a CHOICE. Does whatever you are using work well for YOU? If so, then who cares what someone else uses? For the record, I've had a non-M$ home for at least 6 years now, using Linux and Macs, but sorry to say, currently FreeBSD and Macs.
Here is the ZDNet graph. According to this graph, NT4 scaled about 2.22 times and Linux scaled about 1.63 times when comparing 4-proc performance to 1-proc performance. The ideal scaling would be 4 times, or linear scaling.
cpeterso
Look, yes NT bet Linux on these tests, on this hardware. That's the whole point. Companies want to know what is the best platform for delivering webpages or file serving.
:).
They don't give a crap about whether they can serve their corporate web site on the 386 they found at the dump.
Sure, Linux can run better no a 386...that's cause NT relies on so many bulky technologies that is the framework to their future Windows technologies. These technologies makes it easier for programmers, and users alike. Many of you probably don't realise how much code and work is required to make an OS 'user-friendly'. If you don't like the bulk - one word. Java.
Linux users tend to forget about all that, and just make it 'raw'. Lets not forget Windows has a GUI. Tried running X on a 386 lately? Windows isn't designed to run on computers of yesteryear. It's designed to run on computers of the present, and possibly the future.
If Linux will run on your 386, good for you, run it. But the whole point of these tests isn't a shoot down to the death. MS are trying to show that NT is the best compared to Linux for Web servering and File servering on today's hardware.
Stability is hardly an issue. I have never had to reboot an NT server cause of a bluescreen, and I run several NT networks. Windows 2000 hardly needs a reboot for anything - which was one of MS's goals for Win2000.
Complaning about NT stability is so lame now days. If you go and install 3rd party native kernel drivers that are unstable, it's your fault. If you know how to administer properly, you should have no problems.
Usage wise, I've had more kernel crashes on Linux than on NT.
Yes, but Linux is open source!!! And I could fix it all myself. I don't care. I have my own projects to get on with. And if it means I have to pay a company that supports thousands of employees and talented engineers, so what? I get my money's worth, and I can get on with my own work. Besides, Microsoft tend to send me free copies of their software anyway
In my experience, Linux has a LONG LONG way to go before it matches NT in very important areas.
Performance, Easy of use (some of use like to spend our time doing important and challenging tasks, not pissing around with mundane tasks), and a non-hostile community. I think you will find that ease-of-use is very difficult to obtain. Test drive Windows 2000 and you'll see how consitant and 'obvious' the interface is, but it's damned difficult to get the balance.
That's the ultimate question.. Microsoft may have a performance advantage (gasp!) right now.. but we all know how quickly open source moves forward, and how quickly bugs are fixed. Even Microsoft can't beat the distributed efforts of tens of thousands of developers working in concert. No corporation on the planet can.
I don't know about that...
Linux has thosands of average hackers working in there spare time
Microsoft has hundreds of really good coders working full time
I think that the two are pretty evenly matched, at least in terms of what they *can* produce.
Dosn't solaris beat out NT?
_
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I hope you're not trying to say that coming up with excuses was inappropriate for the first round of tests. After all, how far did Mindcraft turn out to be off? A factor of 2?
Hmm....
The german CT-magazin (http://www.heise.de/ct) just performed a similar test but with different results. Linux beats NT in all but one category (NT server with multiple network devices is faster).
Who's right?
Sven
Shit... You got me 8|-)= Try DAS sometime; THE best beer in the world...
Maybe you didn't read the graph right. That's a 1-processor NT box that tied the 4-processor linux box.
Ouch.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Are you using Netscape or Internet Explorer?? Certain server softwares work better or worse with certain browsers.
Although GCC is one of the most portable compilers, the RTL generation routines aren't well suited
to the register-poor x86 architecture. The main difference, however, is the code scheduler.
GCC doesn't do much P6 style optimization, where VC++ in conjuction with Vtune from intel is quite
an effective optimization tool for the x86...
Well, just get pgcc (the Pentium/P-II optimization patches) patches for egcs - I rebuilt stuff like GNOME and XFree86, and saw significant performance increases - at least 20% faster performance. CPU intensive stuff like The GIMP and XMMS run faster as well.
Another good one would be a straight from the box test. Install RedHat and NT with no customizations at all and see how they do. Not really to prove anything, just for shits and giggles.
You are an arrogant, snotty fool. I am surprised at the maturity of most of the poster's here, accepting that Linux has problems, but also hopeful for the future. I have to ask now, Mr. "I already knew what the results would be" who doesn't even have the spine to write his own name to back up what he says, what do you, and all the others who truly believe that MS is the ONE TRUE OS WAY want?
Do you truly want EVERY OS in the computing industry to be MS? I use mostly 95, and yes, at the moment it is easier for me to use, but I am learning Linux, and I like the power and flexibilty that it gives me, which 95 does not. I like the idea of a community that collectively develops applications for fun as well as profit, rather than having all software developed by big fancy multi-million corporations. I like choice. Many Linux users simply want that too. Only fools want ONE TRUE OS. I feel goo knowing that I don't have to take the OS force-fed me when I buy a computer. I like not having to pay several hundred dollars for a decent workstation or server OS.
So I ask again, do you "MS is everything" people really want MS to run almost every aspect of home and business software?
Please feel free to respond, but only do so if you can tone down the rightous attitude and communicate civily.
Kevin Christie
kwchri@maila.wm.edu
Yes, Kurt, you hit the nail on the head.
/.'ers who could take Linux and Apache and merge Apache into kernel space, compromise everything else, and personally release an OS/Web Server combination that could easily beat NT in Webbench. The same goes for Linux/Samba. What they would have created is an O/S with dedicated application functionality.
There are probably a hundred (a thousand?)
If Micros~1 really wants to beat Linux in general purpose operating system performance, they need to take this approach with *all* other applications. Start by integrating BackOffice, the rest of IIS, IE, Office (why restrict this brilliant strategy to server-only apps? MS should surely strive for the fastest desktop also) and their other in-house applications into the kernel. Then they will FLY!
Of course, *some* of this is actually good from an engineering perspective. Common functions that are essential to the performance of standard and widely used services -- and can be significantly improved by moving them into kernel space -- may justify this approach. Large chunks of application-specific functionality, however, will weigh down non-users of those apps and compromise stability for those who do use it.
Realisticly, what I think MS has done here is create a "benchmark special". They have picked two high-profile applications and integrated them into the kernel a little too intimately so they can claim that NT in general is faster than Linux. The actual usefulness, of the web server speed up anyway, is questionable. Do *any* sites actually serve that many static pages? And, how many of those sites can afford the instability that such approaches bring?
Sorry, Microsoft. What you have created is an NT/Web server/file server combination that is faster than Linux in those same areas. That does not make NT the faster operating system -- and it most certainly doesn't make it the better operating system. Meanwhile, you have pointed out what are now high-profile areas of minor weakness in Linux performance. Those will be fixed -- and fixed correctly. Thanks.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
L1|/|uX r00Lz! $kR3W j00 L4M3R!!!!!!!!1
...sorry, reflex action...
From CMP's "Information Week" June 21, 1999:
"When every minute of downtime can mean millions of dollars in lost revenue, companies generally rely on applications that run on OS/390, Tandem NonStop Kernel, Digital OpenVMS, or Unix operating systems. But Windows NT is increasingly being deployed... so IT managers must find ways to increase the availability of their NT environments. To do it, they're adopting products and services that promise to provide extra protection..."
" 'Any system with lag time is unacceptable for running the application' says William Harris, NT Administrator for the Ohio Utilities. 'Money wasn't even a big deal. I's rather get quality and reliability and availability'. The organization...paid $75,000 to implement the (third party protection) system.
Translation (for those who need it): Management is telling IT they have to transition to NT. IT says, in order to be stable, we have to add third party help. Management says: "Here's a blank check."
It goes on to say that Unix, w/o third party software or service achieves "availability in the 99.9% range, as opposed to 97% for NT."
Now, what's the difference to a business between 97% and 99.9%?
IBM's NetFinity Availability Program guarantees 99.9 w/ NT. Cost: $220,000.
HP Mission Critical guarantees 99.9 with NT for a mere $300,000.
Imagine going to your boss and saying "Hey, how'd you like to save $300,000?"
JL Culp
Business Technology Consultant
Chair, LPSC
babelfish.altavista.com
cpeterso
Sure that explains how Linux lost in the multi-cpu tests but what about losing the single cpu test. What is the cause of that?
ayottesoftware.com
Note the preponderance of "your an idiot" posts, once again illustrating the unswerving reliability of /.'ers. I would hate to see your hotmail box about now.
If I understand this correctly, you're implying that NT was modified to be app. specific to target a narrow purpose (web servers) whereas linux is more general purpose and has a wider application base to satisfy. Actually, the opposite is true.
MS has a far wider user base to afford making their OS better for just one app. at the sacrifice of other applications. Certainly not web servers, which makes very little money for them.
I find it annoying that people are coming up with all kinds of excuses instead of facing the facts. This reveals our own denial of reality, more than anything else.
L.
Although it wasn't clear from my original post, VC++ is significantly better than PGCC.
Standard GCC on x86 is a dog.
Even so, PGCC is probably not the answer either since I've heard that there are problems
compiling some kernels with some versions of PGCC (but maybe that's fixed now)...
OSXS is in it's childhood. In the fall, Darwin, OSX, and OSXS will be resynced. This will give everything a much faster and capable kernel based on mach 3.0. Other perks will be included such as posix threads. After that, it get's sketchy. OSXS will evolve to be a pakcage that runs on top of OSX. This will be similar in concept to AppleShare IP today running on top of OS8.X. OSX will be radically different from OSXS featuring a much more sophisticated interface, and the deatils of the unix underpinnings will be much more hidden from the user. Hopefully they won't take away my command line though :)
Clustering: If anyone here has had trouble running a cluster with recent versions of the aforementioned "unreliable hacks", I'd like to hear it. Any takers?
Anyhow, that only refers to failover-type clustering. I've yet to hear of a widely tested NT-based alternative to Beowulf.
Security: Quite right. Any machine out-of-the-box is quite insecure. We're referring to competantly administered systems, right?
Stability: Win2K should, based on the input of those beta testers I've spoken to, be quite stable indeed; I'll not fight you on this. As for NT4, however... well, there's quite a bit of downtime (nevermind the hassle) involved in the sp5 upgrade, now, isn't there?
The original poster cannot write. "monolithic kernel vs. microkernel, stability vs. speed" is an ambiguous construction whose most obvious reading is that monolithic kernels are by design slower and more stable than microkernels.
3
1. Linux is OPEN (what Stallman means by free)
2. LINUX is stable (unlike Mac or Windows)
3. Windows (95 and NT) have MAJOR knuckleheaded design compromises. The windows UI is horribly broken (drive letters, anyone?). Linux is not there yet, but I'd rather start out tabula rasa without the frills than stick with the bloated beached stinking whale that is windows.
Given that Micros~1 cannot fix the bullshit design compromises of Dildows, it will eventually catch up with them. The windows comcept is starting to collapse under it's own weight.
Linux does NOT have those sorts of problems.
Too much baggage. Time to start over.
support gun control: take guns from cops
There were some performance tweaks in SP5 along these lines, but I forget exactly what they were.
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
It's been known to break some NIC drivers causing a blue screen. We had a pair of systems with this issue (2 HP LCIII systems with 1 each 3Com 905B and Intel EEPro cards where the 3Com driver would cause the bluescreen).
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
Umm, i don't know about the rest, but microsoft.com is run off of well over 50 p400 500Mb compaqs. It says it somewhere on their site.
That's a very interesting and valid point. They should also do a price/performance comparison on different e-mail servers, like Sendmail for Linux vs. Microsoft Exchange for Linux. Oh yeah, I forgot, Linux would win for sure, because MS Exchange ends up costing like $50 a person, where as Sendmail is free, as is the OS it runs on. Not that I'm saying NT is inferior or anything... :)
-- Terry
Troll.
Everybody pretty much agreed that the initial Mindcraft tests were biased. This is why this test was held on neutral ground - with RH on hand, and with everything closely monitored.
/.ers will cry foul and hint that whoever is conducting the tests is under the pay of MS.
The problem is that no matter how neutral the test is, if it shows ANY OS performing better than Linux in ANY category,
This is a pretty childish approach. Just looking at all the posts it's funny how many different excuses are being thought of. Face it - acknowledging fair play like a good sport and fixing shortcomings will do far more to help than simply sitting and spinning conspiracy theories.
I at least hope nobody is flaming ZD like those clever guys who smothered mindcraft with witty remarks. It would do wonders to our credibility...
L.
you fucking whore. ass whore. fucker. cocksucker. fuck you! fuck! shit!
>These studies do not address price/performance.
;)
True, but how exactly do you plan to measure performance, and what aspects of the server should this performance reflect? Perhaps units of dollars/(clients served/second)?
>These studies do not address stability.
Again, how should you measure stability? I would suggest in units of crashes/month, but then MS would cry foul
>These studies do not address security.
Cracks/week/cracker?
One thing that concerns me though, is the reaction the community will give. I think, unless some major news comes out, that we should accept these numbers at face value and implement changes in the kernel and all other appropriate software. In this respect, Linus' idea of stable kernels released more often would be a good idea; many people don't like the idea of recompiling a 2.odd kernel on a deployed server, since it would affect the stability. Accepting these values would show the world that we aren't a bunch of crybabies and are willing to put our code where our mouths are.
Depends. If you just run the operating system, it's stable. Once you start doing anything else, watch out.
I know; I've had to deal with NT for years. Hint: try running a web site using ASP and FoxPro.
Also...ever hear of SP2? Eeek.
And how about the IIS .htr hole?
And as far as costs go, you forget that most businesses are small businesses. For them, a $1000 Linux box makes a lot of sense.
--
I'd rather have CE than Java giving me chemotherapy.
I suppose the Linux team should have stopped the setiathome client before starting the test. ;-)
sorry; exchange server... the biggest joke in software history...
I use nt/linux/solaris daily for mission critical stuff; solaris wins in stability, nt just crashes (we have a dedicated(he has those sh*t msce something or other courses, nt admin) a lot (it aint fast and it aint stable), and linux is fast and quite stable.
Any OS I can crash from userspace is crap; nt is a piece of cake; i just sit and program (does not matter which language) and it crashes at least once in a few days.
Linux is quite easy if you have an out-of-the-box-system; you can secure it enough to make it virtually crashproof.
As far as speed goes; we use linux as file/webserver and it is much faster than the nt mammots we have; this is practical experience; userstats.
I don't know were people use nt for (we tried it as intermediate db server), but it simply cannot handle the load. AIX/DB2 is the only thing we have tried that can handle the 100 mlns of requests we get/day.
If IBM is serious about f*cking M$, then they will help linux get to that point.
btw. m$-sqlserver failed bigtime on our tests.
You might not have heard, but Bill's dream
is to have the CE version of windows running
on all embedded systems in the world.
Everyone who sponsors M$ now will be part of making this happen.
Good luck to YOU when you receive chemotherapy from a win CE controlled system.
It's not about their products, it's about the worlddominationthing they want!
That's why you should think twice...
Not *EVERY company* wants world domination. Most companies just want to be the best at their thing. M$ wants to *be* everything; that's the bit that worries me. If they would say; win98 is great for games and nt/win2k is nice/cheap for groupware then it would be acceptable. But saying; we are the best at everything, is stupid.
If anyone would say such a thing, we would say; 'don't be naive', but Gates == god?
You cannot tell me that he does not want *everything*! Tv/OS/embedded/telcom etc...
That's the bad thing; and *NOT* every company wants that!!! It is plain ignorance to want something like that. When the time comes for m$ to should it out, Bill* will be gone.
Two Things: 1) Choose the right tool for the right job, and 2) Stability.
Say for a moment that Win2k is as fast and as stable as Linux -- taking care of point number two. The fact that 2k can serve static pages faster than Linux is inconsequential to me at my job. The important pages I generate are pulling data from various databases and systems. And some of those databases are distillations of other databases and data sources. The mere thought of trying to set up some of the data-paths I have on an NT box makes me quiver in my shoes.
As for stability, I cannot compare Win2k to Linux because I have not used Win2k, but the only time my Linux boxes go down is when I upgrade the kernel or a hard-disk crashes.
