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Microsoft Clarifies Linux Myths
mikeraz told us about Microsoft's new page on
Linux Myths. Designed to convince the seasoned business professional that Linux doesn't measure up to the hype. Some good points. Some not-so-good points. Care to comment?
Update: 10/05 06:43 by CT : Mandrake has comments on
his page.
I do believe this the kind of "anecdotal" information they are referring to. They're not trying to convince you, they're trying to convince people you may or may not be trying to convince. The point is, go ahead and use Linux, it doesn't matter. Meanwhile Microsoft will be spreading these stories (facts?) to subvert you.
Linux lacks a commercial quality Journaling File System
What about the fs that SGI is contributing?
Hmmm... this is what we term "hype" or maybe even *shudder* vaporware. Seriously though, their point is valid considering that SGI's xfs has not been released yet.
Every member of the Windows NT family since Windows NT 3.5 has been evaluated at either a C2 level under the U.S. Government's evaluation process or at a C2-equivalent level under the British Government's ITSEC process.
ONLY IF YOU DO NOT CONNECT IT TO A NETWORK!
So? Why is that such a big deal? I'm not even aware of any other OS that has achieved the C2 rating (apart from maybe OS/2, and that couldn't be connected to a network either).
Oxryly
I wonder if they used FrontPage to build this page-- did anyone else notice that the bullet lists are formatted wrong about halfway down the page? Someone forgot to close their unordered list tags . . .
davejenkins.com |
Linux is capable of crippling an entire AirCraft Carrier? I'm sure a good *nux SYS Admin could do it on purpose. There's one good reason to promote WinNT. I'm sure those guys had a great time breaking into the Army's web site. We need NT because its so damn fun to crack! How else are we going to bring US world domination to its knees?
warren
> Rachael :) )
> (This is my first ever post, so be gentle
Not bad for a first post: Score:4, Insightful
:-)
Microsoft (hence to be known as blind, deaf, loud, and stupid (in a diabolical, evil-genius kinda-way)) is running their site on either windows 98(unlikely) or NT3.0. Funny the article keeps refering to the stability of 4.0 you would at least think they would buy their own hype.
-"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity" R.A.H
or microsoft marketing (opps. redundancy error)
"Secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy
Capabilities are already part of the 2.2 kernel. The 2.2 kernel does no longer check for privilege by calling fsuser() checking for a fsuid of zero, but has code like the following (taken from fs/ext2/acl.c as an example):
/*
* Access is always granted for root. We now check last,
* though, for BSD process accounting correctness
*/
if (((mode & mask & S_IRWXO) == mask) || capable(CAP_DAC_OVERRIDE))
return 0;
What is missing is a mechanism to make the capabilities workable from the outside, that is, to store the required capabilities in a binary program. Unlike the old fsuser() approach, where we needed just a single "SUID" bit, we not have to store and maintain a bitmask of capabilities with a program. There have been different approaches to this problem (for example, storing capabilities in an ELF section), but the kernel developers have not yet settled on this.
And would anyone be impressed by a response to a reasoned MS statement that does not contain a single attempt at rebuttal?
I doubt if people should get at all bothered about this. It shows Microsoft people to be either blatant liars or else utterly incompetent at understanding operating systems, or both. Anyone with the slightest clue about Unix or Linux and even the shortest experience of Windows (all Windows experiences are short anyway) is just going to get irritated to a smaller or greater degree at the misrepresentation, and that'll inevitably impact on Microsoft sales. And for those that have never heard about Linux in the first place, this free advertising might ensure that they do!
:-)
Another shot in the arm for Linux, from an unexpected source.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Personally, I've seen benchmarks showing that almost everything is better than everything:
MacOS is faster than Windows
Windows is faster than MacOS
Linux is faster than MacOS
MacOS is faster than Linux
Linux is faster than NT
NT is faster than Linux
...etc...
The list goes on, and on. However, the method always works, because overall we live in a computer illiterate society, and the larger number is always be considered better.
Yeah, that 2 Gig AVI limit kind of sucks, but on the higher-end boards that a person would actually use for good video capture, they have come up with ways to bypass that 2 Gig limit. This becomes really important when using FireWire to cap digital video, which eats up like close to a gig a minute or something. Some of the high end editing software can do this too, I think perhaps they save it in several smaller files, and then somehow synch those files during playback so there is no inturruption when switching from file1 to file2, and so on. That's just a guess though, since I don't have the cash for any of that good stuff.
So what... its simply not important? I don't understand... scalability is one of the features people talk about when referring to these OSes. To me an example of scalability is taking an existing set of software on a uniprocessor mid-level machine and slapping it on a quad processor xenon -- instant performance boost.
Except if you use linux.
I don't believe their point about SMP should be dismissed so hand-wavingly.
Oxryly
They didn't even mention anything regarding their
largest challenge.
Linux is developing at a much faster rate than M$
ever thought of being able to.
Is development slowing down? No... in fact it's
actually gaining speed.
More and more companies (BIG and little alike) are
beginning to develop and/or port to Linux.
All of the issues they bring up about Linux's shortcomings
are things that are being actively worked on.
All that aside.... their comment about it not being
a valid Desktop Environment is the silliest thing I've
ever heard.
Look at all the WebTV and AOL users out there.
90% of M$ users utilize 10% of their hardware capabilities.
E-mail, WordProcessing, Web-browsing, Games.
Corel is working on providing a 'Intuitive' Desktop
(intuitive meaning windoze like so that they M$ users don't get lost)
E-mail, WordProcessing and Web-Browsing will be taken care of.
Games? Hah!! Check back this time next year and see
how many devlopers prefer writing games for Linux...
M$ is gonna hate it.
As for the rest of us? The ones that actually WORK with computers?
We use Linux. It works. It's Stable. It's flexible.
It's Powerful. It's DEVELOPING!!!
You're right... Microsoft IS running scared.
IF they weren't... they wouldn't have posted anything like this. *shrug*
Point out to me an article presented to the public,
by someone like Coca-Cola, that explains why
the kid selling lemonade on the corner is not
a viable solution for your thirst and you shouldn't
buy any from him.
No.. you'll never see it. *shrug*
Just keep doing what yer doing folks and Linux
will grow and improve to a pinnacle that few can
imagine at this point in the game.
Ok... I've spewed enough... Laters
Friends don't let friends buy Compaq's. (Dell/Gateway... same same) You want a good computer? Build it yourself.
Word has it that Microsoft is about to release a new OSAM (Other Software Attack Module) to replace the widely used FUD. It is understood that the new module is being beta tested at the moment and it is expected to be released in conjunction with Windows 2000. The new module is called CHPF (Claptrap, Humbug and Pure Fiction) and will be deployed both on the Internet and in a printable version.
The thing to remember is not to get caught up in the upgrade frenzy. In an environment that is expected to be up 24/7, it is best IMHO to just apply necessary. You don't want to just blindly apply whatever patch gets released, just those that are necessary for you. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Reality: Free Operating System Does Not Mean Low Total Cost of Ownership
::$DATA hack which reveals web source code) several days and even when they do, they decline to post enough information to be practical.
The Linux community will talk about the free or low-cost nature of Linux. It's important to understand that licensing cost is only a small part of the overall decision-making process for customers.
The cost of the operating system is only a small percentage of the overall total cost of ownership (TCO). In general Windows NT has proven to have a lower cost of ownership than UNIX. Previous studies have shown that Windows NT has 37 percent lower TCO than UNIX. There is no reason to believe that Linux is significantly different than other versions of UNIX when it comes to TCO.
It really is amusing that they cite a document which compares the costs Sun Servers to WinNT and then conclude that Linux servers cost more than WinNT. By their logic Linux must therefore be equivalent to Sun. Wow. What a compliment.
Seriously though I don't think that any of us will disaggree that sun servers can be expensive. They are, and rightly so. But to equate Sun servers with Linux servers does an injustice to both. They are each designed for different markets even though they can do similar tasks.
Having said this I think that it is wrong and unfair, to both Microsoft and the Linux community, to have anyone related to or in either camp to try to compare the two against each other. A truly independant group needs to be set up in order to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each system.
On the topic of security, I may either be naive, which I freely admit as a possibility, or unaware but the US govenments C2 classification for an operating system means nothing to me, especially considering its stance on strong crypto (but thats another topic). The security of a system is only as good as its administrators, who must practice due diligence in reading multiple sources for security information.
I have personally witnesed Microsoft hold off on announcing security problems (IIS's
-M.
fwiw, I say lets talk about new features in RedHat 6.1, and the new features due out in the 2.4.x kernel. Get psyched for NetFilter.
...
Stay on target. Don't succumb to distraction. Talk about how much you like the features that are in Linux now. Pay attention to what Linus has to say tomorrow at Javits (Internet World Expo), not what Redmond has to say on the M$ site.
Get one more person you know to put a Linux box up as a personal firewall for their cable modem or DSL connection. At first, they won't bother it much. Later, they'll start poking around in X, and realize that they can do more than just try to keep people from cracking it. They'll start to allow their friends to use inbound ftp. Next they'll host their own web page, instead of putting up with banners and boxes from Tripod or GeoCities. Then they'll realize that they can use telnet when they're in Europe to read their mail instead of putting up with a hotmail account. Half a year after they've had it, their on their way to understanding networking a system administration, and finding out that they actually like a command line. They might even keep X up for Netscape just to have the TV-guide site up in their living room.
Looking forward to my LUG meeting tomorrow
Paul
.
The new Quake 3 effectively uses multiprocessing, for the first time in a computer action game AFAIK. Multiprocessing is so cheap and availiable now that I think it will be a checklist item for computer action gamers shortly. With a motherboard like the Abit BP-6 (dual socketed Celeron, $140) it is cheaper to get a lower clocked dual system than a slightly faster clocked uniprocessor system.
'It breaks in a heartbeat' is consistent with your experience but not mine. I've used W2k with many other apps, in all kinds of situations, and talked to other beta testers, and while they've certainly found bugs and so have I this is undoubtedly the stablest os ms has made since DOS. 'It breaks in a heartbeat' is a gross exaggeration based on this experience. I hope you've reported your difficulties and let's hope they're fixed for all of us when it comes out. I just don't want anyone to generalize your experience and think it's junk, because I think it's great. jmho
Rather than bash Microsoft on a point by point bassis there are really only two importent details to bring up in order to crush the whole notion that anything Microsoft has to say about Linux is valid....
:)
1. Microsoft compeditor. Why should Microsoft say anything but nasty things about a compeating product?
2. Would anyone as big as Microsoft bother trashing a product if it wasn't a real threat to there own product line?
Anyway the Linux hype comes from happy Linux users not from a PR machine. Even if it's all BS the shear number of people it takes to make this much hype counts for something.
In some ways this is accually good news.
Microsoft dose this in responce to some major PR for Linux. The word is spreading
I don't actually exist.
OK, this is great. We have lots of people that want to rubut, and we have three sites that come to mind instantly to use.
Slashdot: many many people (media included) read this.
linux.com: isn't this supposed to be the public platform? could be wrong on this one. I think it should be.
freshmeat.net: microsoft claims security is difficult. freshmeat has security updates, links to homepages, etc. etc. for many many many apps. people should know this.
There are lots of people that want to help. USE THEM. We need one of the maintainers of these sites (or all three) to put together a formal response. We, the community, can provide examples, links, test results, etc. All we need is a single moderator to comb through the results and put together a response.
I am willing to help.
All we need is the proper forum to put our experiences in to.
Please, let our voice be heard.
I suppose you haven't had the chance to use a recent W2k beta and discover that chkdsk is many times faster in most cases than it was in NT4?
Linux is about to have THREE journalling file systems.
The team around Hans Reiser is currently beta testing their ReiserFS, a tree based filesystem which now also does logging. Beta test versions are available and perform nice on uniprocessor machines. I had some problems when I went SMP, though.
The ext2 development team is currently working on code for "ext3", an ext2 extension which among other things does logging. I do not know the exact state of their project, but they seem to be closely behind Reiser judging from their comments on the ReiserFS mailing list.
The SGI XFS team is porting their commercial quality XFS filesystem to Linux. The process requires major adaptions to XFS and Linux, and XFS seems to contain some code which is intellectual property SGI does not own and can therefore not GPL, but these problems are currently being fixed.
There is a very healthy and friendly competition between these teams and I think we may be able to see some very interesing released to the common kernel source in the very near future.
After the /. effect, Microsoft's site is still going strong yet Mandrake's site is down for the count.
Not good PR.
Oxryly
Please go to Linux Memory Management subsystem; main page and search for the words "large file". You will find a patch that you may want to try out.
Most of the above arguments are well and good. Yes, *we* know about FUD, but discussing all this in our own safe little cubby-hole that is /. isn't getting the message out.
://crit.org/http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/nts/ news/msnw/LinuxMyths.asp and most importantly, tell people about it!
Therefore, comment on the page using this URL: http
Trickster Coyote
Better say it again. Seems Mandrake got /.'ed and Microsoft is sittin pretty.
Oops.
Oxryly
It works just fine on Windows NT4 and 2000... Not as fine-grained of detail as on Windows 98 but it works. It's not perfect but that's why I help at http://beta.windowsupdate.com to fix some of the bugs.
It seems MS is playing off the modernist myth that anything newer is necessarily an improvement on things which came before. Unix was created to work on a higher class of machine than Windows originally was, and NT is still weaker on every front I can think of, except for mindless mass marketing. They will disparage Unix and claim ot be ahead of it while they struggle to catch up to it. The Microsoft model is to beat superior products with inferior ones surrounded in empty bravado. Wise businesspeople see this already. The good news is, we're giving them an option.
But they will be in the 2.4 kernel which may still be out before W2K ;-)
Tom
All it means is they'll fight nastier. They've a reputation for using the scorched earth policy.
Well, the (well known ;) story is that MS *did* go through the hassle to port everything to NT, but they couldn't keep the animal up in the air and went back to FreeBSD and Solaris.
Thimo
Avoid the Gates of Hell. Use Linux!
Slashdot is one big pro-Linux, anti-Microsoft FUD machine. Redhat has very visible links to /. on it's main page in the "News & Views sections".
-- Virtual Windows Project
If NT is so robust - why doesn't Microsoft offer this self-same guarantee itself, instead of relying on third parties, who probably don't even have source?
More importantly, for many uses, availability isn't a very useful statistic. For example, most extremely highly available systems, like telephone switches and airline reservation systems rely on extremely quick re-booting times to meet their high availability numbers. If you can reboot in three seconds, you can crash every hour, and still claim 99.9% availability! Desktop users, who lose work on a system crash, no matter how long it takes to reboot, care more about MTTF (Mean Time To Failure) than availability.
A more useful analog to the "crack this box" challenge would be for Slashdot (or some other high volume site) to challenge NT to a MTTF contest. That is, keep track of all downtime for an extended period of time (six months), and the total number of web hits. Then calculate the average time between crashes, and the average number of hits between crashes.
> spreading their own version of FUD back at Microsoft?
Perhaps because Red Hat is too busy DOING neat stuff to waste time spreading FUD?
To quote Captain Gideon of the late, lamented "Crusade": "The truth can take care of itself".
Can you post performance stats for a real world application, such as a database server? As they state on distributed.net, the RC5 stats are an indication of ONLY ONE thing: the integer performance of the CPUs. Checkout the numbers for different OSes posted on the net (better, try yourself.) On the same hardware, performance is nearly identical. It doesn't vary with memory or disk either. So your content is interesting, your figures are not :)
>> there are no commercially proven clustering
/. are objective, it is not because the article from Microsoft is biased that /. readers have to be biased as well.
:it is worked on currently with the Ext3 FS, the JFS from SGI, but right now, it is true.
>> technologies to provide High Availability for Linux.
> Can you say beowulf?
Mmm, I thought beowulf was a "computation farm" type cluster not a fail-over type cluster, am I mistaking ?
That's sad but I don't think that the reaction here in
I think that a much better reaction would be a) filter the false from the truth b) when there is a real shortcoming in Linux c) show if this shortcoming is going to be fixed or not and when.
The article state that Linux:
1) lacks a journaling file system
2) can't use more than 2 GB of memory : I think that this restriction will be partially lifted on 2.4, but right now it is true for the stable kernels.
3) can't do true asynchronous IO. Is-it true ? If yes, I think that it is really a shortcoming of Linux as it is a feature which can be important if it is needed...
I think that a page which would show the shortcomings of Linux and wheter they will be fixed and when is needed, the problem is that it is really hard to do from an unbiased point of view.
Don't misunderstand me, I like Linux, but I really don't like the game Linux is better than NT, it is stupid, Linux has to be good in itself and a good way to improve a product is to know its "defaults" and working hard in order to fix those...
Someone moderate this down, this is misinformation. Dang, I thought /. moderaters were geeks and would know something as basic as this
"The Linux SWAP file is limited to 128 MB RAM."
Funny... putting swap space on a RAM drive would seem to be a MS sort of way of approaching things....
Best new white rapper since Pimp Daddy Welfare... Pimp-T!
"First, it's worth noting that Linux is a UNIX-like operating system" -from the introduction "There is no reason to believe that Linux is significantly different than other versions of UNIX when it comes to TCO" -from the "Reality: Free Operating System Does Not Mean Low Total Cost of Ownership section" Hmmmm.... I say: Myth: Microsoft hires employees intelligent to proofread its own propaganda. -supabeast!@work
Why is a pro MS statement automatically flamebait? It seems like quite a reasonable posting. I guess that's just /.
no doubt! I try so hard to make all of my pages "acceptable" to any browser... but IE makes all of my +1 and H2 text look like ass... making me look like an ass. I do so wish they'd quit doing that; does anyone know why IE blows up font sizes beyond all recognition? (for an example, go to my old homepage in Netscape, then in IE if you've got it. why, God, why?
Yo Quiero Linux.
Sorry =)
... because Unix was designed to be an operating system for Medium to Large sized computers Wrong. UNIX was hacked together by K&R to run on an idle VAX. I find it so ironic that 10 years ago the vocal fringe viewed UNIX as an OS slapped together by amateurs (indeed it was) and heralded the virtures of VMS, which went on to become NT.
Ah, i agree, but be carful.
fighting fire with fire rarely works.
what we need to do is fight fire with water.
all we need to do is prove them wrong on their accusations, and maybe throw in a small note about products to be production soon (the next few weeks).
If we do this, we will appear more professional. Something linux can really use. (IMHO)
>my servers have uptimes exceeding 100 days, and in a few cases, 180 days. Our test NT servers never made it past 7 days.
I have to question your credibility if you could only get NT to run for 7 days. I have logged onto a friend's NT server in his college dorm (remotely I might add, something people say isn't possible from NT's command line), to witness that it's been up for over 63 days in a row without problem.. Unattended even! And it's running a handful of hard core internet game servers. This guy is somewhat of a bozo (otherwise I would not have been able to log on his machine in the first place but that's another story..) and he managed to get it to run for months. You could only get 7 days? Please, tell me what the name of your company is so I can be sure never to go anywhere near it or its products.
What do you mean it's orange book? Has it passed the US TCSEC yet?
Wouldn't preventing someone from disclosing such numbers be against the freedom of speech? That's weird... Hmm. IIS is alright though? The benchmarks I've seen were regular Apache vs IIS stuffs.
;) Linux on the desktop... Now Microsoft doesn't see this happening. I'm somewhat in between on this. Yes KDE and Gnome are both good products, they are harder to configure then Windows, but they do offer more options (themes being my favorite) (Incidently why is the kde theme manager so much faster then E's?) However the problem is that X is a ..and I'm sorry to say, a piece of slow crap. Yes it has lots of features. But it is _SLOWW_ You ask what I mean by slow? Install BeOS, try out the Gui, when I move a window across the screen - it's there. When I click on an app icon, it launches. There's never any slowdown when a window refreshes. That is what a Gui should be. Yes BeOS gui has no themes (sucks!) :( But damn it's responsive.. to be fair Windows has a tendancy to lag much like X. So they're about equal in that area. However Windows is much much easier to configure.
Anyway. The prices for total cost of ownership? Well.. while they recieved them from god knows where the fact is that Linux is not really "free of charge" Without a high bandwidth connection (which is what most people have) downloading a linux distribution is an impossibility, a luxury most can't afford at best. Well then you say "They can buy a full featured distribution and then make copies of it" Well...that's not quite the case. Any cd that contains a commercial product can't be legally reproduced. So in fact if you want all your 50 accountants at work to run Caldera Linux with so and so office suite, well you'll have to purchase 50 copies of Caldera Linux. Same goes for Redhat's secure server edition I believe. (although I haven't closely looked at it)
As for administration costs.... Well a Unix admin will cost you more. Unix _is_ more difficult to administer. With NT it's point and click. With Unix you need to learn various command line tools, as well as shell scripting for some tasks. Yes things like linuxconf are a step forward, but it's still only a step at the moment. Until Linux has something nice and integrated like the tools Irix has for instance NT will still be easier to administer and therefore require a less experienced (and costly) sysadmin. So yes the numbers are made up, but the end line is still there, Linux is only free if your time is free.
As a side trip
Yes, but win95/98 can't use the second processor. So you either buy WinNT which can be buggy for your system, and will never really play all your games properly. Or linux, which doesn't play many games right now, but is looking to be a leader within a year.
BTW I didn't mean to imply that WinNT is nessesarly buggier than 95/98 its accually less. But it is buggy when it comes to games. Well not so much buggy as just non supportive.
Great of Microsoft to let us know that NT is more reliable than Linux... I'd tell you that isn't the case for me, but that would just be an anecdotal story.
Now the Linux community has a nice, tidy 'to-do' list, thanks to Microsoft's time investment in finding all of the places where NT has on-paper advantages.
Give us another 6-12 months, and we'll render all of these points moot. Very friendly, almost selfless, of them to help focus the community's attention on areas that need development.
(*grin)
--
This page is obviously a vehicle to deploy some FUD. It is becoming more and more obvious that if a big-name corperation with an internet presence says something, it can be accepted as the, "gospal truth," by the naive public. People who are smart enough (like most of the /. reader-base) will just point and laugh, but for the other people there is an old saying:
This is the exact sort of propaganda Microsoft needs to promote to keep there O/S "ahead" of the game. That is, until the public finds out exactly how full of it they are :)
-AP
I think my favorite quote is this: "Free Operating System Does Not Mean Low Total Cost of Ownership"
Notice how they pointed out they were speaking about free as in beer; not free as in speech.
I think it's a shame that they continue to spread FUD despite their current fight with the Department of Justice.
Joseph Elwell.
A good centralized site for FUD. Its really great for a self-sacrificing company like microsoft to step up and put linux down for the masses. god forbid they can find balanced information. I think it is a shame that "independant" views are nearly impossible to find, most people are stuck hearing "linux rules dude" or some other "zealotry" as opposed to real advocacy or else they end up seeing a total FUDwash like this.
MS just reminded us Linuxers about the items our To-Do list. Let's keep improving Linux.
"Linux does not support important ease-of-use technologies such as Plug and Play, USB" Golly, neither does NT. Thanks for implying that NT supports these features, which it does NOT!! These are only supported on Win 95/98.
and let's not forget that "child" of the 60's, MVS. Well, in reality MVS was a later version of the s/360 operating system but the prinicples of IBM's mainframes have changed little in 35 years. And their track record for business processing is not going to be eclipsed any time soon by the third rate dross emanating from Redmond.
"The largest file size Linux supports is 2 GB versus 16 terabytes (TB) for Windows NT 4.0" Does NTFS even support partitions this large, or is this just the theoretical limit of the operating system? I know NT has large file system support, but didn't think it could scale this large.
Well, gee, let me see, I'll just hook up this 20 terabyte drive I have laying around and test it...
I mean really, you can't refute a claim like that because it's just ABSURD... NO ONE PERSON has 16 terabytes of anything... Yeesh, they can say this with complete security since it will be at least 2 years before anyone can actually test this.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Oh well the moderation system doesnt descriminate between geeks and non-geeks .. put a bunch of tech stuff and catchwords, make sure it's long and watch your moderation thingy going up! Neat huh? it's just like a resume!
I thought groups were for some measure of finer-grained access control too.
Does Windows support groups in the same way as unix, or for that matter VMS.
ACLs would be nice. There are people working on that, though.
ACL's sound a nice idea, but getting a good implimentation is hard.
Oh yea, and everything in Unix is treated as a file. That might have something to do with why security is applied to files.
The only exception would be process, about the only thing they are semicorrect on would be the lack of a mechanism to send signals to a process if the gid matches. Anyway about the only thing you can do with Windows is kill a process...
There's another rather important point being missed:
It's too late for them to do what they would need to do in order to stop Linux from being the threat.
There are very few people (rhat shareholders aside) that will be harmed if Linux doesn't dominate the computing world. Linux has already won this fight. Linux was never fighting Microsoft, it's all their fight. No matter what Microsoft does or says, it won't stop Linux from being out here.
Sure, they could conceivably use PR and marketing tactics to stop anybody else from ever installing linux on another computer (ludicrous worst case), but that's already too little too late to make a difference. They would have had to somehow stop the release of the system back at 1.0.9. Now it's too late -- it already happened; linux is already out here. It is imminently useful as is, and the source code isn't going anywhere. Even if we all decide to drop it tonight as a result of this FUD, the source, design notes, applications, and as many implementations as there are computer types in widespread use, are all out there. And Linux' goal is neither "Destroy Microsoft" or even "Compete on Microsoft's Level". No, Linux' goal is "World Domination" -- There's nothing about that goal that requires domainating microsoft first. Microsoft may be huge compared to your business, but it's probably not even a neccessary stepping stone to world domination. What if Linux achieves the grand goal without even confronting Microsoft?
And how can that confrontation even take place? Linux is not an organization, it's a spirit. And if they try to grab for that spirit or attack it, it won't be where they thought it was when they grabbed. We here on /. might get all upset and hem and haw that our baby is being slandered, but, it just doesn't matter.
It matters to some of us who work in places where we know that systems could be deployed on linux or another unix, with great success, but there's a snowball's chance of that happening. It matters to anybody who is developing and/or selling an application for linux. It matters to people who really need and desire the open standards engendered by truly open computer systems, and it matters to people who understand what's at stake. It probably matters to application users whether they know it or not.
Consider how many computer users are out there who just consider the computer used in their jobs to be like pushing buttons on any other machine. These people could care less what machine it is, as long as they go home on time. These are people who (gasp) do not think about computers on their "own time." Or if they have PC's at home, their doin' the "internet thang" but don't make the connection between those systems and whatever finacial app or restaurant tabbing system they use at the job. There are quite a few of these non-geeks out there. And they neither know nor care whether the machine on which they push buttons is a 3270 plugged into a VAX, or a VT220 on a unix server, or a DOS box with a thermal printer and a credit card swiper, or NT Workstation with a touch screen. (I've seen all these lately, shopping, banking, etc.)
They just don't care about OS, and they don't read advocacy threads, get it?
Our movement does not show up on the average Joe's radar either.
Sooner or later, somebody is going to deploy some vertical solution based on linux, without saying too much about it being linux. With no fanfare or politics, and no reason for the customer base for this new product to think of choosing one brand over another, why should there be? The application user just wants the buttons to push and to go home on time. Even the PHB's, in industries that aren't technology. I'm thinking "Hotel Desk" or "Restaurant Office" type PHB's. They don't give a stinking rat's ass about some of the things we have to struggle over. They sure as hell aren't going to hire a MCSE or a SysV admin to babysit their till or reservation desk.
Oops, I ranted, and bad paragraph form at that. What was my point? Oh yeah, that we'd already made it. At least in the sense that in the post-holocaust future, planet-of-the-apes-style, when the apes figure out computers and start making them work, the system they have readily available will be the one that was open-source and widely distributed (on non-rapidly-decaying media). The one that had the incomplete code locked in a vault in what was once the Pac NW, but is now under 6km of glacial ice, won't matter :-)
Listen, I'm not saying that we shouldn't keep on the fasttrack of development, or that advocacy is unnecessary; just that, from the beginning the goal could have been something like "Get Microsoft's back up, make them perceive competition," a lofty goal still for any product, and we'd have done it several times this year. I can't WAIT for Halloween 99!
"2 GB file limit (isn't this gone under 64 bit CPUs?)" I think it's into the Exabytes for wide archs.
--
Would we be having this conversation if Linux had been marketed on TV? "Not available in stores, call now! Operators are standing by!"
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
He he he
no comments further...
I had a log file which grew to 4GB
What was it logging?
well, I won't argue with you...you like NT better, and that all and well. But, while you're rebooting because of crashes, my uptime file will grow (was at alittle over 2 months before hurricane floyd...then power off). And, unlike you, the unfortunate soul who uses windows, the only BSOD i'll ever see comes in the form of an xscreen saver...
We should not give too much credit to Microsoft. Their OS is based on DOS.
NIST
Bynari Systems charges 39.00, LinSupport charges 1.00......go figure.. M$ has support????
System Apex has made another response here:
o _ms_linux_page/
http://www.systemapex.com/technology/response_t
Can I take it that that is the consensus response from the Linux community? "True our file system gets corrupted so we just use a UPS"
So basically users are attributed to privelages (i.e., ok "all" privelage, you are user root, ok "user" privelage, you are user foo), instead of privelages being assigned to users (ok, root, you have a handfull of powerfull system privalages, ok user, you have a handfull of harmless privalages).
