Slashdot Mirror
Open Source + Competition = Lean and Mean
Lycestra writes "CNN has an article on why Linux is and Windows isn't. We all know this, but it's broken down for the non-geek to understand why the better OS comes out of basements and not Seattle. Its all about competition and what works. Also references to a few of ESR's writings. "
How many people actually have 4 ethernet cards in their servers?
I don't. And you probably don't. Linux beats NT except when you've got multiple ethernet cards.
How many servers do you have that have multiple ethernet cards in them?
According to a German magazine benchmark, Linux smokes NT except when you are dealing with multiple ethernet cards.
All the benchmarks I've seen before the Mindcraft/PcWeek ones (in Smart Reseller), etc., Linux beat NT.
When we fix the TCP/IP threading issues, we'll get over that problem too.
As someone as already pointed out, Joe Barr is by no means a nuetral writer. Judging from his hatemail to Mindcraft, he's a FUD machine.
.
His comments on Windows 2000 promising to be less stable is laughable (has this guy ever seen Windows 2000, or does he hang around slashdot collecting notes from Linux advocates). Maybe he just makes it up
His talk of Windows not improving because of no competition is just plain stupid. Windows went from Win16 to Win32, and Win64 is in the works by some of the smartest engineers in the world. He confuses Microsoft's marketing division with Microsoft's development division.
Windows has consistently been improved, while getting cheaper and cheaper. Web integration, more hardware support, speed and stability improvements. Sure linux's momentum is very high atm, but don't let that fool you into thinking windows has and will still remain stationary. Windows 2000 has been in the works for quite some time, and will be released later on this year. And the amount of features it has will blow Linux away (for a while).
It's interesting (to say the least) at how Joe seems to define competition in the Linux community. Linux is supposed to be succeeding cause of cooperation, not cause of competition. He's an idiot. People work on Linux cause they are proud of their work, and they submit their work for improvement and examination by others.
In a sense, MS workers are also proud of their work, certainly seeing the beaming smiles on their faces when they see Windows 2000 boot after they upgraded the first PDC at Microsoft is an indication of their pride in their product.
MS engineers aren't tied down by MS marketing and told, hey, you make Windows unstable and you can't be proud of your work. And Linux kernel hackers don't wake up ever morning preparing for battle with other Linux hackers.
All these praises from people for Joe's article is blind. Look at his email to mindcraft and tell me if you think this guy is worth listening too - regardless of what camp you're in.
This may be seen by some as a nit to be picked, but this appears to be only a link from CNN to Joe Barr at LinuxWorld. This isn't exactly what I would call the attention of the mainstream press, unless embedding a link is the equivalent of an internally generated story. I'd be much more impressed if it were an actual CNN correspondent who didn't already have the interest in the topic that Mr. Barr does (and a fine writer he is). The fact that they think enough of the subject to link to it is one thing, but it isn't quite the full editorial weight of CNN.
I'm more interested in seeing what Josh Quittner at Time has to say as he undergoes his baptism by Linux fire. Anyone out there offer him any help after his Linux article a couple of weeks ago.
This article sounds more like a marketing brochure than a technical evaluation. And maybe as it should be - for the non-geeky out there. But I would urge people not to cite this as proof that linux is winning, and microsoft is losing. When you have a small army, any victory seems like a big victory against a intractable enemy.
Keep it in perspective, everybody.
--
I'd like to know who has 400Mbps worth of upstream pipe and can't afford to put their servers on an internal Gigabit backbone (giving the Linux box a single NIC ).
Go to auction sites and check out the legit Microsoft Office 97, pro edition. You can get them 20 bucks a CD, it has cd key and everything. Why? Because everybody else is given away office software. You can get Corel preload from some of the PC ventor for free. And you can get StarOffice free (yeah I got the win32 version. It's basically a WinOffice copy but the find-replace function is weak.)
Now go back to OS, can you find a windows 95 at a low price? You can't! I'd tried. There's not way to get a legit win95,98 for less than 55 dollars. Do I have to remind you that there's no competition? The list price is a joke, don't use it please. Look at the real price.
As for multimedia encyclopedia, you can get them free after rebate from CompUSA every other week.
If MS had a monopoly, Windows should be very expensive.
It is.
(OK, some i sound like a microsoft marketing guy :P)...
Duh?!
CY
Well, I am a former Linux user.
/etc files and RedHat decides to obfuscate the whole mess to make their GUI administration tools almost work properly.
Actually, that's not a fair thing to say. I have four computers on my 100-base-t home network. One runs Windows 98 (the main desktop machine I use for the web, for general purpose creative work, etc.) One runs Windows NT (kind of my experiment area for things like running Posix-compliant stuff like Interix and other things NT does well) One runs Windows 95 (down on the workbench in the lab, with the EPROM programmer, the EPROM emulator, the 68HC11 and Zilog Z8 development tools) One runs Linux (Slackware 4.0, for things like ripping CD Audio to WAV using CDParanoia.)
A few months ago I spent about a half year experimenting with the idea of running only Linux on all my hardware (plus several NetBSD machines for various purposes). I wasn't getting a hell of a lot done on my main desktop machine. I purchased ApplixWare, had Windows 3.1 installed on top of the WABI I had purchased (and had Wine installed in parallel- the Windows Image WABI installs gives you an interesting embedded-Windows environment to run Wine inside).
I'm not an ignorant know-nothing who tried Linux for a weekend and struggled for a week to figure out how to remove LILO. I started "playing around" with Linux in 1993 with the first Yggdrasil "Plug-and-Play" Linux distribution when I had a Sound Blaster pro and a 1X CD-ROM drive on my 486 box.