And now it's metaphor time. Database enabled web-pages are nails. GNU/Linux (and I mean the GNU tools and some form of UN*X) is a hammer. Windows is a pile of Jello -- it looks nice, but it cannot do anything useful without trying REALLY hard.
I am not the original poster. But I have tried Linux. Heck, I am still trying.
But I have now gone for about a year without dialup connection and
sound, because neither my modem nor sound card got autodetected
on install. And don't tell me to compile things, because Windows sure doesn't
need it, and Solaris doesn't either. And no, my modem is not a winmodem
and there are drivers out there for my sound card, so I cannot understand
why the distros I tried cannot autodetect my hardware.
ok, here's my $0.02 on Windows 2k (and, fyi, I run Linux most of the time).
:-)
(First and foremost, these are just my impressions of Win2k...not cut in stone by any means)
First, my computer is a p200 mxx, 64 megs, ~1 gig NTFS, ~2 gigs ext2. W2K found all my devices and configured then almost perfectly. The only thing it didn't get was my Voodoo 2, but I can run GL Quake in Linux
The system runs faster than NT 4 ever did. Some of you may than scoff NT 4's performance, but let me say this: I started using Linux because NT 4 was too slow. W2K (approximately) matches the speed of Linux in performing tasks (starting WP vs starting Word97). There's only one other nice change. It hasn't BSoD'd yet. Its stable and quick.
Now, for all you Linux zealots: problems w/ win2k.
Its a beta. I understand that. But it really shouldn't stop being able to look up things via DNS. Its an infrequent problem, but its annoying.
Next, it does kinda take over for you too much. I was surpirsed after a while of using W2k that my application icons in the start menu had disappeared...Windows had a cheerful message telling me that it had optimized my Start menu. I really would have prefered if I could have asked it to do that for me, but ah well. Next, I used to run NT in 1600x1200 perfectly. W2k seems to have trouble drawing at that resolution...I had to revert to 1280x1024 (fyi, its a Matrox G200 SD, 8 meg - drivers come w/ Win2k).
Conclusion. If MS can clean up the problems, Win2k will be *very* nice. Although it can't run servers up the wazoo like Linux can (than again, NT Workstations was never designed to run servers, and therefore shouldn't be tested, IMNSHO), it runs well, far better than any previous MS OS.
Note to MS: Open up the source to NT/W2K. Open Source development of NT would speed up removal of bugs, and I would think that NT would probably speed up as a result. Plus, if the good of Linux and the good of NT could be mixed together into an GPL uber-OS, I would be happy...hell, I would even pay for it...
--------------------------
...started with FreeBSD and switched to Solaris, IIRC.
Or maybe they only partially switched. .
Maybe when you were working there, you thumbed through a ZD publication or two.
What do you know? They're full of ads for Intel and NT-based products. Big Super Suprise!
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Zeus may be faster than Apache. The bottle neck was not Zeus or Apache but Linux's IP stack. I would assume that on a different IP stack, you can determine which, Zeus or Apache, is indeed faster. The result is only true for Linux.
IIS is free (as in beer)
_
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Keep in mind that the filesystem test is on M$'s "home turf", namely the screwy SMB network file system. (personally, I want to see how NT serving via NFS compares to Linux and Solaris) Samba was developed outside of Microsoft, by reverse engineering the wire protocol, without the benefit of any documentation for said protocol. The Samba development team should be congratulated highly for the fact that Samba performs well enough to warrant ZD throwing a tiebreaker benchmark test. This is no small feat.
Likewise, The Linux developers should also be congratulated highly for the fact that Linux is even mentioned outside of academic journals. That Linux is good enough to be measured against M$'s finest by the mainstream PC-centric press is also no small feat.
Sure we're not the *fastest*, but seriously, who was expecting we would be? The point of this round of benchmarks wasn't to prove that Linux was faster than NT, but to show MindCraft that Linux was represented unfairly in their tests. And we showed them that Linux was about twice as fast as they claimed. Rejoice, for the truth shall now be known by all.
Oh, and get back to hacking the source, we've got work to do. =)
"There are lies, damn lies and statistics" -- Mark Twain
How's my programming? Call 1-800-DEV-NULL
Currently the VC++ from microsoft produces far superior x86 code than GCC. I'm surprized that
nobody has commented on this fact yet.
Although GCC is one of the most portable compilers, the RTL generation routines aren't well suited
to the register-poor x86 architecture. The main difference, however, is the code scheduler.
GCC doesn't do much P6 style optimization, where VC++ in conjuction with Vtune from intel is quite
an effective optimization tool for the x86...
It would interesting (but unfortunatly impossible task) to find out how much of the difference is
due to simply the difference in compilers...
Just my 2cents worth...
I have been saying that NT is better than Linux in most server applications. I'm so glad that I chose the right OS for my company. However I knew what the results were going to be before they came out because we benchmarked Linux vs. NT in our environment several times and NT always smoked Linux. YOU LINUX IDIOTS SHOULD KNOW BY NOW THAT IF YOU THROUGH BILLIONS OF DOLLARS INTO AN OS IT IS GOING TO COME OUT ON TOP.
Now I hope this sets the record straight for once and all. Thanks PC mag for showing these old hippies what $$$$ can do to the development of a OS.
MS is going to have a field day of this on their web site. I LOVE IT. Hahahaha
We use NTsp3 for running MS Access queries/reports. The machines we use are factory direct Dells. We get BSODs about once every 2 weeks or more. Usually its the hp printer driver that causes the crash. Does that mean it's a faulty 3rd party driver that crashed the OS?? Maybe so, but why does the WHOLE machine have to go down after I hit the print button??
Stability would be nice.
I think it is a tempest in a teapot... Practical experience has shown ME that NT has been unreliable and slow on my nets compared to linux. Fact of the matter is, why would i run a webserver using samba? I would never do that. I run linux, and apache for my webservers. They never crash and they hand 70000+ potential users, using a .cgi script. I have NEVER....I repeat never had a crash OR complaint from my users period.
Without regard to the tests conducted at ZDNET, practical experience has shown me which webserver to use, not to mention, which one i use for more mission critical applications and services.
I suppose that those that are tired of the crashes will turn to linux. Those that dont experience it will continue dishing out the bucks, and stay awake at nights wondering if when they go into work in the morning whether or not there will be a 'blue screen ' waiting for them and then they go on.
I find it really odd that some system admins find it entirely acceptable to have a server and/or workstation crash. I would like someone to explain that one to me!
Terry Funk
do me perl!
I believe it is in the kernel. I just stopped and restarted my Server Service while watching the Task Manager. No processes died. None were created. It's got to be in the kernel. I wish I had my MCSE (I know, but it pays the bills quite well) training guides to verify this from one of the pretty documents.
Further proof comes from the fact that changing the configuration (bindings) of Server, Workstation, or any of the other network services requires a reboot.
Yes, I want to press this point. (...that some people actually speak english as a second language). I know it's hard for you Americans to accept, but learn to live with it. You are a minority.
They are comparing server performance. If you are not running services then your comments are muted.
Isn't that kind of shortsighted?
Linux has many advantages over NT, including increased configurability, open source, GNU utilities, etc.
A few skewed benchmarks don't mean anything. There are benchmarks out there that show Linux beating Windows NT. Benchmarks don't mean that much when there are a lot of other benefits to a platform. It's kind of bad to base your decisions on one benchmark, when you have to consider everything else that you get with the system..
We will not dance, but rather fix. It's a race, and we will see what the next gains are.
They still not compete the price.
Our company just switched to Linux servers, away from NT. NT was excessively difficult to remotely administer and install, and we found it to be very cumbersome, with very high overhead. Linux has so far been an absolute dream to remotely administer, and our server implementations have yet to crash or even require a reboot. Now that we have all our configuration files completed, installation is very fast and simple, leaving more time for testing any new changes.
I apologize if this sounds bad, but it is a very bad business decision to change your platform based on a single benchmark. NT is more costly, both in cost and administration. My company's experience with it has been very poor.
If you're having trouble convincing your clients of this, just point them at the Kirsch Paper. It worked for us.
-- "God, Root, what is difference?" - Pitr, "User Friendly"
Another benchmark claiming something that I find hard to believe, but it is amazing how many people in this discussion sit here and defend linux so much, here you are mainly preaching to the choir except some really insecure windows users. Don't get me wrong, a lot of the people here are insecure about linux, but the windows people are VASTLY less secure and more defensive.. Maybe These are the ones afraid that if there was a change they would be phased out for someone with more unix experience? I dunno, I tend to be a bit righteous about linux/FreeBSD for some reason so I guess I don't have much room to talk...
The fact remains, if the free operating systems are so horribly bad, why is it so many private users and corporations that use them FEEL like they are more stable and better performing? Oh well, just my righteous two cents.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
This article is about as sparse as possible, will they hopefully elaborate soon? I personally think nothing but good things can come of NT beating us. We do have a lot of areas to improve speed within Linux, and I'm sure we will all enjoy reaping the benefits of straightening out our shortcomings. I wonder what the results would be if they ran both benchmarks at the same time?
I guess the big question is, how many times did they have to reboot NT during the test?
Josh
Squash
So far, I think the marketing team is hog tied somewhere in a back room at MS and the programmers actually took the company over for this product. Without the marketing department, I think MS could do a hell of a lot of good with its software. Maybe that is why Linux is doing so well...
As to the previous poster...
I can verify those findings.
I can also add this:
W2k Advanced Server (The badboy version...)
P2-300 Overclocked 333.
256mb
5gb NTFS, 15gb fat32, Three partitions ext2@19gig
Matrox Millenium II (Work box, not gaming box)
Running since it came out. ~3 weeks, Zero BSODs.
These drivers are stable up to 1280x1024 @ 24bpp
After that, the card flakes out.
Java compiles, C compiles, and various photoshop processes have been run and not a peep from the OS.
To comment on the previous poster's driver problem... a lot of the drivers are preliminary and are not the final drivers. This beta is doing the driver test phase.
IMHO, all and all, this one is pretty damn good. If it was open, Linux would be seriously hindered.
Quite simply, prince toadstool. Download - recompile - reboot.
When we see where we lag, we write faster code. We post the source. We all merrily repeat the steps above. We close the gap in NT's "special areas" every day.
AND with anonymous agitators such as yourself egging us on, we shall double our efforts to close in on the evil empire. Thanks for the encouragement!
SMP shall be ours. Oh, yes...
----- if ($anyone_cares) {print "Just Another Perl Newbie"}
warn "Just Another Perl User" if $anyone_cares;
Next week our boss has made it clear that we are switching all of our Linux PCs over to NT+NT workstation.
m
We are a fortune 100 company and those benchmarks are real world stats for us.
They are also real world stats for www.microsoft.com/msn.com/msft.com etc... see
http://www.microsoft.com/backstage/solutions.ht
about this. I've put the exact same pages on a Linux box and an NT box, the NT box having better hardware, and every time, regardless of the load, the page loads faster off of the Linux box. How can these tests show what my experience doesn't? I've also heard several stories of NT undependability in the file transfer department. Files stored on the NT box often became corrupted, while on the Linux box the files were dependable.
I guess my real question is, were these tests at all like reality, with only 5-10 requests at a time, with many spikes and drops? If not, that could explain it, or it could just be that the NT box that I was working on wasn't subject to the intensive tweaking that the one in the test was.
I don't know.
That's what I read about it. My apologies. :)
But since it's Posix-compliant, does that not make it Unixen?
Fine. Why don't you design a benchmark that you think the free Unixes will do better at? I mean computer performance, not price performance. :-) One obvious thing that comes to mind is this risible Samba thing being replaced by NFS. Another is generating dynamic pages instead of static ones. But that's just the start. What else would prove interesting?
And what about running a variety of operating systems on the same hardware? What about BSD? What about Solaris for an x86?
I'm wondering why all these other OS's get tested but OS/2 Warp and Warp Server aren't ever tested? I mean it is multithreaded at the kernel, runs SMP quite well, and with the free EMX and XFree86OS2 you can run many recompiles Linux applications and daemons. It seems to me that it is really more likely to beat NT because of its design and you get Linux compatibility via the OSS that is EMX/EGCS/XFree86 for OS/2. It was OS/2 that outperformed NT when NT was running 4 CPUs and OS/2 was running on only 1. We should be promoting choice from all players and yes OS/2 is still being sold by IBM you just have to ask or go find it. If we knock NT down we all win even if it is knocked down a notch by that obscure OS formally built by Microsoft themselves. Wouldn't that take the cake? (I love it, QT v2.0 is already available on OS/2)
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
NT's kernel was designed for symmetric multiprocessing from day 1. Every part of the kernel was written with thought given to whether or not it needed to be locked against another processor.
Linux, on the other hand, was originally written for single proc. As I understand it, they only recently started supporting SMP -- and then by having large granularity locks that keep multiple processors out of huge sections of the code at a time. (The article talked about Linux having a single lock around the whole TCP/IP stack!) To fix this, you basically have to go over every line of the code and only lock the things that need to be.
The interesting thing to me, is whether the Linux development model will support this well. Writing SMP code is much harder than single proc code. All those race conditions, deadlocks, and missed data contentions to worry about. People really have to understand what they're doing to get it right. Already there's complaints about the 2.2 kernels not being as stable as the earlier single big lock kernels.
Of course lock granularity doesn't explain the whole picture. NT still trounced Linux pretty badly in even the single proc case. There, I suspect it's just a matter of Microsoft having a greater number of highly qualified people working on the system than Linux does. Not that Linux doesn't have any highly qualified people, but rather that MS can get more of them. Paying people for their labor actually seems to work sometimes.
How many different servers can you put onto one machine with NT? With Linux? What kind of performance do you get when you have a mail server, DNS server, Web server, etc. all on one machine on NT versus Linux?
These are all things to consider before dismissing Linux because of one benchmark.
Redhat had some of its best people at the test lab when they were being run. The tests were closely monitored by MS, MC, and RH.
If the linux community keeps crying foul under these conditions, it will only hurt our own credibility.
It's time to stop whining and start fixing.
L
> Ease of setup.
Agreed.
> Ease of maintainence.
Disagree - on any reasonable sized site it is not easy to maintain.
> Staff training.
For users perhaps (not admins, developers, etc..)
> Access to a large base of experienced workers.
As do Linux based shops - there is far greater crossover of skills between Linux and the various flavours of unix, than NT. Though, comparitively I am sure there are more NT experienced workers out there.
> Much wider array of software available.
Besides the point.
If Microsoft can stack the deck, we can too.
NT IIS vs NT Apache vs Linux Apache vs Solaris Apache
Hardware: One PIII 550 w/ 768 megs of RAM (Fill in same level hardware to make functional system)
8 tests:
I think that would give us the results we wanted for optimal publicity, but if I'm wrong . . . give a better set.
"Well, if NT won't boot then it forfiets that test"
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
It was my understanding that the server service was the NT equivalent of samba ... NT certainly doesn't serve files without it.
support gun control: take guns from cops
Benchmarks are good for one thing: Benchmarks.
Benchmarks are fine and great and all, but in all my personal experience changing servers from NT to Linux gave everyone a performence increase... I know this is mearly anecdotal evidence at best, but that's what has worked for me.
[Silly Analogy]
As for the samba tests.. it's something like this: Microsoft makes up a game. Microsoft doesn't tell you how to play the game. You try to learn the game... Microsoft beats you by a little.
[/Silly Analogy]
Of course, this test doesn't show reliability though.. how long could they each handle those loads? Just the (what hour?) time it took to run the test or 24x7 for 6 months....
Anyway, to incorparate everyone other post we'll see: Well, we'll get better.
Now there is nothing to dance around, since firstly I am in a business where our customers just do not use NT. It does not scale up well enough, full stop. Running a HTTP server is not their main job though.
... it is better to know than to waste time with assumptions and last but not least, contrary to my girlfriends NT box at work Linux never crashed when starting up Netscape 8)
Secondly some weaknesses showed up, great
It is no shame Linux "lost" and it will help to make it better, easy.
I simply refuse to believe that there are no Unix systems out there that can beat NT. We all know that Linux SMP is pathetic and that much faster Unix variants exist. How about running a similar benchmark comparing NT to Solaris, IRIX, HP-UX, FreeBSD and all the other commercial Unix breeds?
Our NT boxes at ERAC have had uptimes at over 8 months and the only reason they don't now is becuase the OS was upgraded to SP5+hotfixes.