Privaleges basically need to be assigned to users, not the other way around. The new definition of "group" would then be a class of attributes which belong to a number of users. So you would automatically become part of a privelage "group" once you shared all the same privelages. I think this one user to many attributes is a lot better for the aforementioned reasons (so you crack ping, all you get is Socket_privelage, ha). The problem then, is, someone ALWAYS MUST have the Modify_privelages privelage. If this disappears, well, you can't change privelages basically. Then whomever had this privelage would be the "root". In fact, this user could have logins disabled, and actually have the whole account disabled, revoke all it's other privelages (no execution, etc.), so that to crack the system you basically have to get access to this administrator user, or another user with sufficient privelages granted by the dummy administrator account.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Yeah, what a bunch 'a shit!!! Your post lost a point as well!
Uh Oh! A reasonable MS post! No linux zealotry! Quick moderate it down!
I wasn't asking about the book, only the rating. Last I heard, NT4 had cleared the UK's equivalent to the DoD Trusted Computer Systems Evaluation Criteria (aka the Orange Book), but hasn't cleared the Orange Book itself.
BTW, the Orange book is from the NSA.
http://www.systemapex.com/technology/response_to_m s_linux_page/ Someone (Paul Jara, author of an independent hardware site) has taken the time to write up a fairly well thought out response (point by point) to the Microsoft article. Although lacking in some areas, it seems to be worth a read for those of you who are keeping score...
---
there has been info on millenium posted at www.betanews.com for a while... check it out there.
I agree completely. I thought about replying to some of this "Linux RAH RAH" posts, but then figured what's the use. Everyday on slashdot and the newsgroups you see the Linux zealots trashing Microsoft in a myrid of unfair, misleading, or simply incorrect ways. But when Microsoft tries to say anything in defense, they scream "FUD!".
What happened to "News for Nerds"? What happened to real geeks talking about interesting stuff? /. has become a cheerleading section for the Linux team. And where I come from, geeks hate sports.
Next time you are talking to an MCSE, ask them if they have a legal licensed copy of NT (and/or related back office products) that they're running on their home network.
Only Time and the DoJ will Tell
------------------------------------
I read this and other postings and I know that Linux will never be the dominant consumer OS. There is so much patronization of the less-knowledgable user in this topic...e.g above, 'if you don't know why that's funny then you're too stupid to use a computer'...and many similar comments. Linux remains the preserve of config file editors and jumper changers who claim it is a serious game OS when there's only one really good game for it.
Funny how they say NT is more stable. Last time I tried to install NT, it gave me a blue screen during install. After a few weeks of trying to find out why it didn't work, I found out that my AHA7890 was not supported. This chip wasn't out when they first released NT, but it wasn't either when Linux 2.0 was released. But with 2.1.1XX (dunno the number) the Linuxcommunity fixed the problem, while NT still can't be installed without doing a lot of copying and freaking around. Haven't tried Win2K yet, and I'm not going to. The more M$ is spreading FUD the more confidence I have in Linux. Oh... I've got another anekdote too. Ever tried to install a Teles BRI 16.3 ISDN adaptor with NT? Took me about 1 hour on Linux (including the compiling of ISDN4Linux tools). On NT it took me a whole weekend (failed once, reinstall NT or else you will never succeed)
Windows Update works great with my W2k betas. Moral: if you don't know the answer, don't find out: assume Linux is best.
Sorry, but they are right about this one. You're right that Windows 9x wasn't designed to be secure, but NT was (and is). If anything, NT has a better security model than Unix.
I've noticed the same thing many times. I use my winbox for games and because I am the only Linux-knowledgable person in the house, cannot convert it to Linux ;( Anyway, no matter how much space you really have on a partition, the apps (especially installs) almost never see more than 2 gigs of it, leaving you with annoying error messages (if you're installing a huge game..I installed Baldur's Gate completely to my HD for over 2 gigs) and also, if the user isn't sure what's going on, he or she wonders WHY they are supposedly missing gigabytes of space.
Check out a beta yourself, it's in there, under Storage management. Its pretty damn awesome. You make a blank directory just like in Linux then set the mount point to it and then it has your drives files!!!
They are effectively NT features; W2k is almost out and it does all these things better than W98. Tried it yet?
Or Wheel?
We should make T-shirts:
First they ignore you
Then they laugh at you
Then they fight you -- YOU ARE HERE
Then you win
If you pay any attention Citrix and their Metaframe product are doing better than ever...
GodBrain http://www.godbrain.net http://www.alienfaktor.com http://www.tril0byte.com
You don't need to convince me, I am not against linux I have two boxes going on a third. My point was, if you are going to make statements about corporate use of a computer lets make a fair comparison.
Considering the source (being M$ ) there will never be a fair comparison because M$ doesn't want everyone by their admission that linux is better, because it is. I hate NT, they use it on the desktop here at work. I don't, I have win98 (which isn't much better but isn't as bloated as nt or better yet..it's not NT).
For a reliable and stable os the obvious choice is linux.. it isn't perfect but compared to 95/98 (being they both about the same approximate age) linux is way far ahead. Compared to NT, I have no doubt if a 'FAIR' comparison was done the linux would be a real good contender if not a definate winner.
"I have gone to look for myself, If I return before I get back keep me here"
Just a clarification on that. Yes, the Hotmail webservers are on FreeBSD, but the backend (user database, mail handling, etc.) is run on Solaris boxes.
They had tried to move the whole operation to NT but failed.
Just FYI, Slashdot had a story about LinModems so it seems at least one of the mass-market cheapo-peripheral manufacturers is taking Linux seriously. There's an interesting quote about the ease of Linux development vs. MS:
PC-TEL Director of Program Management Terry Huang said that the code for the software modem was "adapted from the implementation for Microsoft, but [we] rewrote about one-third of the code." William Hsu, the company's software manager, characterized the Linux development as "cleaner and easier than for Microsoft."
Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two.
*heh* since whn has NT4 supported any of Plug&Play, USB or Power Management? _My_ NT4 Workstation laptop supports *none* of these. (Mind you, I'm am only running the most recent service packs of everything...) bah humbug. matthew
Orange book : slang for one of the rainbow books
( are they by the NIST or NSA ? ) that covers security for government systems .
Damn , wish I could remember the names of the books .
Your Squire
squireson
I agree.
I am an MCSE but I don't advocate NT.
Neither do I advocate Linux, BSD, or any other OS for that matter.
When it comes to choosing an OS, I decide on which OS does the job required best, NOT on whether I like it or not.
I think you'll find a lot of MCSEs like me about.
We get the certifications because companies demand them, I would imagine that the HR deps of big companies have been 'educated' by MS about their MCSE program.
Nonetheless, certification is a requirement nowadays (unless you get a degree in computing, possibly) and it is still hard to find jobs because of the 'experience' requirement.
I have started to rant, now - so I'll shut up.
--Nick
I recall that they are using on e of the BSD family of OSes ... which are , arguably better than Linux .
The problem is , of course a philosophical difference in the licensing .
If you start witrh the right License , you can fix everything else .
While the MS story have a few things that are quite exaggerated, it points out some very serious problems with Linux.
But it only uses the main Linux problem word once - Immature - THAT's the real Linux (community) problem.
I couldn't help laugh at Mandrakes comments - who's he trying to convince ? The corporations ? HA haha ! They'll sure be impressed with his (lack of) language. (If they'll ever read it.)
And most of the comments here seems to do the same. Trying to convince (or keep the faith within) the Linux community that Linux is great.
Pissing contest - except there's nobody around to see how far you can go.
What a waste of energy.
Grow up !
I think that it's not such a bad idea, to keep Linux in the light, but I think that if it is to be done, whoever does it should probably be a big, heterogenous group of Linux-dudes who spend as much time researching the specific differences as they do tweaking their wording.
Well, there is a crappy site up at www.linuxvsnt.com with a crappy and old message board, we could always get in touch with whoever owns that, take it away from them, and turn it into a decent and informative site. Perhaps even one that shows the places where NT does beat Linux (though they be few and far between). Imagine that, a fair and objective site....
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
I have also tested both, and one advantage of win2k rc1 (NT5) over mandrake is the fact that on my fairly new system, win2k had no problem with any of my hardware (scanner, cdrw, usb zip, etc..) where mandrake choked. I would still use mandrake to telnet into my school (they use some flavor of UNIX) if it would correctly format my 22GB harddrive. Admittedly, some of this might be correctable, but I couldn't figure out or find out any way to fix my problems wiht linux. Win2k, on the other hand was a breeze to install, and it has only been down when I physically moved my computer to my dorm room.
"My life is a joke that no one gets"
It's funny MS mentioned Novell in there article. I wonder if they know that Novell had it's own flavor of UNIX call UnixWare (sold it to SCO) and include the X Server with there latest release of NetWare. I knew Novell before I ever looked at UNIX and now that I know them both the basic functions (File Security, Printing, User Authentication, etc..) are pretty damn close together...
in the 70's.
Reality: Free Operating System Does Not Mean Low Total Cost of Ownership
It does if "when we speak of free software, we speak of freedom, not price". Unless the latest version of NT comes with working source code, I can't tweak the OS, or any underlying components to my liking.
---------------
Microsoft doesn't care about free software, and many corporations don't either. They care about how much money they're spending. The point MS was trying to make here is that TCO is less for NT than for UNIX. Since Linux is about as easy to administer as any other UNIX-ish system, it follows that it costs about as much money to hire someone to maintain your servers.
I think it's important to address the points that they bring up, rather than talking about the benefits of free software. We all believe that free software will cost less in the long run, because people will find (and patch) the bugs in it. Unfortunately, I don't think there have been any studies done to quantify this...
The only other point in this post I had a problem with was citing Beowulf as a clustering technology for high availability for Linux. Beowulf is a clustering technology, but the point isn't to get high availability. Beowulf doesn't provide anything like high availability; it just makes it possible to tie a bunch of processors together so that you can throw a lot of computer at a problem. This doesn't give you anything when the master node of your cluster fails...
Microsoft hires evangelists (in fact many companies do, check the job listings) to spread the "good" word about their products. I was a DOS head up through high school, and then jumped on the Windows 9x bandwagon...got on to the internet as a newbie (wow much better than bbs'ing :)) what really got to me though was when I was first exposed to NT. It installed just fine, just like 9x, but after updating it via Service Pack it still crashed all of my apps just as often as 9x, and I got the BSOD as frequently. Linux on the other hand, doesn't crash nearly as often (for me). ...a server is about up-time people, and 120 days on the average without a reboot or down-time is pretty nice if you ask me. NT up-time? I ran it for 4 days max just sitting there and it managed to foobar.
;)
The article that Microsoft posted seems to be poorly researched, for instance: I use a swap partition larger than 128M on my server at home, so perhaps they should do their homework rather than make a groundless, ignorant assumption. Maybe they've not yet mastered the art of browsing through source documentation and README's and man? I know of the magazine article where they draw most of their stance from, and I'm sorry, but it was biased: I find it much easier to kill off processes that I want to update, run rpm -Uvh, then restart the processes than to double click an executable and then *REBOOT*
The thing that drives me crazy as an IS Specialist is licensing. that has got to be the most incredibly blatant money making scheme ever devised. Sure many companies do it with their products: but should I be penalized because I have close to 150 users...I can undestand accessing a specific software package, but the OS? that is just completely unnecessary, unless with the licenses I get increased support should something goofy happen.
TCO, it means more than just what they think. Many apps on Linux are free (hey I even get the source!) under the GPL. The OS is free. The OS is not Windows. and as far as support is concerned, I would be willing to bet that I could get an answer quicker from #linuxhelp than I could from calling up a tech support line. documentation is out there, there is info all over the web and even in most distributions (HOWTOs, FAQ, mini-HOWTOs, man, etc). Microsoft is putting an ease-of-use slant on their platform, but an admin *needs* to know everything that the server is doing and why!
NT vs Linux, we'll hear it up and down. Linux as a community has a lot of development force, and with Microsoft's Windows out there we have a great example of what not to do (and sometimes what to do). Sorry, but my anecdote: I hit the powerbutton and less than 15 seconds later I have a login prompt from xdm (or kdm). Windows 98 on the same machine? close to a minute, NT? close to 2 minutes. no joke. benchmark this microsoft
Justin "ZeroDvyd" Knox
I knew you could!
the microsoft article or the mandrake response
which one is up? dare you eat more crow?
1) you can't take all the crap out of win2k
2) why pay for all the crap to take it out?
Summary: The article is fictional, in part and uses out-of-date information for the rest. FUD at it's most pathetic. Few potential Linux users will believe it, though I'm more concerned how Corporate America will take it.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Security configuration and C2: It is almost impossible to configure Windows NT to be secure without expert help and then what happens - most of your software doesn't run anymore. Microsoft loves to babble on about how their lovely Windows NT is C2 compliant, what they always fail to mention is that in order for it to be C2 compliant it cannot be networked, so this means no C2 compliant web server, ftp server, mail server or any other sort of server, in fact in the modern networked world this essentially means no C2 to compliant anything because almost all workstations are netorked in some way, shape or form.
Cracking passwords: While we're on the topic of speed comparissons here's something that Windows NT does considerably more quickly than Linux: One way password encryption. Ooops, that's not a good thing though is it and explains why L0pht crack can break NT passwords in under 24hours but Crack6 takes days, weeks and probably months to crack a secure password. That can't be a good thing for any operating system.
Security issues and bug fixes: I've never gone in to a great deal of effort to understand a Linux bug but seeing as how they don't come as out as often as Windows bugs then I would certainly have a proportionally longer length of time to understand those bugs. Hasn't Microsoft noticed that Linux distributers RedHat, SuSE, etc all have their own security mailing list to which they post bulletins and patch information. The last time applied a patch from an rpm it was just as easy as installing a Microsoft hotfix.
Object security: Microsoft the Linux security for objects saying that security can only bet set on on files and directories but not on other files. They fail to note that Linux devices are referenced through file typed handles stored in /dev, by placing security on the file for the device you want to protect you can then control access.
Good things about NT: There are one or two good things about security in NT compared to Linux but seeing as Microsoft has succeeded in providing such a hideously biased document I see no reason for presenting both sides of the argument either.
10 Myths about Linux Dispelled! and More!
Linux security is all-or-nothing. Administrators cannot delegate administrative privileges: a user who needs any administrative capability must be made a full administrator, which compromises best security practices.
I guess we all know this is bull. On my system the only thing I have to do if I need another webmaster is to put him into the 'www' group. Same goes for FTP, INN, etc. Right.
The thing which scares me to death is the simple fact that I never saw MS lie like this. How many company managers will read this crap & start bashing their internal network operators / managers for implementing "lousy, crappy software" (yech)? Like it or not, a lot of people still believe MS. It seems, just like the article on software bugs stated a while ago(http://www.shift.com/shiftstd/SiteMap/frames/m ag7.6.asp?searchfor=7.6bombsquad); people complain but in the end they will put up with it anyway. Given this fact alone I fear the article could cause some damage but I doubt we will ever notice it.
The thing that puzzles me the most though... Were did MS got their information on Linux? To put it differently; this comparison is based on something but on what? I'm sure my fellow regular /. readers remember the article in which a MS employee was busy investigating Linux & needed major support because he could not even install it. At that time I felt it was a fair approach if they wanted to try a server comparison. Now I got this eery feeling that this article is based on the studies of those (as far as I know:) clueless endusers. Talk about fair comparisons ;) As a NT administrator I would feel pretty insulted if my theory is correct.
Then, the positive side, this article also pleased me because the article gave me the feeling MS seems to be really getting scared off Linux. Hmm, are we really taking away more marketshare then MS put in their internal prognoses ? I guess so, and I really feel good about it. Marketshare or not; if MS was not worried they would not resort to trashing opponents but hey... Give them some credit for trying. I guess we are at the stage where Bill would order his staff to buy the upstirring company. Surprise; Linux cannot be bought
Interesting. I'm a shining example of how one can start by using Unix (BSD, HPUX, Dynix, SunOS, Mach, OSF/1) and end up with NT. Contrary to your reports, NT has always seemed much faster than a Unix setup. I went from a 200 MHz Alpha box runing OSF/1 to a 90 MHz Pentium running NT, and NT flew by comparison. I've been running NT 4.0 for several years now, and NT has _never_ crashed on me in that time. And the apps have always been there, I've never had to wait for them.
Thank you for providing so many spesific examples of where we were wrong, and for backing you're arguments up with fact so well
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
If you want the mem dump ... if not, just disable it .., and you won't need a swapfile on your system partition, unless you want an administrative notice (2 Meg swapfile req.)
...I find this article very interesting.
I read through each of the points and tried to figure out which operating system would give me the best features, performance, etc.
And, after reading through the whole page, it has become clear to me that NT/IIS is not a viable option. Why?
Well, since we have to assume that Microsoft put a lot of time and effort into this page, they would check all of their HTML - I mean, it's not like it's hard. But somehow, IIS is stripping out the title of the document and the
How does something like that happen??
=-)
> Linux clearly has a long way to go to be > competitive with Windows NT 4.0. I dont think they will ever understand that Linux DOES NOT need to be competitive --mc
VAXen didn't exist when Ritchie and Thompson hacked Unix together. Sheesh, if you're going to be a Unix zealot, at least get your facts straight. Oh, and VMS didn't go on to become NT, NT is a significantly different (and better) beast.
I don't seem to recall saying it was POSIX- certified ..
~ Kish
Speaking of power outages... here's a fun one to try... Run NT 4.0 w/ SP5, and turn off the breaker controlling your PC's outlets. (Simulation of breaker overload). Now open up Outlook Express to find everything gone from the Inbox. This was duplicated twice on three machines ALL using NT5 SP5. Explain to me how an Inbox gets erased by a breaker switch? That journaling thing didn't help any of my three roommates...
http://www.m-tech.ab.ca/linux-biz/boe ing.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/990811 -000001.html
Dell:
http://www.idg.net/crd_ibm_dell_9-126 405.html
http://www.dell.com/linux/press.htm
SGI:
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/1999/3 1/ns-9268.html
IBM:
http://www4.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,41
http://www.theregister.co.uk/990930 -000020.html
Compaq:
http://www.digital.com/inFORM/issues/issue27/ln
Intel:
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/1999/3 2/ns-9301.html
http://www.linuxia64.com/
Fujitsu:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/990929 -000017.html
Microsoft:
http://www.vcnet.com/bms/departm ents/nt/bugs.shtml
http://support.micro soft.com/support/kb/articles/Q150/7/34.ASP
http://support.micro soft.com/support/kb/articles/Q194/8/34.ASP
http://support.micro soft.com/support/kb/articles/Q224/7/93.ASP
Other side: HP:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/990920- 000020.html
Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two.
I to have just read the posting on the microsoft site and agree that linux needs some sort of motivational force that promotes all forms. I suggested this some time ago and was instantly shot down with comments like: "linux is getting enough positive press from magazines and the like". personally i dont agree. We need more positive press created by the users - Something im working on. As for the microsoft comments that show their views of the system, i think their just scared and trying to create a sort of propaganda (in australia i think its called negative business practices) anyway if these are in fact true points about the system microsoft has exposed its soft "underbelly" and allowed us to go in for the kill. All we need to do is exceed the "functions" microsoft deems unsuitable and promote the hell out of it. We wont get sued for monopolisation if it succeeds because we allow fair practice. Sure Im A Lemming! But Im A Lemming With Teeth!!
Sure Im A Lemming - But Ive Got Teeth
Yes, Boeing does use Linux... and Solaris, and even VAX VMS. I have worked at a company bought out by Boeing, and have seen all of these machines used there. Of course, the only one I ever saw crash was NT 4.0.
If I could get a firm grip on Reality, I'd choke it.
They are comparing Unix with NT...... practically every argument they make is based on linux being excactly the same as unix....if course then it still doesnt make any sense :)
Windows is based on MS Dos, which used to be QDOS, which stood for "Quick and Dirty Operating System" - I sh1t you not!
--
While most of this article dealt with server issues that I don't know too much about, I did want to comment about desktop performance of Doze vs Linux.
First let me mention something about my situation. I am in university for Computer Engineering, focusing mostly on software development. I use Linux at home (mostly), but have a fair bit of experience with Windows. I have a Pentium 166 with 128MB of RAM at home. Here is what I have found about the performance of Linux vs Windows.
I find that in general, windows performs much faster as a desktop OS. Most applications in windows (I mean any of Win95/Win95/WinNT4.0, start slightly faster than applications in Linux the first time, and MUCH faster on repeated starts. In general I find the performance of Linux (in this regard only), to be about the same as the copy of Win2000 server that I evaluated (on the same box). While I still use Linux because I much prefer the Open Source mentality, and find the customizability and high quality architecture of linux to be much better than 'Doze. However, it would be really nice if Linux would perform as zippily as 'Doze does.
I also have an idea as to why there might be this performance problem. I am not sure if it is correct but this is my hypothesis. Applications developed for linux tend be small, and very modular, and specific, which is a Good Thing, whereas apps in 'Doze tend to be bloated, but more general. This means that the application buffer in Linux is constantly being changed with the new apps that are started, whereas in windows, it reamins more fixed. I think the problem lays in the fact that under linux you need to run X(well you don't NEED to, but you know what I mean...), and then some desktop environment. I have tried both KDE and GNOME, and have found them both to be slow. These toolkits being loaded and unloaded, translating calls to X are the reason for the slowness in Linux (I think). I was wondering how, if at all, Linux could improve this area of its performance, because I see it as a major area where Microsoft will be able attack Linux, once it starts competing more in the desktop market.
Okay, I don't know how much sense that made, but hopefully I got at least some of my point accross.
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Pilchie
Hey man, if you installed a server configuration that leaks memory into a production environment, then you're asking for it anyway.
Next time, try some testing.
Yes MS did hire some DEC guys and they did license some code, but to say they ended up with an improved system is wide of the mark.
Last year Compaq, who for your information now own VMS, had on the VMS home page the following banner.
VMS is today what Microsoft want NT version 8 to be
This statement lasted about 4 hours before Satan brought his offspring into line and it was pulled.
Someone points out a flaw in Linux and the zealot's response is to claim it doesn't matter, you should spend all this extra money on another piece of hardware, your a moron if you don't, blah blah blah. How typical.
epic needs to work on openGl?epic needs to get rid of Tim Sweeny and get a new coder, as well as canning all the marketing bastards that shoved Unreal Slideshow onto the market in may of 98 when the game was still an alpha at best. The Unreal engine is an utter turd. Microsoft could have done a better job with that game. -supabeast!@work
Now think about this page. Its important to ask yourself "Why does Microsoft have such a page?" They don't have a page comaring NT to the Mac, or other Unix clones. This page tells me that Microsoft is really scared by the rise of Linux.
Acutally Sir,
:) I think you need to go and look around for those CS books :)
The previous poster is correct. We just did this in our OS class
Has Microsoft forgotten about a certain Navy vessel which tried to run NT and ended up being towed in because their navigation systems were dead after NT CRASHED??!! Or how about the MS fiasco with Hotmail? Remember when they tried to switch Hotmail to NT after they bought that site? They had to switch immediately back because NT couldn't handle the load. And one more "anecdote" for MS: yesterday my NT workstation bluescreened when I clicked the cute little X box to close a window.
Windows is going the way of phlogiston...
Would you please list, say, the five most important reasons why Linux sucks?
I'm sincerely interested to hear what a Linux sceptic that dares post a comment like yours, has to say.
Hope it's worth while, though.
Best regards,
Steen Suder
Best regards,
Steen Suder
-- for email: send to
At the bottom of their article, M$ mentions several companies who've deployed NT and depend on it. I work for one of those companies, in data communications. I do not state which one. The statement was made that the deployment was a top down decision. True. further fact: deployment was mandated because the product was out of hand, was infiltrating the company after it had been -forbidden- because of it's unreliability. Tiger teams were formed because the problem had spread to the point where email was failing, company wide just about every day. They also mention reliability, but fail to mention those NT boxes have to be rebooted regularly, origonally weekly, though it may be bi-weekly now. Yes, the email is critical. M$'s product is unreliable without these work-arounds. And they're proud of it?
I think this page puts us firmly into stage 3! :-)
Thanks MS, let's break out the tequila!
The gui who "should" be in charge if Linux or the gui who made the post?
LINUX stands for: Linux Inux Nux Ux X
FRA: STFU GTFO
Look, I love Linux to death. I think it's absolutely wonderful. But it has flaws. It is not perfect. NT is better than Linux in at least a couple of areas: its filesystem and its access control lists.
I have been running Linux and NT both for years. I can tell you that Linux loses data from power failures, and I fear it because of that.
It appears that this is where the reality distortion field is setting in. Instead of admitting that Linux is inferior to NT in this area (which it is), a lot of folks here are claiming that I need more hardware.
Wait, isn't that Microsoft's argument? Buy another XXXX megs of RAM and all will be well. Throw another hundred megahertz at the problem. Buy a UPS.
I would expect most reasonable software engineers to say, "Yeah, you're right, we're working on that" or maybe "Cripes, I haven't lost any data, you must be unlucky" (which one person did.) Instead, they are blaming me for not throwing hardware at a software solution.
Whoah. This is reality distortion worthy of Steve Jobs. Somehow it is my fault that ext2 is fragile? I don't think so.
Now, for you Linux Doubters(tm) who are reading this and inserting the occasional pointed flame: keep in mind that MOST of what people tell you about Linux is true. It really is amazing in many ways.
However, there are some things things Linux is not:
I haven't seen this reality distortion field directly myself before, and it worries me. This kind of unclear thinking will harm Linux more than anything else. It both prevents problems from being recognized and fixed, and also does a great deal of propaganda damage. If we are promising that it is all things to all people, we are lying. People remember that stuff. In five years, when it has swallowed much of the functionality of the other mainstream OSes, what are you going to say when people refuse to use it because of their bad experiences two or three years before?
It's worth thinking about. Pushing it too strongly this early is dangerous. It's not finished yet, all hype to the contrary.
By your rude and childish signature, I've already come to the conclusion that you are beyond redemption.
oh btw, i'm helping the journaled fs effort on linux. Please do not spread these kinds of false data (FUD?) around. If this is sinceraly a mistake on your part, I suggest you read some good books on FS design and basic datastructures (also machine design would help) -- since both are two different thigns and you've come across a confusion that a lot of college age kids have.
The thing that bothers me most about this article of MS's is that they're actually _using_ those flawed data from the MindCraft benchmarks to make a point! Come on, MS, even MindCraft admits it was an unfair comparison!
How old is NT, based off Digitals OS, I believe, so age has nothing to do with it Old is not bad, say mature. OS390/MVS is older , yet it pisses all over NT How can NT claim to be 'reliable' when Mr IBM and Sun says no, you need special over-engineered hardware to make that claim. NT's roots were based on a cheap 8088 processor. Things appear more modern now, except when the new chipset has bugs..And a busy O/S means that I/O errors might slip by. Be paranoid about data corruption. Security, granularity.. See ACF2, RACF. NT is a very bad example. NT does not have SAF calls/interface = flawed by design. Cost a lot fix up linux. When NT built security checking in an application- like IIS, and not doing edit checks on passed arguments, you knew they were clueless. Belts and braces security will slow things down by up to 10%. So expect MS/NT to 'copy' fastchecking routines over the place. Wait till the hackers zap the checks out. Both Linux and NT have a long way to go. On cost of ownership, is MS including the cost of 6 billion minutes of tech support questions each year? Ok if not 6 billion, how much then?
cheers !
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
I'm sorry - but I have to pull you up on "never looses data". Microsoft Exchange Server is *constantly* screwing the *massive_single_file* it uses as an information store.
Clarification - NT memory allocation sure is done on a page-access basis. When you make the allocate memory call, backing store is reserved in the paging file, but physical memory isn't allocated until each page is accessed for the first time.
Nice to see a response that was ridden with zealotry. But one correction:
ugly: NT supports 4GB of memory. No it doesn't -- it supports two gigs protected, and sets aside two gigs for shared memory.
No, they're right. But only in the "Enterprise Edition" of NT Server. For regular Workstation and Server, you're correct.
I work at Northrop Grumman Corporation, and we've deployed Linux all over the place. We have it serving Samba, LDAP, FTP, DNS, Web, and on and on. Never once have I *lost* any data, for whatever reason at all. Be it a lack of a journaling file system or for any other reason. We've got it installed on Alpha boxes, Sun boxes, and PCs. The fact that most of our boxes all have uptimes over 100 lessens the necessity of having to wait a few minutes on a fsck. And if you're having power problems, get a ups for pete's sake! If you're looking for just something to rag on Linux on, and all you can come up with is a journaled file system, I think that's pretty weak. I've used jfs under AIX, and it's damn handy. But nothing NT has comes anywhere near that. So my point is, don't use this argument to justify your NT boxxen, if it's that big of a problem, get a real unix OS!
Doh! Silly dippy! U are not limited to just one 32 bit segment! dippy dippy, you can connect two of those and make them into a virtual 64 bit segment, true it goes a bit more slowly, but that's nothing he wcant solve with good algos right dippy?
Anyway zappa, dont post annomously if you dont mean it. Yes we are beautiful. How old are you anyway?
That
maybe one reboot a day...
Linux still has a a better uptime in the real
world. MS has just admitted it, basically.