I'm not interested in running Linux anymore as my main desktop machine. I found myself spending most of my time futzing around, trying to get things to work, downloading tarballs of source code and building all the half completed applications advertised on sites like FreshMeat.net. I wasn't getting a damn thing done, and I was bleeding away my money on books from O'Reilly (damn fine publisher, they have some of the BEST books out on Windows NT).
I started to fall off the boat after purchasing several commercial releases of RedHat (4.2 and 5.1). I backed off to running Slackware with a commercial Motif Windows manager after I got tired of the hell that was configuring a RedHat system when you know how to get a stable Linux running by hand editing
After awhile I got tired of it. Finally I just went out and bought Windows 98 for the main machine (it's so much better than Windows 95 that most of the things that drove me to Linux have disappeared). Now I'm running a machine with no sound card (cool USB speakers from Microsoft) and having a good time. I don't save files from the web browser into a home directory where they're forgotten for weeks. Everything I grab off the 'net is plain and visible on the Windows desktop.
I am sure I am not the first person to abandon Linux as a desktop system. I constantly am finding little tricks and hacks (i.e. the CDParanoia program for ripping scratchy Audio CD Disks from the Library) where Linux is valuable. Valuable enough to keep it running on a P-166 with 128 MB of RAM. But that machine has a cheap 14" monitor. The machine with my new Sony 19" monitor is the Windows 98 machine. It makes me happy, because it works so well. There isn't anywhere I can't browse on the Web (formerly a major problem due to the paucity of useful plugins for Linux browsers).
Enough though. This is LinuxAdvocate Central, they say. Have at it, dudes, Rip everything I've typed apart. You won't convince ME that Linux belongs on my desktop. It's a great server OS for those places where you're not trying to do anything particularly innovative.
In a step that will surely shock both of us, I'm gonna have to side with tummyX. Joe's article has major problems. The assertion I like is that NT's stability peaked with 3.51. Based on my experience, this is laughable. I've had NT4 servers (running SQL 6.5 with 300 concurrent users) go 12 months with only 2 reboots (and those were service pack upgrades) OTO, the 3.51 servers I admin'd had to be cycled regularly (once a month to once a day) or they'd explode in a fiery ball o' bits. NT4, espescially SP3 is one hell of a stable OS - if you configure it properly. (I supported ~130 NT/SQL servers at MS, only ~6 of those ran 3.51 - so while my data isn't statistically relevant, it's _good_ anecdotal evidence.)
I'm still not wild about NT5 (oops win2k) though. And lets not forget that MS has been trotting out the "Cairo->NT5->win2k will release later this year" line for going on 3 years now.
--Shoeboy
I've been using linux of many variants for quite some time (4 years, not an old timer, but no newbie either.)
Some things to understand about linux/Free Software development:
1) As the poster above pointed out, all happens in FULL view, which means that any serious flaw can be pointed at, and hoisted by the marketing dept of [insert company name here as proof fo "how bad linux is." Personally, I prefer seeing it all out in the open. I learn something, and get to watch as the problem is tackled (more learning, which is a personal hot-spot for me. :)
2)Linux develops based on needs and flaws found during use. I.E.: "I'm using linux for A, and found that when I do B, things go real bad. Can I/we implement C?"
Now, I'd wager not to many people are serving a single static web page off 4 ethernet cards to a LAN. Why would you? If you need to serve THAT much content (or lack of content, if you will :) what you are serving is probably mission critical. And that means multiple machines in case one goes down.
Yes, what Mincraft pointed at IS a problem, but it's currently a NON-ISSUE in most (all?) installations. It's like worrying about whether or not you can drive your car underwater (at least, for the time being.) Which is why it was never addressed before. But since there is an efficiency gain to be made by improving the kernel's network threading, and it's been pointed out that that IS the problem, it's being worked on. Which means the non-issue will be fixed, because fixing it will only be an improvement, and a technically correct one at that. That's one BIG advantage to Free Software... technically correct ALWAYS wins.
So just because linux currently has a problem with 4 NICs at unrealistic high loads doesn't mean it's worse at working with one (or 2, as needed by firewalls, routers, etc..) and it doesn't mean it won't fit your needs better. It may NOT fit your needs better, but only YOU can evaluate that. Not some benchmark. The same is just as true for the benchmarks that show linux is faster (which actually seem to be the majority, if you insist on worrying about them.) No benchmark will fit what you are doing, unless you set up a real-world benchmark for yourself (which I invite you to do... the results I've gotten have turned up much useful info, and helped me tune both linux and NT in the LAN I take care of. I'll leave the results to your imagination ;)
And remember, if you do decide to give linux a run, you CAN improve it. If you do not know how, you can SUGGEST improvements, or pay for someone to put them in. That's the WHOLE POINT. I really do believe that linux will do 90% of what people need to do at any given time, and do it well. It's a function of the licensing, and the culture.
If you do NOT give linux a run, all I ask is you do the favor of not being a troll here or anywhere else (about ANY topic, linux or not.) It does no good, and is quite rude. Imagine going INTO the MS building, finding an engineering meeting, and bursting in every 2 seconds with "You suck, MS sucks." That's what's been going on alot lately and it's getting quite tiresome. Yes, the internet IS the meeting room, for all to see (not implying Slashdot is the place linux developers discuss issues, but alot of linux/freeBSD/etc. users do.) Do, however, feel invited to come and share your well stated opinions/questions, no matter WHAT you use (such as the question you asked here.)
Thanks for listening :)