NT serves over 3,700 store locations and at the corporate office in St. Louis it servies 22,000 client PCs without crashing not one time.
we tryed to get Linux to file serve 22,000 PCs at one time like NT does and Linux could not open enough files and that SAMBA bull crap just crashed.
We use linux to run an in-house irc server and that's about it. it's not good for anything else.
not meaning to sound immature, but its true
linux isn't rocket science... NT is simpler, but still...
for just a second...
"What fails to kill me makes me only stronger."
-F. Nietzsche
Thank you. Now quit crying and start coding.
That is all.
Our NT boxes at ERAC have had uptimes at over 8 months and the only reason they don't now is becuase the OS was upgraded to SP5+hotfixes.
NT serves over 3,700 store locations and at the corporate office in St. Louis it servies 22,000 client PCs without crashing not one time.
we tryed to get Linux to file serve 22,000 PCs at one time like NT does and Linux could not open enough files and that SAMBA bull crap just crashed.
We use linux to run an in-house irc server and that's about it. it's not good for anything else.
Should hold one of these benchmark test every six
months and invite more contenders. I would like to
see FreeBSD, Solaris, Irix, and even say BeOS
in these. It could be done during a convention weekend and marketing could have a field day.
We're all so glad for you. Obviously you haven't installed any software in those 8 months, because you would have had to reboot. NT sucks at installing programs.
Why can't you configure IRC with all of those beefy NT boxes? Yeah, NT is a pretty good single purpose OS if it sits idle most of the time (which is how it appears to be at ERAC), but the real question is what happened after 8 months that crashed file serving to your 22,000 users? A Unix admin might lose their job over letting that happen. NT sucks at uptime.
8 months of uptime is a merely a warm up period for Linux. I've got a 386/40 running Slackware that's been serving web pages on our WAN for 873 days. Why do I keep it going? Because it can keep going. NT sucks at this. The only limitation is I can't hot swap hardware, but Solaris can. NT sucks on low end hardware.
On Samba: ever tried file serving 500,000 users or 5,000,000 users with NT? Can't do it. Samba can because it can run on Unix with 128 processor boxes. Samba can run on Crays. Can NT do that? Sorry, but NT sucks even at it's own game on the high end.
Microsoft brags about 99.9% uptime, but that's a ten minute crash once a week, every week, 52 weeks a year. Heck, I can crash our exchange server in five minutes with my Linux box, and sometimes I do it just because I can. Now THAT'S mission critical.
And now it begins....
Is anyone going to apologize for all the crap they threw at Mindcraft? Hardly. But yet, everyone just KNEW that the tests had to be rigged..... I mean, the mighly Linux could not possibly be slower.
But it is.
Now, can Linux fix the problem? Sure thing. Will Linux catch up? Sure.
I LOVE Linux, I run it here.
But, if we want to be taken seriously, we have to try NOT to act like hypocritical children. When we are better - take credit, when we are beaten, let's fix it.
But if Linux people get a rep for always whining, and blatantly ignoring fair test results, we will never break out of the tech/hobby category.
hehehe. did you read the man pages on how to open up more processes ? IMHO, i'd be very surprised to se a configuration like yours IRL. I'm an NT/UNIX admin and i'd *love* to see how you managed to get NT to server that many clients.
Actually, it may be difficult for some of us to imagine, or understand, that anyone speaks a language other than English. Period.
-rozzin.
And a good admin who can hack the kernal costs more than $60,000.
NT's ease of use lets you hire less costly IT staff.
There are trade offs on both sides.
I don't know that much about NT, but someone
commented somewhere (maybe on Slashdot, maybe
on Usenet) that there are web servers geared for
speed (Boa?). Shouldn't one of them have been
used instead? After all, Apache's not built for
speed. What was the NT server built for?
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
I used to run these benchmarks, and worked with the people who wrote them. They were designed to work best on Intel hardware with NT and IIS. It was intentional, and to use a ZD benchmark in this type of comparison is laughable.
------------------------------
check it out:
www.freebsd.com
I don't put ANY weight on benchmarks one way or the other.
Bottomline: In the *real* world, which is better at doing the job? Linux.
Do we care that a single server can't flood an 155Mbs pipe? Fuck no. Competent admins load balance for redundancy @ 1.5Mbs and up.
My reaction is the same as the mindcraft results and the same as if Linux would have won. Big deal. You can make a meaningless statistic out of anything. The govt does it all the time. Now Microsoft will. Whooppee.
How about this, try and move NT to a different partition by coping and then to get it to even run once it's licencing bullshit kicks in. Or restore it after a crash. Good luck. Time for 10-48 hours down time while we rebuild the entire system.
Kinda reminds me of the strip. Sometimes you
get beat off the line but you know you have the
power.
I've been in places when I was two car lengths
behind at 1/8 mile but I still had a big smile
on my face 'cause I knew I was gonna' catch him
and blow by.
I think that's where we are now. NT has come off
the line and is maxed. We came off a little wonkey
and are just now getting traction.
It' just an analogy but I think a good one.
CC
"Pray arm me further by your reply" Winston Churchill
NT has put many services in kernelspace and has largely bypassed their HAL in favor of multimedia performance - especially video.
NT uses a multithreaded process model for IIS and SMB file-services that results in higher throughput but less stability. A single thread of the main process may die without completely destabilizing the server but if the main process dies then all child threads die.
Linux divorces the graphical user interface from the kernel thus ensuring stability (framebuffers are available for video enhancement though) and implements most services as userspace daemons.
Linux uses the forked process model to provide services to multiple users. This modem achieves stability in that if one process dies, the others continue as if nothing had happened. Both Apache and SAMBA operate in this way I believe.
NT has chosen performance over stability.
I believe that with kernel enhancements and profiling, any bottlenecks in the networking system can be eradicated causing Linux to perform much faster and possibly even beat NT in tests such as these.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
I don't know that Samba and Apache selected the forking model by choice. Not to long ago threads really didn't work under linux, so there was no choice. I had a similar experience while working on a video game called Golgotha. We *really* had to have threads, but they didn't exists or didn't work properly.
:)
The kernel has had fundamental support for them for a longer period of time, but a reliable thread safe libc (and libX11) did not surface until recently (the last year or so). Even now the distributions are struggling to get everything converted over to the new glibc.
Even though linux now has good thread support, gdb has trouble with them (last time I checked, which was a while back). Also, apache and samba are not linux-only products. The safest and most portable approach to take back then was to use a forking model.
Other than taking up an too much memory and thus causing swapping, I don't see why a threaded model would be any faster than forking model if pooling is used. Pooling keeps a fixed number of processes running all the time and dispatches request to them. When they finish they sleep and wait for the next request. This way you have the safety of a separate process space and you avoid the forking (as in you "forking piece of sheet") over head. You let each pooled process have a fixed lifetime in order to clean up any leaked memory. Some systems have libc leaks that can't be avoided, so this is important to long-term stability.
You might argue that a thread context switch is less expensive than a process context switch. Under NT (and 95), all threads are scheduled without regard to what process they belong to, so at most could skip some page table changes when going from one thread to the next. I doubt that is the case, because threads jump from ring3 to ring0 and back while executing system functions (ensuring they have different page tables). Also threads have a separate segment mapping for fs. A 3->0->3 context switch is accomplished by an interrupt in NT. One way to speed things up in linux might be to have a way to pool system request up in ring3 and then dispatch them all at once in ring0. NT did this with their GDI code. Doing this for all system calls wouldn't require a huge change in the kernel, but it would make user code harder to write as system calls have to be parallelized. GDI doesn't require any changes to user level code, because there are no return codes to worry about for graphic drawling operations. Xlib has the ability to que up commands as well. But that is not going to speed up apahche.
Another possible advantage to using a thread model is faster IPC. With something like Apache, there shouldn't be very much IPC going on except to dispatch a new request and possibly lock protect common files.
I have not looked at a single line of apache code, so I can't say for sure, but there seem to be a number of httpds running all the time, which would signify that it is using pooling. So why is it slower than the NT counterpart?
-- Virtual Windows Project
Microsoft posted a comparison on their site that showed how Linux is more expensive than NT when you include hardware into the formula. The formula MS used included OS, http server and hardware costs. But they forgot a few things...
If a company is ready to spend $60,000 on a web server/Internet gateway, they would also like to have firewall and traffic shapping capabilites. These features are much more expensive than the OS and could cost up to $60,000 alone.
Put that in the formula and see who ends up winning the games of value.
ayottesoftware.com
It appears that under these conditions NT has outperformed Linux. Now let's repeat the tests every 3 months for about a year. On the same equipment. Oh yeah, leave the machines running.
No. NT is mostly (but not near fully) posix complient. Does that make NT Unixen?
Didn't think so.
anybody know how bsd would fare in the web tests?
But here is our chance to show the world [and MS] why Linux and other OSS projects are such a good idea. By quickly implimenting fixes to the problems brought to light by these test, we can prove how much better OSS is.
Proposal: Annual or semi-annual benchmarking of NT [or the current MS server platform] and Linux [and any other OS's that want to compete I suppose]. By doing similar tests regularly, we can show how efficient OSS can be at fixing current shortcomings [as if 24hr bugfixes aren't enough].
Just a thought. ;)
BTW: Sorry for the overuse of the "OSS" buzzword
I'd help with implimenting fixes myself, but I'm not exactly an expert coder [I don't think "Hello World" will help Linux beat NT]
Ender
If at first you DO succeed, try not to look astonished!
Nothing to see here
Modems aren't autodetected in Linux if i recall. You just point /dev/modem to /dev/cuax (com1 = cua0 ...etc.) I think its /dev/ttySx with 2.2.x kernels. Basically, you shouldn't need drivers for your modem. The only things that differ between modems are the init strings.
/usr/sbin/sndconfig on RH Linux. Yeah, the sound support isn't that great, but its coming along.
Sound card, well if you have a Creative Labs one, its pretty easy, you just type
Give me your bosses email address, I've got this guaranteed way of making money.
Deleted
ATIPA Inc., a long time supporter and commercial seller of Linux based systems, will be discontinuing our Linux servers and support. I work for the company and we will still support clients that have already purchased support contracts through us. We have made this decision based on the recent benchmarks that have shown Linux to be far behind NT in performance. Our customers require performance in high-end servers. We have had many problems installing and supporting Linux but have always kept an open mind that one-day these would change. However, that day seems to never come so we will put Linux on the back burner until it catches up with NT. Assuming it ever does.
Already today we have had over 3 calls from customers wanting a refund or an exchange for a copy of NT to install on the servers they bought. All of this is the results of the benchmarks. Sorry Linux fans.
We want to thank the LJ for being so kind to have us in their mag.
You can visit our web site at www.atipa.com. However, in a few days we will be taking down most of our Linux ads.
But I don't think that this means that speed for web serving should be any more important. Getting back at Microsoft is not a reason to improve Linux in my book. There is are many other fronts that Linux heading toward like the desktop, embedded devices, and hand helds. I can imagine that if Linux is tweeked for web serving more than normal that some test will find Linux useless for embedded devices or something else that is important.
Microsoft right now sees Linux as direct competition as a server. It will be nice to see Linux compete back but don't expect NT to stand still. There are other servers also. How does Linux compare to Mac OS X?
And no more excuses. Linux is not the fastest. Deal with it.
For now.
--
First, I respect both NT Server and Linux(Red hat), but those are not the only servers available. FreeBSD is in my opinion a very good operating system and is worth a try to see if it could handle the stress. ;-)
A note to all linux users: Don't let NT win, you have the ability to correct (not patch) the problems with the current kernel and blow NT away next year. Re-writing code never hurts, and it usually works better too
I didn't see any benchmarks as far as stability goes. NT may be faster, but what good is it if it crashes daily?
What I would like very much to see here is an equivalent comparison between FreeBSD and NT (or FreeBSD and Linux, for that matter).
My guess is both NT and Linux will lose, but... who knows...?
You are a fucking idiot. What are you one of
those wannabe hackers who switched to linux because you wanted to look smart, teardrop windows machines, talk like a "31337 hax0r", and say "i'm cool because i use linux" (even though i know nothing about linux and the open source movement)
Get a life you moron, linux does not need or want dipshit users like you.
I get the Berst Alert each morning. Here's what I expect to see when I get to work Monday...
Headline:
Mindcraft's NT vs. Linux benchmarks validated (somewhat) Click here for more...
Subject:
In a ZDnet benchmark released last Friday, NT handily beat Linux in high-end web and file serving...
Jessie will continue on repeating the statistics and then make a very valid point.
Jessie's Take: It's put up or shut up time for the Open Source Community. We've heard for months that Open Source has the advantages of fast response and a huge base of programmers to draw on. Prove it. I promise to keep my mind open for the next 6 months. In that time, I expect to see Linux/Apache/Samba at least be in the Windows 2000 ballpark for performance and usability. Barring that, I'll be forced to admit that the hype was just that, hype.
----------------
Like a lot of people I know, I bought into the Linux mantra of faster/more stable/more robust. Well, now we know that in some instances we're not faster and in fact are a good measure slower. What do we do?
There is a historical precedence here. When Microsoft introduced NT to the market, it's target was Novel NetWare. At the time, Novel dominated the market and had a clearly superior product. Everyone in the marketplace knew that was the case and Novel felt confident of their market dominance.
What happened? Microsoft never gave up. Even when NT was regarded as an also-ran, their marketing people were busy touting the areas where NT did have the advantage. Areas like the familiar graphical user interface, programming simplicity (Visual Basic) and others. At the same time, their army of programmers were working on making NT better. People bought NT on the notion that Microsoft will get it right eventually. And, for a large number of people, they have.
Novel made the mistake of assuming that since they started with the superior product, they would always have the superior product and thus, a lion's share of the market share. We all know that assumption almost bankrupted the company.
I believe that the goal of the Open Source Community should be to create the same level of confidence in our business and home users that Microsoft has. I believe that we need to ensure that our users believe that even though we may have a slower web/file server at the moment, we'll get it right eventually. In the mean time, we need to continue to market to our strengths. We allow for easy remote administration. We have no per client license fees. We do not force you to modify your IT strategy to fit the solution a single monolithic company designs and sells.
How can we do this? Well, if you're a kernel programmer, drink more Mountain Dew and help get us a more robust kernel. If you program Gnome/KDE, keep up the good work and continue releasing solid, easy to use, and attractive user interfaces. While you're at it, how about a single, integrated Linux configuration tool (like W2K's MMC) that sets up screen resolution, sound, video and themes as well as incorporates all of the server side configuration capabilities of Linuxconf. If your a distro, how about an install for the masses that is as easy to use as Windows 98 or Windows 2000?
I fall into another category. I program in Visual Basic during the day and hack at Visual Age for Java at night on my Linux box. I can't help the kernel guys or the KDE/Gnome guys program. I can, however, download the new Mozilla and report bugs. I can also help the companies who are helping the programmers. I have already bought Civ III and the 80 dollar (gulp) version of Red Hat. I plan to buy Visual Age when it is released. I have high hopes for Corel's distribution and will probably shell out the money for that also. Most importantly, however, I advocate.
The rest of 1999 will be critical for our community. We've been noticed by the popular press and our "competitors" and have been challenged to live up to our own expectations for ourselves. Today, we have been given the opportunity to very publicly prove or disprove all we have been saying for the as long as I can remember.
We either need to deliver as we know we can, or go back to being a small, niche group of hackers that no one really takes seriously.
I'm going to do my part. Please help
A gentleman who goes by the name of "CoolAss" tells us to grow up!
--
Aside from all the hype I think these numbers are really good for Linux. All this means is we have to take the "...and its faster too!" off of the arguments. The merits of the Linux operating system still out-weigh NT's: its free and has by far the best tech support/problem solving organization in the history of computing. If we get these numbers closer, no one in IT could justify spending money on M$ shaite for marginal performance boosts.
Getting the benchmark means opensource and Linux have already won. M$ just doesn't know it yet....
How about it ZDNet? Let's have the gory details. Specifically what tuning was done to each of the operating systems? How was the software procured? Who installed it? How was the hardware procured? I want to see it all.
I don't care if it's faster -- I just want something that *works*, without babysitting.
I walked into a client's office today to find their Exchange server box locked up tight. No mouse response, no three-finger-salute login response, no nothing. Had to hit the reset button and hope for the best. Not impressive at all, especially for the dough the software cost. Had this been one of my FreeBSD boxen, I would have been shocked. Considering the OS and the email package, I just shrugged.