--------------------------
Your Favorite OS Sucks.
^D
I can remember the first time I was exposed to the seminal difference between MS-OS software and the various OS systems I had become accustomed to over the previous sixteen years (VMS/UNIX/etc). I was sitting beside a marketing droid (nice fellow) helping review a business plan he was developing on his Windows box. All of a sudden, his screen blipped, and he cursed, "Damn-it!" He pointed to my knee and said, "You hit the reset!" I looked down, and on the front of his computer were two buttons. "What's a reset?" I asked. He said, "You've just re-booted my machine!" I blinked at him for a long moment. I had never used a "PC", only workstations and mainframes. "Isn't that kind of dangerous, having a button on the front that re-boots your machine?" "No, I use it two or three times a day!" He hesitated and looked up at me. "You don't have a re-boot button on your machine?" I blinked at him. "I've never re-booted my machine." He blinked at me. I blinked at him. Across the abyss...
Not quite. The number of misleading and downright false statements in the piece is staggering. Off the top of my head:
The numbers cited are from the Mindcraft benchmark, which is far from a common customer workload.
They neglect to mention that there is competition among support companies, which will drive down the cost.
This is false. sudo allows one to delegate root privileges.
This is false. Can you say http://www.redhat.com/errata? (and similar for other distributions)
Funny you should mention it. I've been using NTFS for as long as it's been available and until yesterday, I'd never lost any data.
My assistant turned off the scanner on the scsi bus and not seconds later, the machine BSOD'd. Haven't seen one of those in at least a month. (Before people get on my case, the scanner is not on the same bus as the hard drives.) After rebooting, we were completely unable to access our development drive because of... a permissions problem. Hmmm. A little bit of investigation and the problem was discovered- the security descriptors for every directory from the root of the drive all the way down to the working directory were corrupted. As we discovered this afternoon, any directory on the volume that we had accessed for writing in the last two weeks was similarly toasted. In the end, we ate the week's loss of data and restored from backup.
If NTFS as deployed on NT4.0 was a journaling filesystem, I suspect that we would have gotten through unscathed; however, contrary to most speculation, journaling appears to be a feature of NT5.0. MSJ recently did a two part article on it hoping that developers would fall in love and start incorporating its features into new software. NTFS has better checks than say FAT, but it's certainly not the robust powerhouse that Malor has made it out to be.
By the end of the day, I was struck with the idea that maybe I should put my scanner on the UPS just to keep NT happy/afloat?
-Hope
Microsoft is not only contradicting itself, but is contradicting itself in two realms where it is illegal to lie. Lying in court is called perjury. Lying about the capabilities of one's own product is called false advertisement. Lying about the capabilities of someone else's product is called slander.
Red Hat has a large amount of money right now, having just gone IPO. People are still trying to figure out what RH is going to do with this. Obviously, a lot of it is going to promote Linux in its entirety (it seems that Linux companies find it more profitable to grow a bigger Linux pie than to fight over one's piece of that pie).
I am not saying this out of any real or perceived "duty" on the part of RH, but from a Red Hat profit/loss perspective. Is it worth it to Red Hat to move some of their marketing budget over to legal to take some of Microsoft's more obviously false claims and ram said claims down their throat? That is, sue for slander, charging for legal expenses and a reasonable award of lost business (not a huge money amount). And the important part: do not settle.
While this sounds like a lot of fun, this may also be good marketing. If you can win a slander lawsuit in court, you force Microsoft to retract the statement, and can use the counter-statement (a matter of public record) in marketing.
There has been a big stink on either side about Microsoft and the law. The lawsuits tend to be about antitrust law or IP. To Microsoft's advantage, both pieces of legislation are themselves contraversial: some of us don't believe that the laws being applied should even be on the books, regardless of what Microsoft is doing with regards to these laws.
Slander suits are a beautiful way to sidestep this and to fight legal battles on much firmer ground. After all, who opposes anti-slander legislation?
Just imagine what would happen to the software industry, and especially the Linux industry, if we could just keep Microsoft from lying.
--The basis of all love is respect
Yeah, NT can boot from drives larger than 4GB if you do the copy-from-another-drive trick, but Microsoft won't support you if you call up with a problem. Some Adaptec SCSI cards will actually limit the first partition to 4GB to force people to fall into MS's support requirements.
So what... its simply not important? I don't understand... scalability is one of the features people talk about when referring to these OSes. To me an example of scalability is taking an existing set of software on a uniprocessor mid-level machine and slapping it on a quad processor xenon -- instant performance boost.
Not exactly, a large number of people don't understand the issues with multi processing.
For starters unless CPU power is the limiting factor then increased CPU power won't make any differnce what so ever.
Second in order to take advantage of multiple processors the specific task has to be one which can be carried out in parallel. Many actual real world applications have a mixture of parallelable subtasks and subtasks which must be done serially. An example would be a pit stop in motor racing, first the car is jacked up, then the wheels are replaced in parallel, then it is let down, but it cannot be lowered until all wheels are fixed.
Third physical and hardware issues get in the way, even though the algorithm can be made parallel if all the subtasks are acting on the same data things can actually end up slower. Like trying to change the sparkplugs in an engine by having a mechanic for each plug.
Fourth the program cannot be taylored to the number of processors in the machine and as this is a general purpose system, which potentially is doing many other things, waiting until all the sub tasks can be run together (if even possible) may well be the slower option.
I hate to be a party pooper here, but talking about how good/bad Quake runs on a server is a pretty irrelavant issue. Last time I checked, if your smart, you shouldn't be gaming on your server anyway, since it will slow it down. I don't care if Linux or NT runs Quake better, as long as we're talking about the server environment.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
That's not NTFS. That's Exchange's problem. If it's one massive file, that's more like a filesystem on top of a filesystem.
:)
You can install Exchange on a FAT volume just as easy, and I doubt it will make the least difference in the overall stability of the database.
And I didn't say never loses data. I have never lost a byte myself. I know, however, that NTFS is designed to protect the integrity of the filesystem in a power failure or hard crash. You can indeed lose data, but you probably won't lose anything but what you were actually working on. If you're saving something when you crash, you will probably lose that data, but you can be just about certain that you won't lose your whole filesystem.
This is a good thing -- NT crashes way too often. It needs the extra protection.
Myth: Windows NT outperforms all other operating systems
Reality: Windows NT only outperforms all other operating systems if MS is allowed to misconfigure the competition and avail themselves of technical support that no MS customer would have.
Also it needs to do some really silly task like repeatedly serving the same (static) webpage...
All in all, this was an article full of ridiculous amounts of FUD and unsupported claims. Here's my
thoughts on a few choice bits that I found particularly amusing.
Linux fundamentally relies on 30-year-old operating system technology and architecture.
Why are they continually harping on the fact that it's 30 years old? There's a reason Unix
has been around that long and in those 30 years, a lot of work has gone into the OS.
Customers such as Barnes and Noble, The Boeing Company, Chicago Stock Exchange, Dell
Computer, First Union Capital Markets, Nasdaq and many others run mission critical
applications on Windows NT 4.0.
More fool them!
Linux lacks a commercial quality Journaling File System. This means that in the event of a
system failure, such as a power outage, data loss or corruption is possible.
Because of course, Windows never causes data loss and corruption!
There is no reason to believe that Linux is significantly different than other versions of
UNIX when it comes to TCO. (total cost of ownership)
Ummm, what? huh? I think that claim is a bit preposterous!
The very definition of Linux as an Open Software effort means that commercial companies like
Red Hat will make money by charging for services. Therefore, commercial support services for
Linux will be fee-based and will likely be priced at a premium. These costs have to be
factored into the total cost model.
The difference is, that if you run into trouble you have a lot more tools and options available
(due to it's open source nature) than you would for Windows NT. If you run into a problem
with Windows, you _have_ to contact their tech support, which may be free, but is not guaranteed to
be useful. Becuase they are closed source, there are no other options if you can't figure it
out yourself. With Linux, there are a plethora of options and choices, before you have to pay for
support. (and does anyone actually have any data on what RedHat charges? This FUD article
was apparently not motivated to actually find out, they just speculated that it would be
expensive).
Linux is a UNIX-like operating system and is therefore complex to configure and manage.
Hmmm, again, they make a broad claim without any evidence to support it. This is true FUD
at it's worst.
For example how many certified engineers are there for Linux?
hahahaha... ok, now this IS an amusing point. I have a story to relate that happened to someone
I know who worked for an ISP. He went to solve router problems for a client. This client happened to
have an MSCE(Microsoft certified engineer) working for them. This guy was not something Linux wants
a clone of! My friend later related that this guy neither understood what packets were (?!), nor was he
quick to grasp, the uses of cable... My friend -with much cable around him- suggested they needed to hook
the router up to a computer that was in a different room. The MSCE didn't want to because, he didn't want
to have to 'move the computer over here'. Yeesh!
Linux system administrators must spend huge amounts of time understanding the latest
Linux bugs and determining what to do about them. This is made complex due to the fact that
there isn't a central location for security issues to be reported and fixed. In contrast
Microsoft provides a single security repository for notification and fixes of security
related issues.
Wasn't this silliness mentioned yesterday in an article about ZDNet's "impartial" test of
Linux vs. WindowsNT. (window's large service packs, vs Linux's single patches that can be tested)
*sarc* And of course, it's very difficult to be on bugtraq and it's hard to determine how to apply
patches!
Configuring Linux security requires an administrator to be an expert in the intricacies of the
operating system and how components interact. Misconfigure any part of the operating system and the
system could be vulnerable to attack. Windows NT security is easy to set up and administer with tools
such as the Security Configuration Editor.
And listen to this folks! You don't even have to be the Administator to set up security. Now, there's
even new remote administration tools being made for Windows by 3rd party groups! Get your copy of BO2K today!
Linux does not support important ease-of-use technologies such as Plug and Play
In all my experience, Windows rarely does either!
---
I hope you're not pretending to be evil while secretly being good. That would be dishonest.
I have to point out that neither NT4 or Linux support power management on SMP machines which is rather annoying if you want the shutdown button on NT to switch the machine off. According to the FAQs and Help pages though it's a 'feature' of the Intel hardware. :(
Good rebuttal but:
>> There are no commercially proven clustering >>technologies to provide High Availability for >>Linux."
> Can you say beowulf?
is false. Beowulf is a high performance clustering technologie. We still don't have a good high availability clustering solution AFAIK. There is work being done here but we aren't here yet.
But I am still waiting to see a NT machine on the top 500 list (the 500 more powerful supercomputers).
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
I mean really!
:-)
First of all when it talks that using 4gig of RAM is "possible", but it didn't make to the kernel, then they're talking about 2.2.* kernel, right? Then creating swap files more then 128 MB IS possible, although they say that it's not.
They're comparing file system of linux with NT's, so if linux doesn't have journaling one, then NT SHOULD have it (it's comparison/contrast), right? So why doesn't NT have the real journaling fs?
Has anyone heard of OEMs that provide uptime guarantees for NT? Including the times when IIS 4 was compromised, bugs has not been fixed in 6 months (for details search or subscribe to NTbugtraq).
"Therefore, commercial support services for Linux will be fee-based and will likely be priced at a premium."
What the hell are they talking about? What about Linuxcare, VA systems, REDHAT, IBM support?
Try to get that quality service from the MS! Premium price? Unlikely!
No sense on the desktop? What about that slashdot article that was saying about 911 in some state that was converted to all linux desktops to prevent crashing?
Admins must spend "huge amounts of time understanding the latest Linux bugs and determining what to do about them."? Kernel bugs are fixed in less than 12/24 hours, software bugs? just rpm -Uvh them (or use any other binary upgrades, like debian's)! What about NT/Win patch/SP (don't remember which was that now) that was actually removed once because it didn't fixed the problem, it just indroduced new ones?
What about the time i had Blue Screens on my NT WS whenever i was starting Word? The prob was that the printer driver that was issued by Epson (and was around for 6 months) caused NT to hang. IT SHOULDN'T BE THAT WAY!!! Freaking printer should not take the system down!!! It should not have this control over OS!
I'm sorry i got carried away
Is M$ in any way accountable for the stuff it put on that web-page? Why don't they just start writing stuff completely out of the air? What stoppes them?
Thanx in advance
------------ Internet? Is that thing still around? H.J. Simpson
Strange, but theres something about October and Microsoft and Linux. Last year we got the Halloween documents - this year we get this 'thing'.
:-)
Maybe theres a big get-together of employees and managers in November or something, and they all want fuel for the "What did your department achieve this year?" questions. The PR department has not had the greatest amount of press recently - this should cause a stir
I wonder what they did the year before last in the month of October...
365(days) * 24(hours) * .01(m$ estimated down time) = 87.6(total yearly downtime)
perfect time for sysadmin to take a vacation (better if you can choose your downtime))
Yeah,
SGI is knocking the shit of out Linux. With Aio, SMP and addin' on that phat spin lock shit Microwack should know by now not to step to the L to the X. On the DL IBM is kickin' it with apache making it like, "bling, bling". And we all know in two years time you'll see better everything on Linux than you can find on wack2K or whatever. Man, microwack are just shook ones. Bill Gates is just a bitch.
They (Micosoft) are *bullies*, and treating them any other way is simply asking to lose teeth. Or worse.
However they are well established bullies, who know how best to cry "victim" when they meet resistance. (And in a bully's langauge "resistance" includes not being initimdated by them.)
Microsoft is probably right about a part of the claims they make in that article otherwise it would be too easy to prove them wrong wich would be very bad from a marketing point of view.
This is the same company who repeatedly got caught purjuring themselves in a high level court.
It's utterly trivial to prove at least two of the claims of this webpage nonsensical without knowing anything about either Windows or Linux. i.e. the "swapping to RAM" and the "adecdotal evidence issue".
'Windows' *is* a trade mark of Microsoft: see here (at the bottom), for an example of where they claim this. I believe it's even a registered trade mark (although I don't have something to hand to confirm this).
Note that this does not prevent anyone from using the term, except in relation to the business of computer systems, since there are over forty categories of trade mark, and items can exist in more than one without (legal) conflict. That's why there can be a car and a computer called the 'Vectra', a computer and a household detergent called 'HP9000', and a phone chat service, a cellular phone service and a shampoo/conditioner called 'One-2-One'. There's even an outdoor clothing material called 'Microsoft'. Window companies have no reason to mention that "'Windows' is a trade mark of Microsoft" unless they're selling a competing product.
You got to admit for some bold faced propaganda like this, its got to be an ex-nazi propaganda minister of some kind..... Brad
MS sites benchmarks that NT is better than Linux. I don't doubt for a minute that is how the benchmarks turned out. I also don't doubt for a minute that's what they were looking for when they started the benchmarks. Any set of benchmark (not just one where MS wins) is slanted. There are NO benchmarks that test everything equally and will actually tell you OVERALL which OS is better (they all test small parts, and as we all know, the whole is greater than it's parts).
As for the reliabilty of Linux, it is very reliable, but there are no real studies (that I've seen). This is a valid point. I run an NT network where I work, and it runs well. I'm not going to say there is never a problem, but there are no major distasters on a weekly basis that many people would have you believe happen. I have also run Linux and think it's about as stable as they come. But anecdotal evidence will never be able to compare to real-world studies. Just because my network runs well doesn't mean all NT networks do, just as your Linux system running well doesn't translate to all Linux systems.
MS also claims NT is more secure than Linux. I can't say it is or isn't, but then again I don't think anyone really can. Every OS is insecure. There is a way to hack everything, and there are always new ways to hack things. The government security testing of NT is a major plus to MS though. Once again it comes down to real-world testing vs anecdotal evidence.
What everyone needs to do is look at this not as an MS propaganda piece (yes, I know it is, but most /.ers assume anything coming from MS has no validity at all) but as a simple comparison and see that it has good points (the real-world data for NT) and bad points (the TCO and benchmarks, which vary completely depending on who does the study). Instead everyone seems to think that bashing MS and talking about what Linux will have will change peoples minds. We shoudl be trying to make COMPUTING better, not Linux.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Has somebody else noticed that there is a mention to "Open Software"?
Does it mean to avoid a mention of source code or just to avoid a TM sign that could give some corporate prestige to Linux?
--
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
I could only read a little, before becoming a bit light-headed, but this caught my eye.
"Linux is a UNIX-like operating system and is therefore complex to configure and manage. Existing UNIX users may find the transition to Linux easier but administrators for existing Windows®-based or Novell environments will find it more difficult to handle the complexity of Linux."
Essentially what they are saying is our people are too stupid to understand Linux, stay with the one and only. I thought Microsoft hired bright people, somehow I find this hard to swallow.
And this too was interesting.
"Configuring Linux security requires an administrator to be an expert in the intricacies of the operating system and how components interact"
God forbid a system administrator *know* something about the OS they are administrating, good grief. The rest of the diatribe was pure fud.
This is actually true right now.
SGI is adding real posix aio and journaling FS to linux. nuff said. real posix aio is required for XFS so they have to do that too.
> The cool thing about Unix is that it was designed as an infinitely flexible basic foundation on which to do anything. It was
;-}
> developed originally to play Spacewar. From there, it was moved to text processing applications. Now we have Netscape,
> StarOffice, Gnome and KDE - all four of which are indisputably late 20th century programs.
Damn 20th century programs, things were much better with my 19th century steam powered DTP package
Maybe you live in interesting times
...holy penguin pee!
--
Xenu loves you!
This isn't a case of preaching to the converted. Microsoft are preaching to those who are thinking about converting - to Linux. ie Big Business. Trouble with the Linux "community" is that it's only any good at preaching to itself. FUD may not work on techies, but it does work on IT managers, purchasing managers, CEOs etc. So who's going to lead the damage limitation exercise?
Just a quick response:
2 1.pdf
You are actually wrong about the "best comment". NT 4 was rated with ITSEC to be secure with the network connected at E3 level.
http://www.itsec.gov.uk/docs/pdfs/certreps/crp1
The fact still remains that no version of Linux has been certified either with or without networking, even with the source code available!!
John Wiltshire
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Good point, but Q3's SMP usage is a good test of muliple processors. And Q3 screams in quake with muliple processors. Well I guess I didn't have a point, but hey we all go offtopic sometimes. And I am concerned about how games proform in linux, because I would love to see linux excel as more than just a server.
Bill: Is W2K ready to ship?
Steve: Nope. Maybe by the end of the year.
Bill: We need a plan to keep people from switching to Linux between now and then. How about an anti-Linux HOWTO on MSN and a couple of articles by ZDnet?
--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
eat hot DOJ death
What you're talking about is 3rd party harware and packages. Granted Linux lacks this support - but that doesn't make the actual OS worse than NT4. TrueType fonts are useable on Linux for example.
I'm glad you've had good luck with it. In my experience, I have lost data from Linux machines and not from NT ones. And I have A LOT more NT machines than Linux ones. At last count, I was directly responsible for about a hundred NT boxes, 6 Unix boxes of different flavors, and 3 Linux boxes.
:-)
2 of the 3 Linux boxes have been at least partially corrupted due to a power failure. I had to erase and manually copy in a bunch of files that had been crosslinked. The Debian box has never been the same -- I can't even compile kernels on it anymore. I'm sure I could fix the problem if I took the time, but I haven't so far. The Redhat box seems all right, finally -- but I was chasing down and reinstalling missing files for quite some time. (and yes, I know that RPM could have done that for me, but I didn't know how at the time, and it was faster to just replace the files. I haven't found a similar facility in dpkg.)
Of the remaining 106 or so machines, precisely 0 have have had glitches due to power problems (and yes, they have had exactly the same number of power interruptions.)
I did lose one (1) NT server when two hard drives died simultaneously (same production run... was kind of eerie), but I don't hold that against NT -- that kind of hardware failure requires lots of expensive redundant equipment to prevent data loss. I would have lost the whole Linux partition too.
In that same timeframe, we lost data on 2 out of 3 Linux machines after (different) power failures.
If data integrity is all you measure, Linux looks just horrible -- absolutely shoddy -- from my sample. This is why I don't trust it with the crucial files from my business. Amazing uptimes or not, UPS or not, ext2 is fragile. Accidents happen. The combination of these two facts forces me to hold off deploying it for file-sharing applications.
Paranoid? You bet. I have to be. That's why they pay me.
I'm really looking forward to XFS or ext3. I'd love to have Linux on every server. It would save me *so much* time and hassle.
But first, I'll be beating on that new filesystem, while standing there toggling the power off and on a few dozen times, to see if I can kill off any files.
http://www.betanews.com/ Is that enough "real info?"
There are no OEMs that provide uptime guarantees for Linux, unlike Windows NT where Compaq, Data General, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Unisys provide 99.9 percent system-level uptime guarantees for Windows NT-based servers.
System-level? Meaning the core operating system, i.e. the kernel? As noted many times above, the 99.9% figure still allows for one BSoD (Blue Screen of Death - a system-level crash) a week. When was the last time you saw a stable-release kernel, running on supported hardware, kernel panic (especially once a week)?
I think given those provisions, any of the distros out there could easily give a 99.9% system-level uptime guarantee. Now, service-level guarantees might be a different story. But then again, restarting a crashed service on Linux is just as easy as it is on NT - easier, actually, since you can log in remotely if it's any service other than inetd. Try restarting IIS from home!
Right...
Just to be fair, are SuSE, RedHat, etc. etc. not in it for the money also?
So it has begun... Microsoft has inadvetantly made a mistake here, in its haste to head off the Linux wagon it has placed a page about the competition in some prime realestate. This has a number of complications for MS, 1, it has drawn attention to Linux and 2, with MS's poor corporate standing in the community (check MS's contibutions to charities and the PR slant) it will most likely create an environment of Linux awareness than a MS purchase.
Indeed awareness and profile are integrated deeply with any succesfull service or product. This coupled with, reliability, serviceability, aesthetics, features, performance, durability, conformance and perceived quality form the cornerstone of end user use.
All products face this continuing balancing act and depending on the type of use the end user has planned, the importance of each of these characteristics is changes.
This has been why Linux has grown so much, like it or not MS has been meaured against these characteristics and been found failing, the end user has been shown competitor as an alternative with MS giving away free PR for Linux, end users will (it is instinctive) compare, and evaluate based on their needs.
MS gambled on "Perceived Quality" via their web site's portrayal of linux V's all other characteristics. This was not only poor management it reflects a culture that is quite incapable of re-focusing on a changing user environment and believes that more of the same is the way to succeed.
MS presumes that end users do NOT compare and contrast their needs with the offerings from various suppliers, someone should make MS managers read IBM's history for an example of how another company thought it could tell end uses what was best for them... nuff said, if you don't know go do some reading it makes for a lightening on the soul.
Rat
Sigh
There are none as blind as those who will not see.. (unknown)
Many of these attacks are based on benchmarks from companies that clearly have no idea how to tune linux
Actually all you can conclude is that they didn't tune it. Indeed it's arguable that in the original Mindcraft test they detuned.
The unanswered question is how much would it cost for Microsoft to provide unlimited tuning and support? (For that matter how would in compare with flying, first class, the author of the specific Linux application or kernel component you wanted support on to your facility.)
Of course! Thank you!
I keep hearing stories from NT admins about how they dream of that 99.95% uptime but just can't achieve it
The usual procedure here is for an MS advocate to say "its the hardware" (even if the same machine runs Linux, Netware, Solaris and OS/2 perfectly) or "the admin is no good" (mutually exclusive with the claim that NT dosn't need a highly skilled admin.)
What is Microshafts obsession with being commercially proven ?
Maybe its the only "quality measure" where their products do well. Though since MS appear to want to define what it means its hardly an objective metric.
Yes, but the Orange Book doesn't cover network connections! So *any* C2 certified system would fail that benchmark the moment you put in a NIC and connected some cat-5. A better argument would be to remind people that C2 certification certifies certain SYSTEMS (both hw and sw) - In other words, NT's gotta be running on a specific machine to qualify.
What a laugh.
If you want a lower TCO for your desktop, you buy a Mac. If you want a lower TCO for your servers, you go with *n*x. (Yes, the gurus can run *n*x on the desktop, too, but most people can't.)
Micros~1 trying to win a TCO debate is hilarious.
CT
Constitutionally Correct
I thought that the '1.0 release' of NT was version 3.1. In any case, Netcraft says:
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
As far as other comments as to my experiences with NT, these were stock NT installs on hardware identical to some of our *nix servers, with MS SQL server and IIS installed. We would come in after a few days of one running to find it locked up, displaying the blue screen of death, or services stopped.
Anecdotal stories are one thing amongst friends, but if a consultant (agh!) or an 'experienced' person recommends against NT for a business application due to their experience, is it still anecdotal? Would it be anecdotal if the endorsement were for NT over Linux?
I just find it interesting that Microsoft seems to label advice or conveyance of experiences as anecdotal stories. In the same point of view, can I label their marketing campaign (howericdidit.com, and others like it) as anecdotal stories?
Just some food for thought.
Check out the Kirch Paper, the ultimate tool against FUD.
"Cause there's 40 different shades of black, so many fortresses and ways to attack, so why you complainin'?"
Both NT and Linux are fine OSes for doing certain kinds of things. Linux is obviously the most flexible and socially-friendly OS out there. It does have a lot of 'growing up' to do though. NT has a wealth of software available and is fairly robust and full-featured as a desktop or departmental server. My personal preference from a technical stand would be BeOS on the desktop and Solaris on the server but this is not easy due to the current market place. My alternative is to simply go with NT on both the desktop and server for vanilla setups and use Linux, BSD, BeOS etc. where ever NT falls short of my requirements (which is probably going to be where I have low-end h/w or the need for extremely flexible and open communications between platforms).
in the antitrust case? Or did they deliberately wait until it was too late to do so to post this FUD?
I believe that one of the arguments Microsoft pressed pretty hard to the judge was that Linux presented competition in the desktop operating system market. Doesn't Microsoft's official FUD site belie their argument?
Is there anything left which was not said before /. poster about the MS 'Linux myth
/. board?
by other
clarification'?
Many have dealt with the sometimes semi-true
claims which were presented in that paper. And
there was a lot insight behind many of these
contributions.
Is there still something left in my chest which
wants to be posted to the
Yes. As a Linux veteran (much older than that
'obsolete' UNIX thing) I feel that this MS paper
was the appointment of LINUX into knighthood.
As I did read their paper, my old heart filled
with deep pride and satisfaction because I could
hear their desperate voices crying behind the
words of their document.
"Why are you all so hot to run that OS, which
is not backed by a big corporation like us?"
"We have invested all our energy we are capable
to make our OS the best OS in the world. Nobody
could try it harder than we have done. Why are you
not satisfied with the result?"
"Please don't leave us alone."
Thank you MS for that honor. I'm sure that among
me, many other lovers of Linux (and its friends)
will try their best to prove that we are worthy
of your decoration.
Go Linux GO!
increase
/usr/src/linux/drivers/block/loop.c
#define MAXLOOP 8
in
to 256,
make the apropiate device files (/dev/loop),
rebuild and boot your kernel
The Linux operating system is not suitable for mainstream usage by business or home users... Linux clearly has a long way to go to be competitive with Windows NT 4.0.
:)
At least with Linux, doesn't it seem like Microsoft is trying to make the DoJ's case for them?
That is not true. Take everything out of Windows 2000 that is not in Linux and you will end up with an OS that can run on your P75/http/web/ftp/... Install everything on Linux to make it comparable to Windows 2000 end you will end up with a system requiring > 300 Mhz.
For the record, our NT based e-mail and proxy servers have been on the fritz all day. Happens at least once a month. On the other hand, I don't remember once that our UNIX based intranet or AS/400 file server has flaked out in the 10 months I've been here. Oh, yeah, but that's just antidotal.
I don't think /. would be a good site for this kind of comparison. At the top of this page I see the phrase: "(Beta is only a state of mind)" Which implies a rather questionable level of stability. I couldn't load ./'s main page earlier today. Don't know why. Was it the OS? Probably not. The site? That'd be my guess, but prove that to marketing-numbed minds. I'd suggest a site with an established code base, one that isn't in a constant state of evolution. I suggest something along the lines of FreshMeat: lots of dynamic content, not much change in the code generating that content.
. . .can be seen at:
m l
http://www.nacs.net/~heller/ms/ms_linuxmyths.ht
** Martin
Myth: Linux is more secure than Windows NT
Reality: Linux Security Model Is Weak
All systems are vulnerable to security issues, however it's important to note that Linux uses the same security model as the original UNIX implementations- a model that was not designed from the ground up to be secure.
FALSE
The unix security model has had 20-30 years of scrutiny by the hackers the world over. Lots of IT people put linux boxes in as firewalls in front of their Windows (NT as well) network. I know of no-one who uses Windows NT as a firewall in front of anything else (but maybe im just a minority)
Linux only provides access controls for files and directories. In contrast, every object in Windows NT, from files to operating system data structures, has an access control list and its use can be regulated as appropriate.
FALSE :) unix - chmod 000 /dev/audio (or other) )
In unix, files represent everything from files to devices. An Access list can be achieved by using group ownership. NT just confuses the issue by representing devices and files in 2 completely different ways. (any ideas how to prevent users from using the soundcard for example?
Linux security is all-or-nothing. Administrators cannot delegate administrative privileges: a user who needs any administrative capability must be made a full administrator, which compromises best security practices. In contrast, Windows NT allows an administrator to delegate privileges at an exceptionally fine-grained level.
FALSE :) Compared to DOS? :)
You can either set the PC up properly with group access to devices/files/whatever, or you can set up SUDO to allow certain users to perform certain commands only. define "exceptionally fine-grained level"
Linux has not supported key security accreditation standards. Every member of the Windows NT family since Windows NT 3.5 has been evaluated at either a C2 level under the U.S. Government's evaluation process or at a C2-equivalent level under the British Government's ITSEC process. In contrast, no Linux products are listed on the U.S. Government's evaluated product list.
TRUE - but misleading :)
Microsoft neglects to mention that the C2 certification is null and void if the NT machine is plugged into a network
Linux system administrators must spend huge amounts of time understanding the latest Linux bugs and determining what to do about them. This is made complex due to the fact that there isn't a central location for security issues to be reported and fixed. In contrast Microsoft provides a single security repository for notification and fixes of security related issues.
IRRELEVANT :) If you do this daily, the chances are the security hole is fixed within a day of it becoming known.
Linux is not Red Hat. Run Debian, and if you have a properly secured machine, bugs are fixed when you do your regular "apt-get update;apt-get dist-upgrade"
NT requires a SPACK application (uh.. service pack ;) which has a high probability of breaking installed services (as outlined below).
Configuring Linux security requires an administator to be an expert in the intricacies of the operating system and how components interact. Misconfigure any part of the operating system and the system could be vulnerable to attack. Windows NT security is easy to set up and administer with tools such as the Security Configuration Editor.
FALSE FALSE FALSE!!
Linux requires that you either read the documentation, or sure, get someone with experience to secure your machine. Windows NT on the other hand, requires an expert to INSTALL THE SOFTWARE IN THE CORRECT MAGIC ORDER for it to work at all. Example: Install NT server. Install BackOffice, Routing and RAS. Install SP5. MS proxy server breaks.
Windows NT servers are typically a hodge-podge of poorly integrated patches that break each other if applied in anything but one magic order. This order is discovered by trial and error, and NT reinstalls.
anyway.. i just had to have my say.... one of our client's NT servers (which we are due to firewall with a debian box) BSODed and didnt come back up. Upon reinstall, SP5 broke MS proxy today :)
smash
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
informative? I don't understand. This comment did nothing to disprove the points that were made on the page. I come here looking for some good retorts to this, and instead I get the usual "playground bully" tactic of "oh yeah, well, your mother wears army boots".. sad...
www.jackasscritics.com
Ask what you can do for Microsoft!
LINUX stands for: Linux Inux Nux Ux X
FRA: STFU GTFO
Nvidia and Epic are working on solving the problem; the TNT drivers seem to load all textures into memory twice or something like that.
They offer a few workarounds in the meantime, worked for me, saw some improvements (W98/DX7/UT338) although it ain't as good as it can be.
Cya,
barbaBob
--
*sig*
"Linux does not provide support for the broad range of hardware in use today; Windows NT 4.0 currently supports over 39,000 systems and devices on the Hardware Compatibility List. Linux does not support important ease-of-use technologies such as Plug and Play, USB, and Power Management "
See how this implies that Windows NT 4.0 supports USB, Plug and Play and APM. Which of course is not true (Win 98 of course is different, but we do not talk about that here). Linux 2.3 kernels are better than NT 4.0 for all of the three.
Btw., I never quite understood all this hype surrounding the Netcraft benchmarks. It simply says, that NT can fill 200 mbit ethernets and Linux only fills 100 Mbit. But who actually needs 200 mbit on a single computer? So NT is faster, but who cares, the test case is completely irrelevant.
And regarding that TCO of NT is better than UNIX/Linux: there are several studies saying this and a lot of others stating the opposite.
Most of the other lies have already been demistified (C2 security hahaha).
Bye egghat
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
More response would only indicate we take the article seriously, and anyone who does that I've got a bridge to sell. :-)
The truth shall make you fret. (Ankh-Morpork tImes motto)
As far as security goes I think that it is worth to mention one of the most glaring omissions by MS.
they state:
"Linux only provides access controls for files and directories. In contrast, every object in Windows NT, from files to operating system data structures, has an access control list and its use can be regulated as appropriate."
What they fail to point out is that the Unix system model is to abstract everything to a file. given this idea, file security is all that you need. Want to block access to a device, change the permissions. This goes beyond creative omission, this is a grievous misrepresentation of the facts. If Microsoft can't understand the basic concepts of its competitors, how can they be taken as legitimate software providers?
Microsoft is about BS - always has been and always will. Their Linux myth page is just plain silly. Sillier than Roller Derby.
Just know this - Microsoft did this sort of stuff with Apple. They just put up lies after lies about Macintosh computers. In fact, Microsoft even paid folks with corporate credit cards to go post on forums, posting imaginary problems and complaining about stuff.
Hopefully, they aren't trying that guerilla warfare tactic again.
Please email me if you wish to reply.
Nathan Hill
nhill@sunnet.net
Hmmm... does that mean once I fill 128M of the 300M cache I have allocated my Linux system will crash?
There's a great page up at http://www.nacs.net/~heller/ms/ms _linuxmyths.html that talks in rebuttle about this.
The proper source is unknown and the following is paraphrased, but ... you're not over the target if you're not taking flak. It is clear Linux is over the target. Microsoft sees themselves right in the crosshairs so they lash out. Yeah, it's almost Halloween again ... coincidence? I don't know. Regardless of the claims of Microsoft, it is a good list of to-dos. Linux is on-target and bearing down.
ive noticed they seem to say that win-nt4 server is significantly better than linux, but they never seemed to mention the fact that win-nt couldnt handle the load of hotmail.com, causing win-nt to crash several times before solaris was restored as the server os for the hotmail mail service. they probably also didnt mention that redhat.com handles 30,000+ emails a day on a 486sx running redhat 5.2 "i think" without any problems. id say there was alot left out of that report and was merely a poor guided stab at linux.
Webserver logs for one of our clients. For some reason the little cron job type thingy didn't rotate the logs for a week or so, and they grew too large.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
The design of the NT system is based on VMS, but the origonal NT system was a port of OS/2 meant to run on the N10 processor, or somesuch that never showed up.
I was truly fascinated to read the page and their misrepresentations, representations, and FUD yesterday, while waiting for a compile to finish. Went home and did a little channel surfing, and one of their customers, Nasdaq, was in the news for the software and OS. Seems they installed some new software and it's so efficient that it's slowed their processing down to a crawl. Brokerage firms and traders big and small were howling and calling for SEC investigations and lawsuits.
THAT's a testimonial for you!
Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by tenure.
and if you lookup www.microsoft.com, you'll see that they're running NT 3.0. Not exactly a resounding endorsement of their own faith in the maturity of their own OS.
NTFS is *not* a JFS. It's one of the things they (M$) pounded into my head when I did a MSCE a couple of years ago. .... *CRUNCH*)
Not NT doesn't offer a JFS by default, though I think there are a couple of third-party (very expensive) JFS's which were also ported to NT.
No, I can't spell!
-"Run to that wall until I tell you to stop"
(tagadum,tagadum,tagadum
-"stop...."
Why you ask? In my humble opinion, I think if a company like Redhat or any other other organization spread "their own version of FUD" the Open Source community would pounce on them too and inevitably hurt Linux and/or the Open Source model.
FUD stands for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. I, and I think I can speak for most on this point, we do not want people to FEAR Linux, be UNCERTAIN about Linux or DOUBT Linux in any way.
I think what you really mean is spread TRUTH. I believe the Open Source Community does a decent job of dispelling Microsofts FUD. We certainly don't want MS or anyone dispelling FUD we've created. More importnatly we don't need to create FUD.
So, NO don't put out FUD that is pro-linux. FUD is FUD. Spread the TRUTH and urge Microsoft or Apple or Sun or whoever to be honest with the public and let the fair benchmarking begin.
Lets stand on our merits.
Integrity is what you are when nobody is looking.
Not only is much of this information untrue but it is just plain
horseshit(excuse the american).
For one thing:
the 2 statments "Windows NT 4.0 Outperforms Linux On
Common Customer Workloads" and "Linux Makes No Sense at
the Desktop" are the only ones with any ounce of truth in
them.
these are true but the other features of Linux far out way
these disadvantages.
The security issue they speak of is bullshit! Give me one
hour and a computer and I will destroy your NT Server (and
I am not a hacker) give me a linux computer and It's much
harder.
"The Linux community likes to talk about Linux as a stable
and reliable operating system, yet there is no real world
data or metrics and very limited customer evidence to back
up these claims." Prove otherwise.. then start to talk.
"Free Operating System Does Not Mean Low Total Cost of
Ownership" Don't ask.... Sure there is some maintanence but
come on to hire some one with a MSCE?
"Linux as a desktop operating system makes no sense. A
user would end up with a system that has fewer
applications" Even if this was true any linux user would have
more applications because they can get them for free. On
windows sure while you may have more applications,
chances are you are going to jail for pirating software.
"Linux application support is very limited, meaning that
customers end up having to build their own horizontal and
vertical applications." *cough* -- WTF??
Now I am not going to talk about the benchmarks or I will
never get back to work. But using common sense you will
learn find many more ironic things that I missed out.
-------------------------------------------
Movie News - "Entertainment news, bitch!"
Remember when you were a kid and you had something cool, and everyone tried to make theirs sound better? ie Microsoft...
I guess they have to make themselves seem better in order to seem better, Linux doesn't brag about how it's better, we don't go out of our way to prove them wrong...we just let them look like mindless idiots...
JediLuke
JediLuke
-Do or Do Not, There is no Try
First they ignore you,
then they ridicule you,
then they attack you,
and then you win.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Where are the responses to this memo, from IBM,
SAP, Dell, HP, and RedHat?
After all, when Microsoft attacks Linux, these
are the companies being attacked. IBM, especially, should respond. With full page ads
in trade mags, or Monday Night Football spots or
something.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Yes. But not a feedback joystick! |)
LINUX stands for: Linux Inux Nux Ux X
FRA: STFU GTFO
Ummm... he didn't say that he couldn't run it under Win2k, he said he couldn't run it under Win2k using the directx drivers!
He went on to say that the OpenGL drivers (presumably still under Win2k) work fine.
Then again, of course, as with anything, YMMV.
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
I suppose it's okay, they pay me by the hour, but it still rankles that there are far better tools that I know how to use very effectively and they're just out of my reach.
--
Deja Moo: The feeling that
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Not to mention "sudo"
49.7 days. (Couldn't fit 49.7 in subject line though :) Check out:
l
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-339369.htm
Marketing wisdom? That's the second best oxymoron I've heard, after Oversexed of course ;)
I am interested in starting a group that would publicly be a good contact point/web site/information warehouse for those who wish to be advocate of Linux, as well as a place for the press to get reliable, good information. If anyone wants to send me some e-mail about current advocacy sites/newsgroups/mailing lists, I would really appreciate it. I don't want to duplicate effort or step on toes here. If anyone is interested in this idea, shoot me some e-mail and we can discuss ideas on how to build an Open Source media force.
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
I'd like to say a few things on this whole thing while I'm here.
Mandrake for all his greatness should get somebody to proof read his rants *sigh*.
The more somebody slags something I like, be it an OS or my fave teddy bear the more I'm likely to hate their fucking guts!
The copyrtight link at the bottom of the the Myth page points to a file called cpyright.htm. If that 8.3 hangover isn't enough proof of a world gone I don't know what is.
Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
I'd like to say a few things on this whole topic while I'm here.
Mandrake for all his greatness should get somebody to proof read his rants *sigh*.
The more somebody slags something I like, be it an OS or my fave teddy bear the more I'm likely to hate their fucking guts!
The copyright link at the bottom of the the Myth page points to a file called cpyright.htm. If that 8.3 hangover isn't enough proof of a OS gone awry I don't know what is.
Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
Which game is that? Civ CTP? Free Civ? Quake? Quake 3? Craft? Railroad Tycoon II? Check out linuxgames.
Besides, my favorite is still xgalaga.
--Wes
Blah I can't get my sig to work, it won't fit.
If Unix is as old and decrepid as Micros~1 want everyone to believe, why didn't they post the TPC rating of Oracle on a Sun Enterprise 10000 ?
Oh wait, Oracle beat them to that, where the 30-year-old technology was over two orders of magnitude better than Windows NT.
Matt
>>while standing on one leg and chanting "Bill Gates is the antichrist". Ah -- there's why you have to keep re-booting that monster server. You're supposed to chant, "Bill Gates is NOT the antichrist." (Win/NT 4.0 Core technologies, p. 467, MS Press 1998.) See, if you had actually contracted with someone who has an MCSE they could have fixed that little feature after only 13.6 billable hours... :)
We all need to switch to WINternet!! Created from the ground up with bloated GUI tools and security bugs!
--
PanDuh!
It's exactly this kind of thinking that makes windows such a poor product. you say "there's no real advantage in being technically superior" and applaud the company that delivers more of the same?
So in other words, you're very happy paying BIG money for an OS that is technically inferior , but is good for MS cash flow? (read:vig) You're the one opening your wallet..stand up....stand proud...demand an operating system that actually operates.
Stop subsidizing Bills coke habit. (What else could motivate such terrible software?)
Thanks, I just got a tt font server up and running. Only thing I don't like is the location bar in Netscape, it's a weird fon't that I don't know and not sure how to fix. Oh well, I think the TT fonts are a nice tradeoff.
Now I'm starting to worry -- is the tt server on port 7100 vunerable to exploits? I hope not... (I pride myself in having as a secure system as possible, even though technically I *am* a linux newbie)
I've never understood this "advantage" to NT.. What good is a security classification on a network operating system when it only applies when it's disconnected from the network?? Who's going to use a NOS unless they are connected to a network!?
Note that after honking about how "Linux Needs Real World Proof Points Rather than Anecdotal Stories," they cheerfully present "Customer Testimonials" -- anecdotes, in other words.
"Real world proof points" isn't even English, and "Boeing uses it!" isn't proof of anything.
It's rather standard political advocacy.
The advocate defends their position on anecdotes (but calls them "facts") and "studies" (carried out by people in their back pocket and with the most biased methodologies. e.g. Mindcraft.)
They then criticise anyone who questions their POV saying "don't use anecdotes" and dismissing any objective study. (Typically changing the subject when they can't refute the methodology. e.g. using jargon such as "Enterprise Class").
Note that "Customer Testimonials" are either highly selective or simply made up...
You're a dear ; ) :)
Thanx
- Rei
Yes I understand that the software may necessarily not generalize to multiple processors. My point is that if the software does, for example if the software is a database/web server servicing many thousands of connections, then the OS should allow the software to take advantage of the multiple processor -- essentially the OS should not get in it's way.
The Linux kernel gets in the way... its lack of fine grained kernel locks (as the document in question pointed out) and kernel level lightweight processes make it so that an application running multiple threads does not enjoy a performance boost when give multiple processors.
That is a clear liability, and its not just NT that has the advantage there... there's also Solaris and a handful of other Unices (Digital UNIX is one also) that give that advantage as well.
Multiple processor scalability is an important Achilles heel for Linux going into the server domain, and its important to acknowledge that fact rather than try to rationalize it away just because its a component of more M$ PR (FUD).
Oxryly
Maybe there aren't as many Linux cert. engineers, cuz what ain't broken don't need fixed! :)
The Trademark holder is the Open group, and they say Unix is anything which implements their specification. This includes many different Unixes, including IBM's OS/390 which is not derived in any way from from AT&T code. Heck, IF NT passed the tests, they'd allow it to be called Unix.
Linux is not currently a certified under any of the Unix standards, but I belive that Caldera has applied for Unix95 certification.
I have a really hard time seeing how Microsoft can use Linux as a defense in Microsoft's "we're not a monopoly" statements and then print this FUD shortly after the closing remarks have been made in the trial. Is Linux a viable alternative to NT or not? According to the trial, yes. According to this article, no. What gives and how does Microsoft get away with this talking out both sides of their mouth?
Probably because this is the C2 rating we're talking about, not NT. ANY OS would have to have no removable media for C2 certification.
Unattended? okay so it hasnt crashed yet, somehow, but also its hasnt been down becasue he probably hasnt tried to change a dman setting! THERE IS A FINITE AMOUNT OF TIME I CAN SPEND REBOOTING and i hate microsft for it.
Juln
FreeBSD at least has a couple of aio_* system calls, that do asynchronous IO, conforming to POSIX.2.
Apart from that, isn't it possible to open(2) a file with O_NONBLOCK *and* O_SYNC options? That way you can set the F_SETSIG flag with fcntl(2), and be notified with a SIGIO when the write has been completed to disk.
The first step towards losing the War is letting the Enemy pick the battleground. This is, most likely, why RH and others don't respond to FUD except to call it FUD and move on.
Linux has made bigger gains through the strategy of quietly pushing forward than it has through playing catch-up.
--Threed
I suggest you buy a UPS and configure Linux to shutdown properly on losing power.
Here is my anecdote,
I run both NT and Linux as Internet Servers. I also use Linux Router Project (one floppy linux) on a 486 without hard disk as a terminal server for 32 analog telephone lines (I cant do this with NT)
My linux machines are up un running for two months already without a glitch. Or maybe a minor glitch -my fault- but without the need of reboot. Running web,mail,dns and database services.
I have to reboot NT almost daily. If I let it run, then the asp engine or IIS 4 will stop working in a matter of days. And I use only Microsoft software...
Of course, those promises have been delivered on: 2.2 is much better at SMP than 2.0. It's just that we can do still better...
--
Xenu loves you!
Remember that Free for Linux/Freebsd dosen't just mean Free as in Free Beer ( although that would be nice ) it is Freedom! Freedom to Choose which software I want to run! This makes the cost of ownership null in my book, because I choose it.
Another thing, Whoever wrote that crap at MS has never administered a network before. MS NT has wasted more of my time the last couple of years, I am thinking of sending MS a bill. I have had o reboot MY former NT servers every couple of months or so, to refresh the resources.
Also, I find RedHat very easy to administer, and the things I have to get my hands on and figure out, good for me because I learn something in the process.
I got a free copy of NT workstation 4.0 with my NT server , I use it, and it still cost me too much with agravation.
As I read that page, I raise my middle finger to it, not for the proverbial F*** you but I say 'format c'
Later
"If you have done 6 impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways" -- hhgg
Microsoft tech support is almost nonexistant (Have you ever tried to call them? I have at work.)
The term "support" has been abused to the point where it's treated as being equal to advertising a phone number. Even in cases where subsituting a random phone number would make no practial difference.
Actual support is providing people with the information they need (at an appropriate level, much psudo-support can't go further than "advice to novices".) in order to get their problem fixed. Spending hours listening to on hold music and talking to glorified secretaries and receptionists isn't it. As well as little matters like "How much does it add to the TCO to have someone holding on the end of a phone, unable to get any work done..."
On their comment of SMP, I have a 2 processor system, and I can measure the time spent on SMP. Its almost always under 5% of my total cpu time in load0 conditions.
If one processor is sitting idle for X% of the time then going to N will mean that your are likely to have N processors sitting idle for about N*X% of the time. Further you will never get linear scaling, contention to memory and perpherals will see to that. The way you fix this is by changing the hardware architecture. Even in cases where having more processors would be useful the (application) software really needs to be written to take advantage of this.
The claim linux supports only 2 gig of ram is correct. However, I can't name a single system that would require 4 gig of ram but need so little cpu power that it would be most efficiently done in a single system, can you?
More to the point if you need a single system which needs that quantity of memory (especially if it is SMP too) then an IBMPC compatable is probably not the kind of hardware you should be thinking of. (Or X86 CPU's either).
Message I've never checked about linux swap size. the ext2 filesystem has a max filesize of 2 gigs
If your application needs a single file that big then odds on it's broken by design in the first place.
most of the times when NT crashes it's because of bad sectors on the disk and other shoddy hw manufacturing.
um...i thought it was the convoluted crappy code and backwards compatibility to 1985.
More stable, more features, better all around
you must be mistaking this forum for alt.heavy.sarcasm, or you are just insane.
Juln
Microsoft claims Linux can not do GUIs. I would
like to comment on that:
1) Linux uses X-Windows, proven technology that
comes from MIT!. It is also networkable, that
means you can setup a linux server on a powerful
machine and run the programs there and have
486s with good vga cards to display the results.
Windows (of any type) can not do this.
2) Linux GUIs are plenty. I have a 486 100 MHz
and I am using TWM which puts very little workload
on my machine. But if you had a PIII you could
use KDE or Enlightment or some other fancy window
manager. But on Windows... same old desktop,
either in 486s or PIIIs!
3) The Windows GUI freezes up when a task works
a lot with I/O devices. The busy cursor is
activated for all windows when the swap file
is used. The Windows TCP/IP stack also freezes
the desktop; when I receive a lot of data on my
modems the GUI freezes. When I also open some
java machine the GUI does not respond. There are
times that I click on either the taskbar or a
window that is irrelevant to the java process
(i.e. outside of a web browser) and the machine
completely stops to respond!(P166 with 32 MB RAM,
and I am not talking about the swap file.) And if
you copy files on the Windows OS, try to drag 'n'
drop the file copying window to another location
to see the HD stop working and the copy to freeze.
I had put a heavy book on my mouse trying to
continuously press the mouse button so the
window stood dragged and that situation remained
for 2 hours and the files (250 kb) have not been
copied! On the contrary, X-Windows offers true
GUI multitasking, not freezing up any other
process.
Actually, for me it was Red Hat that detected my v770 as a 550, not the other way around. Not to rain on any parades or anything...
Game... blouses.
Not that you need DirectX to run Quake (including Quake II and III Arena), or most games written with a modified Quake engine.
:(
My SMP NT box runs Half-Life just fine.
But not when it's running Linux.
Ugh, reading that post made me think that people might get the impression that i think linux = redhat. Not true, just that was the distribution that gave me that experience. Heh, enough crap out of me for a year.
Game... blouses.
I find it mildly amusing that MS cites Linux lack of support for Plug and Play, Power Management, or USB, when NT 4.0 does none of these things either...
This looks like a pretty cool open source OS. Can you Beowulf it? :P But seriously, it could be the successor to Linux.
If that's true, how did SCO get a C2. Of course Doug and Larry wouldn't lie to us, now would they?
NT does not stand for "New Technology." It stands for "Nice Try."
--
This is not my sandwich.
I dont think i've posted anything quite this lengthy. woohoo. Anyway, you can get the gist of how I wrote it, /. readers are smart, they'll figure it out :-).
:P
:).
:-P
:-).
:-)
see bottom of comment for disclaimers.
Myth: Linux performs better than Windows NT
Reality: Windows NT outperforms Linux using highly skewed benchmarking
environments by companies that are partnered with Microsoft, or paid by
Microsoft.
Point - Linux supports only 2 gig of ram, where NT supports 4 gig.
Rebuttal - Windows NT needs much more RAM to operate at a reasonable
level.
Point - The linux community continues to promise major SMP and performance
improvements.
Rebuttal - so does Microsoft.
Myth: Linux is more reliable than Windows NT
Reality: Microsoft needs real world proof points rather than anecdotal stories.
Point - Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 has been proven in demanding customer
environments to be a reliable operating system. Companies such as
(blah blah blah).
Rebuttal - Never heard of BellSouth? Berlington Coat Factory?
GENERAL MOTORS?!
Point - Linux lacks a commercial quality Journaling Filesystem.
Rebuttal - Where's the journaling filesystem for NT?
And apparently Microsoft isn't keeping up with SGI... XFS under
GPL? I think I heard a rumor about that...
Myth: Linux is Free
Reality: Microsoft completely misunderstands what free means.
Point - Its important to understand that licensing cost is only a small
part of the overall decision-making process for customers.
Rebuttal - Licensing costs for Windows NT based networks are astronomical.
You need to buy the server software, a client access license for each
client, no matter what OS they are running. Oh, you want office
software? Ok, you need to buy a copy for each client. Gets expensive
real quick. Lets see, someone remind me how much StarOffice costs
again...
Point - Speaking of support services... Fee-based, blah blah, premium
costs, blah blah.
Rebuttal - What is their point here? Last I heard, Microsoft charged
astronomical prices for their support contracts and support plans.
Couldn't be any better than these so-called "premium prices" that
the Linux support companies charge, that's for sure.
Point - Linux is a UNIX-like operating system and is therefore complex
to configure and manage.
Rebuttal - Apparently Microsoft is trying to use Slackware as their
comparison model. (Forgive me for picking on Slackware, it makes a
point in this discussioN). Last I checked, Caldera, RedHat (and of
course Mandrake), SuSE and hell, all of 'em were making great effort
to make Linux easier to install and manage than ever before.
Point - Linux is a higher risk option than Windows NT. For example, how
many certified engineers are there for Linux? (1). How easy is it to
find skilled development and support people for Linux? (2).
First Rebuttal - Last week (I think it was) Computer Reseller News had a
FRONT PAGE article describing the flood of "certified" NT
"professionals" who didn't have any real world experience and thus
were completely useless. Let's see, how long has Linux been around?
9 years or so... how long has it been popular? Erm, a few years at
best, mostly in the last couple. Ok, now how long has Microsoft been
around? How much money do they have to funnel into this sort of
thing? Exactly. Its a big difference. There will be more
certifications for Linux-centric professionals. And you can damn well
bet that those people will KNOW the system. Not just click click
click their way through blissful ignorance.
Second Rebuttal - This question should just go away. I am going to make
a glaring observation here: Microsoft has no clue. I know, obvious
to some, but not everyone... Post a question about Linux on just about
any Linux related newsgroup. Visit the #linux or #linuxhelp channels
on IRC. Join a local user group mailing list and ask questions.
Do a web search. Chrikey, I have an easier time finding answers to
Linux questions than I do trying to find answers to questions related
to any Microsoft platform or application.
Myth: Linux is more secure than Windows NT
Reality: linuxppc.com vs. windows2000test.com.
Need I say more?
Apparently I might... read on!
Point - Linux security is all or nothing. Administrators cannot delegate
administrative privileges.
Rebuttal - Two words: groups. sudo.
(sudo is an outstanding utility. I just wish distributions
would include it by default. RedHat 6.0 doesn't, Caldera 2.3 doesn't,
not sure which ones do, but I know they're out there
Point - Every member of the Windows NT family since Windows NT 3.5 has
been evaluated at either a C2 level...
Rebuttal - What I heard is that this is only valid if the NT system in
question has no floppy drive and no network/modem connection.
Point - Linux system administrators must spend huge amounts of time
understanding the latest Linux bugs and determining what to do about
them.
Rebuttal - Windows NT system administrators dont need to know anything
about the system they are administrating. Thats what this Microsoft
point says to me. And no central security repository? No, instead of
relying on Microsoft, the Linux community can use... THE LINUX
COMMUNITY! Wow. Imagine that. And the security bugs in Linux
actually get fixed. Oh, and you dont have to download a 60 meg
"service pack" to fix it either.
Point - Configuring Linux security requires an administrator to be an
expert in the intricies of the operating system and how components
interact.
Rebuttal - Microsoft Windows NT system administrators shouldn't be experts,
Microsoft makes it so easy that any fool can mess up, er configure the
security for an Enterprise. I dont know about the rest of you, but if
I'm hiring a system administrator, I would REQUIRE they be an expert
with the System. ESPECIALLY in an enterprise. Mission critical?
And you dont have experts administering the system? To quote Mr. T:
"I pity da fool!"
Myth: Linux can replace Windows on the desktop.
Reality: Linux is replacing Windows as the server.
Point - A user would end up with a system that has fewer applications,
is more complex to use and manage, and is less intuitive.
Rebuttal - Okay, I'm going to institute a new rule. If you're going to
BLATANTLY FUD, then "Do your homework". There are LOTS of applications
and programs and other such available for Linux. http://freshmeat.net.
http://www.linuxberg.com. Plus if you dig just a little (and not much
mind you), you'll find hundreds of applications. And guess what,
THEY WORK.
Point - Linux does not support important ease-of-use technologies such as
Plug and Play, USB, and Power Management.
Rebuttal - Not to the extent that Windows supports them. However, since
Microsoft had a hand in the development of these technologies so they
would ONLY work on Windows, there could be a correlation...
Linux supports MANY MANY MANY plug and play devices. Wow, lots. At
least, the ones that are any good. Linux doesn't support WinModems.
Well, thats because they're *WIN*Modems, not LinModems
USB? Well, up until recent history there weren't a whole lot of USB
devices being MADE. Only in the last year or so, even though the
promise of USB was made long ago (in the Computer Industry). Now as
more USB hardware is available, Linux is starting to support USB
better. I do not know anything about where the support is headed, what
devices are even supported, etc, but I do know it's there.
Power Management? Ok. Yeah. No Power Management. Thats why there's
a whole section with 15 or so items in the Kernel configuration. Yeah.
Go Microsoft.
Point - The complexity of the Linux operating system and cumbersome nature
of existing GUI's would make retraining end-users a huge undertaking...