This box is a PII-400 with 128MB and runs nothing but Exchange 5.5 and one line of dialin RAS for a piddling 14 LAN desktops and one remote user. Total uptime: 6 days. Yeah, this is something you'd trust mission-critical stuff to. Not. My advice to the client? "Reboot it every day or so to keep it 'fresh'." Heh.
If it was up to me, they'd have a proper freenix sendmail box sitting in the corner just doing its thing day in and day out. I don't even bother connecting a monitor, mouse, or keyboard to those kinds of boxes anymore since I trust them to stay up *forever*. When it's time to do admin work, I can just sit here in my office (miles away) and reboot the suckers if I need to. In all my short time (year & a half) using freenixen, I've had one box that was unstable -- and that was my fault. Otherwise, I have never had an irretrieveable lockup with any of them. Never.
I don't give a damn if they're a little slower than NT (though as a FreeBSD user, I've gotta wonder), any OS that doesn't make me look like a random mouse-clicking idiot is a Good Thing ©
...go beat up on the 2.3.* kernels instead.
./linux/REPORTING-BUGS first!)
And then send in the bug reports (but be sure to read
"the open-source community ...claiming that
objected to Mindcraft's use of the Apache
Web server
using the fastest open-source Web server,
Zeus, would improve results."
Maybe ZD has the source to Zeus, but not the rest of us.
I do find it interesting that they determined that Zeus' performance "peaked almost exactly where Apache's did."
None of this is very good for the proposal I'm writing for my company to replace Apache with Zeus.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
How about a questioning of your denial because of your blatent " if NT is faster than linux in these two areas, obviously MS *MUST* have done terrible things throwing, throwing parts of these apps into kernal space, because they could never have beaten linux otherwise. It's just not possible that they wrote better code" attitude.
Yeah i know it's freeBSD, but they are both free unix
Even more to the point: They are both unices! User friendlyness aside, I can find 1500 things that annoy me day in and day out about windows. Most of them have to do with the interface "taking over" and doing stupid things it has no right doing. Like autoloading CD-ROMs. That's just downright annoying, especially when the company that made the CD only puts up an install option.
Lowmag.net
Sure it crashed buddy....sure it did....
Just like all linux haters have whatever distro they tried crash on them 5 minutes after they install it or just like how when someone goes to a movie their friends don't like and somehow magically they decide not to like it either.
PS: If you hardware wasn't on the HCL I might believe you but what moron installs an OS knowing their hardware isn't going to work then being surprised it crashed? Nah..no one is *that* dumb.
The "NT is not stable" myth is exactly the same type of FUD as the "Linux is faster than NT" myth which Mindcraft and now PCWeek have finally put to rest.
One whould have hoped that the Linux crowd would have learned not to spread FUD from this whole incident. But if this post is taken as a typical example, it looks like the FUD is just shifting.
You lamers still don't get it.
Microsoft has done quite a few things right. These kinds of
tests (static pages or no) are highly dependent on threading
within applications, when there are large numbers of simultaneous
transactions, for speed. Windows (and OS2) have had a very
superior implementation of threading within apps for some time.
Actually much of this code was written for Os2 and then Microsoft
used much of it in NT and 9.x. Os2 and Windows also share
much of their code base (except COM) and have essentially
the same windowing sytem, which is generlly superior to
X so long as network transparency is not required for a gui.
Microsoft has also done many things wrong by tying the tasking
and signal management too closely to the windowing system
which causes instability in these hidden windows which manage
too much of the system, and in an over-reliance on COM.
Still, they write good code. It is not spaghetti code although
Linux lunatics would like to think so.
Linux will never beat NT in these kinds of speed tests with
large numbers of concurrent transactions within a process
until its implmentation of threading is improved, along with
a better SMP implementation for multi-processor machines.
But NT still beats Linux on a single processor PII or better.
Not an old 486 of course, but get real.
Microsoft has certainly not designed its system for these
benchmarks. It's not that important to them. Microsoft has
designed its systems to emphasis the gui and to optimize
speed (or the appearance of speed) to the desktop
user. It just happened to have available from Os2, thanks
to IBM's giving it away, a very good implementation of threading
which gives it a tremendous advantage over Linux and almost
any unix in certain areas of preformance. That was almost
accidental.
Stop pretending that software designers at MS are inferior
to unix hackers and grow up. There have been some bad
design decisions driven by marketing but most of the code
MS produces is excellent.
Regarding Windows 2000, don't assume that just because it
has an order of magnitude more lines of code that it will be
buggy or perform poorly. Probably, it will have problems. But
a large code base does not necessarily mean that the code
is unmanageable. If you call yourselves software engineers
and not just coders then consider that one job of a software
engineer is to design tools to manage a large body of code.
Computers were designed to do this kind of thing and these
tools will improve, to the point that the size of the code base
won't matter much.
These tools will also be available to open source, so in the
long run MS doesn't have a chance, but still, it is very immature
to keep pretending that MS is technically incompetent. There
is much to learn from MS in technical areas as well as in
marketing tactics.
I find it really amusing that (of course) all of these benchmarks really show is speed...what about stability? Almost all the Linux users I personally know have been using NT at one point and have changed to Linux ONLY because of the stability of the OS. Make no mistake, I'm sure NT is "fast" when using software that has been highly optimized for it...but it is one nasty beast to keep up and running stable reliably. And let's not even talk about remote administration of an NT box..it's close to impossible!
Please, try to see the other side of the story as well.
"In the other corner, two cardboard boxes; one labeled 'Windows NT Server,' the other 'Microsoft IIS'..."
This all inspired by:
(Yeah yeah, apples to apples...)
-m
What good is a "50%+" speed increase over Linux if it can only handle that for half as long as Linux? Anyone see where it says how long each test was run for? Hour? 2 hours? a day? a week of constant testing? What I would like to see is someone run tests like these and see how long the servers go before they "crash" or something goes wrong.
THOSE ASSHOLES AT ZDNET DON'T KNOW SHIT! I WROTE THEM A LETTER TELLING THEM HOW FUCKING STUPID THEY ARE ADN THAT LINUX RULEZ SUPREME!!
This doesn't matter much. I'm not even sure this is a good configuration for most places, 2 duals could very easily be better than one monster quad. Or perhaps fewer nics... If they want to say they beat us here then they can have it, I think linux performs much closer if not better than NT in more common environments.
Ok, NT beat Linux and shows that Linux has some bottlenecks. Likewise, NT also improved because of a discovery of the transaction log bottleneck.
But rather than admit it, and improve the code, you have a bunch of people still here in denial.
Worse, the old "NT uptime" FUD keeps getting posted. I manage a bank of NT servers, and the uptime is atleast 6 months. The only time I ever rebooted them was to install a new service pack, and if I hadn't, they'd still be running. Maybe some people just have buggy drivers. I had Linux crashes because of device driver bugs before too. That's the price of using a monolithic kernel vs a microkernel. (stability vs speed)
Just remember: all products eventually reach feature parity. At some point, NT and Linux will compete equally on features, stability, and uptime. The difference will come down to other issues such as support, software availability, branding, or programming freedom.
But, given enough time, all the technical issues will be solved.
Putting together pure smb server (100GB). Trying to decide between Linux and FreeBSD (we use and like both). Considered NT, but $400 for server plus 50 client licesnes would cost more than we paid for the hardware. I'll never understand why chip price decreases are expected but OS price remains constant.
Unfortunately the little piece of negative press is leaning me towards FreeBSD. It's performance is simply stunning, expecially on the low-cost hardware we use, plus I won't have to put up w. the flack from my ProNT manager once he reads this report next week.
Can't believe the Samba results. On our low-end hardware I've seen Samba/FreeBsd/IDE5GB/90MhzPentium
beat
NTServer/UWSCSI18GB/200MhzPpro
When xfering large (200mb) files.
Night Jim BoB!
I think what most people are forgetting is the important part of Linux is not its speed. Its definitely not how fast it goes in any benchmarks.
Its the fact that we have a system that we can play with till the bitter end. We can see how any piece of it works, from the low-level memory management to the desktop environment.
I know the most important thing for me has been the incredible community that I feel apart of, that have spurred communities like slashdot and projects like KDE and GNOME.
Everyday for the past 5 years, I've seen advance upon advance from Kernel 1.0.9 as more and more features have been added. And the power that open-source has provided.
And after I started learning how to program, the thrill of putting open source to the test, and being able to take the source code to an application, sit down and find the bug that was bothering me.
These are the things that make Linux the WORLD'S BEST OPERATING SYSTEM. So what if NT can spit out static web pages 4 times faster. I know my linux box can handle the dynamic stuff much more reliably and with a lot less horsepower, and if it can't then I'm looking forward to the next year or so as I watch the wizards take care of all the problems.
And as I sit there and watch, I can only hope that one day I'll be able to do my part, and that is the magic that makes open source so wonderful. Everyone that touches it WANTS to do their part in this amazing journey. You think anyone gets that from running Windows? I think not.
Lee Nevo
UNIX Admin
Kudos to everyone for the BEST operating system ever!
Posted by John Hayward-Warburton:
But! Until the bottleneck (which is being sorted) is reached, the results are identical.
So, for non-thumping applications today, standard Linux is just as good as NT and is FREE (and open). And, soon, when the bottleneck is fixed, it will be equal with the leaders.
In any case, was there a benchmark for "hacker satisfaction"?
Far too many excuses. Far too many "This is unrealistic". Far too many "The benchmark is biased."
SHIT!!!
Why can't people except losing. Linux is not fastest. Linux is not fastest. No way. No how.
I rarely cuss but enough is enough. What is this? Some kind of game where you distort the truth until it fits your expectations?
I really don't want to hear anyone call out FUD again.
--
Nevertheless, it would be naive to pretend that these benchmarks will not be used by M$ to condemn Linux as slower than NT across the board. They will do it, and it will be a bald-faced lie.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
There are probably a hundred (a thousand?) /.'ers who could take Linux and Apache and merge Apache into kernel space...
/.ers could figure out how to do it?
Here's my useless comment: could somebody mention some URLs that describe how to merge software into kernel space as mentioned above, so that even more than a hundred
I think what most people are forgetting is the important part of Linux is not its speed. Its definitely not how fast it goes in any benchmarks.
Its the fact that we have a system that we can play with till the bitter end. We can see how any piece of it works, from the low-level memory management to the desktop environment.
I know the most important thing for me has been the incredible community that I feel apart of, that have spurred communities like slashdot and projects like KDE and GNOME.
Everyday for the past 5 years, I've seen advance upon advance from Kernel 1.0.9 as more and more features have been added. And the power that open-source has provided.
And after I started learning how to program, the thrill of putting open source to the test, and being able to take the source code to an application, sit down and find the bug that was bothering me.
These are the things that make Linux the WORLD'S BEST OPERATING SYSTEM. So what if NT can spit out static web pages 4 times faster. I know my linux box can handle the dynamic stuff much more reliably and with a lot less horsepower, and if it can't then I'm looking forward to the next year or so as I watch the wizards take care of all the problems.
And as I sit there and watch, I can only hope that one day I'll be able to do my part, and that is the magic that makes open source so wonderful. Everyone that touches it WANTS to do their part in this amazing journey. You think anyone gets that from running Windows? I think not.
Lee Nevo
UNIX Admin
Kudos to everyone for the BEST operating system ever!
If you wankers have questions about this NT vs. Linux benchmarks, then dammit get on irc and join the LinuxNet irc server "irc.linuxnet.org" and come to #linux.
This is were the hard core developers hang out at. They will help clear any questions you may have.
3 years of Linux brainwash. 3 years of
"Linux is faster than NT". 3 years of
learning Linux while I could have been
learning NT and got my MS certification.
I want my 3 years back. Give back my
3 years damn it!
It's simple to avoid AC's: just browse at +1 or +2
You are an idiot. All you are doing it creating more bad press for Linux.
Karl Osha
irc.linuxnet.org
> I think that it was just a couple of days ago /.) where people
> when I saw some of the stuff that was posted on
> Mindcrafts site (linked to by
> were bad-mouthing them because of the tests.
The bad-mouthing is embarassing (maybe the zealots whose badmouthing killed the Amiga have found a new cause). But the ZDNET comparison showed Linux 's performance to be no where near as bad as Mindcraft Microsoft-sponsored comparison claimed. So while you shouldn't call Mindcraft "whores", they did execute a biased survey. Mindcraft's name is mud.
>>These studies do not address price/performance.
>True, but how exactly do you plan to measure performance, and what aspects of the server should this performance reflect?
>Perhaps units of dollars/(clients served/second)?
If you're just talking software, dollars/*anything* linux is zero and will win.
I'm sure every boxer trains as hard as possible when going up against a tough contender. It doesn't make them "afraid" of their opponent.
-----BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH-----
Blah.
rooooar
What is this, stream of consciousness writing? Do you have the ability to read what you type, "..4 cards would performance even better..", do you know what the word 'exacerbate' means?
Microsoft is going to have some real grist to put in the FUD mill for a change. In the short term, we can expect this cost Linux a significant amount of mindshare. Over the next few months I think we're going to see fewer "Business adopts Linux" stories. Never mind the fact that most networks won't see this kind of throughput and that stability wasn't addressed, in the minds of the uninformed Linux is going to be a low performing second best for awhile. I think the real danger is that the community will feel pressured to "fix" the problems before the fixes are stable. That would not be wise as we can still tout stability as a talking point.
In a way, I suppose, this benchmarking was a gift. Linux usually gets problems fixed well and quickly when they are identified. It's probably better in the short run for Linux to take it's lumps and get things fixed even if it does force us to lose a few converts and rethink our opinions of it's strengths.
At least there is a bright side. I don't think these tests did anything to vindicate Mindcraft. Linux still lost but only half as badly. There are no good reasons for anybody's opinion of Mindcraft to go up.
There's something wrong with this picture if MS thinks this is anything to BRAG about.
...
All those campuses and engineers and shit and they can only beat linux by 45% on a test that's impossible for linux to win? (my bet is everyone at MS knew the new threaded TCP/IP stack would give faster throughput - who knows how stable it is compared to Net3 or BSD - no tests on that).
Let's test the older version of NT without a threaded IP stack (yes MS *just* came out with that about 8 months ago at the most) against linux.
Or lets test the future threaded IP stack version of Linux (2.3) with reiserfs or xfs against NT5
Is this supposed to make us all just quit? It's not like big corporations are using tons of linux installations on purpose anyway.
They tested a single processor configuration as well. They let the Linux guys use a different SCSI controller which Linux has better support for. NT still trounced Linux.
What *I* would like to see if some of these Linux zealots come down to earth and realize that it's just an Operating System, not a religon. It's o.k. for another OS to be better than yours at some things. If what you like about Linux is that you can freely hack on the source code, take pride in *that*. I suspect that is one thing NT will never be.
Anyone know where/if more info is available on the tests? Like how many clients, what type of clients, what exact hardware, etc, etc...also, what about numbers like CPU utilization and interrupts/sec?
Deepak Saxena
Project Director, Linux Demo Day '99
Deepak Saxena
"Computers are useless, they can only give you answers" - Picasso
Whether it was low-end or not is up to debate, since Ziff Davis decided not to divulge the specs on their test machines. All we know is that the 'low-end' machines were single-processor with 256MB RAM. They're talking about 'low-end' in the giant-corporate-server scope most likely, which is different from what most normal users would consider 'low-end'.
Unfortunately, this story isn't on the web; I guess it's only in the hard copy magazine.
Can anyone in Germany provide some more details?
--
You need to open 1 of the .h files in samba and change the default numbers. I forgot where I read this but the samba team has acknowledged this. I believe I might of saw this at opensource.com when they were refuting mindcrafts statment. You are also full of shit and lying through your teeth with NT. I used NT and it slows down at about 1,000 clients and the only thing scalable about it is sql server. Exchange server is unstable and slow as hell. I beta tested w2000 beta3 server and it took over 100megs of ram to boot and over 375 threads. Are you saying that this bloatware can handle all of these clients and process data for them at very fast speeds? Using NT for your situation is like using netware. NT was designed to compete agaisnt netware and not unix. I have seen linux outcompete NT by large numbers with stuff like file sharing and web serving. Microsoft pays huge amounts of money to zd and I dont trust a thing they say. I have seen Jesse Berst claim that win3.1 is more stable and faster then os/2 and windows95 is as stable as unix.
Go benchmark yourself and you will see that NT maxes out very easily compared to unix and linux.
well ...