Rebuttal - This is about the most valid (albeit limited at that) statement
they make in the whole article. It isn't the complexity of the
operating system though. The operating system (in the UNIX world) does
not have bearing here. The OS doesn't control what left mouse click
and Control-Alt-F4 do. The fault lies in INCONSISTANT (!!) user
interfaces. Windows isn't consistent all the time everywhere, however,
it does provide a lot of consistency in places such as Menus and short
cuts. A user in the Windows world can almost be garunteed that
Control-C will copy and Control-V will paste. That the File menu is
next to the Edit menu. That pressing F1 will get (semi weak in my
opinion) a Help Dialog. Sure, KDE and GNOME are trying to fix this,
but they use different conventions. And not everyone uses KDE or
GNOME. They're bloated. Yup, I said that. It costs less system
resources to ignore a desktop environment and just use a slick
window manager (Be it blackbox, icewm, window maker, or twm). But what
consistency that is present in the Desktop environments is lost and
you're in a worse problem. Blah blah blah, I could go on this for
quite some rambling, but I won't. This topic has been beaten to death
on every forum newsgroup mailing list and IRC channel known to the
Linux community.
Summary -
They sure like those sweeping generalizations... "not suitable for
mainstream usage by business or home users" in particular. How many "home
users" are running linux now? Millions? Must not be suitable to them. Or
something. Not suitable for use by business? Better shut down all those ISPs
running Linux based Web/Mail/DNS/News servers. Better tell IBM, Hewlett
Packard, Compaq and all the rest to give up on the Linux idea.
They say that Linux "clearly has a long way to go to be competitive with
Windows NT 4.0". If Linux isn't competitive with Windows NT 4.0 now, then
WHY ARE THEY WRITING ALL THIS FUD?!
Sorry. I had to.
This article is written by me, Joshua Timberman. I am in no way connected to
Microsoft, IBM, or any other company mentioned in this article. Nor do I
closely follow the Linux kernel development. I am a Linux user at home and
work. Yes this is a disclaimer. Perhaps I should...
#include
Of course, I didn't do that at the beginning. But that's Okay. Nobody's
perfect, not even me
I refuse to run NT on my network, and my servers have uptimes exceeding 100 days, and in a few cases, 180 days. Our test NT servers never made it past 7 days. You just proved their myth correct - that is a perfest example of an anecdotal story.
True... but then anything that I saw on that site relating to uptimes (see our customers) is anecdotal as well... I honestly don't think you can get a benchmarked uptime...
i.e. their saying that Boeing, Barnes & Noble, etc... they get huge uptimes on NT... isn't that anecdotal? Same as when I say my mail/news/web/LDAP/db server is sitting at 230 days right now?
I love to read these comments from all of you very unprofessional, very bitter unix people. why are you soo bitter people?? Maybe because you are all second class?????? Its real tough to fight a one sided debate, on this extremely biased excuse for a website. LOL
--
hax0rg0d!!!! I AM 37337!!! GIVE ME WAREZ!!!!
... blah blah linux bites, nt's sweet... so, ignoring all their clever (and selective) use of facts (which may or may not have basis in truth), i try and do work on nt on a regular basis, and i get frustrated by it. it may have a built in gui, but it isnt consistent. it may have all these technologies such as 16exabyte files, but still slows down and the mouse intermittently freezes when i copy files from a floppy. it still requires a reboot cos i install a damn driver or piece of simple software. it still makes my fast pc run as slow as a pig swimming thru syrup at times. the only good thing i can find to say about it is that its more reliable than win9x. but what i hate most is the may ms always resort to such childish, petty, infantile tactics. rather than dealing with their own issues and improving their own product they find it necessary to resort to throwing up a smokescreen and shouting "hey, the competition is crap". if nt was so great they wouldnt need to, it would maintain its position by virtue of quality alone. obviously it cant so they stoop to mudslinging. very puerile and cowardly.
I read through the white paper linked to from the main FUD page. In it, they claim that NT has a 37% lower TCO. However, buried within was this little marvel:
So, in short, your cost is 37% lower, but your capability is reduced roughly by 50%. One wonders exactly how this is a win for MS...
-- Cerebus
Actually, I have had a use for it. Rather frustrating, actually, I should have partitioned my 27 gigger with a different FS. There are only 8 local loopback devices and I can't find a way to make more. So, all that I can encrypt using local loopback encryption (I use blowfish) is 16 gigs (8 2 gig files, each actually an ext2 filesystem).
;)
2 gigs really is too small in modern day systems. I want ext3, dernit
- Rei
Gee, it's interesting that MS forgot to mention that Windows NT 4 needs the soon to be released Service Pack 6 to fix four remaining Y2K problems.
9 933447PM
NT Stung Again by Y2K Bug, Joseph McKendrick
Wednesday, September 22, 1999
Microsoft considered Service Pack 5 (SP5), released at the end of May, to be the final word in Year 2000 fixes for Windows NT 4.0. Despite Redmond's attempt to exterminate the problem, Y2K bugs keep popping up. The latest glitch prompted the company to issue yet another Y2K patch for installation over SP4 and SP5. The patch has been folded into SP6, which has been in beta testing since July and is scheduled for release in October. "All versions of Windows NT will be maintained compliant with SP4," the last major feature upgrade, a Microsoft spokesperson says. The problems addressed with this latest patch include a century date issue with the Net User command line security utility for setting log-in times. As a result, network administrators may have difficulty setting user log-in times after the new year. A glitch in the News Network Transfer Protocol (NNTP) server incorrectly converts two-digit years coming in from messaging clients. In addition, SP5 does not change the real-time clock date setting in systems not in a daylight-saving time zone, or those with multiprocessor kernels. A separate compliance issue was discovered in Outlook Express, which must be addressed with a patch for Internet Explorer 4.0.
... (click for more)
http://www.entmag.com/displayarticle.asp?ID=923
WTF? Why the hell would I want to have servers reboot themselves? I only ever reboot a server if it crashes or something...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Geez! Did you forget? or are people not paying attention. Check out ZD magazines a bit more closely! Hint: every other page is a M$ ad! no.... I'm not joking. MS = Micro$oft SUCKS
... on their own discussions groups. M$ doesn't care what we have to say. Right now they are posting comments in pro M$ discussion groups and using some of their own people to feed these discussions on how Linux's coffin was finally nailed for good. Surely, a whole bunch are gloating on how it was about time that M$ set the record "strait" with Linux pretentions at being a serious OS. That's why they made a site like that, to help feed discussion about M$ greatness and Linux worthlessness. Does it work? Absolutely, even here, Linux proponents are willing to admit some of Linux shortcomming over NT. You can be sure that M$ is monitoring such discussions and will quote to their advantage and out of context many of the comments found here. Well, I wasted enough time with this, got to go back installing McAfee AV on my M$ platforms before they get wiped out again. Ps. I'm not a coward, I just don't want to bather to define an account.
Groups are half-baked ACLs that only root can maintain. As an ordinary user, being able to run untrusted code by temporarily dropping most of my capabilities (a la Java, but they might never run out of bytecode verifier exploits) would be Really Cool, but I don't see how to add that without starting over and winding up reimplementing NT.
They tried to change it over to NT, but it couldn't take the load.
such an insightful look at the issue at hand! I have to agree with you on all counts, and admit that I am guilty of being a whiner regarding this whole thing. I think what happened was I read most of the FUD article from MS while my caffeine rush was kicking in ;). If we were to out-FUD the FUD folks from Microsoft as you suggest, we would indeed need to form a group of some kind...or at the very least start getting our own independent benchmarks together. I like the idea you pointed out regarding a "How many crashes this week?" poll or some kind of survey. Again, I must agree that getting our response read in a clear, professional context at a high volume site like wired or yahoo, would get our anti-FUD FUD to the right eyes.
Microsoft wants us to return fire with a flame war, but if we as a community speak up with an articulate response to their obviously ignorant FUD, then many more uninformed users would tend to listen to both sides of the story.
ZeroDvyd
Well, I was proven wrong. Guess MS did try porting hotmail to NT. thanks for all the people who calmy corrected me
treke
Not to reset the whole BO issue, but I don't think it proves much about NT's lack of security. It's just another (admittedly powerful) arbitrary executable. If someone tricks a linux admin into running a binary of their choice it's quite obviously game over there too. My one most-intense hatred of NT is that there's no way to transparently connect to other machines. 3rd party stuff like pcanywhere is horrible. But i do really like that Verdana font...
"Luck is the residue of design" -- Branch Rickey
Eh, crud. What was wrong with me? You're right of course. NTFS hasn't had journalling. I think it does show up in Windows 2000. I'll go stand in the penalty box now. Serves me right for saying something nice about NT. ;-)
--LP
Ha ha ha ha ha... *lol*
:)
That's the funniest thing I've seen in a while.
I bet it took them this long to find the bug (4 years?) because they never got a Windows machine that was that stable before.
This sounds a lot like the jiffies rolling around under linux. However, we knew about that problem, and never let it get that bad in the first place.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
James M Rogers
.06
jrogers@visnetinc.com
With all the recent attention around Linux as an operating system it's important to step back from the hype and look at the reality. First, it's worth noting that
Linux is a UNIX-like operating system. Linux fundamentally relies on 30-year-old operating system technology and architecture. Linux was not designed
from the ground-up to support symmetrical multiprocessing (SMP), graphical user interfaces (GUI), asynchronous I/O, fine-grained security model, and
many other important characteristics of a modern operating system. These architectural limitations mean that as customers look for a platform to cost
effectively deploy scalable, secure, and robust applications, Linux simply cannot deliver on the hype.
The Real Reality:
Linux was written from scratch with modern technology. But we didn't throw out what has worked for the past 30 years just for the sake of newness. Linux
the kernel is very small, elegant and fast. It is easy to port the kernel to new processors. In fact, the first kernel that most new processors run today is
Linux. Linux was written from the ground up to first be reliable, second to be maintainable, third to be extensible. True, Linux was not written to be SMP,
but it was relativitly easy to add SMP to the kernel. Because none of the developers have had 8 way and 16 way processors til the last couple of years,
there has been no way to test SMP to this level. Linux does best in SMP with two processors, because that is what was affordable for the developers.
Interesting to note that none of Microsofts published tests are against a 2 way SMP Linux system. Linux does support asynchronous I/O and has an
extremely fine grained security model based on files and groups. A Graphical User Interface has nothing to do with the Kernel, but Linux has a fine GUI in
the XFree86 server that was written from scratch to be network aware. I am sitting here in front of a 17" inch monitor, a keyboard and a mouse and I have
total access to the 5 Linux boxes that are on my home network I can run multiple X sessions to each box, run applications on each box and have them
appear on my local screen, secured with SSH. The windows graphical interface is simply not network ready.
Myth: Linux performs better than Windows NT
Reality: Windows NT 4.0 Outperforms Linux On Common Customer Workloads
The Linux community claims to have improved performance and scalability in the latest versions of the Linux Kernel (2.2), however it's clear that Linux
remains inferior to the Windows NT® 4.0 operating system.
For File and Print services, according to independent tests conducted by PC Week Labs, the Windows NT 4.0 operating system delivers 52 percent
better performance on a single processor system and 110 percent better performance on a 4-way system than similarly configured single processor
and 4-way Linux/SAMBA systems.
For Web servers, the same PC Week tests showed Windows NT 4.0 with Internet Information Server 4.0 delivers 41 percent better performance on a
single processor system and 125 percent better performance on a 4-way system than Linux and Apache.
For e-commerce workloads using secure sockets (SSL), recent PC Magazine tests showed Windows NT 4.0 with Internet Information Server 4.0
delivers approximately five times the performance provided by Linux and Stronghold.
For transaction-orientated Line of Business applications, Windows NT 4.0 has achieved a result of 40,368 tpmC at a cost of $18.46 per transaction
on a Compaq 8-Way Pentium III XEON processor-based system. This industry leading price/performance result from the transaction processing
council clearly shows how Windows NT can deliver world-class performance for heavy duty transaction processing. It's interesting to note that
there is not a single TPC result on any database running on Linux, and therefore Linux has yet to demonstrate their capabilities as a database
server.
Linux performance and scalability is architecturally limited in the 2.2 Kernel. Linux only supports 2 gigabytes (GB) of RAM on the x86 architecture,1
compared to 4 GB for Windows NT 4.0. The largest file size Linux supports is 2 GB versus 16 terabytes (TB) for Windows NT 4.0. The Linux SWAP
file is limited to 128 MB RAM. In addition, Linux does not support many of the modern operating system features that Windows NT 4.0 has pioneered
such as asynchronous I/O, completion ports, and fine-grained kernel locks. These architecture constraints limit the ability of Linux to scale well
past two processors.
The Linux community continues to promise major SMP and performance improvements. They have been promising these since the development of
the 2.0 Kernel in 1996. Delivering a scalable system is a complex task and it's not clear that the Linux community can solve these issues easily or
quickly. As D. H. Brown Associates noted in a recent technical report,2 the Linux 2.2 Kernel remains in the early stages of providing a tuned SMP
kernel.
The Real Reality: Linux performs great on hardware that is too small to even run NT.
For many small to medium businesses, Linux can be deployed as a fax, web, file, and print server on antiquated Pentium 100 computers, saving an old
computer from the trash heap and saving both the environment and your business dollars.
For file and print services in day to day usage, you cannot tell if an NT box or a Linux box is your server. Most servers do not operate anywhere
near their peak performance except for a few seconds a day.
Most web data is live data that uses CGI scripts to run them. How fast is Linux and NT when they are both running the same Perl scripts?
Benchmarks prove nothing unless both systems are setup by experts who don't know what benchmark that they are going to be running against. It
is easy to make one system look better and the other system look worse. Again, at normal loads, will the users know what web server is serving
pages? Because on my small network my apache SSL seems to work great.
Gee, how many people are on the transaction processiong council and how much does it cost to sign up?
Aready a patch in 2.3.x for this 2GB memory limitation and if you want a workaround today all you have to do is run a PPC or DEC Alpha processor
instead of the more limited x86 archetecture. The Linux filesystem does support larger files than 2GB but your applications need to use special
libraries to access above 2GB. Or you could just use a raw partion anyway you want. Sorry, wrong again, we can use 2GB swap partitions and
even when we were limited to 128MB swap we could run 16 of these for a total of 2GB of swap space. And Linux does have asynchronous I/O
and fine-grained kernel locks. Linux also has real time support at the kernel level, does NT? Linux also supports at least a dozen different file
systems.
Linux has never been an enterprise system. We have decided to make it an enterprise system just a couple of years ago and we are already on a
par with NT on almost every level. Expect good 8 way SMP support by Christmas. Expect 16 way by the middle of next year and 32 way by the
end of next year.
Myth: Linux is more reliable than Windows NT
Reality: Linux Needs Real World Proof Points Rather than Anecdotal Stories
The Linux community likes to talk about Linux as a stable and reliable operating system, yet there is no real world data or metrics and very limited customer
evidence to back up these claims.
Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 has been proven in demanding customer environments to be a reliable operating system. Customers such as Barnes and
Noble, The Boeing Company, Chicago Stock Exchange, Dell Computer, First Union Capital Markets, Nasdaq and many others run mission critical
applications on Windows NT 4.0.
Linux lacks a commercial quality Journaling File System. This means that in the event of a system failure, such as a power outage, data loss or
corruption is possible. In any event, the system must check the integrity of the file system during system restart, a process that will likely consume
an extended amount of time, especially on large volumes and may require manual intervention to reconstruct the file system.
There are no commercially proven clustering technologies to provide High Availability for Linux. The Linux community may point to numerous
projects and small companies that are aiming to deliver HA functionality. D. H. Brown recently noted that these offerings remain immature and
largely unproven in the demanding business world.
There are no OEMs that provide uptime guarantees for Linux, unlike Windows NT where Compaq, Data General, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Unisys
provide 99.9 percent system-level uptime guarantees for Windows NT-based servers.
The Real Reality: How do you judge reliability except with uptimes?
I have never had a windows system stay up for longer than a month. With Linux I regularly go 6 months between power failures. A freshly installed
Windows 98 box crashes daily, even when no user programs are running on the system. Friends crash daily with Windows NT as their workstation,
never crash under Linux, even when running twice the number of windows open as they ran under NT.
Linux has been proven in demanding customer environments to be a reliable operating system. Customers such as The Boing Company, University
of Washington Medical Center, Slashdot, and Cisco run mission critical applications on Linux.
The Linux ext2 file system is good for hard drives of up to 20 GB. Multiple harddrives can be checked in parallel. I have never had a Linux
system failure. I have never had a Linux system not come back up due to a power failure. The file that I was editing was still in a temp file and I
continued from where I left off.
First off, Linux itself was written to be highly available. Linux has ran as a web and file server for over a year without a single reboot. Linux just
never You can even write and add new drivers to the kernel on the fly without having to reboot the machine. You can change the IP numbers on a
Linux box, on the fly without a reboot. Companies like IBM will provide this service if customers really want it. Secondly for web servers you can
currectly get boxes called "load balancers" that will invisibly redirect web requests to servers that are up.
You don't need to pay extra for something that comes for free. Linux is written from scratch to be reliable. These companies support Linux on a Per
Incident fee schedual. Interesting that they don't feel the need to quarantee Linux uptimes.
Myth: Linux is Free
Reality: Free Operating System Does Not Mean Low Total Cost of Ownership
The Linux community will talk about the free or low-cost nature of Linux. It's important to understand that licensing cost is only a small part of the overall
decision-making process for customers.
The cost of the operating system is only a small percentage of the overall total cost of ownership (TCO). In general Windows NT has proven to have
a lower cost of ownership than UNIX. Previous studies have shown that Windows NT has 37 percent lower TCO than UNIX. There is no reason to
believe that Linux is significantly different than other versions of UNIX when it comes to TCO.
The very definition of Linux as an Open Software effort means that commercial companies like Red Hat will make money by charging for services.
Therefore, commercial support services for Linux will be fee-based and will likely be priced at a premium. These costs have to be factored into the
total cost model.
Linux is a UNIX-like operating system and is therefore complex to configure and manage. Existing UNIX users may find the transition to Linux easier
but administrators for existing Windows®-based or Novell environments will find it more difficult to handle the complexity of Linux. This re-training
will add significant costs to Linux deployments.
Linux is a higher risk option than Windows NT. For example how many certified engineers are there for Linux? How easy is it to find skilled
development and support people for Linux? Who performs end-to-end testing for Linux-based solutions? These factors and more need to be taken
into account when choosing a platform for your business.
The Real Reality: Linux is free as in free speech, not free as in free beer.
Linux is free because you have total access to the source code and are allowed to change it how you like, or hire someone to change it how you like.
How much is not having being tied to a single vendor worth to you? Can you image how much a car would cost if there was only one car company and
they were the only ones that had the keys to your car hood?
But for those who must see just the hardware cost differences it is as follows:
Table 1: Total Cost of Ownership (per year, per organization)
Annualized cost
Windows NT Server/ Compaq
Linux / VA Linux
% Difference
Initial systems purchase price
367,250
367,250
0%
Initial systems installation, integration, and training
13,300
5,000
-266%
System and network upgrades
10,310
100
-103,100%
Systems and network management labor costs
439,520
100,000
-439%
Applications development/maintenance labor costs
392,870
100,000
-392%
Out-of-pocket annual cost of technical support/upgrades
25,040
100
-250,400%
Total annual cost of ownership
1,248,290
572,450
-218%
TCO per server
42,130
19,320
-218%
TCO per user
1,350
619
-218%
And of course a Linux CDROM is only $2.00 and upgrades all installed software with only a single system reboot. So the software cost comparison is
almost insane.
Table 2: Software Costs (average per organization)
Windows NT Server/ Compaq
Linux / VA Linux
% Difference
Server Price
Server operating system
5,430
2
270,000%
Number of servers
30
30
0%
Total server price
162900
2
-8,145,000%
Value-added software (free with linux, and installs in initial install, but what the hey, I said a dollar to give some sort of basis in reality,
infinity doesn't make any sense)
Databases
17,020
1
-1,702,000%
Development tools
10,590
1
-1,059,000%
Applications
13,600
1
-1,360,000%
Utilities
8,300
1
-830,000%
Total value-added software
49,510
1
-4,951,000%
Total initial purchase price
212,410
2 (everything came on the single $2 CDROM)
%
Total initial price/server
7,080
-11,800,500%
Using the same numbers as NT and then calculating what it would cost for Linux I found that the Total cost of ownership for the hardware installation
and setup is just under half what NT costs and the cost of the software is 11,800,500% higher for the NT software than the Linux software. This
frees $800,000 from your budget to configure Linux however you want it, or you can just take Linux as is and save the $800,000.
Notice that Microsoft didn't compare their consultants fees with UNIX consultant fees. Because it is much easier for an expert to configure and
program under Linux than under Microsoft you will find that projects cost half as much as comparable programs written for you by Certified Microsoft
Engineers. Linux is easier to program because all the source code is available to read and allows you to fix problems even at the OS level easily
and rapidly.
Linux itself comes configured out of the box to run. Simply by following the included How to Guides and reading the included documentation
administering and configuring Linux is easy and rapidly picked up.
There are no certified engineers for Linux. Vendor certificates are just a way for a vendor to make money. As long as you can pay your fee and
can spit out memorized test answers you can become a certified engineer. But Anybody who can program in C can develop on a Linux system.
Because students going to college can afford a complete Linux development system you will find many young men and women ready to get their
first jobs as low paid Linux developers. More experienced UNIX people can be hired at a higher cost. You can hire freelance developers off the
internet and pay them as they complete project milestones.
Myth: Linux is more secure than Windows NT
Reality: Linux Security Model Is Weak
All systems are vulnerable to security issues, however it's important to note that Linux uses the same security model as the original UNIX implementations-
a model that was not designed from the ground up to be secure.
Linux only provides access controls for files and directories. In contrast, every object in Windows NT, from files to operating system data structures,
has an access control list and its use can be regulated as appropriate.
Linux security is all-or-nothing. Administrators cannot delegate administrative privileges: a user who needs any administrative capability must be
made a full administrator, which compromises best security practices. In contrast, Windows NT allows an administrator to delegate privileges at an
exceptionally fine-grained level.
Linux has not supported key security accreditation standards. Every member of the Windows NT family since Windows NT 3.5 has been evaluated
at either a C2 level under the U.S. Government's evaluation process or at a C2-equivalent level under the British Government's ITSEC process. In
contrast, no Linux products are listed on the U.S. Government's evaluated product list.
Linux system administrators must spend huge amounts of time understanding the latest Linux bugs and determining what to do about them. This is
made complex due to the fact that there isn't a central location for security issues to be reported and fixed. In contrast Microsoft provides a single
security repository for notification and fixes of security related issues.
Configuring Linux security requires an administrator to be an expert in the intricacies of the operating system and how components interact.
Misconfigure any part of the operating system and the system could be vulnerable to attack. Windows NT security is easy to set up and administer
with tools such as the Security Configuration Editor.
The Real Reality: The UNIX security model is strong.
UNIX was designed from the ground up to be secure. Processes are seperated from each other, a running process cannot kill other processes and it
cannot bring down the box. Users are isolated from each other. Every user has a home directory for their configuration and user files. Users cannot
overwrite systems files and since there is no registry it cannot become corrupted.
UNIX is based on the model that everything in the system is a file. So file control will control access to every device in the system. Every
hardware device can have its own group and only those authorized to use that device can do so. Since processes can only access their own data
structures and can only call operating system functions through well documented system calls there is no need for these access control lists.
The ability to run any command under Linux can be given in a case by case basis. Sudo is a utility that allows non root users to run commands
that usually only root runs. Any privlige can be deligated and all command usage is fully logged.
The C2 security only applies to an NT box that has no modem and no network card. Once you install a model or a network card NT loses its C2
security classification. Linux is by far more secure than Linux as a recent test proved. A fully configured NT box with hundreds of hours of
Microsoft engineer installing patches, and hotfixes, doing security audits on all installed scripts, and configuring the NT box to be secure versus an
out of the box Linux install with no patches and unsecure CGI software installed and it still took a week for someone to break into the Linux box. An
unpatched install of NT would have been broken into within a couple of minutes.
As a Linux administrator I only need to goto http://redhat.com/support to see if there are any problems today to take care of, takes all of a couple of
minutes. And this checks all the software on my system. Not just the operating system. And none of these patches add features that I don't want or
need, they only fix a bug. If I want I can down load the patches to a new CDROM image and burn a new CD with all the patches in place.
Linux security means turning off the services that you don't want, and installing the patches for the rest. Normally about ten patches will do and as I
said, you can modify an installation CDROM to install exactly what you want installed, with the patches already in place. Actually, very few of the
components of a Linux system interact, Linux is a modular system and that is what makes Linux so easy to understand.
Myth: Linux can replace Windows on the desktop
Reality: Linux Makes No Sense at the Desktop
Linux as a desktop operating system makes no sense. A user would end up with a system that has fewer applications, is more complex to use and manage,
and is less intuitive.
Linux does not provide support for the broad range of hardware in use today; Windows NT 4.0 currently supports over 39,000 systems and devices
on the Hardware Compatibility List. Linux does not support important ease-of-use technologies such as Plug and Play, USB, and Power
Management
The complexity of the Linux operating system and cumbersome nature of the existing GUI's would make retraining end-users a huge undertaking
and would add significant cost
Linux application support is very limited, meaning that customers end up having to build their own horizontal and vertical applications. A recent
report from Forrester Research highlighted the fact that today 93 percent of enterprise ISVs develop applications for Windows NT, while only 13
percent develop for Linux.3
The Real Reality: Linux Makes Perfect Sense for the Desktop.
Linux is great on the desktop. A user ends up with a system that has just as many high quality applications, it is easier to maintain and much more
powerful. The GUI is there to hold your hand for as long as you want, but the power of a complete develpment enviroment is ready when you are to make
you a much more productive and powerful user.
Linux may not support every peice of hardware, but neither does Windows NT. Linux does support plug and play devices, but it is a manual
configuration. USB on a PPC iMac running Linux is supported just fine. And x86 USB support is in 2.4 which will be out shortly. Honestly,
however, how many people own USB products yet? The Power managment under Linux works very well indeed. My Toshiba Satellite 4010CDS
works perfectly with power managment.
The end-users will never see the operating system behind the GUI's and it is easy to pulldown list of applications that the user can just point and
click. The only thing that the user will have to get used to is that you only have to single click to run an application now. And won't it be nice to
never have to reinstall an OS because that OS crashed and ate it's registry? If you set Linux up to run an Xserver on every desktop that allows the
users to connect to a central X server then all the users will have all their settings and applications no matter what computer they use to log in to
the system. Then, because users are only lightly loading their computers using them as X-terminals, you can also set up a beowulf cluster back to
their desktops to run the companies computer intensive applications with the idle on their computers.
Linux has every business and home application available through either Staroffice or KDE. These applications are totally usable now, and if there
are features that you really need, take some small fraction of that $800,000 that you saved by using Linux and pay some young programmer that
needs the experience to add the features that you need. And give back to the community that gave so much to you. Actually, anyone who can
program in C/C++ can pickup Linux programming in a very short time.
Summary
The Linux operating system is not suitable for mainstream usage by business or home users. Today with Windows NT 4.0, customers can be confident in
delivering applications that are scalable, secure, and reliable--yet cost effective to deploy and manage. Linux clearly has a long way to go to be
competitive with Windows NT 4.0. With the release of the Windows 2000 operating system, Microsoft extends the technical superiority of the platform even
further ensuring that customers can deliver the next generation applications to solve their business challenges.
The Real Summary
The Linux operating system is ready for mainstream usage by the business or home user. Today with Linux, customers can be confident in delivering
applications that are scalable, secure, reliable, network ready -- yet cost effective to deploy and manage. Windows NT clearly has a long way to go
before it can be competetive with an operating system as cost effective and feature packed as Linux. With the release of Linux 2.4, we the people extend
the technical superiority of the platform even further, ensuring that customers can deliver the next generation applications to solve their home and business
challenges.
More information
Customer Testimonials
See how these leading companies and organizations have deployed Windows NT Server 4.0:
Nasdaq
Barnes & Noble
Dell Computer Corp
The Boeing Company
First Union
Chicago Stock Exchange
Performance Data See Industry Benchmarks Show Windows NT Server 4.0 Outperforms Linux
Footnotes
1. Siemens & SuSE announced a patch in September 1999 to extend to 4 GB, although this is not part of the 2.2 Kernel or major distributions.
2. Linux: How Good Is It? D. H. Brown Associates Inc. April 1999
3. Forrester Research, Software Vendors Crown Server OS Kings, Aug. 31, 1999
As far as the government approving it, isn't thier new computer crime center running on a Beowulf? Also, Bob Morris, Sr. who is or was the head of the computer crime division of the NSA helped write UNIX.
Well, with that in mind, I'm going to pay off Sun with a ton of money for the right to call myself Java. However, does that make me a programming language? Clearly not.
I'm talking about technical details, not whether or not some fscking idiot wants to get permission from a trademark owner to call something something it's not. And as I clearly mentioned before, I never said Linux was certified anything!
Get a clue, people.
~ Kish
Actually, there's a mis-print... there shouldn't be a comma (,) after the "I/O". Asynchronous I/O (read: serial ports) existed long before Bill Gates was born. Async I/O completion ports are an NT (or win32s) invention -- if MS is such a wonderous storehouse of innovation, why did they remove this from windows 95 when it was already available to win3.1 via win32s? (I've never understood that.)