;-)
...
... the strength of linux is that
if one is honest, (s)he would have already
guessed such a result.
linux wasn't "designd" for this kind of hardware.
BUT we all know that it will be in future
SMP & huge amount of RAM are not handled well.
there is no upwards-scalability in the kernel
e.g. you need other algorithms for SMP (>2 proc)
and RAM >1GB not just parameter changes
this is also clearly shown in the test and my
personal experience is the same...
however
development goes on fast. if there were more
2GB, 4x PII 500 machines out there linux
would have won. now it has to adapt to the
"bigger" hardware.
CU,
Armin
Just set your score threshold to one, and all of the ACs will magically disappear
My company is a Windows Solution Provider. We have thousands of NT systems, scores of NT sysadmins, yet we are switching to Linux (and many are not happy about it).
Hire me. PLEASE
The thing is, nobody cares. With the blistering speed that OSS develops, anybody with at least the mental capacity of a newt knows that OSS will overtake all others. It's only a matter of time. Linux development has only begun to take off. What happens when SGI starts merging Irix with Linux? How far will Windows be in 2 years? How far will linux be in 2 years? What about 10 years? What would a benchmark look like between linux and NT 4 years ago? What will it look like 4 years from now? Can you still not see the big picture? 4 years ago nobody would have believed Microsoft would be funding benchmarks against a piece of freeware. Now they are. Why? What are they afraid of?
--- A Jesus Fish eating a Darwin Fish only proves Darwin's point.
I code on NT every day and work on Linux every night. The NT box has a faster processor -- PII-350 vs. PPro-200 -- but otherwise the boxes are fairly comparable -- 64MB RAM, etc. It's possible the NT box has a 100MHz bus.
Linux is vastly superior in comparison to NT in my environments. There is no comparison, on any front that I can think of:
In my world -- comparing the two as workstations -- there is simply no comparison between the two when it comes to speed, and I don't care about anyone's benchmarks if they claim otherwise.
And shall we talk about blue screens? And memory leaks? Meanwhile Linux keeps going and going and going, staying out of my way and letting me work. Again: no competition. Linux wins going away.
This has been my experience with NT. It has not been pleasant. It is not "good enough." It is pathetic. So I don't care how many benchmarks it "wins" (especially when those benches run counter to my own observations in the real world). Linux is a breath of fresh air. I'm sure that almost any unix would be too.
Bill Gates will never get another dime out of me so long as I have any say in the matter. His products are an atrocity.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
Free beer.
First off... nick names are just that... nick names. You can attack me personally, but you can't avoid the facts.
Second, I am not talking about the Mindcraft tests. I am talking about the PC-Week tests, which all who were involved (including Linux experts from Red Hat) said were fair.
You are proving my point with every reply...
Pricing does not matter?? since when has a large company _not_ looked at the bottom line. For example, given 5 grand, set up Linux and NT boxes for intranet web serving and e-mail. Well, I can get a nice dual proc box w/ gobs of RAM and free software, or i can get a Celeron and pay the other $4000 for unlimited user NT licenses. Do some benchmarking on that. As for the scale of these (Mindcraft/ZDNet) benchmarks, i sure as hell wouldn't put thirty grand into an intel box (NT or Linux), I'd spring for an UltraSPARC or an AIX box. Let's bench NT against that. Then compare the reduncancy and reliability. This is a huge deficency of the popular computing press, I'd like to see them bench (all the solutions) based on bottom line price, not the same hardware. What's the fastest solution for $500 (my guess, one contender: free unices) for $1000 or $2000 then for $10,000 and finally for 30-50 grand. My guess is that then, Unices would hold the upper hand every time.
Linux has one huge advantage that ZDNet and friends are completely ignoring, the ability to put all those old computers in the corner to good use. I'd like to see them do a story (or even mention) that Beowolf cluster at one of the national labs that was assembled completely for free, with old donated computers. Last i heard, well over 100 486es and a handful of Pentiums. This is what Redmond and everyone else in the industry fear: the ability to get a job done without spending big bucks. As if money makes the world go round.
Reid G. Ormseth, Esq.
So far, I have some info on how Apache was configured. Kernel is next.
Previous comment should be (Score:-1 flamebait)
Some evidence?
Server: runs custom accounting package with 10 users + mail + print spooler + SAMBA + DNS + light HTTP + routing + fax server + monitoring. No special hardware.
Uptime: except for the one occasion where the drives shut down because the airco failed, it's been in continuous use for almost 2 years. No unscheduled downtime at all.
It was a replacement for an SCO Unix box. It never went down either.
These experiences are typical. So when I sell a Linux box to a customer, I guarantee that it will stay up indefinitely (given enough money for adequate cooling, UPS's and so on) . I know that it doesn't cost me anything to guarantee this.
BTW, 99.9% uptime is a joke. Continuous uptime, with no unscheduled maintenance is the target.
FreeBSD, that's who.
Not worth benchmarking against NT?
Don't assume that NT will advance in the next three years as it has in the past nine years.
I've never used Visual Basic, but I'd have to assume that Tk (with the scripting language of your choice) would be just as easy to use to "quickly develop a GUI application". And for a larger project, why wouldn't someone choose Qt over MFC?
.sig--if I want to say something, I'll type it in myself.
I don't have a
And it will grow.
Linux will die like all other Unices
very true. It is sad that Americans are not taught a second languange, but truly at this point there is little need beyond self-edification. The world seems (from this side at least) to speak primarily english.
-COWARD
On the main page of their test, zdnet state: 'despite significant tuning improvements made on the Linux side, Windows NT 4.0 still beat Linux'..
They didn't, however mention the fact that they formatted the fileserving partitions into 4 separate partitions to improve WinNT's performance on the front page, did they?
Although I can accept that Windows NT might possibly be able to beat Linux, the wording of that reveiw doesn't make me particularly confident it was 100% un-biased.
On a completely off-topic note: while i was editing my preferences the number of comments on this story more than doubled, in about 5 minutes. wow.
If your going to do this from a beancounter standpoint, you also have to calculate the going rates in your area for NT vs Unix admins.
Machines don't run themselves, and are often cheap compared to the folks who run them.
Well, it least this is going to teach some modesty to the GPL or die crowed. Sure Microsoft sucks but it seems it doesn't sucks that much when it doesn't make a BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death). Maybe it's time for the hackers here to try some more innovative designs instead of sticking to the same stuff that has been around in Unix for decades. For example why isn't Apache heavily multithreaded like IIS is ? This is much more effective with multiple CPUs.
Maybe it's the whole Unix thing that we should throw away and start from scratch a new OS. BeOS proved that starting from scratch brings good things, and speed is one of them. Unix is 30 yo... nothing is eternal, not even Linux. You can't upgrade the same technology forever.
This benchmark is about as valid as a for loop that stays entirely within the CPU cache. Not likely.
(That said, we need to fix it just for bragging rights. But anybody who bases a deployment decision on this kind of nonsense deserves what they get.)
Rob
This is a weird, amped-up benchmark most closely approximating a really small but insanely trafficky intranet. ;)
I certainly do not routinely see NT boxes performing in such a manner in the real world- and I think it's a very fair question whether even these crazy 4-way 4-ethernet-card monsters would stand up to real world conditions acceptably.
I understand one issue is latency- in other words, if it is faster for NT to serve 200 pages to one place and have another request sitting there for 20 seconds, it does it unhesitatingly to get the numbers measuring higher. Apache apparently is much more willing to pay attention to that one request sitting around getting old, and to balance out the load so that nobody gets too lagged. Of course, this is not being tested for.
This has nothing to do with MS having better people: it is almost entirely due to tradeoffs being made entirely in favor of benchmarks just to get to a place where they can produce numbers like this and have people saying, "I suspect it's just a matter of Microsoft having a greater number of highly qualified people working on the system". Never forget that the benchmarks are by their very nature an exceedingly narrow view of what the job really is. As such, the numbers become meaningless- not only meaningless in the sense of 'I don't care, I'm sick of rebooting the thing', but meaningless in the sense of producing realworld results that measure up to what the benches suggest. It strongly appears that NT servers are capable of flurries of extreme activity, but also lag pockets and serious unreliability issues- in other words, even if the machine has not crashed, your chances of getting guaranteed good response are not that great- the NT server is busy running around serving something it has cached to people in line after you, because doing that increases its benchmarks drastically. This consoles you not
OK so NT can serve twice as many GIF files as
Apache/Linux per second, so what? What
about *dynamic* database driven web pages??
Again I complain that this is not a real-world
test of server capability -- if you think NT is
so great than how come Hotmail is still being
served from Sun machines??? Because NT can't
handle it -- I rest my case.
...but still yes, this test does show where the
Linux kernel and Apache need work, I suppose.
and see what happens! The single processor box in the test had 256MB!
What *I* would like to know is... How do both OS's perform at their minimum configurations, how do they perform over a range of configurations, did either operating system crash during the course of the tests? What is the overall price/performance ratio?
Let's have the whole story!
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
It works for me fine.. SuSe, RH, W2k, NT they all setup fine on my system.
If we allow ourselves an easy out by saying price/performance is a selling issue, we do ourselves a great disservice.
If I was a Microsoft advocate (I'm not, although I'm am MCP, MCP+I, MCSE, MCSE+I, MCT and some Novell stuff tossed in for good measure) I would argue that training for any Microsoft platform was substantially cheaper than building a linux guru. And I would have a fairly good stand for that argument in terms if someone that is familiar with Windows.
What many have failed to comprehend is that the Linux advocates know many OS's based on the fact that they had to know the OS they were working with to get Linux going. Also Most (from my experience) just have that Techie knowledge most sought after. Stuff you can apply to almost any UNIX based OS or TCP/IP based OS on the market is easily crossed when using Linux.
Although I'm no programmer, I'm a network geek, I have no doubt that we will show how the Open Source Way can and will overcome all commers in this respect.
Look like a much more fair test this time, and it has provided us with better information.
Of course, I'd have preferred to see Linux win now, but it doesn't make me feel bad that it didn't. It will also help with NT tuning information, for those of us with both.
I'd have like to see a little more qualification on what the results mean. I believe the tests only measure throughput for example, and not responsiveness.
All information is useful. I believe Linux will catch up, and far faste than NT would have had it been the slower one.
These benchmarks will always leapfrog each-other. Witness the TPCC numbers race. We all benefit in the end.
Benchmarks mean scratch, let's do some "real world" tests, shall we?
Let's make a "security" test, see which webserver can be exploited to hack your system.
But that wouldn't be fair, is it? afterall, nobody cares to hack you in the real world,
while if you server 2x static web pages, you're the king.
And uptime?
Doesn't mean shit.
Afterall, in the real world, who cares about making it servers run all the time,
they just want them to run for small tests, like this one.
And features?
Forget it, who needs PHP? or mod_perl?
And kernel features such as ip masquarading?
appearantly, nobody needs these anyway...
not in ther real world.
And the price?
doesn't count in the real world, because nobody pays the bill, per user.
Let's leave prices for our boss to worry about...
And they were so gracious letting us have NT clients.
What about unix clients?
let's see how can NT scale with NFS!
Let show them we are good with benchmark,
since it is exactly like the real world.
I, however, don't give a damn about the results.
So Bill's penis is larger than linus'? get over it.
we will show them we are better - in the real world.
---
The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck,
---
I'm going to live forever, or die in the attempt.
Uhhh whatever. We server over 22,000 PCs on one NT box using TCP/IP and it runs nicely.
This is a god send that can be reduced by placing commonly requested documents near the root of the (don't fork the directories too much)server
.htaccess completely! In the httpd.conf (or equiv.), put "AllowOverride None" in the "Directory /" block. (Slashdot doesn't allow the less-than or greater-than chars.) Say for a moment you have "AllowOverride AuthConfig" in the "Directory /" block. Now if you http root is /usr/local/apache/htdocs and the request is for /images/new/today.gif, apache will check for /.htaccess, /usr/.htaccess, /usr/local/.htaccess, etc..
/directory" block but it should be restricted to a specific directory and not just /. If you run a server for multiple users (like http://www.example.com/~user/something.html) who need control of .htaccess, use something like "Directory /home/*/public_html/secure". This way, the .htaccess search will only start from that directory.
Actually, I would turn of
How can you aviod this? Don't set AllowOverride ANYWHERE. If you absolutly need it, set it in a "Location
use Slackware or something and so you can minimize the system to do only what it is suppose to do
How exactly does Slackware run faster or do less? Did they rewrite critical portions of Linux or Apache code in assembler?? Linux is Linux. The major difference between distributions are the installation and package programs. If you have of the "secret" optimizations from Slackware, please post them on Slashdot because I'm sure many other readers would be interested too. If you mean RedHat starts up more junk, that is easy to fix. Try '/etc/rc.d/init.d/someservice stop'... it works for me. Better yet, remove the RPM entirely and it will never run. To see what is running, type 'ps ax' at the prompt.
Also, since RedHat seems so slow or their people don't know how to configure the server, why doesn't someone else come forward with anything besides anecdotal proof of Linux's speed.
Like one of the other posters mentioned, the cost of the OS is only relevant if the webmaster is a college student at the bookstore. The cost of the OS is the last consideration for any serious website. It is the same thing as buying a used car for $500 or a different car for $2000. If the $500 car is going to break down each month, get worse gas mileage, and take $250/mo in repairs, it just isn't worth it. At 1 year, you are behind at least $1000.
I won't even touch the Beowulf "cluster" solution...
One question I have is why the *BSD systems were excluded? [FlameBait ON] Maybe it would be too hard for Linux users to argue biased testing against two OSes [FlameBait OFF]
Nope. I'm part of a development group and we do not make any of our findings public.
Too bad though. There is some really useful (IMO) information that we come up with, and I have been wanting to use the resources available to me to assist in Linux development. I am still exploring this.
In these lab environments you really get to know what makes a particular setup fsck up...
It's not a linear scale.
And Linux is based on Unix, which has hasn't exactly cost nothing to develop.
People dammit if you want to know wtf is going on in the development of the linux kernel and the details about the benchmarks come to "irc.linuxnet.org #linux"
If I setup my server using all the optimizations and tricks that the MS team used to get their winning numbers, would MS still provide me support for that machine? I doubt it.
Can I even find out the tweaks they used?
A better comparison would have been Linux and NT installs fresh out of the box with no tweaking. I don't have the time to keep track of such tweaks to my systems. I try to keep them as close to fresh installs as possible so that I can maintain them easily and rebuild them quickly.
Can you point out the lines in the source code to any version of the linux kernel that indicate being narrowly targeted towards serving http? Or are you just spouting crap (while blowing off the fact that Windows95 with its wide user base has a different code base than NT server with its web server revenue)?
Nope. NT's TCP/IP stack has finely grained locks, lots of threads can be in there at once. It's been this way at least since 4.0 first shipped, I belive 3.5 and friends were that way as well.
... and next time the advantage will be mine.
You think that the Linux-kernel coders rolls over and play dead? I don't think so...
You obviously know nothing of unix or NT. How is NT easier to administer than unix? I used to think so until I LEARNED unix, now I can't believe how utterly clunky NT's pathetic management tools are. Worthless.
FWIW, unix (all kinds) are an ADMINISTRATORS OS. NT is a LUSERS OS. NT is absolutely horrible to administer.
support gun control: take guns from cops
Whilst I doubt manyfolk are going to be running Netscape on ther server and browsing, this still is a valid point.
Namely, what if it was another service you wanted to run whilst serving up webpages?
What would the results be if the machines were also acting as DNS, email, or backend database servers too? Or even running CGI's? These were only static tests. I recall seeing an article PC mag did before on web server performance. The static performance was similar to this test, but IIRC, NT got tromped in the CGI tests.
-- -- The Dragon De Monsyne
Hang on a second- 'hooks' doesn't tell you much.
What I'd guess is that NT is doing some very funky caching so it can serve pages in bursts. Here's what I'd do if I was NT: save up requests in queues until I could load up a given page and whang it out to a bunch of clients without even blinking or pausing. I'd have everybody sitting around waiting for me to be happy with the size of the queue, and I'd be real busy trying to make bigger queues the better to whang out a pre-loaded page over and over as fast as I possibly could.
If I was Linux, I would try to keep track of what queues were forming, and rush about trying _not_ to let any of the lines get too big.