:-))
Anyway, UNIX (at least linux specifically) you can have a "synchronous write". It's a flag during the open() call to force all buffering to be pass-thru. The write() will not return until the data is commited to the device. There's also the fsync() family of calls to force any queued buffer writes to be commited to disk. (This is much like a database transaction with the notable exception that there is really no way to roll back the write -- heh, unwrite()
Trus a company that said "We will make an great OS for I386,
Sparc, Power PC and Alpha.".
Now, some years later look at the result: all support for Sparc and Power PC has been dropped long ago. The Alpha processor was the last one to loose support.
Would you trust your critical systems and applications on such a company?
Would you belive such a company to support new 64-bit processors?
What if they drop support for your platform? You are left in the cold. There in _NO_ source code available so you can't do your own maintenance.
Clearly no one going for long time stability would even think about using software of a company with such a history...
Ech Ni!
This won't matter much, but think about it. Its where these componanies, from software to hardware, make a lot of their money. Plus, I work for MS support, 2 accounts now, and we have no say how things get done. And I like both OS's, and know the flaws of Windows, but I can't afford the money to get another harddrive. I want Linux, Be3O, and Millenium when they come out.
Thought some of you might find some humour in this
http://www.merlinsoftech.com/animationJava.html
Use Lynx, as I did.
Nice to see a response that was ridden with zealotry. But one correction:
:-), since that was my intent. Thank you. Although I do have to say that many of the other posts have been very low on zealotry; I just wanted to cover some of the things they hadn't.
I'll assume you meant "wasn't"
You're also right about Workstation being the only NT limited to 2GB. Thanks for the correction.
-Billy
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the win32 API a key part of the internal architecture?
OK, I'll correct you, the win32 api is *not* a key part of the internal acitecture of NT, although it is in 95/98. don't forget the win32 API also has a linux implementation, WINE. does this make it a version of windows?
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Microsoft is like a bowl o' bad spaghetti. Ya know it won't kill ya, but it sure as hell makes ya sick. Seems to me that these claims by Microsoft are out of fear. Linux is the ideal system for people who just wanna fool around, business, and many other types of users. Any windows product I, or anyone I've known, is extremely shakey. NT servers are not what Microsoft says they are (representing newspaper as the meatballs). They are unstable, unreliable, and uneconomical. I don't want to bring Windows 2000 into this, cause I dunno much about it yet, but I'll say it was not at all stable in its beta testing phase. Another ancient myth: Linux is not user friendly. Not true anymore. RedHat 6.0 has proven this theory wrong. A GUI almost undistinguishable from Windows. For all you Microsoft lovers, sorry if I've offended you, but it's my opinion. Microsoft has forgotten the meatballs, and replaced them with newspaper. The sauce is just crappy and tastes like doggy doo (reliability). Linux is your premium cuisine choice. 8-) I'm hungry. I'm gonna go get some spaghetti so this analogy will end. -Hex
part of the reason ms tech support is so damned awful is that a good number of them are straight drunk. i've got a friend who works part-time at ms, he cues up hold music (if it sucks, blame him).. the employee mini-fridges are kept stock with not only pop, but quite a bit of beer, too, and it doesn't go unconsumed. so keep that in mind next time you have to call them.
ROTFLMAO 'Been an NT workstation user for years, I've been wondering ever since, why my machine with 192 ram performs better when I enable a large swap file... Finally I know :-D Manuel
A centeralized linux PR dept? Great idea, but what's wrong with fighting fire with fire? "Windows Crashes!" "Your work will be lost!" "Your Machine is not safe!" We have a much deeper well of FUD to draw from, we just have to make it known!
Where are my GPFs? I WANT MY GPFS!!
Thanks!
"Go Forth Ye Lemmings and Propagate"
Thanks!
"Go Forth Ye Lemmings and Propagate"
If your application needs a single file that big then odds on it's broken by design in the first place
Bullshit. From video capture to my Monte-Carlo n-tuples - why should I split it?
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
I wonder why people have been using it for over 30 years?
Just to clarify:
The C2 rating of NT was without the network connected.
The E3 rating was with the network connected.
Different security requirements. Realistically, no business I know has C2 or E3 requirements and the network side for C2 must be sniff-proof. This really means that the C2/E3 ratings mean that NT is securable and nothing more. We knew that anyway.
I've had no problems with BSOD on NT, but that may be because I work with it every day and must have learned how it likes to be treated?
Agree with your comments about 'anecdotal' stories.
John Wiltshire
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Who was the lucky guy to win the server the M$ site is running on? I didn't even knew their site was also part of the NT versus Linux contest.. For all you guys who believed this was real, common, just read the comments on Slashdot, not even Microsoft employees are be *that* stupid.
I've used every flavor of Windows from 3.0 through NT and they all crash the same. I've gotten more blue screens than I can count. And viruses... it seems like their is no way to avoid them with any M$ product. With Linux, however, I haven't had a system crash in THREE YEARS and I actually have some viri stored on my drive, just for the hell of it.
With Linux I can cut the fat from my kernel and recompile it for my proccesor, I've never had a faster OS, Windows 95 on the other hand required me to wipe the drive and reinstall everything every three months or so, just to keep the system working at a decent speed.
Linux isn't for everyone, yet, but anyone who has kept up with some of the recent releases such as SuSE or Mandrake can see that Linux is rapidly becoming easier to install and use. Given a couple more years, Linux will have M$ on it's knees.
I don't like M$'s lies any more than the rest of you, but I think we need to keep in mind that if you don't counter the FUD with something (and something very public and noticeable), then the public isn't going to "find out exactly how full of it they are."
y -mine.
You have a point there, but, as you hinted at, and as we all know, writing a piece to post on the site of your distro to point out the advantages of Linux (over M$) is going to be a very sensitive subject, because you're not going to want to get into the same dung hole they're in and start your own FUD page. The last thing the public needs is two [or more] companies going at it tooth-and-nail, or even spouting back and forth about whose-product-is-better-and-why-and-you-should-bu
I think that it's not such a bad idea, to keep Linux in the light, but I think that if it is to be done, whoever does it should probably be a big, heterogenous group of Linux-dudes who spend as much time researching the specific differences as they do tweaking their wording.
My thought of the day.. =)
Insert mind here.
While hardly an expert about the benchmarks and certifications listed
(though I have dealt a bit wit tpmC before), I know
the steps needed to aquire these certified statments almost invariably cost what,
from an average citizen's perspective, is a large sum of money.
Demeaning not-for-profit groups for failure to spend time on a million dollars worth of certification strikes me as a very a low blow.
(btw, while the acl statement was inaccurate, many times I yearn for Linux to have more elegant access schemes)
Well, I may be mistaken, but did MS ever write such stuff about CP/M, or OS/2, or whatever? This piece is beneath comment (so why am I commenting on it? I'll leave that question to the philosophers). But really, this is sad in a way. MS was a giant of its time; whatever your feelings about win9x or NT, there is something vaguely distasteful about being in on the death throes. Avert your gaze, people, as the "market leader", which once could stamp all over the smaller, whimpier dionsaurs is reduced to printing drivel like this on its own home page (does this mean it can no longer bribe^H^H^H^H^Hfund "independent" organisations to do the dirty work?) Maybe it's just me, but this has the stink of desperation about it. Move along now, folks, ain't nothing to see here.
Many of their references are to magazines, unfortunatly I could probably find another magazine, that posted a story with the exact oposite responce. ... ... Well funny me, but i beleive sudo allows you to delegate different administrative privlages to different accounts. .. 'This [tracking bugs] is made complex due to the fact that there isn't a central location for security issues to be reported and fixed.' I would suggest looking at the homepage of whatever distribution you have. Most of them, RH and Debian i know for sure, have some sort of bug tracking system, and have security updates about any problems found. In the case of redhat they work on fixing those security holes i beleive.
But howabout some of their real points?
They discuss the 2G memory limit, which is actually a limit in the x86 architecture, the 4G is achieved by an ugly hack intel made. You want 4G of memory? use alpha.
They mention that the swap file(partition) is limited to 128M. Now i might just be seeing me, but my swap partition is 200M, and its just one partition
They talk about 'free' operating system does not mean low TCO, when infact the free means the availability of source code to the user
Microsoft says, 'Administrators cannot delegate administrative privileges'
Directly after that, the page says, 'Configuring Linux security requires an administrator to be an expert in the intricacies of the operating system and how components interact.' Now i dont have a chance to work with NT boxen too often, but i have heard far too many stories about NT being the exact same way
Howabout 'Misconfigure any part of the operating system and the system could be vulnerable to attack.' If they mean that you can take advantage of the program, then at most that will get you regular user access, because most distributions dont run too many programs as suid root.
And the last thing i'll notice
There are some good points on that page of microsofts, but there are too many half truths, and misconceptions for me to take anything they have to say seriously.
Like it's been said so far -- a very nice shopping list for our community. Of course it is a marvelous of corporate whoring for the archtitectonically deprived: ie I love the repetitive phrase "from the ground up"... make me think of the article on bloatware we noticed yesterday over at www.shift.com. Only new and bright and right from the shiny-shoed guys will work, of course... everything else is cobwebby. "Only this publicly ridiculed and blatantly sophmoric security model _built_from_the_ground_up will outdo a tried and tested 30 year old, honed, battle-fortress security model."
Oh yeah... but back at my first thought:
1. SMP
2. paging file 1. Where are we at on SMP in people's opinions? And where is a good place to go to get into the thick of this discussion/development?
--> 2. Isn't the 128 M paging limit a feature, not a limit, in Linux? If you need to page that much, you need more RAM anyway.... so I gues that makes me wonder about the RAM limitations...
.o0PackedB0owl0o.
1: Windows NT 4.0 Outperforms Linux On Common Customer Workloads
Yes, we've all seen those mindcraft tests... we all know
2: Linux Needs Real World Proof Points Rather than Anecdotal Stories
OK probably every person who knows a linux user has heard the "System that ran for a year without being rebooted" story, but that's NOT the only evidence of linux's superior reliability. Linux has NEVER frozen on me, except for once or twice when I was messing with the runlevels in my early days... however any windows user knows exactly how often it freezes, and any NT administrator will testify the same for NT.
3: Free Operating System Does Not Mean Low Total Cost of Ownership
What is total cost of ownership? In my entire linux-using career, I have paid a total of $40 towards linux software. I bought RedHat 5.2 back before my cable modem days. Since I started using windows, i've spent at least $1000 on software. Open Source has NO total cost of ownership. It's that simple. All you pay for is the phone bill downloading it.
4: Linux Security Model Is Weak
Two words: Back Orifice
5: Linux Makes No Sense at the Desktop
I have used linux at the desktop happily for about a year now. It's been a fun experience learning it. Now that I know the basics, I can use it daily. There is no lack of good software for linux, only a lack of PAY software.
6: Linux does not provide support for the broad range of hardware in use today.
I have had very few hardware problems that weren't fixable by a download. There would have been no download if the hardware companies had included linux drivers, but that's the breaks.
Well thanks for actually reading my rant, flame away for my inaccuracy, and I hope you enjoyed it. Please moderate me up!
Patrick Barrett
Yebyen@adelphia.net
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
But note that they also say...
Very interesting. I am a long time MS products user. First DOS and then WIN. I have been toying with the idea of playing with LINUX for some time, but did not care to get into something with limited applications available. After reading this page(MS's LINUX Page) I have to assume that MS considers LINUX a threat, therfor LINUX is now worth my time. I am now ready to install on one of my home PCs. I'll be back in few weeks to report on how I am faring. Just for the record I have so far found the Mac to be the easiest to use and the least buggy.
First of all, I have no love for Windows, MS, but I do think that There are a couple valid points in this article, if you look between the piles of FUD. [1] HA clustering needs to be brought to Linux. Maybe the release of SunOS code will give this a little boost. [2] There should be a centralized repository for security updates and such. I don't think this is nessessarily hard to do either... just take a little work. Maybe the guys from l0pht would like this honour :) [3] Security is much harder to achieve under Unix systems than under NT I think. i won't argue as to which is more secure once properly set up, but Unix is a little more work to get there. I do love how MS does not point out the existence of WINE, allowing many windows apps to run under Linux. The supposition of Linux not being a desktop OS is entirely wrong. otherwise I am an idiot for using my gnome/wm desktop so efficiently. :) The anecdotal stories bit confuses me though. Is there some official or recognized manner of validating stability? I would tend to think that simply naming companies which use your solution does not really say ANYTHING non-anecdotal about their product, only that people use it. I do happen to know that the CSE uses a custom cluster solution for NT with like 10+ redundant boxen in order to achieve the same level of reliability as found in 1 Sun E10000 box. Perhaps something should be done to address the measure of system stability? Like a real world stress test in which a system is pushed as hard as it can be, for as long as it can, without failure caused by software (like simulate a 90% load on a webserver, or terminal server)
five fingers make a fist amalgamate and resist
therefore Linux has yet to demonstrate their capabilities as a database server.
They then later state:
Myth: Linux is more reliable than Windows NT
Reality: Linux Needs Real World Proof Points Rather than Anecdotal Stories
I don't know about most people, but I don't need PC Week or Ziff-Davis to tell me Linux is more reliable than Windows NT. I refuse to run NT on my network, and my servers have uptimes exceeding 100 days, and in a few cases, 180 days. Our test NT servers never made it past 7 days.
Then this, which is disinformation (as our ceo calls it):
Linux lacks a commercial quality Journaling File System
What about the fs that SGI is contributing?
And the best comment:
Every member of the Windows NT family since Windows NT 3.5 has been evaluated at either a C2 level under the U.S. Government's evaluation process or at a C2-equivalent level under the British Government's ITSEC process.
ONLY IF YOU DO NOT CONNECT IT TO A NETWORK!
Microsoft is going to try to win the battle in the only forum they can compete with Linux in, the PR forum. The are not very many major Linux promoters, Red Hat probably being the closest to Microsoft that Linux has. Becuase Microsoft cannot out innovate or even out perform, they are resorting to FUD and PR tatics to convince people that Linux is a Bad Thing (tm). Kinda like the Ministry of Peace.
All I know is that my Linux internet gateway server accumulated an uptime of 11 months before a severe thunderstorm finally hung a couple of processes. Our NT corporate server, on the other hand, has caused us nothing but grief. But here's the kicker. The Linux is running on a common, ordinary Gateway p2-266. NT is on a Hewlett-Packard Netserver running 39GB of raid-5. So the NT should be more reliable, right? Hmmm. Maybe NT5/win2k will clean up M$ act, but for me, Linux has proven to be one of the most reliable servers in the house. The only other system as reliable has been our HPUX system running on a multiprocessor superSPARC system. Compare the little '266 to a $250,000 HP system. Pretty good stuff, Linux!
just tried to go to http://www.microsoft .com/ntserver/nts/news/msnw/LinuxMyths.asp in ie5...
HTTP 500 - Internal server error
ROTFLMAO!
I was just on Apple's web site, and according to Apple Technote 1150, the maximum filesize (not volume size) for HFS+ is 2^63 bytes, which is (if I can trust a calculator running under NT on a Pentium III system) about 9 QUINTILLION bytes. I'm not sure if any current version of the Mac OS currently supports a programming interface which will take advantage of 64-bit signed values, but presumably Mac OS X will.
Linux can measure up, but Linux does not have integrated services like BackOffice where they can take advantage of each other and are written by the same company.
Sure we can get Apache working with MySQL and PHP, but what is the Linux version of Microsoft Transaction Server, Microsoft Site Management, MS Visual Source Safe, MS Project, etc. Then how well will these Linux equivelents work with the existing Linux software.
Also can Apache be scaled to use more than one CPU in a SMP system like MS IIS can? If not, then we need to get a better web server software or change Apache. Corps want to run at least four Pentium 2 class CPUs on a web server set for a local Intranet with at least 600 users or more hitting it at once with deep database hits with 12 gigabytes or more in data for the database (this number is average for large law firms or fincial firms that keep track of client transactions).
Microsoft's main money comes from their licensing for client/server technologies.
In order to beat Microsoft, not only do you have to have counter-parts to every MS server/business software out there (aka the whole enchilada) but you also have to have a much better pricing scheme on licensing. With GNU Licensing, MS Licensing is beat. But a company that supports Linux, better make up for it by charging for Tech Support or selling the equivilent of BackOffice etc. for a preium price (but that goes against GNU Licensing).
When I say the whole enchilada, I mean it. Have something like ASP that ASP code can easily be converted to. Have some sort of VBScript (or multiple scripting languages like PerlScript, Javascript, VBScript, and plug-ins for new ones) server side and client side that code written for MS products can easily be converted over to. Have a VB, VC++ type of IDE and compiler than can take VB and VC++ code and convert it. Make it easy for IS departments to migrate to the Linux platform by giving them the tools they need.
Don't be another Sun, Apple, Oracle, etc. and just one a few solutions with hardly any migration (outside of slow emulators that are also buggy) provide for every possible solution that a Corp IS Department needs and a way to convert over from the WINTEL platform without having a hard time and spending a lot of money.
Then and only then will the Microsoft Juggernaught be stopped.
But somehow I doubt the companies will do that. Never have, never will. Until they do, it will be like that Talking Heads song "...same as it ever was... same as it ever was...same as it ever was!"
I worked at Dell for a time. The key part of the tracking system, where it diplays the status of ever dell made computer (for those of you that have dell computers that's what that barcode on the back is for), is done on a series of internal websites. Guess what I saw on the bottom? an apache web server feather!! I wonder what OS they're using???
32 swapfiles is the max, but only one per disk, per my references, (don't run NT myself).
"...unlike Windows NT where Compaq, Data General, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Unisys provide 99.9 percent system-level uptime guarantees for Windows NT-based servers."
Assuming it takes 10 minutes to identify a crashed server, power-cycle it, and wait for it to reboot (this time varies GREATLY different systems), 99.9% availabity would be one crash per week (I did the math). I'm *SURE* they are not counting "planned" down times (You know, you have to reboot now that you made that change), and I am pretty sure they aren't counting hardware or power failures or other things that are quite outside of MS's control.
I don't consider a crash per week acceptable. Sorry.
If I don't hit 99.9% of the other cars on the road when I'm driving, am I a good driver?
I have a client who had a Novell server go over 900 days without reboot (A two-day power failure finally took it down). I think I can say quite certainly _No_ NT server in history has done that. That is the way things are supposed to work. Linux seems a heck of a lot closer to my ideals than NT is.
I can't speak for DG, IBM, or Unisys, but I have seen Compaq's "Guaranteed four hour service" program in action at a couple clients. Never seen a client broke for less than 24 hours with that program, either. I don't trust Compaq's "guarantees" when it comes to servicing their own products, how can they guarantee someone else's software??
Nick.
Im sorry to say, but i agree with most of the comments on there... except for the 'free' part (if you have the resources, any software is free)... They say that NT is better than Linux for home use, and i completely agree with them. Most people, when they buy a new computer (and have no idea what they're doing) would just assume that Windows 98 (or 95) is the only operating system in the world; sort-of like the computer wont work unless it has Windows. Can you imaging someone, who has Never used a computer before, try using Linux?? It's next to impossible. It's hard enough to learn it after one has had a lot of experience with Macs or PCs. Even if it Is more stable; it doesnt help any if the user can't Use it. I mean, it makes sense, right?
I just recently installed Windows NT on my computer (to replace my two-partition Win98/RedHat5.0 OSes), and I must say, I'm very impressed with it.. Maybe it's because I'm so used to Windows.. but anyways, it's basically the standard. Even if people dont like it,
I'm hardly a "Linux is better than NT" kind of guy, but there were a few points MS makes in their document that made me laugh:
Myth: Linux is Free
Reality: Free Operating System Does Not Mean Low Total Cost of Ownership
They claim this, than use (as the example why NT has a lower cost of ownership) a study that compared NT to Solaris running on a Sparc!. When I can run Solaris on a cheap Pentium box, I'll let you know how this comparison works.
Myth: Linux can replace Windows on the desktop
Reality: Linux Makes No Sense at the Desktop
And hasn't Microsoft constantly claimed that NT is not a desktop OS either? Aren't they coming out with an update to Windows 98 for just this reason?
It gets funnier every time I read these. Are you slashdotters sure this post isn't tied to the Monty Python one?
Actually, that was a limitation in the 2.0 kernels. I have several 2.2.x (x=10/12) systems running with 256MB swap partitions.
--- Bigger bits, softer blocks, tighter ASCII.
I just read an article about this last week. If I understand it properly, a C2 certification is only applicable to a specific software, hardware and network configuration.
:)
In the case of MS it was NT 3.51 with all patches running on a Compaq Proliant server (can't remember which one exactly) in a stand-alone environment. This is the ONLY situation in which Microsoft can claim to have C2 certification.
I may be wrong, but I doubt it
-- If it weren't for the voices in my head, I'd go insane from loneliness. -Me, Myself and I
Guess who's website this is from:
This blurb is from Microsoft's web site regarding Windows NT server. That's what I call a premium.
Forget about this site. In fact, we need to put together a compilation of facts about Windows NT server. I'll start:
NT only has the C2 security rating if it is not connected to the network and doesn't have a floppy drive.
Summary:
:) What a way to brush off competition... 'Their's is no good, mine is better.' haha
'The Linux operating system is not suitable for mainstream usage by business or home users.'
Thanks for setting the record straight M$. That pretty much says it all. Keep thinking that
I also liked...
'Linux clearly has a long way to go to be competitive with Windows NT 4.0. With the release of the Windows 2000 operating system, Microsoft extends the technical superiority of the platform even further'
So if we want technical superiority out of Linux, we might have to forgo future 2.x kernel development and skip to Linux 3000. Win2K isn't any better than NT4 and won't be for a LONG time.
Erik
'These are the stories of our lifes. If you say so?'
My Public Key can be found in a fake rock by my front door.
Now we have a ready-to-target task-list. I'm certain there are groups working on some of these issues already, but those that aren't being worked on or haven't had a lot of effort put into them just got a big boost, I'm sure.
I mean, just think how great it will be to see each of these points fall, one by one?
If anything, Micro$oft just infused a lot of Linux developers with a nice burst of energy.
Now let's get to it.
my smug mug is on smugmug
Trying to get the sites hits up before the big IPO, huh?
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Why not write a "Win Myths"-page?
Maybe 'cause it would take much too long to write such a page, m u c h to long
But I will clarify some win myths anyway...
- "Windows is the o/s with the most ease of use"
-> Is someone gonna to write a page comparing the current Windows and NeXTstep? or MacOSX???? (We all know who are the winners)
- 'Linux is a UNIX-like operating system and is therefore complex to configure and manage.'
-> Should someone that isn't able to edit a config file or to play around with the shell or does not understand the system internals set up and administrate a system that should run well and be secure? - No.
- '[...] commercial support services for Linux will be fee-based and will likely be priced at a premium. These costs have to be factored into the total cost model.'
-> You don't even get a windows manual for free when you pay hundrets or thousands for MicroSuck s/w.
- 'Linux system administrators must spend huge amounts of time understanding the latest Linux bugs and determining what to do about them.'
-> The German NTSP5 was destroying the entire system of a friend; even if it was installed directly after a clean NT install!
Et cetera, et cetera...
- root 66
p.s.: Wasn't every non-unix o/s a step back?
-- I love the smell of Blue Screens in the morning.
I read that article (from microsoft) and at first i thought that it was supposed to be humorous. yeah, 30-yr-old technology... ok so i guess cobol is like really early-to-mid-nineties type stuff right mr. gates? lol tell me another one...
I cant microsoft did that - i reccomend people to just flat out read their site, it is very insulting. if anyone wants to get together and make a page with the other side of the "myths" icq me. lol.
I believe that there is an NT cluster at here at NCSA that ranks 147 on the top 500. I could be wrong about the rank, but I have seen the machines myself, and I have seen results of work done with the cluster.
Yeah, i know you're all in shock that osmeone's willing to admit theyv'e got a win box with ie5 on it... but if you up the font size on it so it becomes readable all the text runs into itself. it looks like shit.
Im not sure about anyone else, but I actually use linux as a destop OS. I am a high school student in the US, and I get by fine with linux.
They refer to things like POSIX AIO. Linux' implementation of AIO is new and rather bad (well, the standard is not great as well). AIO can be used to schedule I/O events which helps I/O intensive applications. The HTTP proxy squid is an example for an application which uses this.
Someone please tell them about sudo!
Certainly, but the owner-group-world model of ACLs is not that great, and it's the only one which is available on Linux AFAIK. All major UNIX vendors have extended this scheme with their own proprietary ACLs. This is an area where Linux will play catch up again.
They do however have a valid point on Journaling FS and fine grained kernel locks which are both in development.
Especially journaled fs will be a big win for shops with large storage requirements.
"Regarding 99.9% uptime guarantees - of course people will sell you a 99.9% guarantee on NT. You pay lots of money, and when it doesn't meet the guarantee, you get some money back. I wonder what the terms of those guarantees are? Sure an NT box by itself is pretty stable, but what about when you want it to do actual, useful stuff?"
"99.9 percent system-level uptime guarantees" - they only guarantee that the OS will be running 99.9% of the time. Still better than I'd expect out of NT... Let's take a look at the companies they mention.
Unisys:
"Purchase any Unisys High Availability Server Package, and Unisys guarantees you will experience no more than one unplanned system failure per year. If this commitment is not met, Unisys will issue these credits:
$1,000 credit for a 4-processor single server
$2,000 credit for an 8-processor single server
$5,000 for a 4-processor clustered server
$10,000 for an 8-processor clustered server"
"This specifically excludes other causes of
failures including, but not limited to, site disasters, operator errors, or failures of applications, operating systems, or networks."
Pretty nice. Of Compaq, Unisys, and IBM, Unisys was the only one I could easily find out about on their website. And of course, that uptime guarantee applies to 30-year-old Operating Systems, as well.
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Come together, en-masse! Let us ban this dangerous chemical Dihydrogen monoxide! Leading component of acid rain, found in all cancerous and precancerous tumors, leading cause of erosion, in its gaseous form causes severe burns. Do you think Dihydrogen monoxide should be banned? Ok, OF COURSE they don't want their customers to run linux. It would dimishing the lining of greenbacks in their pockets. I do this move of theirs is rather stupid, especially if they will be greatly publizing that page. If I was microsoft, I'd be trying to encourage it just enough to make it look like I didn't have a monopoly. Greed is a very very good wool-over-the-eyes and it has blinded them. It blinded them long ago and has been blatently obvious. I say let them do what they want. I say let those poor bastards who will follow, follow them. They will wallow in their stupidity, never, ever realizing it. I just hope that one day their convoluted structre built out of lego's and posicle sticks will be too heavy to support its own weight and collapse. Can't depend upon the government for it, can't depend upon the government for anything. It makes me sad to say that it all boils down to money.
- "The Linux SWAP file is limited to 128 MB RAM."
- "the [Linux] system must check the integrity of the file system during system restart"
- "How easy is it to find skilled development and support people for Linux?"
It's suppertime. Enough of this junk before I lose my appetite.*blink*
I thought this was a good thing.
No comment necessary.
==================================
neophase
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neophase
"With all the recent attention around Linux as an operating system..."
What else could it get attention as? A toaster coil?
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Linux is a UNIX-like operating system. Linux fundamentally relies on 30-year-old operating system technology and architecture.
It is so strange that Microsoft claims Linux is equal to unix and Unix Vendors make linux sound like the comparision isn't even close.
Linux was not designed from the ground-up to support symmetrical multiprocessing (SMP), graphical user interfaces (GUI), asynchronous I/O, fine-grained security model, and many other important characteristics of a modern operating system
No, that's true, but was windows? As I understand win9x was an attempt to copy the easy things from unix ala DOS. Is the NT kernel really that different?
Linux performance and scalability is architecturally limited in the 2.2 Kernel.
Yes, that's true, and we all know that PPC version of Windows is in beta somewhere, right? The hell? Windows really just runs on two platforms, x86 and alpha and I'm sure the "scalability" is limited by platform as well.
Does NT have a journaling file system? It might, when I turn it off "the bad way" it does not complain like win9x. Anyone know?
Linux security is all-or-nothing. Administrators cannot delegate administrative privileges: a user who needs any administrative capability must be made a full administrator, which compromises best security practices.
Yeah, you're right, Linux doesn't have anything like NT's permission system which is a rip off of unix, wait... it does moron. Also, ever heard of sudo? or groups? This one makes no sense.
Linux as a desktop operating system makes no sense. A user would end up with a system that has fewer applications, is more complex to use and manage, and is less intuitive.
Thats how I like it.
You can take your notepad and that damn paper clip guy and the annoying way to change file permissions and the silly non-case sensitive [aA] in [Aa]dmininstator and peddle it to someone else.
Disclaimer, Yesterday my NT machine at work surprised me by displaying the root directory's files and addresses on a horrid blue background. Needless to say I was none to pleased.
The 128 MB swap size issue is no longer true. At least, as of sometime in the 2.1.x series, carrying forward to 2.2.x and 2.3.x (obviously).
I thought groups were for some measure of finer-grained access control too. ACLs would be nice. There are people working on that, though. Oh yea, and everything in Unix is treated as a file. That might have something to do with why security is applied to files. Hee.
Oh yeah, and NT's "journalling" filesystem, isn't. It journals on metadata only. (If you don't know - that makes it completely worthless.)