Considering that people want not to wait when they get web pages, doesn't it seem preferable to pay a lot more attention to latency than MS is willing to? There are genuinely conflicting interests here. To begin really obliterating the benchmarks, it becomes increasingly important to not waste much time caring about if anybody's been waiting too long- you _want_ them cooling their heels in line, that way you can gear up and do whole lines in mass-production fashion.
Lastly, picture what happens when there isn't so much of a line. Linux happily serves the customer. NT _first_ looks to see if it can make the customer get in line and wait for others like 'im...
Remember that these benchmarks still come from an organization funded by Microsoft, and an organization that has done slanted and biased benchmarks before. That doesn't mean that these results are automatically false or that they have no value; however, one should not take these benchmarks at face value without looking further at the details of the test, especially since other benchmarks have come to the opposite conclusion. ZDNet, if I remember right, did a benchmark earlier and concluded that Linux 'ate NT's lunch'. And that benchmark is not the only one that has concluded that.
Mindcraft does have a vested stake in having the results come out in NT's favor. It was embarassed previously when its original benchmarks were shown to be essentially a hatchet job funded by Microsoft. To make both Microsoft happy and salvage its own reputation, it has to
1) Produce results that still favor its backer, Microsoft, and
2) Have the results favor NT by a lower margin that the previous test so that it looks like the later tests are 'unbiased'.
I am not saying that their results are necessarily incorrect. What I'm saying is that Mindcraft has a vested interest in having the outcome of the tests come out a certain way, and may still have found a way to rig the tests. Before jumping to conclusions, we should learn the details of the testing to see if significant slant is still present in the tests.
that going with 64 MB instead of 256 MB will save you only about 125 bucks:
Current price for 1 64 MB DIMM -- about 45 bucks.
Current price for 2 128 MB DIMMS -- about 170 bucks.
(That's out of today's ComputorEdge magazine here in San Diego)
> Last message I read about it on klm says that performance has recently matched apache.
Any Apache developer will tell you that's nothing to brag about.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
I'm not talking about "corporate backing" I'm talking about design.
;-)
It's mish mash of some of the greatest CompSci Engineers ideas bascially designed to get VMS and DOS to play nice together
After 30 years Unix has changed quite a bit but fundamentally not that much because it's modular and additive small tools approach works. This is a comfortable flexible and absolutely BRILLIANT design. Sure it's a relic but people should bow down to Unix in awe ***really***
MS would be very lucky to get 30 useful years out of NT and if you don't think BeOS and plan9 (or some combination of them) have anything to offer over NT well you too are living in the past - the more recent past but the past nonetheless.
Watch BeOS (MS likely is - might even have to buy it). Ultimately everytime NT proponents talk about breaking with old technology (they mean Unix here) they are talking about NT as well - only they don't know it.
This tests correspond to my own tests where I ran Linux, NT, and Solaris x86 on a 4 processor Netfinity, and Linux didn't scale at all.
Linux with 4 processors is only marginally faster
than Linux with 1 processor. NT and Solaris both
scaled linearly (although Solaris' plateau was
alot higher than NT's)
IMHO, Linux has a long way to go before it's going to be useful as a database server. It's nice for horizontal scalability, because you can slap a whole bunch of cheap boxes in a cluster, but doesn't work at all when your problem is not amenable to clustering.
I find these studies inadequate as data to inform a purchasing decision. While MS will claim that they have proven NT to be better than Linux for Web and file serving in the general case, I disagree. Here's why:
These studies do not address price/performance. P/P is one of the most important metrics in making a purchase decision; these studies measured only peak performance. That the prices of the Linux-based and NT configurations tested are not given indicates to me that Microsoft wishes price to be disregarded as a factor in purchasing decisions. To do so would be an irresponsible act for any purchaser. Consider that NT license fees increase dramatically with number of clients, while Linux's price is constant and lower than any NT option.
These studies do not address options such as clustering. Clustering is a common solution to the problem of constant high client load. It may well be a better solution (in P/P and in peak performance terms) than simply boosting processing power with multiple processors. It also has reliability advantages.
These studies are not generalizable to other hardware configurations. While MS will claim that they prove that "NT is faster than Linux" inherently, they do not. The HW configuration was selected for the first Mindcraft study, which has been proven to have been engineered to favor Microsoft. Hence the hardware configuration itself is suspect. An across-the-board comparison on various configurations, with P/P as well as peak performance measured, would be a more reasonable comparison of the virtues of the OSes themselves, and would also highlight particular combinations of HW and SW that are worthy of consideration for purchase.
These studies do not address security. The release version of MS IIS has outstanding security holes, including the recent one disclosed by eEye. This was a root compromise which took eight days for Microsoft to admit, and two more to fix. Microsoft classically avoids the subject of real-world security, preferring the proven-worthless tactic of security by obscurity. Security, of course, is a major consideration to be made in purchasing.
These studies do not address stability. Stability, like P/P, is an important metric for purchase decisions. It helps one determine how expensive a system will be to maintain -- one that requires regular resetting or reconfiguration in order to keep operating will cost in manpower; one which crashes a lot will cost in downtime. Downtime costs money in an enterprise situation, and hence should inform purchase decisions strongly.
These studies do not address changing real-world needs. A real server system is rarely left serving static Web pages forever. When needs change, performance will likely change as well. Building a system to meet a single, narrow-minded need is likely to lead to a dead end in terms of scalability.
These studies demonstrate nothing about the future. Based on past trends, one can expect the situation for Linux-based OSes to get better and better. The next version of Windows NT will likely offer decreased performance on the same hardware (due to increased resource consumption by the OS itself) whereas future versions of Linux will likely improve performance. Buying heavily into Windows NT leads one to platform lock-in which may damage one's ability to escape the expensive effects of bloat.
In short, I do not believe that MS has demonstrated that there are advantages to purchasing an NT system over a Linux-based system for real-world file and Web service. Wise system administrators, IS/IT managers, and CIOs should stick with the proven security responsiveness, stability, price/performance, and scalability of Unix-based systems, possibly including Linux-based systems, rather than betting the farm on the Johnny-come-lately Windows NT.
I've got a Dec Alpha (Dual processor) currently
with a 75 day uptime w/ 3 full class C's on it.
Digital Unix is THE OS is you want real beefy
performance for a web server. Give me Linux for
a workstation and BSD for a mid size mail, dns or shell server. But when it comes to a production
web server DU will eat em up. too bad its a bitch to patch and since Compaq bought em out their engineering staff are as useful as my copy of Win95
I highly doubt that zdnet would be this stupid or would not mention about the 4 card trick on there web site if they expect money from microsoft. Where did you find this out?
/..
:-)
If pcmag were this dumb you could imagine all the bitter arguements here at
I know for a fact that even the journalist know that having 4 ethernet cards do absoletely no service for a web server and hardly anything for a file server. The only thing multiple cards are good at is routing. I dont think this would be such an accident if zdnet did put 4 cards on. However I expect more intelligence in zdnet (excluding Jesse Berst)
Like the article says, fixes are already on the way. How quickly can Microsoft adapt to such findings? Maybe it's not Microsoft of Borg at all.......
Another question to ask about this test is how many sites handle 36253440 hits/day? Even CNN says that they only handle about 3 million hits on a normal day.
Hmm, that's an interesting theory. Somebody should test this. I'd be interested to see how Linux and NT each perform as a webserver if each has 500 T1 visitors and two 33.6 modem visitors. Will NT pump data into the T1 visitors forever, forgetting about the low-bandwidth modem users? Will Linux be better in this respect?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Well I personally would never run the gui on a server - a gui is for client machines.
I have had X crash (it's pretty rare compared to a 95/98 crash, I haven't had a lot to do with NT tho). It will not bring down the OS the way a Windows crash will - even if it does lock your console you should still be able to telnet in and kill X - then again I've never had a problem switching VTs when X crashes so I wouldn't know. The GGI people are working on putting accelerated drivers in the Kernel and I think Matrox cards already have some acceleration on a standard 2.2 kernel.
--
enterfornone - logging in for a change
Note that there is no name that can be traced back to atipa.
Don't believe everything you see on the internet.
Close but not quite. I wasn't suggesting "that NT was modified to be app. specific to target a narrow purpose (web servers)...". I was suggesting that it had been extended to perform well in the static html subset of this particular, high-profile, area of service -- with an eye on benchmarks rather than, and, possibly, at the expense of, actual user needs. Perhaps that is what you meant as well.
:)
Your point that "MS has a far wider user base to afford making their OS better for just one app. at the sacrifice of other applications." only makes it a greater sin. It does not prove them innocent. Consider their slipping market share for NT in the server arena vs. Linux. This is the kind of advertising that they cannot buy. I would suggest that your logic applies here too -- can they afford to pass up such a chance to prominently display the "superiority" of NT with the disinterested blessing of ZD?
As for your annoyance "that people are coming up with all kinds of excuses instead of facing the facts", which facts did you have in mind? Note that I did not question the facts of the result, only the architectural decisions that contributed to NT winning these particular benchmarks.
On your claim that "This reveals our own denial of reality", do you know of a wide-ranging suite of disparate and concurrent benchmarks that show this NT performance advantage to be more than specific to these two areas? Please, update my reality and share them with me. If you can demonstrate that I am off-base, that these results are not anomalous, that this performance is typical of general, mixed-load, server performance, I'll humbly apologize to both you and Microsoft.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
If you don't know how to do it, you may not want to do it. Writing kernel-level code is not a task for the faint of heart. Furthermore, the general philosophy of kernel design is that only those things that all (or nearly all) user-space programs will need to work should be included. Unless performance is really that important and stability really that insignificant, you're better off not to bother.
X has crashed on me a number of times, cutting off the console and any ability to kill X or even safely reboot the machine. Sure, the Linux kernel wasn't at fault, it was chugging away happily. But it was at fault by negligence, because it didn't do it's job -- safely abstract the hardware.
Frame buffers are a start, though my understanding is that the X server based on the frame buffer is rather slow because it doesn't have any acceleration available to it. So it's only a start.
Posted by SmashPHASE:
:)
So if I get it right, web servers with an extreme
payload perform better with NT?
Assuming Slashdot runs Linux, let's go for NT, since it also runs faster on single cpu
configurations, their M6800 (or is it a Z80?) will probably benefit from it...
"Life's a bitch and than you marry one.."
1) I think this shows that both Linux and NT are insanely fast under these circumstances. Both the setups in this benchmark pumped out enough data to satisfy the needs of nearly any possible webserver or fileserver you can think of. What type of server gets more than 150 million hits a day?
2) Why isn't BSD ever tested in these benchmarks? Many sites, such as cdrom.com, put up impressive numbers with BSD systems. It'd at least be nice to see what BSD can do with a 4-CPU/4-ethernet card box.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
A test I would like to see now is a "real world" test. Using the same techniques as in these tests, but set a price cap on all tested items. Say the cap was 10,000$ or so. This is alot more realistic because this is how real companies operate, they are on a budget and can't always afford 25k worth of hardware and software. This 10k would have to be used for hardware AND software at fair market value, the same price a business has to pay for it. If you could only afford a dual processor NT system and a quad processor linux system then so be it. Besides a price cap, how about a longer testing period, say about a week and a half under constant high loads. If the system crashes you can reboot it, but the final results will be a total of pages served in the given time frame. A test like this would see which system would give you the biggest bang for your buck, if your web server or file server crashes and is down for a long time then you're going to lose money, every page not viewed is a dollar not going into your wallet and your file server is usually critical to your company, if your people can't view and work with the documents they need on the server then you're going to lose alot of productivity.
The price cap would severly limit the power of your hardware but it would do so within reasonable levels. The test would be less of a pure performance test and more of a price/performance test. This is where the free unicies excel, they are excellent operating systems yet cost you nothing more than download time or the price of media. Maybe other free unicies should be thrown into the mix, which would give a little more variety in the comparisons. That kind of test would turn my head if I were a sys admin, or even the owner of a business where every dollar counts and if I'm wasting my money on NT because it has a better marketing pitch I can change my ways the next hardware upgrade or just replace NT with linux on my servers.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
... please admit the truth:
... it's like complaining you couldn't get Windows2000 to run on your 386 or something.
If you have gone for a year without being able to get a dialup connection then you ARE an idiot.
I'm sorry - there is NO excuse for that
Both complaints are signs of IDIOCY
That's what M$ did when they found problems with NT file throughput from servers to clients. That's what Apple is doing with their OS, finally bringing it into the 21st century. Competition is what makes good tennis players, people, and it works the same way with programmers. I've no doubt that the next version of Linux will whup ass on NT, the makers of which will then come back with something that whups ass on Linux, and then the Amiga will come back huge and crush *everybody* ;-).
I didn't say the linux kernel was narrowly targeted. I was referring to Sun Tzu's comment:
"Realisticly, what I think MS has done here is create a "benchmark special". They have picked two high-profile applications and integrated them into the kernel a little too intimately so they can claim that NT in general is faster than Linux."
If you think about it, it's quite unlikely that MS would deliberately create a benchmark special OS to beat linux. It would be possible if web servers were their primary business and they wouldn't weaken the rest of their client base by specifically modifying the NT kernel just for web servers. However, MS has such a huge market that this would be a stupid move, esp. since they have been striving to merge the 95/NT code bases and haven't been able to do so yet.
Why would they jeopardize that goal and risk screwing up software for their 200 million paying customers just to satisfy a benchmark against linux for a webserver that they give away for free?
L.
L.
And as the improvements flow from the Open Source groups as a result of these tests it will only get better for those of us that have already switched over.
Peace
--Somewhere there is a village missing an idiot.
I think this is the first time anything like this has happened.
None of you are crying fowl.
I am very happy to see that the Linux community can see when they have to stop whining, and start programming.
I think Linux has a lot of potential as a enterprise level server. But that's all it is. Potential. Without people willing to take the time to make use of that potential, Linux will die.
I can't wait to see the rematch. And I congratulate NT on it's victory.
(this is more petty bickering than anything worth reading)
NT has preemptive multithreading, and IIS uses NT's threading to do it's work (including getting requests, and assigning them to a thread). You won't see a problem with what you're talking about. That's the whole point of threading, and why NT is faster than Linux.
Excuse me, but unless you're running apache from inetd (which is stupid for ANY amount of traffic), apache uses the Linux kernel to accept connections, and passes the connections to its child processes (subservers), which takes advantage of Linux's preemptive multitasking. This is exactly what you were claiming NT does that makes it better than linux. And if the question is one of multitasking vs. multithreading, I don't see why moving all the children into a single multithreaded process would add any performance gain, and would make the apache code much more complicated, because it would have to deal with mutexes and locks and all that un-fun stuff.
It's more likely that Linux is guilty of what you say (certainly, we know that the ip stack of linux is guilty of this). And the performance of linux on SMPs shows how guilty it is of pending other tasks because of it's lack of threading (or use of).
Linux has a much lower per-process overhead than NT does, therefore making multithreading within the same process merely an alternative to multi-process multitasking (which was WRITTEN for this kind of thing, and places no constraints on explicit process code to take advantage of it) as opposed to a necessity (as is the case in NT).
--
Paranoid
Paranoid
Bwaahahahahaa.
I thought the reason Unix admins made more money was that they can manage more servers due to lower downtime. That and the larger machines they have to manage.
I believe a guy called IntlHarvester is abusing the moderation system. Every time I set my threshold to +2, I see a bunch of his comments. A quick look at his user info shows that ALL of his comments are scored up to +2. A quick glance at his comments shows that they are not at all that deserving, mostly vaguely cynical paragraphs disparaging OSS. Not that he doesn't have the right to his own opinion, but how likely that he gets scored up every single time?. While being negative about OSS?
Bottom line, something is not kosher here, and it violates our trust in the system.
Ok, not only am I an AC, but I'm off-topic, moderate me down!!
Actually, Linux is not based on Unix, and contains no Unix code.
As much as I hate Microsoft for what they've done to the computer industry, I have to admit they do have the ability to buy some good engineers. However, I think you're missing two important points regarding the relative programming talent in the Microsoft and Linux camps. First, there are plenty of terrible programmers at Microsoft as well. Steve Maguire's book Writing Solid Code alludes very subtly to this fact. (They grew so fast and there was such a shortage of qualified talent they were forced to hire less talented people.) Second, there are lots of excellent engineers working on Linux. In fact your implicit assertion that there are only "average hackers" working on Linux is rather absurd.
Everybody knows the rock stars of Linux development, like Linus and Alan, but I think there is something even greater brewing. From personal experience and contacts it seems that there is a lot of anti-Microsoft and pro-Linux sentiment in computer science departments all over the world - there certainly is in mine. I think most of the very best programmers would work for less money for the satisfaction of doing something they believe in. With Linux they can really feel like they're making a positive difference. At Microsoft the only real motivation seems to be money - they certainly don't seem to mind selling poor products to consumers.
What I'm saying is that Linux has won the "hearts and minds" battle, so to speak, for recruiting engineering talent, and the money is starting to follow as well. I think the imapct of this over the next few years will blow everyone away - especially Microsoft!
Chris
simpkins@tilc.com
(BTW, the links above to simpkins.org don't work right now. I'm moving my stuff to a new server.)
>Second, I am not talking about the Mindcraft tests. I am talking about
Dude, the PC Week tests *WERE* the Mindcraft test done by people who seemed to know what they were doing.
Didn't you notice that the numbers doesn't seem to be as out-of-wack as the orginal test performed by Mindcraft with no one looking over their shoulders? That speaks volumes about the basic compentence of the people at Mindcraft to perform this kind of testing.
> The world seems (from this side at least) to speak primarily english.
;)
For this side yes. It seems to me that mandarin (or maybe another Chinese language) is the most used language. hey, 1 billion people that makes one out of six.
Go everyone and learn Chinese
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
First two mistakes I made in my first post. It should be 362534400 hits/day, and 3 million pages serverd per day.
Hm, if you look, there are two posts by this AC which are EXACTLY the same. There is an interesting thread on the first one. This one is um... redundant.
You'd better guys donate some $$$ to those boys and girls who try to find the Cure for Cancer, and you won't need chemotherapy, but wait, in this case you won't have chance to flame, right?
There are a few replies that I probably could surmize have been written by the microsoft camp, and I guess this could be beneficial to wake up some of you coders out there. I look at all these reports in this light, nothing is ever perfect but things can always get better, NT needs to, and so does Linux. Now you all can argue to the degree to which each OS needs to improve, but I think the thing you have to realize, the enemy is our own pride, the competition, is microsoft, this is how we have to see it.
Invision a new reality, a new world
with GNU/Linux Debian Rocks!!! =) NiteRain!!!
I don't know what life is, but no one gets out alive...N
what are you doing still posting in Slashdot, get to work...
we got kernel to buff...
remember, a stable kernel can be made fast easier than a fast kernel made stable...
we have 1 months to make this baby faster...
we can do it..!!
First thing.... These tests where much better but they still manage to miss the mark.
.htaccess files on commonly accessed files nested five directories deep. Not .htaccess file .htaccess files as possible. This
.htaccess file that is already slowing things down also has
:)
Ok, just in case anyone still thinks these tests are worth a shit. I'd like to clearify that this is pure and unadulterated shit. There now that the
childish remarks are through. I'll do some intelligent speaking.
First off, I don't doubt this to be shit from the get go. I'm an MCSE (my work paid for it) and I know the insane amount of system reasources it
takes to run a NT Server alone. Yes, I know how to properly configure an NT Server right down to the streamlining of the registry. Plus, we have
all been through the multiple restarts and memory that applications won't let go of after using it. Not to mention all the swapping and overhead
processing. Don't get me started with IIS 4.0.
There is a new bug found almost on a daily basis that spells doom for these servers. Plus, IIS 4.0 doesn't have near the amount of features and
configuration possiblities as Apache does. Next Apache needs someone who knows it inside and out to configure it. This is due to Apache's
extreme flexiablity.
Say that average joe smith sets up his Apache server and uses
uncommon with big sites where management is broken up. Well, for every request on the document Apache will check with each
per directory. So if this file is accessed 100 times. Apache will check 500 times for the rights to that file.
Because it will check the root to the next directory to the next. And merge the config files it finds along the way. Making Apache check 5 times
per document requested. But, on the up side if you need infinately specific rights to files. This is a god send that can be reduced by placing
commonly requested documents near the root of the (don't fork the directories too much)server. And using as few
is why you should try to place as much configuration as possible in the gobal configuration files and preferrably in the server configuration file. I'll
explain the last part of that last sentence next.
When Apache is looking into what the rights are for a requested file. It checks certain files in certain orders. And within those files it checks it
against the directives in the order they are placed in the config file. Meaning if that same
the most requested file in the directory near the bottom of the config file. It will take longer. Maybe not whole seconds longer. But, enough on
heavy sites to make an impact.
These are just two of the many configuration tips for Apache a person can pick up when they rtfm (Read The Fucking Manual)and even reading
the source.
And all the rest of the way IIS doesn't have as flexiable a rights system. Nor does it handle dynamic pages as well as Apache. Infact IIS 4.0 will
work fine if it isn't that compilcated a site, the pages are static, and the machine is so big it won't ever see a processor load near 100%.
Apache has that complete control rights system. It handles dynamic pages bueatifully. And doesn't freak when heavy loads hit. It will just keeps
chugging away.
As for file serving? I can't say. I'm not anywhere near an expert at samba. But, I do know that my Linux box boots faster, handles heavier loads
better, and memory management is bueatiful. And to make another remark.
RedHat should not be the version of Linux they are pitting against NT. Sorry, this isn't a direct RedHat sucks type deal. It's a use Slackware or
something and so you can minimize the system to do only what it is suppose to do. And recompile everything to be optimized with the systems
hardware. Maybe not even Slackware. Just something streamlined. Redhat is actually a great system for the home user. That's the way they
seem to be heading nowadays. And I applaud them for it. My it's now easy enough for my mother to use it.
Personally, once again you can look at the source of the tests and wonder why the outcome is the same. These companies are heavily dependent
on Microsoft products. And some have been funded by Microsoft. Mindcraft even did there tests in Microsoft's labs. Of course they aren't going
to say anything bad about Microsoft.
The real test should be here is X amount of dollars. Put, together the best system you can. Linux would kick the fucking shit out of MS. For the
amount of the software alone you could put together a Beawolf cluster that would crush any NT Enterprise 4-way SMP box. I know, I tried this
before when installing many NT systems to upgrade a hospitial. Personally, I won't go there if I'm shot. But, that Linux cluster is up to this very
day without a reboot performing critical storage and access control for CAT scan images. On the other hand the NT clusters (if you can call it
true clustering) are constantly having parts of them rebooted.
Whatever, don't believe this stuff. It's just FUD and the media looking for conflict.
Eros -- I know what every file on my box is there for..... Do you?
"the margin of victory was smaller than in Mindcraft's tests."
"Where kernel problems were found, fixes are **already** under way"
It's not FUD, but valuable advertising for Microsoft to use in their campaign against Linux. This is where REDHAT and CALDERA and SUSE
*******should*******
stand up and put out counter-advertising that plays UP the strengths of the OS instead of allowing Microsoft to run fullpage ads in PCWeek and other 'management'read magazines.
the gu ru
How many high volume web sites use static content?
And how many lesser volume web sites actually require machines with that much horsepower?
In the real world, NT loses because
1. It's way more expensive, both in inital cost and in maintainence.
2. It's a crappy environment for doing any CGI work that isn't ASP. Hell, it's a crappy environment for doing programming period.
3. IIS doesn't conform to the HTTP standard. (I've personally been screwed by it's bug of not sending cookie headers on relocates)
4. Lots of security flaws, in NT and IIS.
What I would like to see, is an NT and Linux comparison, with BOTH running apache. This would
show where the areas of improvement are most
needed.
Linux != Apache
There are lots of nice web servers for Linux,
some with a better design for multi - processor
systems. Looking at the benchmark results, I
see that scalability is rather low, is
Apache or Linux the limiting factor. Has anybody
tried similar tests with different web servers?
Plan 9 came from Bell Labs/Lucent
OS9 is an old Unixesque operating system written in assembly language, first for the 6809 (that's where the 9 came from) and then for the 68000. The manufacturer was Microware. Anyone know if it's still alive and kicking?
BTW - I think OS9 was also microkernel. I know Plan 9 is.
Okay, NT was tested to be faster. But don't you think it is hilarious that MS deems Linux as a competitor? I mean, sheesh, Linux is free! It's like the tortoise and the hare. The hare obviously has all the advantages (here is would be money, man-power, equipment, time, etc.) and the tortoise has still managed to keep the hare on it's toes. I'm not saying that Linux a direct comparison to a tortoise , no, I'm just saying that Linux is obviously a sleeping giant. MS better try harder than ever because very soon that giant will wake up.
One particular NT 3.51 configuration achieved a C3 rating (certainly not B2) when it was not connected to any network.
NT has preemptive multithreading, and IIS uses NT's threading to do it's work (including getting requests, and assigning them to a thread). You won't see a problem with what you're talking about. That's the whole point of threading, and why NT is faster than Linux. It doesn't matter how big a pipe a certain user has, NT will assign a 'timeslot' for that thread, then move onto the next, all threads will get equal priority.
It's more likely that Linux is guilty of what you say (certainly, we know that the ip stack of linux is guilty of this). And the performance of linux on SMPs shows how guilty it is of pending other tasks because of it's lack of threading (or use of).
starting with "top" of course
....
there are then dozens of disk, io, memory, hardware etc, etc monitoring and performance gauging tools.
That's not the problem.
The problem was identified clearly in the article.
I just have to wonder why are all the NT sysadmins so defensive in here? It's as bad as the teenaged rantings
I was there at ZDnet's labs for one of the days the test was in progress (and have the photos to prove it :-).
The kind of resources the average person can get together for load testing would barely make a dent compared to the stuff that ZDnet's test rigs can throw. The rows of systems in an array from floor to ceiling from one side of the building to the other all over fibre/gigabit ethernet/100baseTX full duplex switched, etc and any combination you care to think up can throw a pretty intense load on a poor unsuspecting server.
Also, I got the impression the Linux folks were a bit outgunned by the NT people there. While the Linux people there knew their stuff, the NT folks appeared to be the cream of their tuning folks.
I for one do not doubt the authenticity of the tests, and I might add, I'm not too suprised at the result either.
Don't forget, Microsoft have explicitly optimized for this particular load after getting beaten a while back. You can be damn sure they knew there was no chance of loosing.
I'm sure that everyone out there knows someone who is a mac person. You know the type, they think that Macs are king and that everything else sucks. Well the macs were better in many ways at one time, but these guys still strut around like it was still true. They do almost as much to hurt the platform as the stooges at Apple itself. When I see people blasting the mindcraft study it reminds me of this a great deal. If we want linux to win it will take more than bitching and bragging about advantages that are no longer there. Apparently the service patches for NT are not just bugfixes. Microsoft has done some work to actually improve their product, and the linux community needs to do the same. If NT is able to beat linux today we need to find out why so that the same won't be true tomorrow. Chanting mantras like a Macolyte won't cut it. Benchmarks like this are a very good thing for linux because they spur developers to fix problems that might otherwise not have been seen. If we respond to this challenge by improving linux then in the end we will be the ones who gain from it, not Microsoft.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
are money the most important think in the world?
for business: yes!
but another question:
is business the most important think in the world?
i do not think so. maybe some people think it is, but they stop when this business brings its results soon: poluted air, poluted water, devastated coutry, wiped-out whole kinds of plants and animals, etc.
in such situation, "here-you-have-blank-check" policy (HYHBCP) does not work anymore because some things can't be bought!
in long term, HYHBCP is not good. to be more precise, it leads all of us to death and starving! (including the source of check).
think about it!
hany
Well... I was wrong with my first comment.
Some of you still feel the need to whine.
Next time, I will refresh the window before I post my comments.
Perhaps some of you will grow up eventually.
...things are really heating up!
Yeah, this will sound like nitpicking. But basic information like this should be readily available in the "report."
- What network card was used? In the MindCraft tests, a 4 channel network card was used that allowed them to basically QUADRUPLE network throughput. This card's special features were not supported in Linux. Was this card used again?
- If they tested Zeus on the multiprocessor machine, why didn't they also test it in single processor mode? It's common knowledge that Apache aims to be stable & standard-compliant above all, while Zeus is optimized for speed speed SPEED. In single processor mode, the deficiencies of Linux 2.2's poor multithreaded TCP performance should become a non-issue, and Zeus would perform at top speed. However, only Apache was used for the speed benchmarks.
- WHO from Redhat & Microsoft was present? Redhat is not the primary maintainer of Samba, Apache, OR the Linux kernel. Redhat probably lacks the ability to gather hardcore experts from these projects (since the experts spend their time on more productive endeavors), while Microsoft knows how much value these benchmarks have propoganda-wise and can successfully coordinate FUD attacks with their strongest stock-option-bound engineers standing by.
Red Herring annoying FUD like this angers me. I hope someone like VA Research, Redhat, or other commercial Linux supporter will step up to the plate and start publishing their *own* benchmarks.
-Pimpus Rootus
That is all shit, sorry. A study sponsered by O'reilly found that by changing 2 registry keys you can change NT workstation to NT server. Same performance, same appearance, etc. MS is just blowing smake up everyone's ass to charge an extra buck for NT server.
> It's been known to break some NIC drivers
> causing a blue screen.
Try this the other way around. The 3COM driver has some cute little features that qualify it as an intermediate level network driver. It is just this type of driver that causes the problem.
> the 3Com driver would cause the bluescreen
You said it correctly this time... It was 3COM, not Microsoft that caused this failure. You don't take your Chevy back to the dealer because your new Kenwood radio blew a fuse. Or do you? If you did, I'm sure Chevy would fix it, just as Microsoft did with the intermediate network driver problem.
Look, both OSes have their issues and both OSes have their strengths. This test seems to have highlighted a problem in the Linux IP stack. As painful as it may seem, Microsoft stepped up to the plate and provided a fix for its IP problem. What I see here is finger pointing. As the Linux community, we need to step up and recognize that we could improve our IP stack. In fact, let's do one better: Let's step up to the plate and FIX it.
And even the results are significant. Using the car analogy again: "The Mercedes has a top speed of 160, while the Linuxmobile could only reach 120 (after we connected all of the spark plug wires which were inadvertently missed in our test in the last issue), but both had excellent slalom times and, in everyday driving, nobody goes 160 anyway."
I wouldn't expect Linux to come out on top anyway. The bottom line is that on the same hardware, one program is going to significantly outperform the other only if one OS does something stupid to get in the way. Now I wouldn't be totally shocked at any future stupidity in Windows. I'm convinced now that MS product development is no longer driven by end user needs (was it ever?), but by competitive tactics. If a future version decides to fork a new copy of IE every time you open a file, or won't connect to the internet without going through some "value-added" MSN portal, or won't install software that hasn't been signed by Microsoft, then we have an opportunity to pass them.
Even now, you can probably find enough MS stupidity to concoct a set of benchmarks that Linux will surely win. (I'm sure that MS funded the original Mindcraft tests only when it was pretty confident it had removed most of the stupidity in IIS.) How about benchmarking some desktop functions against an Active Desktop-hobbled Win98 box?
i read CT magazine regulary and i think CT is a magazine with lots of technical competence, and not a marketing magazine.. those guys usualy know what they are talking about. besides technical competence the sociological impacts of computers are also often covered very good. given this it is a surprise that they are not more against microsoft. i would say that they treat microsoft more then fair.
in the last issue they also had a linux vs. NT web-server shootout. they used a siemens primergy 870 maschine (4 xeon 450 cpu's, 2GB ram, intel etherpro 100 nic, mylex dac 960 raid controler, price of the maschine: about 100 000 DEM ) here the some of the results:
serving one static html page 4k size: NT and linux almost on par (linux ahead a few %) both systems answer 900 requests/s when hit with 512 concurent client process.
with 8k size static page: linux is between about 5 and 10% ahead of NT.. at 512 client processes the linux maschine serves about 600 requests/s the NT maschine about 550.
using a 4K page but selecting one random page out of 10E4 pages linux has about 830 req/sec and NT about 720. the linux line seems saturated where the NT line is bended down already..
random 4K static page out of 10E6 different pages: linux about 270 req/s while NT has never more then about 30 req/s. that means linux is some 900% ahead..
now some dynamic pages. they used plain old CGI scripts with perl. no PHP or ASP. using all 4 CPUs linux answers 210 till 250 request/s while NT is around 60!
same as above but using only 1 of the CPUs of the maschine: linux around 100 req/sec, NT around 25 req/sec.
if the script contains a sleep(3) at the beginning (to simulate slow database connection or slow client connections) the results are: linux increases the number of requests linear with the number of requesting processes and reaches about 80 req/s for 250 simulated clients. NT is saturated at around 7 req/sec. (in words: seven).
the only time that NT is ahead of linux (about a factor of 2) is when using 2 NIC cards instead of 1.
my interpretation of all this: i guess there are very few webservers where one would needs more then 100Mbit/s.. and then one would be propably better of with 2 cheaper systems doing load balancing.. given the extra reliabilty, remote managemnt, etc of linux and the better extraordinary better performance in most tests linux is the clear winner.
greetings from vienna, austria.
der mond.