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Linux is technologically inferior to NT. Some of the standard tools are better (e.g. Bash is much better than CMD, as are most of the cloned UNIX tools), some are worse (e.g. most of the GUI tools are a bit crap).
Despite its technological inferiority, there are a number of reasons why people use Linux over NT:
1. UNIX-like tools (these aren't standard on NT)
2. Hardware requirements (NT requires better hardware)
3. Price (Linux is free)
4. Politics (some people believe in the GNU political viewpoint)
5. Rebellion (some people want to be different, and most people use Windows)
6. Hatred (some people hate and/or are jealous of Microsoft)
At the end of the day, most people will eat a free lunch, regardless of what it is. That doesn't mean they'll choose the same thing when they're paying.
To continue with this metaphor, any rational restaurant owner will try and convince people that his food is better than the muck being given away by the charity next door.
Well, I did view it with IE5 on an NT 4.0 machine, and the fonts are ... tiny and blocky.
This isn't a real limitation. Others have pointed out that the 128Mb ceiling no longer exists; but even if it did, you were always able to spread your swap space out over multiple physical volumes since Linux doesn't care where your swap partitions are relative to anything else. This can make paging highly efficient. Constrast with Windows where, AFAIK, your swap space must reside on the same disk as the OS. Obviously, this disk will already be busy enough.
And the brethren went away edified.
Correction:
Change "I remember back when I first started playing around with NT" to "I remember back when I first started playing around with Linux". My mistake.
http://www.info world.com/cgi-bin/displayNew.pl?/petrel/980713np.h tm /zdnn/content/zdnn/0923/2140612.html
"The National Security Agency (NSA) lists the following configurations as having been evaluated for U.S. C2 certification: Windows NT 3.5 with Service Pack 3 on the Compaq ProLiant 2000 and ProLiant 4000 Pentium systems, and on a DECpc AXP/150. The LSEL diagnostics software was used as part of the configuration. The systems were certified only in a stand-alone configuration (no network). No other version of Windows NT has received C2 certification on any hardware platform (Windows NT 3.51 was C2-certified in October 1996, but only in the United Kingdom)."
http://www.zdnet.com.au
"To date, Microsoft has not obtained C2 certification for any release of NT beyond version 3.5, the company acknowledges."
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3. Promises of SMP .... Well excuse me for not running a superserver but most mid level and small businesses, lets face it they are the ones paying for MS licenses, will not need or require that level of service.
Actually, I'm sitting here in a shop with several SMP machines. All running Linux. In fact, they make awesome Quake machines. Let's see NT do that. (Remember, NT does not have DirectX.)
Finding God in a Dog
Hmm. This page looks an awful lot like a private anti-Linux pro-Microsoft page I ran across recently. I'll see if I can find the URL and post it here.
My responses:
1) RE: Benchmarks. There are three types of lies: lies, damned lies, and benchmarks.
2) WTF is a "proof point"?
3) A journalling file system does _not_ prevent data loss! It simply makes fscks faster (a worthy goal in itself, but much short of the walking-on-water powers normally associated with journalling file systems).
4) I wouldn't brag about the uptime gaurentees provided by HP, at least- they gaurentee that uptime _only_ running a small number of "certified" apps and only one a small number of machines and configurations. And you pay for it. And they don't count scheduled downtime. And 99.9% is sucky- that's like 9 hours of (unscheduled) downtime a year. No wondering clustering is so important to NT.
5) The only TCO study I've ever seen showing that NT is cheaper than Unix (which was included in the MSDN, BTW) among several other humorous assumptions, assumed that anyone using Unix on the desktop also needed to have a Windows box on their desk as well for office apps, email (Unix doesn't have email, don't you know...) etc. In other words, TCO(NT) = TCO(Unix) + TCO(NT). Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!
6) I'll be the first person to agree that ACLs are better than Unix's protection scheme. The only problem with NT's protection scheme is that you can't use it. Little known products like Microsoft Office need all sorts of rights, like the right to write in C:\Windows. Yeah, if you know what you're doing, you can mostly lock down an NT box (leaving only a few gaping security holes absolutely required by the applications), but most people _don't_. Yeah, Unix's protection scheme could be signifigantly improved, but at least it's used.
6) I like the weasling on the C-2 security ratings. Last I heard, NT only got C-2 by disabling the networking. And 4.0 wasn't certified for years- so long the guy who was originally suing them was threatening to take them to court. Oh, and C-2 doesn't mean that much- the only lower rating is D (no security at all, ala DOS). Some versions of Unix can even hit B levels of security (there's a version of HP-UX that does this, IIRC). The only reason Linux hasn't gotten C-2 is simply that no one has walked it through the paperwork (i.e. for the same reason it's not "Unix").
7) Um, NT doesn't support PnP either. My experience has been that Linux has support for more hardware than NT. And is gaining on 98 (especially since 98 seems to be dropping support for older hardware). And hardware support is mainly done by the hardware vendors, not by Microsoft- Linux is starting to pick up support from the hardware vendors. For instance, I'm willing to bet that Linux will be native (and 64-bit, but that's cheating) on Merced before Windows will...
8) Funny, I'm using Linux on the desktop even I type this (at work, even). For my work Windows would be _less_ effective. But I'm willing to agree that I'm a special case. "Easier to administrate" is a tricky concept- administrating one Windows box (or one Mac) is easier than administrating one Linux/Unix box, agreed. But administrating 500 Linux/Unix boxes is signifigantly easier than administrating 500 Windows boxes. Things which make life _more_ difficult in the single-box (like using text-files for configuration) suddenly change to be helps in the 500-box situation (for example, letting you write scripts to automatically reconfigure all those systems).
Once you start ignoring administration costs, I'd pit Gnome/Enlightenment for user friendliness against anything Windows has to offer. Especially considering there is no user interface rule that Microsoft themselves don't violate (for example, the DDK viewers don't even have menu bars, just tool bars).
And the question is not "how many applications are on a given OS", but "are the applications you need on the given OS?"
Swap: 1026024K av, 3188K used, 1022836K free
and yes, that is a gig!
It's kind of interesting that none of the commercial vendors have ponied up the money for a TPC benchmark on Linux. I would think that it's a given that Oracle/Linux beats Oracle/NT and probably MSSQL/NT as well....
Perhaps RedHat (et al) are too busy chasing the "workgroup server" and small business markets to bother with trying to sell database servers.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Hmm, that's interesting... I was just able to connect to the url at "microsoft.com". But wait! Their servers are down?! I don't get it... some terribly informed soul at slashdot said the servers would be down!? Perhaps I'll try again in a few minutes and won't get through...? Perhaps the "tens of thousands" of /.'ers just weren't interested in following this terrifically inflammatory link...?
Yeah right.
Okay. Why not just accept that MS IIS servers are not crap? They have proven time and time again that when configured correctly, they can function very well under load (and in "microsoft.com"'s case, also in very large clusters).
Before you mark this flamebait, please understand that Linux is neato. I use it. I love it. I'm normally ftping the latest and greatest CD Isos of most of the distros the day they're released, same as all of you. I just don't want to support my 250 moron users with it on their desktops! Yuck!
Another example: the Unix file system tree is far more flexible than drive letter mappings. (No matter how much money Microsoft has, they can't add letters to the alphabet.
I've had that problem. My dad went partition crazy when we got our new machine, and with two hard drives, we ran out of drive letters. So he had to repartition to get it right.
Actually, most support calls cost $245 now.
We scared them. I pity Microsoft. I mean they thought they had all computer users brainwashed that bloated, unstable, nearly unusable programs and operating systems were what we wanted. Then this little upstart linux comes along and encourages *gasp* stability, and most horrifing of all, open source.
Don't ask for whom the bell tolls, Microsoft, it tolls for thee.
Finkployd
The point being is that "truth" is relative to depth of overview, knowledge of the details and ability to sort out the sheep from the goats
- not telling the entire story
- sampling over a small domain
- not calibrating experiments to measure the desired variable (compare with double-blind medical tests)
- ad homien attacks, focusing on non-critical issues
- glossing over details, a major sin as the diversity of software means you need to understand where certain packages have comparative advantages, Linux domain is the value for price-concious consumers
- thinking that your solution is the only solution (why aren't we all driving model-T fords?)
- ignoring the future pathway and credibility
- comparing items at different stages of growth
Thus while Linux certainly have weaknesses, it is all to easy to draw false conclusions. From a structural point of view, Linux has specific advantages
- unliked canned applications, open-source can be tuned to give comparative advantages, if everyone is using the same package (something that app-servers forget) then there is no commercial points of differentiation
- long-term credibility as noted by Linus and ESR
- licensing costs are independent of per user or per machine basis
- the development process leads to better peer review and stability
- provides alternative vehicle for independent companies
These structural efficiencies make it a viable long-term competitor, especially as it benefits service-based companies which is what the Internet enables. For example, supposing I come up with a brilliant compiler that runs everything 2 times faster, then by setting up as drop-in web-site where people can leave code and pick up compiled binaries you can compact two whole layer of costs in the marketing and distribution (you might be surprised at how little money actually goes into product development as a percentage of costs).
Oh well, time will tell how efficient the OpenSource model is compared with ClosedSource.
LL
Every time Dave Cutler tried to put features into NT to give it some level of robustness, Bill Gates shot him down for not retaining backwards compatibility with Bill's two-bit (DOS) imitation of an eight-bit operating system.
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
The fact that Micro$oft even feels the need to have an article like this shows that they are noticing something.
I almost wonder if they finally realize a little threat to their NT/IIS setup?
Pricing of the support notwithstanding, frequently the help
you get from them isn't much help. (poor support geek talking from experience)
1. Linux doesn't need to worry about a journaling file system because it's so good it can run without electricity. /.
2. Desktop applications really don't matter. Everyone knows users use their machines just for the OS.
3. With the right patches, Linux can serve mixed drinks at cocktail parties.
4. Users would much rather deal with a cornocopia of accronyms like KDE, GPL, gdb, Tcl/Tk, GIMP than have to remember the two letters "NT".
5. If we all love each other enough, everything will be okay.
6. Linux has great hardware support.
7. SMP support will be better in release 2.3.1.7.9.3.6.a
8. The same users who can't find the "Any Key" will have no problem installing Linux.
9. Any sized web site can run Linux without problems. Just look at
Myth: Linux is more reliable that NT
Reality: Linux needs real world proof points rather than anecdotal stories
You know I actually agree with some of these points but this one is just ridiculous. I'm not saying Linux is more reliable than NT, just that the answer doesn't make any claims about the fact. A lack of evidence on the subject doesn't mean M$ wins by default.
(isn't proof points something marketing types say to look smart? )
-- Moondog
Go into Edit|Preferences, pick Appearance|Fonts. For the Variable Width Font, pick "Utopia".
This will render the site readable (if not palatable.)
The problem is that, in general Windows users prefer gigantic real-estate wasting fonts. So the default Netscape font on Windows is actually a lot bigger than the default Netscape font on Linux. The site had some style sheets tailored for Netscape up near the top (I did a 'view source), but they were tailored to the font sizes Netscape uses on Windows, not the sizes it uses on Linux. So when it says to make a font be a few sizes smaller than normal, it looks fine on Windows, where 'normal' size is so huge, but not on Linux where 'normal' size is smaller.
Utopia is a particulary large font even at the Linux Netscape default of '12 points', and so that renders something a bit more readable.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
No delegation of administrative privileges?
They apparently never used sudo.
I don't mind a little marketing FUD here and there, but when they flat out lie, that irritates me.
SEAL
There a plenty of shaky claims here:
The cost of the operating system is only a small percentage of the overall total cost of ownership (TCO). In general Windows NT has proven to have a lower cost of ownership than UNIX. Previous studies have shown that Windows NT has 37 percent lower TCO than UNIX. There is no reason to believe that Linux is significantly different than other versions of UNIX when it comes to TCO.
Really? How bout the fact that Linux is free, morons. Oh yeah, and it runs on non-proprietary hardware. This means that, while the hardware available won't be as incredible as that offered by Sun, you don't have to pay for a proprietary system and operating system. This is, in my opinion, a blatant lie. Just a paragraph before they long for "Real World Proof Points Rather than Anecdotal Stories," but then throw out this crud without a single bit of real world data. Hypocrisy - ain't it a bitch?
Linux lacks a commercial quality Journaling File System.
Well, NO. In fact SGI has donated XFS to Linux, an implementation which, by the way, kicks the sh*t out of the half-journaling NTFS that Microsoft developed.
The very definition of Linux as an Open Software effort means that commercial companies like Red Hat will make money by charging for services. Therefore, commercial support services for Linux will be fee-based and will likely be priced at a premium. These costs have to be factored into the total cost model.
Okay, I've got some time, let's do it:
1 "Unlimited User License", RHL 6.1: $29.95
1 Incident Support: $225.00
Total: $254.95
------------------
1 Windows NT Enterprise 25 Client: $3,428.95
1 Incident Support: $245.00
Total: $3673.95
Want Web/FTP? Better throw in IIS, too. How about Mail? Exchange server has your name written all over it. Program development? Visual C++. I deem their contention that the TCO for NT approaches within an order of magnitude that of Linux to be the most ludicrous on the site.
Configuring Linux security requires an administrator to be an expert in the intricacies of the operating system and how components interact. Misconfigure any part of the operating system and the system could be vulnerable to attack. Windows NT security is easy to set up and administer with tools such as the Security Configuration Editor.
Imagine that - putting a trained professional in charge of security! It seems odd to me that everyone in charge of security in other fields - the armed service and national defense, the police and domestic protection - go through years of training to become proficient at their trade, but in a perfectly Microsoftian world any moron off the street should be able to protect potentially valuable data from intruders.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
The 16TB limit is actually the theoretical limit. The actual size proven size is 2TB. And yes I use linux and I have a few MCP certifications. I enjoy the flexibility that linux offers as opposed to Microsofts "do it our way" style of OS.
Some should forward the link to the DOJ.. so they can say that MS doesn't think of Linux as a competitor and illustrate what a buncha asses they are.
bah, just turn off the 'use documetn fonts' setting in netscape.
Working for a smaller ISP , it is interesting to note that we can host 800 domains on one cyrix 233 machine that is running linux, and have an uptime of about six months and than or NT box which hosts considerably less domains is in need of a reboot about once a week ,and requires that we run MUCH more expensive hardware to get similar results , as far as I am concerned linux is a much better performer, and on cheap hardware.
The page is unreadable in netscape. Just when I thought I fixed the fonts problem, I get this shit again. Anybody else getting this problem of teeny weeny, crumpled text.
I know I will be moderated down for this, but . . . Vincent
Taken staright from M$'s document:
Linux does not provide support for the broad range of hardware in use today; Windows NT 4.0 currently supports over 39,000 systems and devices on the Hardware Compatibility List. Linux does not support important ease-of-use technologies such as Plug and Play, USB, and Power Management.
Ok USB isn;t supported to my knowledge, but NT does not support it either. Plug and Play under NT? ha! By deafult it is turned off, and the ONLY thing I ahve ever seen it work on is a soundblaster 16. No Power Management? RH 6.0 seems to manage power just fine on my Thinkpad 600, didnt even have to tell it it was a laptop, it just did it. Yet more half-truthes and lies told by the big softies...
The trick is to rememebr, ther is no
Microsoft web site states:
"In general Windows NT has proven to have a lower cost of ownership than UNIX. Previous studies have shown that Windows NT has 37 percent lower TCO than UNIX. There is no reason to believe that Linux is significantly different than other versions of UNIX when it comes to TCO."
Oh dear, they resorted to comparing TCO with *UNIX* not Linux and then saying there is no reason to believe that Linux is significantly different. So the fact that Linux is free and most other UNIX Operating Systems cost quite a bit seems to have escaped them.
Microsoft must think people are very naive. I hope this page backfires on them, as it should.
Actually, I have a machine right here that has a 2GB swap partition, and also supports Terrabyte size files with a kernel patch I got from ftp://mea.tmt.tele.fi/linux/LFS/.
About the desktop machines... I've run linux as my primary desktop machine for the last 3.5 years, and so has everyone in my house. Even my mom uses it, I set her up with an account that starts KDE, put StarOffice on her desktop, and she loves it. Contrary to what MS just said, NIS+ allows me to add users to all of my machines at once without going into each one.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
Uh, no it's cause they want legacy support.
Windows 2000 runs find with DirectX 7 thank you very much. All my games work.
But NT is based on VMS, which is xx years old. I put xx cos I dont know how old VMS really is. But I know its old!
While the page isn't 100% inaccurate, it's obviously full of holes and misunderstandings/
misrepresentations. Many of these can be easily refuted. A well-written point-by-point rebuttal
that avoids the religious issues (and that someone can get into a national pub) seems appropriate.
Hey Kragen, ya feeling creative?
I think it can do 16 exabytes. What they don't tell you is that NT cannot boot from a partition that is larger than 4GB. An odd 'feature' considering the size of most drives. Yeah, when NT came out they weren't that large, but it does with RAID. It gets over 4GB very quickly that way. So, you're stuck with multiple partitions of the same drive and NT doesn't mount /, /usr, etc - it is C, D, all separate drives.
NT does have DirectX, and it runs Quake just fine.
NT 4.0 does PnP, and Windows 2000 has full PnP and USB support.
If Windows NT is as good as Microsoft says it is then it seems to me they'd want to use it on their Hotmail service. The last time I checked, www.hotmail.com was running Apache and FreeBSD.
You can see for yourself at http://www.netcraft.com/whats/
Take care,
Steve
I believe that what linux truly needs is some sort of a PR "department".
/.'ers specifically (what Effect?;^)) has caused behaviour similar to little kids walking quietly around a very aware, and very alert, bully.
I believe they are referred to as "Advocates". Most definitely not professional (you get what you pay for), but still a presence. This is why it's so important the temper those that do, and will always, flame madly with well-thought out and pleasantly spoken arguments, delivered with lightning quickness. I personally have noticed the tone of articles (featured here and others) shifting from making flippant remarks and unsubstantiated FUD, to what can almost be considered toned-down respect. The fear of reprisal from the Linux community (and
Anyway, Linux doesn't need a full-time PR machine. The companies that sell it most certainly do (they've got to keep the zealots AND shareholders happy), but the community as a whole speaks for itself (loudly, and with very big bashing sticks).
+&x
Myth: Linux is more reliable than Windows NT Reality: Linux Needs Real World Proof Points Rather than Ancedotal Stories
Linux lacks a commercial quality Journaling File System. This means that in the event of a system failure, such as a power outage, data loss or corruption is possible. In any event, the system must check the integrity of the file system during system restart, a process that will likely consume an extended amount of time, especially on large volumes and may require manual intervention to reconstruct the file system.
Okay, maybe that's true. Running e2fsck every time I reboot IS annoying, but as long as my system FS doesn't corrupt, I'm happy.
Besides, any mission critical computer is gonna have a UPS.
However, the only time Linux really needs to go down on mission critical computers is when a new piece of hardware is installed, or when the UPS loses it's power supply. Noone, at Microsoft, at any place that uses both OS's can say the same for NT and be completly honest about it. Linux DOES crash, but so infrequently, it's not even worth mentioning.
There are no commercially proven clustering technologies to provide High Availability for Linux. The Linux community may point to numerous projects and small companies that are aiming to deliver HA functionality. D. H. Brown recently noted that these offerings remain immature and largely unproven in the demanding business world.
Beowulf.
There are no OEMs that provide uptime guarantees for Linux, unlike Windows NT where Compaq, Data General, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Unisys provide 99.9 percent system-level uptime guarantees for Windows NT-based servers.
Why do we need OEM guarantees? With a properly maintained linux system, 100% uptime can be achieved.
Myth: Linux is Free
Reality: Free Operating System Does Not Mean Low Total Cost of Ownership
The very definition of Linux as an Open Software effort means that commercial companies like Red Hat will make money by charging for services. Therefore, commercial support services for Linux will be fee-based and will likely be priced at a premium. These costs have to be factored into the total cost model.
And how much do I have to pay an hour for support for business related technical problems with NT? I thought it was in the range of $25 an hour, but I could be mistaken... The only good thing about MS tech support is that when my Sidewinder broke, they sent out a replacement free of charge. Home users may have free technical support, but they're comparing business consulting fees. Microsoft makes quite a bit of money on their technical support lines...
Linux is a higher risk option than Windows NT. For example how many certified engineers are there for Linux? How easy is it to find skilled development and support people for Linux? Who performs end-to-end testing for Linux-based solutions? These factors and more need to be taken into account when choosing a platform for your business.
RedHat comes to mind. There's hundreds of linux support / consulting services that have sprung up on the net over the past year and a half. Just because they don't have an official titles for their consultants (MSCE makes me laugh) doesn't make them any less qualified in their areas of expertise.
Myth: Linux is more secure than Windows NT
Reality: Linux Security Model Is Weak
Linux security is all-or-nothing. Administrators cannot delegate administrative privileges: a user who needs any administrative capability must be made a full administrator, which compromises best security practices. In contrast, Windows NT allows an administrator to delegate privileges at an exceptionally fine-grained level.
Sudo. This is a flat-out lie on MS's part.
Want more lies? This is from "Linux can replace Windows on the desktop".
Linux does not provide support for the broad range of hardware in use today; Windows NT 4.0 currently supports over 39,000 systems and devices on the Hardware Compatibility List. Linux does not support important ease-of-use technologies such as Plug and Play, USB, and Power Management
Lie lie lie, lie lie lie. Pnptools, USB as a kernel module, power management as a kernel modules (yes, I do believe that when a system goes to init 0, it CAN automagically power off). If developers would release drivers for their products in linux and stop cutting corners in production cost (winmodems, winprinters, etc...), any differences in the range of supported hardware would dwindle to a big fat 0.
You know, I do have respect for Windows as an operating system. However, any respect for Microsoft as anything more than a hardware device manufacturer has just went down to nothing.
NT has had a journaling filesystem called NTFS at least since Windows NT 3.51, released several years ago. Perhaps even since an earlier release; I don't remember that far back.
Your TCO points are well made, particularly the first one about registry corruption.
--LP
I never thought i'd see the words Microsoft and optimized in the same sentence.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
Hrmm..did anyone bother to mention that you can't create the NT install partition larger than 4 GB unless you have NT with service pack 3?
Remember kids, compare the future versions of your product with the previous version of your competitor's product, and you will gain marketshare.
(128 MB swap partitions being a limitation of the 2.0.x kernels, for example).
Plus, if Microsoft can claim (er, insinuate) that Plug and Play, USB, and APM actually work in NT 4.0 (maybe with special patches and hacks), shouldn't we be able to claim that XFS and ext3 support journaling right now? I mean, Stephen Tweedie and his merry men are testing journaling Right Now! Not to mention the memory limitation being erased... and which OS is 64 bit clean?
--
QDMerge 0.4 just released!
how to invest, a novice's guide
One key issue about "UNIX is old" is that unix is stable because of that age. Most corporations that I looked up using Netcrafts "what's that site running"is running solaris and netscape server...although I looked up www.amd.com and it is a Linux box with Apache.
It says something about an os's stability when it has a nick name for it's crashes called "The Blue Screen of Death". Simple logic would rule that if something happens so often that it requires an actual given name to the event tells you something. Let's look at the linux is hard aspect as viewed by a corportate user that has only seen a windows 95 type gui. Put that user in a full screen command prompt mode and see if they know what to do. Take that same person and put them in a full screen terminal screen on a linux box and see if they know what to do. Finally take that person and put them on the desktop of KDE 'for example' (insert you favorite WM here) and see what they do. When it comes down to it, most people would say even the 95/nt desktop is "hard".
From my corportate view people don't technically know how to operate the computer. All they know to do is double click here and click there etc etc. If something isn't the way they learned it or if something changed they consider the pc broke or not working. This is not their fault, in most cases the pc is being forced on them to do a job they may have done for years with out one.
"I have gone to look for myself, If I return before I get back keep me here"
I'm encouraged. Can you imagine MS doing something like this even a year ago? Putting that page together will have cost them a lot of money. Large organisations produce responses like that by forming a committee, producing drafts, arguing about wording and getting lawyers to check things. If it cost less than $100,000 I'd want to hire the manager.
They are clearly frightened by Linux. If you read it carefully, they attack Linux as a credible enterprise (>4 processor) OS, and they attack in the workstation environment. This is funny. Linux has never tried to be an enterprise OS. We'll get there, but we're not there yet. NT is nowhere near that level either. In the workstation environment, NT has a solid, strong presence. Many Linux devlopers (KDE & Gnome teams ) are working on this.
The real place that Linux is winning is in the workgroup/department sever space. This includes many small / medium sized enterprises. The reason they are scared is that this is the only place that NT Server has any significant presence.
Linux is starting to hurt MS. With a little help from the US DoJ, we'll hurt them badly.
The paragraph on journalled filesystems was probably the funniest. If you don't know why, please email me. Then hit the 'off' switch on your NT box. Then reboot it. If you still don't understand why that's funny then you are too stupid to own a computer.
Umm no not sense 2.2.x came out....
the-penguin:~$ free
Swap: 262136 13488 248648
"Think of it as evolution in action."
Speaking of which, now that Sun has released their journaling file system it might not take Linux too long to catch up in that department.
Since NT is re-warmed DEC VMS, then it is about 24 years old.
ext2 works perfectly with 64bit, just ask anyone who has alphaLinux running. The problem is not in the ext2fs filesystem, but in the File I/O API. That API uses signed integers as argument (and returncode), so on a 32-bit system you've got only 2^31 bits, which is 2Gig.
On a 64-bit system the current ext2fs limit is 2Terabyte (if I'm not mistaken :-)
With the upcoming xfs from SGI to Linux, the filesize problem won't be solved on 32-bits systems, just because the problem isn't in the filesystem, but in the file I/O API itself...
I wouldn't want to be working with applications that require 2G+ files on intel anyhow. Especially not databases.
I've got a message for all the beautiful people of the world...
THERE ARE A LOT MORE OF US UGLY MOTHERF*CKERS AROUND THAN YOU ARE!
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]
maybe. i know lots of people in the education sector that _should_ be unbiased, but certainly are not...
For years, since using Windows NT, I've been waiting for ide busmastering support for NT... Time has gone by and I also had many mainboards with Intel chipsets (call me stupid). Still, no sign of real busmastering support... Sure, they claim there is some support since service pack 2 (using the dmacheck util), but it's a hoax. Intel won't support it's chipsets under NT and the only alternative is a Intel BM driver provided by Heylard Packard, but with no support at all.. UDMA/33 or UDMA/66 (ata66) support totally lacks under NT also and the HP/Intel drivers won't support ata-pi devices and especially thing like an Iomega zipdrive... Every time I try to copy some files from one ide device to another, the cpu load turns 100% (Celeron 450, 192mb ram. 440bx mobo), this has been like this for years, no matter how fast my processor gets. Also using HPs drivers has always gotten me a lot of BSODs. NT SMP support is great -sure-, maybe just what I need to compensate this devicianty of NT. (sorry for my English) In time, I've tried it with various hd's and a lot of ata-pi cdroms, it just doesn't work. Face it, if you want to run NT stable and fast, you just gotto have high-end SCSI devices who cost a fortune. And what about the long awaited fat32 support, so I don't have to use fat16 with 16kb clusters for my Windows 9x toy os? (Win9x?, be honest, everyone likes to play a RTS game every now and than) NT, great FS support! -not- Under Linux I use UFS, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, EXT2 all just for free and not some crappy BSOD happy Winternals sollution. I don't see any ata66 support coming for NT in the (near) future either. Just face it, NT is simply not end user ready.. (At the moment, I'm using the experimental ata66 patch for my 6 ide devices under Linux 2.2.12 and it rocks!) p.s. Is it so difficult to make multiple swap files of 128mb M$? p.s.2 Here's another good example of M$ NT uptime and releability: http://www.euronet.nl/~mailme/euronet-ntfailure.ht ml The commerial part of my ISP who tries to run a business and make money using NT... read the message that has been shown for days (weeks?)
you've never really used Linux, have you ? Whats the matter, your MSCE loosing its value ? too bad.
It seems to me that Linux advocates should take this as a great compliment - MS Marketdroids sweating over a free OS that wasn't even a blip on the radar a year or two ago. With the pace of development that is going on, what will it be like 2 years from now? Mature GIUs, several office suites, better SMP, 64 bit CPU support (something lacking in Windows AFAIK).
Now what is needed is a series of articles that debunk the various issues on this page, like the 128M swap partition limit, the 2 GB file limit (isn't this gone under 64 bit CPUs?), a list of industry benchmarks where Linux was shown to outperform Windows, a realistic assesment of support costs including showing the differences between RedHat and MS per instance support, the issue of remote administration, the FUD about having to relink the kernal to add features, and so on.
Coupled with this should be a list of Linux advantages over Win - the high quality free software certainly does drive TCO down in many applications (this is what attracted me to Linux in the first place).
All of this has to be nailed down tight.
And then post it on Linux.com for everyone to see.
i think is very farfetched to discredit Linux on such a weak propositions. i could go by the list *like 1000 ppl b4 me didn't do it* hehe na dget a 4 on insightful.. huh!! hehe but i don't have the time nor the patience and quite frankly nor the experience. All i can say is they have some gut-ripping good stuff... but THE GREAT and bast majority is crap! i mean what is this? i used to have more respect for microsoft... i thought they would b able to have some dignity and not attack on the low points, by overeacting,liying and hiding the TRUTH or half-a truth, on chewed bone by writting on plain english.
ouch... u guys whatever!