>>I think that the file server portion of the test is inherently flawed in that it uses a non-native protocol under linux...SMB. SMB is native to all windows platforms. They should be testing NFS as well, then I would think that linux would fair better
:| SMP is a weakness which is not going away very soon, or very easily. It's very easy for people to say things like the above - but it takes a huge amount of effort. Linux was designed from the ground up to be a single-CPU system, and going back and unraveling all those dependencies as well as staying stable is one hell of an undertaking. Expect a couple of years before this is finished. SVR4 MP was designed from the ground up to run on multiprocessors, and indeed SVR4 based systems have excellent scalability. (check out SVR3 - SCO had to re-engineer it from inside out in order to make it anywhere near scalable). I believe that Linux should be relegated to single-CPU boxes... too many scalability and stability probs. Get a commercial Unix if you're already into investing in a multi-CPU box.
No, the testing was for Windows connectivity - NFS is not very relevant in that context. If you want to compete with NT, do it on _their_ turf.
>> IIS 4.0 vs apache was much the same, test apache vs apache
Same principle applies. We're talking about the high-profile solutions from the Windows universe and Linux universe.
>> I'd like to see NT's wolfpack clustering compared to that of Beowolf...but I guess that's not necessary considering that NT is listed nowhere in the top 500
These are completely differently-targeted clustering solutions. And schlepping together 200 Intel boxes with PVM does _not_ make Linux superior to NT in any performance scale.
>> Let's take the cue from the IP stack problem and from BeOS and multi-thread the hell out of the kernel
Yes sir, right away
Sorry, you've just blown your credibility entirely. I've been over this many times. I've been illustrating a caching strategy that is guaranteed to beat linux- it may or may not be what the tested version of NT is using, but it is _orthoganal_ to CPU scheduling issues and threading. It's very amusing that you get a 'score: 2 Insightful' on this comment- methinks I sense self-effacing geeks trying to be humble at all costs here.
What I'm talking about is a strategy that's flat guaranteed to produce faster throughput- at the cost of totally obliterating latency and potentially never _choosing_ to serve certain pages, regardless of CPU usage. This _is_ a problem if you're not running benchmarks, and Linux+Apache uses a much more expensive strategy which will never be as fast as this 'caching from hell', or drop connections as willingly.
Frankly, you should have stopped with the 'get equal priority', because your continuing only illustrated that you have no idea what's being talked about. This is not a strategy for CPU utilization- that's orthoganal. It's a strategy for choosing which requests to serve and which requests to ignore for the time being- and if this is so hard to understand, I imagine the tested version of NT _is_ doing this because (a) Microsoft people are _not_ stupid, and (b) Microsoft people will always cheat given the opportunity. This is a pyrrhic cheat- you can't use it on a real web server. It has nothing to do with CPU scheduling and is purely a hack to optimize benchmarks for intranet requests.
And you, TummyX, are attempting to mislead, but probably you simply don't understand enough to realize it- you are behaving as if little CPU scheduling/threading issues have profound global effects that overcome choice of algorithm. I could specify an algorithm for NT that (given an impossibly fast load of requests) ignored everything but the requests for _one_ page, and never tried to do anything but spit out that page to the requesters, trashing all other requests quickly and efficiently. This is likely to be a simpler task than keeping track of what's _really_ happening- and as long as that one page's requests alone can come fast enough, this algorithm would beat both Linux and NT- serving only one page as fast as it possibly could and wasting no time keeping track of anything else.
Of course, this is useless- but it would win.
Now, are you going to come back and (as your interesting posting history suggests) assert again that there is no such thing as algorithms and NT is just a large vat which you throw requests at and fish web pages out of- and that CPU scheduling is the only consideration in doing this, because the only algorithm that exists is serve-upon-request?
If so, you're not only a fool, but you have no idea when you've been spanked. Please illustrate exactly when the ip stack of Linux sits around caching http requests instead of serving them, as you claim...
that Slashdot has resorted to analyzing reports and trying to improve Linux rather than posting baseless flames along with flagrant use of the term "M$".
I guess the serious readers have been there all along but like me, were driven out of the shadows by the ridiculous behavior towards MindCraft.
If you are still having trouble understanding Linux has a design problem, try this little exercise. On Slashdot, go to the search box down there at the bottom and enter something in. When the results come back, select to search in the comments and time how long the search takes. I seem to get results back in about 10 seconds. Now, go to search.thunderstone.com: a web index similar to AltaVista which is driven by their SQL server Texis. Searches on here come back in less than one second, even though they are searching much more data (350 gigs in Oct. 98).
MySQL simply is not designed to efficently search through text so it is slower. Just like Linux does not have the multi-threaded TCP stack and so it runs slower. Flames won't help at all.
Now, for the offtopic part.. Are there any good SQL servers out there (DBI/DBD support is a huge plus) with good text searching abilities? One website I run on MySQL has the same problem with long searches. We looked at Texis but the license is simply too expensive. They base it on transactions/day and rows in the database, going from a couple thousand all the way up to $12.9 mil. Just to convert over, it would have cost us about $50,000. On the plus side, they do support Linux!
coz ive seen you motherfuckers do it
go fuck your holier than thou elitist selves.
I hear OS/9 is very popular in embedded applications, like controlling traffic lights.
LJS
i hope your letter was polite tho.
that pisses them off more because
then they cant ignore you as easily.
I'm an administrator for a large (1000+ node) NT 4.0 SP3 network. I have direct responsibility for about 120 workstations and 2 servers. I can say from personal experience that NT is very unstable, and it doesn't even have anything to do with the GUI-kernel connection. Our main server, a BDC, file, and print server crashed about every two weeks for a year before we finally gave up and set the damn thing to reboot every night. The thing would be sitting there with its monitor off and users would start complaining that the file server was unavailable. We'd turn on the monitor and sure enough, the machine was locked solid - only a power down would reboot it. And when the machine comes back up all you can do is look at the log files to see about when it crashed. Other than that you get no debugging info at all.
By contrast, we have a Linux box running our very active intranet web site. We've had it up for 6 months and it has run flawlessly. Interestingly, I set up the Linux web server in the first place because I was tired of IIS failing for no apparent reason (the site had been hosted by IIS).
Oh, and the Linux box is an old P166 with 16MB RAM, the NT server is a brand new Dell Poweredge 2300 dual PII 350 with 128MB RAM, hardware RAID 5, 3 hot-swappable 9 GB cheetahs. All that reliability hardware wasted on an OS that can't stay up for two weeks!
It's certainly not for technical reasons that people choose NT over *nix.
Chris
simpkins@tilc.com
(The links to simpkins.org don't work - I'm moving to a new server.)
After reading the PC Week results this moring I just by chance checked out the newest c't at the newstand (sorry, the article does not seem to be available on their website). It just happened to have a Linux vs. NT web services performance comparison as well. Without getting into any detail here, Linux won. By far, in every category.
I've seen a lot of ppl here are taking the PC week test results very serious as to which OS is superior for web hosting. I would not read too much into any type of artificial performance test as they are flawed by their nature of beeing exactly that: artificial. Your own experience should be the final instance.
A little note at the end: the c't tests were very well documented taking up multiple pages of the magazine, something that can't be said about the PC week test. That fact alone and it not beeing some silly rebuttal test makes me take the c't test more seriously.
freedumb
In Houston, it is rare to see a very good NT sysadmin make more than $70,000 and many don't do better than $50,000. In Houston, a UNIX sysadmin with 5 year makes $85,000-$100,000, with ten years $150,000+, especially with security or dba or other skills. There is a wall that is getting steeper with every new bunch of MCSEs entering the market here. With UNIX, it takes skill -- skill is essential as well for good NT people (don't push me -- I am being open-minded), but no one understands that and NT will support a poor admin to a large degree whereas UNIX will let him dig his own grave.
UNIX people get paid according to skill. They also get to work with better stuff with more importance. Mostly they get paid more because there aren't too many people who can do what they do.
Can't reproduce it here. I'm guessing it's your video card driver or your mouse driver.
***belch***
Ding! Your word processor is ready!
GRRRR
/.ers to be aware of this and dont fall for the w2k hype.
THEY USED THOSE STUPID 4 ETHERNET CARDS AGAIN!
I am getting rather angry and upset about this. Can you say "false advertisment"?
If microsoft continues with this alpha ehternet driver which the license that says use at your own risk, then we should use the alpha 2.3 kernels! MY boss reads pcmagazine and he is allready looking for excuses to dump my linux box for a NT one. I WILL BE VERY PISSED IF I HAVE TO USE NT! DONT YOU GUYS GET THIS! Microsoft is trying to isolate everyone in the linux world by pitching NT users agaisnt linux ones and making us look like whinners who have an infior OS or ms is trying to limit linux's sucess through deception.
We all lose if this happens. If MICROSOFT USES THIS TRICK AGAIN I WILL HIGHLY CONSIDER SUEING THERE PANTS OFF. I am not a fanatic but if pcmag just took those stupid 4 ehternet cards out and replaced them wiht 1 fast one, then NT would go down majorly in the benchmarks. Want proof that linux is faster? Read this http://www.heise.de/ct .
Its in german but you can translate it in bablefish. This magazine gets no moeny in ms ads.
See! I am no linux anti ms troll. I just WANT FACTS!
The question is, is NT faster then linux as a file server and a web server with 4 ethernet cards?
The answer is yes. I admit this.
Linux can kick the crap out of NT with any other configuration!
Zdnet is very unprofessional. They also did another test earlier showing NT win by using 4 ethernet cards while doing heavy dynamic html servering.
I am no whinner but to be labled as a sore loser who screams unfair at a referee is too much. Its more like screaming unfair by one team paying the referee money to make sure I would get fouled while the other team wouldn't.
Ahhh that feels alot better. Moderators rememberthat I dont intend to start a flame war but I just brought in some facts. Zdnet used 4 ethernet cards and I want
I recognize that it would be nice for Linux to thrash NT on a top-of-the line box, but there is one place that Linux will definitely beat NT. How about a low-end box (eg earlier Pentium or such)? I'm using a 486 that I pulled from the trash heap as a webserver, DNS server, nameserver, et al. It was actually serving 8-10 thousand hits/day for a while on a 3C509. Not too shabby. I think this is one place that Linux really shines--setting up departmental servers or low-usage webservers for smaller companies, and you can't even run NT on the same hardware.
that you have plastyered there name everywhere.
they purposely try to keep the location secret
because they are a bunch of elitist assholes who
hate 'the masses'. furthermore they pirate
starwars and the matrix and other stuff and
make alot of excuses about why its ok for them to do it.
the moderators are just as bad as the 'criminals'
fuck off bitch
No, NT was modified to be app.specific to serve as many static pages as quickly as possible without regard to latency. It is possible that the tested version was in fact pushed so far in this direction that, if you made a single request for a page otherwise unrequested, it would be ignored and not serve the page.
_THAT_ is what I, at least, am implying. Why? Because I spelled out the algorithm capable of defeating normal web servers on these terms- and if you go by only bandwidth, 'mad caching' wins very big. As long as you can keep the requests coming and the granularity isn't so big as to have the server waiting for more requests too often, it pays to _not_ serve pages until you have a whole raft of identical ones to whack out in a loop. This strategy of not serving pages when asked is of course insanity for _real_ use, but by God is it a winning strategy for benchmarks! Instead of keeping all the pages in RAM, or going through a complicated prioritizing system and trying to keep latency down, you ignore all that and just count requests- and when you serve, you just do a tight loop using the same data over and over. It's beautiful, even if it is pretty useless for doing anything other than winning benchmarks- in normal use most requests will be delayed, because they're being saved up for optimal serving at a later time. One way of telling if this is happening would be if the request latency varies wildly even though conditions aren't changing.
Again: I for one am implying that NT was tweaked for this test into a form that bears no resemblance to a web server- and Linux will never, ever catch up to it without similarly discarding any concern for the actual requests. Paying no attention to latency is just faster- checking on times costs, sorting costs, and serving pages upon requests totally bypasses the gains you get from caching and spitting out identical pages in quick succession. The trouble is, as I said, this course of optimization leads directly away from realworld performance and towards a thing that only works with benchmarks...
Does anybody, anywhere, have records on the statistical distribution of latency re. this NT optimization, compared to the tested Apache setup? Will they talk about latency at all, or try very hard to make no comment on it? Are there any records on _regular_ NT latency that might provide a clue? My experience trying to download from NT servers does suggest that latency varies wildly...
I've got an idea. How about a fair real world test? An independent group comes up w/ some real world type need. They then give (or allow) each group to use some reasonable set amount of funds. That set amount will go to cover hardware, software, and personnel (they will have to pay themselves on set hourly figures that the independent group finds reasonable). That way you bring it down to the bottom line. The servers would be tested on how fast they could be and how reliable as well and of course price would also be tested since the cheaper system setup would allow more expenditure for greater overdesign.
I just don't believe it, This is driving me crazy, I run my own test on NT and Linux red hat, and Linux just all out kicks NT A$$!!! Here's how we do it, You take your setups, however you like, i don't care... Then you do Web benchmarking, file benchmarking, mail server under a load, dns load, MUTLI web sites being hosted, 16 people telneted in, 23 ftping, and then see how NT stands up. But what? Oh yeah, i run a web hosting comp, i do this every day, And even the HIGH-END nt box dies within 3 days, Linux, well... it's still up :) Man i hate them microsoft funded benchmarks, come over to my place where we only support Linux, and i'll show you how NT dies after so much, Now, linux does have it's limits yes, But i havn't found them yet!
Got shack?
ShackCentral Network
Worlds best gaming network!!!
Have you sent a bug report to MS btw? If you can reproduce it, you should.
Depends on what you mean by Linux. Linus thinks it's everything, including the software. And Linux "doesn't contain any unix code" is unlikely. Programmers would have studied Unix and inadvertantly used the same code/algorythms in the Linux kernel.
"Linux has a much lower per-process overhead than NT does, therefore making multithreading within the same process merely an alternative to multi-process multitasking" ;P
Bingo: and for what it's worth, MacOS has much worse per-process overhead and context switching time than either (I use it, and I never ask too much of it- works fine for running an application or two) It's good to see glimpses of reality through the onslaught of mindless technical hype. Because NT threading is a necessity and works pretty well, suddenly it's a requirement and nothing else can work- if NT was the one with really good multiprocess multitasking, and Linux was the one with mad threading, multithreading would be called an ugly hack and we'd be hearing about locks until our brains ran out our ears
Thanx Paranoid: good reality check.
Excuse me, but unless you're running apache from inetd (which is stupid for ANY amount of traffic), apache uses the Linux kernel to accept connections, and passes the connections to its child processes (subservers), which takes advantage of Linux's preemptive multitasking. This is exactly what you were claiming NT does that makes it better than linux. And if the question is one of multitasking vs. multithreading, I don't see why moving all the children into a single multithreaded process would add any performance gain, and would make the apache code much more complicated, because it would have to deal with mutexes and locks and all that un-fun stuff.
Uh, no. I wasn't saying that it made NT better than Linux...it was a response your your earlier argument that NT left some users idle. It was nothing to do with NT is better than Linux cause. It was to do with, uh, Linux isn't better than NT cause . And overheads for processes as opposed to threads is always much higher. Especially when you have to start communicating across processes. Where did you get your assumptions that NT handles processes worse than Linux?
Threading isn't just a nasty hack to get speed, it's there cause it's a good design - why do you think a mutithreaded ip stack is going to be incorporated into linux soon?
There is no necessity in NT to use threads, but obviously (as i outlined above) it would be faster. Certainly, in IIS, you can choose to have each session spawned off in a seperate process if you want to - threading just makes more sense. And I wasn't saying that Linux IS guilty, I was saying that it's more likely linux would be guilty of leaving requests idle than what you said about NT (eg. don't make stupid claims about NT).