----====___SUBLIME___OR___NOTHING___====----
I mean just check out all the .edu posts here. They are completely without FUD.
Well.. what can I say, the Microsoft page has some inaccuracies, but Mandrake's page...heh. If you're going to do a rebuttal for a company please don't use phrazes like "Pulled ouf of ass" Mandrake's response was about as unproffessional as it gets. I would like to point some things out. This throwing around of the word "Fud" is getting quite old. Linux advocates are just as guilty of it as Microsoft. Don't believe me? "Linux is faster then NT" "Linux is more secure then NT" Does this sound familiar? And oh dear god what is this "We free software writers can admit our failings unlike you NT trash who don't allow benchmarks to be published against you" - What is that?? I've seen several benchmarks of Linux vs NT done by third parties with Linux winning in some areas. This is news to me. Admit failings? After the first mindcraft test Linux advocates screamed that the linux system was misconfigured, that if it was configured correctly then it would knock the socks off NT. After the system was configured by Linux engineers in the successive tests the results were..NT beats Linux..again..and not by a small margin either. Did those same Linux advocates admit to Linux failing the test miserably? Of course not, they simply pointed and said "Nobody would use such a over powered system for file serving" Admitting a failure is not in the Linux advocate's vocabulary, screaming "Fud" pointing fingers, creating conspiracy theories, and giving the "But it's being worked on now real soon (tm!)" responses as in the case of the journaling file system. Folks please stop screaming Fud and look in the mirror. Also I must say Mandrake's "You're just gui point and click using idiots" comment was really..really...well.. you can figure it out.
Actually, it was the mandrake site that I had trouble getting in to. The microsoft site was surprisingly fast. Different horsepower behind the scenes, I guess.
That's something experience taught me, whenever two parties are fighting over something they both take their own opinion to the extreme and the truth ends somewhere between them.
Microsoft is probably right about a part of the claims they make in that article otherwise it would be too easy to prove them wrong wich would be very bad from a marketing point of view.
The response of the linux community is pobably less truthfull (more flame-full) but at the end of the day a summary of all the reasonable responses will probably create a document exactly like the MS article only comparing linux and NT on points where linux wins.
The Operating System war has become more of a war of tastes that will probably have no real end.
Something like ferrari drivers bitchin to Volvo drivers about their stupid slow boxy cars and the Volvo drivers shouting back that their cars are safer and more comfortable and run on less fuel.
Drive the car you like, run the OS you like, there is no more need for this discussion.
i have NT4SP5. On a brand new Dell Optiplex with power management (APM) in the bios. when i give a shutdown -h now in linux it shuts down cleanly (disconnecting from the mains power). When i tell NT4SP5 to shutdown the computer, it just gives a box on the screen which sez, computer is now shutdown and a restart icon. Thats bullshit.
Multi-headed display can't keep the slashdot effect at bay.
Ever say "No thanks, I have enough RAM"?
Hee Hee
Mandrake has been slashdotted!
I wonder if it pisses him off when his fans crash his server. Or maybe not crashed, just bogged.
>> system features that Windows NT 4.0 haspioneered such as
>> asynchronous I/O...
> .... IIRC ext2 is asynchronous by default.
actually what I think they are getting at is the asynchronous I/O interface provided to users .... which NT of course didn't pioneer - they stole it from VMS - an almost 20 year old OS .....
Besides - this is so much FUD - Linux/Unix has threads which are functionally equivalent to signal based asynchronous I/O ... and have an easier to program API.
A thing like this leaves MS open to so much flak, it seems barely worth their effort.
Everyone knows most of what they said is just plain wrong, so let's explore why Microsoft even posted it.
The DoJ trial has reached an end-point, things aren't looking good for Microsoft's monopolistic future, and now this comes out.
Hmm, sounds like a ploy by the big M to sink one more ship as their own slips beneath the waves.
Lucky for us penguins are great swimmers, eh?
I wonder if this is related to that Microsoft employee who called up Loki about Civ CTP for Linux tech support...
Was that a hint of things to come? Certainly.
Have those things fully arrived? Only time and Tux will tell...
-- May the Source be with you...
Linux security is all-or-nothing. Administrators cannot delegate administrative privileges: a user who needs any administrative capability must be made a full administrator, which compromises best security practices. In
contrast, Windows NT allows an administrator to delegate privileges at an exceptionally fine-grained level.
Isn't this what groups are for? If you set it up correctly, you have completely identical situations. What they're saying here is jsut outright false.
Actually, having this kind of attention from MS just proves that they take Linux seriously as a competitor.
If I were ever faced with this from a customer using it to justify not using Linux, I'd pull up all of the other sections showing "MS is better than x" where x=other commercially accepted products.
How fun would it be to visit an Oracle shop thinking about Linux, being faced with this propaganda, and pulling out the "MS/SQL is better than Oracle" document?
Instant loss of credibility.
MS Windows NT Myths
:)
... if you don't run too many applications at one time, don't install anything that isn't MS-certified and do NOT tweak anything except in MS recommended ways (with a little gui box to go with it). But as that is usually good enough for some people, this is a good definition of very.
... or at least bug fixes had better be timely and actually work. Oh yeah, add in support :)
:) ).
:) )
Myth: Windows NT outperforms all other operating systems
Reality: Windows NT only outperforms all other operating systems if MS is allowed to misconfigure the competition and avail themselves of technical support that no MS customer would have. In fact NT hasn't really been shown to outperform anything any way. What does outperform mean by the way?
Myth: Windows NT is a very reliable operating system.
Reality: Depends on how you shake "very" but yes it is realiable in staying up
Myth: MS Windows NT delivers a great OS at a great price.
Reality: $4000 for 1 server and 10 workstation licenses? Come on, you gotta be kidding! (I know that number isn't quite right but it *is* in the thousands). Put in the hardware and user software packages and that's a bundle. I don't know about you, but if the OS alone costs me into the thousands, it better be as bug-free and secure as possible
and this could really be a lot of money. "Now which button should I press to get to the do-hickey thing that'll change this access permission?" the customer says. "Press the one that says 'XXX'" says the customer service rep. "It didn't work." "Oh, I mean 'YYY'." "That didn't work either." Two hours later: "I'm glad you fixed my problem," says the customer and the rep says "I'm glad we did too. Your bill is in the mail." "How much was it, by the way?" The rep tells him and the customer drops dead.
Oh and the "certified engineers" business is a load of hoooo-ey. Who cares if there exist well-trained lemming/sloths who paid thru the nose
to learn to service my NT box when I could easily learn MYSELF how to service my UNIX/BSD/LINUX/etc. box?
Myth: Windows NT has passed US gov't certification for security.
Reality: Uh, not to burst anyone's bubble but I think only Win NT 3.5 got C2 certification and *that* had to be with the box not connected to any other computer (no internet boys!) The others may have gotten the British Gov't's okay, but it's news to me.
Myth: Windows NT security fixes are easy while the competitions are really hard to understand.
Reality: MS publishes incorrect security fixes and sometimes takes weeks after and exploit is published to fix the bug and that's good? Oh, and a simple rpm -Uvh is hard?
Myth: Windows NT is a really intuitive system and so is a good desktop system.
Reality: Okay, personal story boys: When my family first got a Windows 95 machine, I was in high school. I had experience with apples and dos (and a funny little Tandy that I programmed basic on when I was very little). We even bought a thick $30 Que book on using Windows 95. It still took me a long time to figure out how to do simple things like rearrange my menus on the start bar -- and I *never* got to rearrange my desktop pop-up menu. Not to mention I didn't understand the utility of the start bar for a long time (like clicking on minimized programs to bring them up or to switch between programs.) Windows NT user interface is much the same, so the comparison is
valid. My point is not that the Windows UI is bad, it is that it is only "intuitive" because I've used it so much. It has been no more intuitive for me than the default Red Hat 6.0 window manager and default bars/menus/etc. I have a feeling that the idea that Windows is intuitive is simply because so many people have used it for so long that they don't realize the trouble they had when they first started with Windows (3.0, 95, etc).
Myth: Windows has so many good applications that it makes it the only choice.
Reality: Yes there are a lot of applications for Windows NT. Many of them are good or at least acceptable. But they generally cost a hell of a lot of money. MS Office costs at least $100 (if you are a student). Corel/WordPerfect may be cheaper, but it probably isn't much cheaper for business licenses. Development environments can cost a lot more (if you actually want to be able to distribute the end product, which the student licenses from MS forbid --- I don't know about Borland or the others). I'm usually happy with a text editor and a command line compiler. That's all I need or want, so I usually end up treating a MS Visual X as a text editor that happens to have the compile command on a menu. I know it's silly, but when you don't need the whole shebang, IDE's for Windows are just too much and the ported GNU tools just don't work too well on Windows (besides, DOS command line sucks). So why should someone who really only needs a text editor and e-mail and a web browsers and a command line compiler and a few games use Win NT? As that is about what most non-computer people I know need
(minus the compiler
Rachael
(This is my first ever post, so be gentle
"Go Forth Ye Lemmings and Propagate"
Christ, get off your moderation high horses, the guy was just making an amusing spoof off of the page's contents. This entire god damned article would be labeled flamebait if a user wrote this huge pile of FUD
They arent talking about NT they are talking about LINUX.
Just because Microsoft doesnt do it differently, doesnt make the point less valid.
How do I get my 99.9% uptime if I promptly install every service pack and hotfix from my single vendor, if I have to reboot each time? Last time I did SP5 on a dual PIII 500 machine, the install took 20 minutes, and the reboot 10.
Dumbed-down? Wherever did you get that from? I've been using Windows 2000 since it was NT5, and I'll testify that it's the most advanced OS I've seen. As much as I love Linux, and as bloated as Win2000 still is, on a good computer, Win2K is awesome. Yes, Microsoft added lots of silly wizards and stuff, but just because an advanced feature has a nice front-end and is simple to use doesn't make it "dumbed-down".
There's that bit about linux lacking a commercial quality journaling file system.
Does NT have a commercial quality journaling file system? (you can even leave off the "commercial quality bit in answering)
For File and Print services, according to independent tests conducted by PC Week Labs, yadda yadda yadda...
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't said test result in an immediate identification of the TCP/IP stack bottleneck, and a fix in the current development kernel?
First: Windows NT 4.0 Outperforms Linux On Common Customer Workloads
Then, in a bullet point: Linux performance and scalability is architecturally limited in the 2.2 Kernel. Linux only supports 2 gigabytes (GB) of RAM on the x86 architecture,1 compared to 4 GB for Windows NT 4.0. The largest file size Linux supports is 2 GB versus 16 terabytes (TB) for Windows NT 4.0. The Linux SWAP file is limited to 128 MB RAM.
Ok.... I have a couple of problems with this. First off, if you talk about common customer workloads and then talk about 2GB ram limits and 2GB file size limits, you are speaking once from your mouth and once from your ass. I work for a major entertainment company in the online division. We have web servers up the wazoo, mostly solaris admittedly, but I have yet to see anything break the 1GB barrier, much less two. In my mind, for the average small business, you're going to be able to get by on much less.
Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 has been proven in demanding customer environments to be a reliable operating system. Customers such as Barnes and Noble, The Boeing Company, Chicago Stock Exchange, Dell Computer, First Union Capital Markets, Nasdaq and many others run mission critical applications on Windows NT 4.0.
OK... lets see some screenshots of the uptime counts of the machines at these places.
The Linux community likes to talk about Linux as a stable and reliable operating system, yet there is no real world data or metrics and very limited customer evidence to back up these claims.
FUD, pure and simple. "Here, look at this operating system that is just hitting the big time. There isn't much existing data on it, so it must suck. Of course when NT was brand new, it didn't suck even though there was an equal dearth of hard data on it."
Linux lacks a commercial quality Journaling File System. This means that in the event of a system failure, such as a power outage, data loss or corruption is possible.
Well, I'll grant them that. On the other hand I've watched NT servers lose data without a system failure or a power loss.
There are no OEMs that provide uptime guarantees for Linux, unlike Windows NT where Compaq, Data General, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Unisys provide 99.9 percent system-level uptime guarantees for Windows NT-based servers.
Again, this is basically saying that because Linux ISN'T a well established OS, that it SHOULDN'T be. That's bullshit.
The very definition of Linux as an Open Software effort means that commercial companies like Red Hat will make money by charging for services. Therefore, commercial support services for Linux will be fee-based and will likely be priced at a premium. These costs have to be factored into the total cost model.
Yes, but on the other hand, the lack of a single authoritative source of data, there is now room for real competetion between people providing support for your OS. Don't like the quality or cost of MS support? Too bad. Don't like the quality or cost of Linux support, well it if becomes lucrative enough there will be plenty of places for you to go to.
Linux is a UNIX-like operating system and is therefore complex to configure and manage.
Kind of like many of the systems and features MS keeps touting to prove how much cooler NT is than Linux? Has anyone here played with ActiveDirectory? How about NT's very beta version of NAT back when it was still NT 5 and not Win@K
Linux security is all-or-nothing. Administrators cannot delegate administrative privileges: a user who needs any administrative capability must be made a full administrator, which compromises best security practices. In contrast, Windows NT allows an administrator to delegate privileges at an exceptionally fine-grained level.
First, I think that this is kind of woefully narrow minded. It also completely ignores the functionality of setuid in using administrative tools. The unix security model is far more versatile than it seems at first appearance. And the NT model is far more cumbersome.
Linux system administrators must spend huge amounts of time understanding the latest Linux bugs and determining what to do about them.
Personally I find the buffer overflow bugs a lot easier to understand than some of the stuff I've seen in HOTFIX descriptions. Personally I don't care, I just want the bug fixed, which usually means a new RPM and no reboot.
This is made complex due to the fact that there isn't a central location for security issues to be reported and fixed. In contrast Microsoft provides a single security repository for notification and fixes of security related issues.
Ahem: RedHat does a pretty nice job for me.
Configuring Linux security requires an administrator to be an expert in the intricacies of the operating system and how components interact. Misconfigure any part of the operating system and the system could be vulnerable to attack. Windows NT security is easy to set up and administer with tools such as the Security Configuration Editor.
I'm not even going to bother.
Myth: Linux can replace Windows on the desktop
I have to grant MS just about everything they say here. But again, the problem is not that linux isn't suited to the desktop, just that it hasn't reached the critical point of support and ease of use. Whose fault that is is something I leave open for others to debate. Certainly though I don't think MS is helping at all. I wonder how many engineers at MS would like to port DirectX to linux. Or certain MS apps? But that's simply not politcally possible.
Jherico
What can the average user can do to ensure his security? "Nothing, you're screwed"
Microsoft is right again. All right everyone.. time to give up Linux and start using NT since Microsoft has proven that it's so much better.
Oh sure, Linux security is all-or-nothing. I guess my home system doesn't exist.
*cough*sudo*cough*suid*cough*
--------
"I already have all the latest software."
Oh yeah, forgot to mention... I don't think NT supports files up to 16 terrabytes. I had a log file which grew to 4GB, and wouldn't grow any more, and my filesystem had plenty of space on it. No matter what I did, I couldn't pack any more data into that file. This was NT4, SP5.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
GNU/Linux is not Unix.. It's POSIX-compliant and so plays nice with Unix, but in order to be a version of Unix, it would have to have been derived from Unix. It was not.
~ Kish
Gee, maybe somebody oughta tell that Dave Cutler guy about this; he might be a little peeved at Microsoft for asserting that they pioneered asynchronous I/O, given that I seem to remember VMS, hell, RSX-11 supporting it.
So are, as far as I know, NTFS and VFAT in NT, in that they'll do read-ahead and write-behind.
The "asynchronous I/O" to which they're referring is, I suspect, explicitly asynchronous I/O, e.g. Win32 ReadFile() or WriteFile() with a completion routine...
...or, in systems supporting POSIX asynchronous I/O, aio_read() or aio_write().
Note that after honking about how "Linux Needs Real World Proof Points Rather than Anecdotal Stories," they cheerfully present "Customer Testimonials" -- anecdotes, in other words.
"Real world proof points" isn't even English, and "Boeing uses it!" isn't proof of anything.
Mind the Gap
Does anyone realize that NT is actually an improved version of an OS just as old, called VMS. Correct me if i'm wrong, but i believe M$ actually hired the creators of VMS and said 'now build us an OS.'
*sigh* Here we go again. Someone has up and forgotten that there is a place for everything. Let me start off by pointing out that I run both NT 4.0 Workstation, and Linux on SMP machines. All joking, bragging, and heart attacks aside, Linux is *noticeably* faster that NT is for MOST applications. I won't get into any gorey details, but suffice to say, the intresting part of that statement is that NT is running on a dual 233MMX, whilst Linux resides on a dual 166 (thats right, no MMX). So we don't have a journaling FS yet. Yes, thats fairly important. However, to the credit of my Linux boxen (i have 4 of those) I have never lost a scrap of data on any of them, through numerous power outages. I can say the same for NT however. I'd call that just about dead equal. One thing that really rang my bell is the TCO issue. MS needs to figure out that while, yes, nt server on some raging beast of a machine might cost less than SCO openserver on some honking big box, Linux didn't cost several thousand bucks, like SCO versions typically do. Lets address the security issue for a second. If I wanted to create a box that you couldn't get into to use as a firewall/router it wouldn't NT..I can promise you that. Installing SSH on linux, and turning off all other login services, I dare say, would create as near a thing to an impervious-to-hacks box as there is. Ok, yes, we do need to work on fine tuning asignment of privilages a little. Ok alot. Even with sudo, there are things that need to be able to be broken down more thuroughly. Lets talk about productivity and development of apps for a second. When was the last time you downloaded an app for NT that said it worked, and simply didn't? I can tell you right off, this past saturday, I nabbed a copy of audio catalyst. Geuss what? No ASPI access in NT, fat lot of good it does me to be able to rip on an NT machine, when I have a linux box with half the CPU that can rip 4 times as fast. Granted, after pulling about 30 megs of patches, I did get ASPI to work, no thanks to MS. They simply told me there was no way. Enter the set of balls I grew as a Linux newbie attempting to hack kernels: I ripped the win98 aspi dll, and dropped it into NT, threw a little mojo on the registry, and presto. Unfortunatly, since no one will ever read this, and MS doesn't care (they never have IMHO), no one else longing for ASPI access in NT will ever know about it. Any fool can post a patch like this to the linux OS, and geuss what? If it works, it'll get used. So as a last note, since there aren't lists of linux certified professionals anywhere (according to MS), I ask: Where were all of your professionals when I was working on ASPI? Because I can tell you of at least 4 LUG's I can email and get an answer to just about *ANY* support question you can dream up. My point is this: For those who need a reliable OS, and have some idea what to do with a computer when they see one, linux works. If you just want to plunk your fat happy arse into the chair, and go to work, you should probly *NOT* use an operating system designed by narrow minded, self praising gazillionairs. Unfortunatly, until now you haven't had much choice. MS: You've just made your second fatal error. You've prooven to the world that you are biased towards your own product. Both of these operating systems are good. They can both be made to do nearly anything you could desire from an OS. One of them was just developed by much more open-minded friendly people.
I am sorry Bill I am not a math whiz how is the NT Server solution TCO less than Linux TCO?
When was NT written from the ground up to support SMP?
Its complete bullshit that you need a "Specialized Administrator" to configure/optimize a Linux box, and a dumbass NT person can do wonders with NT, um hello thats because the people who did that shit, probabaly use NT, and wrote have the damn subsystems, and the 50 million API layers it sits on.
The place I worked over the summer (Motorola), didn't know how to configure/optimize a server just meant 'Click this button to Optimize Server'. That server crashed 5 times daily, they wouldn't even think about switching to anything else. I was the only person in my group that used Linux on their computer, and I was one of the few who acctually got something accomplished. My NT partition kept crashing, and made me feel like I was on my 386 again, I had installed Linux onto the laptop, and it flew.
Okay I'm done with my ranting....its five o'clock somewhere, I want a beer.
Jason
If they want me to read their FUD, they should at least make it so I don't have to strain my eyes. Uggh.
This signifies something grand for us open source monkeys. Microsoft is now scared, otherwise they would have NO REASON to post rediculous things such as this. Does Intel go on about AMD, or is it AMD that bitches about Intel's performance? Does Intel really care? Just an analogy.
You cannot expect objectivity from a competitor. UNIX vendors compete in some markets with Linux, thus no objectivity (at least in marketing).
Does NT have a journaling file system?
NTFS.
Yeah, you're right, Linux doesn't have anything like NT's permission system which is a rip off of unix
I think you might want to take a deep look at NT's ACL model before continuing to display your ignorance.
Reality: Linux Needs Real World Proof Points Rather than Anecdotal Stories
...
Customer Testimonials
See how these leading companies and organizations have deployed Windows NT Server 4.0:
Nasdaq
Barnes & Noble
Dell Computer Corp
The Boeing Company
First Union
Chicago Stock Exchange
How ironi.
-----
First, it's worth noting that Linux is a UNIX-like operating system. Linux fundamentally relies on 30-year-old operating system technology and architecture.
Humans fundamentally rely on billion-year-old architecture in their genes, so they should be scrapped and reinvented.
Linux was not designed from the ground-up to support symmetrical multiprocessing (SMP), graphical user interfaces (GUI), asynchronous I/O, fine-grained security model, and many other important characteristics of a modern operating system.
Linux started out sleek, lean, and unbloated, and then evolved into a viable OS. In contrast, NT started out with bloated features you don't need in a server (running a GUI 24/7), and can barely support its own weight (finding bugs in NT is like finding a blade of grass in a cubic acre of hay).
-----
Reality: Free Operating System Does Not Mean Low Total Cost of Ownership
It does if "when we speak of free software, we speak of freedom, not price". Unless the latest version of NT comes with working source code, I can't tweak the OS, or any underlying components to my liking.
-----
Myth: The Linux SWAP file is limited to 128 MB RAM
Reality: Go read the mkswap(8) man page: the OLD (v0) swap spaces could only be 128MB (on an i386). The new ones (v1) support up to 2GB. Get your facts right, Microsoft. This has been around since kernel 2.1.117.
-----
There are no commercially proven clustering technologies to provide High Availability for Linux.
Can you say beowulf?
-----
This is made complex due to the fact that there isn't a central location for security issues to be reported and fixed.
Try dselect update install on any Debian system, or the RedHat errata, etc.
------
No Linux products are listed on the U.S. Government's evaluated product list.
Because we don't care about the U.S. Gov't stupid encryption "security" policies, approval would only make Linux look more insecure.
-----
Configuring Linux security requires an administrator to be an expert in the intricacies of the operating system and how components interact.
Or an admin with a port-scanner.And you tell me an NT box is secure without an admin who knows about the system? Nice try.
-----
Reality: Linux Makes No Sense at the Desktop
We never said it would... but my sister seems to like her Windows-free desktop (and she is totally OS-indifferent).
-----
Windows NT 4.0 currently supports over 39,000 systems and devices on the Hardware Compatibility List
Assuming they were bought in the last 3 years, otherwise, it's obsolete.
-----
Linux does not support important ease-of-use technologies such as Plug and Play, USB, and Power Management
Sad, my Linux box seems not to exist.
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The Linux operating system is not suitable for mainstream usage by business or home users.
We never said it was good for mainstream by home use, we projected by current developmental progess that it WILL be soon.
And business? Go ask RedHat if businesses don't like their software.
--------
"I already have all the latest software."
Someone I know, interns at Microsoft and he was mentioning that the 3 things they are scared of and want to crush are Linux, Sun and AOL. So seeing this page does not surprise me.
I thought the following comment was a little strange...
;)
The Linux community claims to have improved performance and scalability in the latest versions of the Linux Kernel (2.2), however it's clear that Linux remains inferior to the Windows NT® 4.0 operating system.
I'm sorry but does anybody recall a number of stories regarding Linux based clusters built by NASA ranking in the top 100 (and IIRC top 20) most powerful computers in operation today?
Maybe I didn't look carefully enough, and numbers 1-19 were actually all NT Wolfpack clusters.....
Actually, Under NT you can split your swap file among as many drives as you have.
I agree, though, MS is running scared, and we are likely to see A LOT more of this type of information coming from them.
Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com
Before going off on a knee jerk, "No it isn;'t so you lying cheap bastards!" reaction(I'm sure it's too late), you need to really look at the points listed. Some are factual(go ahead, dig down andadmit it) (or based on recently obsoleted facts), others true but twisted to have a very MS bent, and others are downright lies.
Perhaps it would be best for a very nice point to point bulleted feature list to be published and linked to. Have one listing of NT features and another of Linux.
Keep it up to date and be honest. Linux does have shortcommings, but show them that the shortcommings are NOT from the user community and that they are being rapidly addressed.
Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
You are wrong. NT has DirectX since some service pack (don't remember which).
Hmmmm. I see. What precisely are the qualifications of a WinNT administrator?
One of the (valid) claims MS makes is: "Linux Needs Real World Proof Points Rather than anecdotal Stories"
They then post the first bullet to this statement as nothing more than *their* anecdotal evidence regarding NT: "Customers such as Barnes and Noble, The Boeing Company, Chicago Stock Exchange, Dell Computer, First Union Capital Markets, Nasdaq and many others run mission critical applications on Windows NT 4.0."
Look! We've got better anecdotal evidence!
C'mon guys, we're *still* waiting for a few real benchmarks...
Think about how an organization works in selling a product like NT. Where does the feedback come from? A little comes from the cash register, where a slowdown in NT sales might be seen. Most comes from account managers who hear the devastating news that the account is already lost - to Linux.
Conclusions:
Major accounts are being lost to Linux.
Microsoft are already suffering.
They are scared as hell of Linux.
We can expect to see lots more comparative articles in various places.
Wait until the MS anti-Linux campaign hits your TV screen - then we will know they are truly beaten.
...or does it?
MYTH: Linux does not support important ease-of-use technologies such as Plug and Play, USB, and Power Management.
FACT: Plug-and-play is in fact fully supported on industry-standard PCI bus computers. Power Management and USB are still only in very limited use on the desktop, but projects to improve these technologies' implementations on Linux are in progress.
MYTH: The complexity of the Linux operating system and cumbersome nature of the existing GUI's would make retraining end-users a huge undertaking and would add significant cost.
FACT: The GNOME and KDE desktops work approximately like Windows itself, making retraining virtually non-existent.
MYTH: Linux application support is very limited, meaning that customers end up having to build their own horizontal and vertical applications.
FACT: With over 4145 applications available, customers have many pre-fabricated software solutions available. Better yet, many of those applications have the source code available, meaning that customers can customize these applications for their specific needs.
Any bozo can do this. But it takes a genius to get the facts and myths mixed up.
Conclusion: Linux is in fact a viable alternative for the desktop and will only inprove over time.
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
Linux security is all-or-nothing. Administrators cannot delegate administrative privileges: a user who needs any administrative capability must be made a full administrator, which compromises best security practices. In contrast, Windows NT allows an administrator to delegate privileges at an exceptionally fine-grained level.
Someone please tell them about sudo!
It could get even simpler in the future. Capability lists are in development, which can give / take away certain capabilities from programs without needing them to be root (uid==root is effectively just the everything capability).
That would for example allow to let certain users run with network configuring ability without installing suid binaries for them. And a lot things more.
I at the bottom of the page I see:
error 'ASP 0113'
Script timed out
/ntserver/nts/news/msnw/LinuxMyths.asp
The maximum amount of time for a script to execute was exceeded. You can change this limit by specifying a new value for the property Server.ScriptTimeOut or by changing the value in the IIS administration tools.
A typical show of ignorance by a blind linux zealot. Not only does NT support DirextX, but it runs GLQuake with a 3d card very well thank you very much. This type of open mouth first research the facts later drivel is what can easily give the linux community a black eye. I like linux as much as the next guy, and I have it on my machine at home, but I also use NT on the same machine, and other than 3D only cards like the Voodoo2 there is no way in hell that linux comes within spitting distance for performance of NT with 3d games such as GLQuake, Quake2 and Quake3 test. Why ? Because of the server-client nature of X-Windows. When XFree86 version 4 with Direct Rendering is released it should even things up. But until then linux has a long way to go in the gamming department. (Especially now that 2d/3d combo cards are the norm)
I couldn't see a "reply" button on Microsoft's page so I'll reply here.
I happen to work from a P166 equivalent with 48 Mb RAM. I can work with X, Netscape, Winframe client, TV, Audio mixer, pppd, xdaliclock, videotext app, nice CD ap (xmcd) all at once.
Try all the same under NT and it will page like a bastard - assuming that hauppauge's own drivers don't make it trap instead!
Let's hear it for code that is small in memory!
george
Don't forget #8 - Any new feature you want will be in the next version, which is due in six months from any given point in time.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Actually, the interface, the multimedia code, and the DirectX/Gaming code came almost directly from Windows 95. All of these are just as susceptible to security flaws as the rest of the system.
You failed to point out WHY he was incorrect.
--- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
The Linux community continues to promise major SMP and performance improvements....since...1996
#begin rant
How dare they use the waiting for promises card. Geez, this ticks me off. When I was 15 years old I had to wait 2 frigging years for Windows 3.1 so I could use all 4 megs of ram on my machine. They tried to make me wait for Win95, NT and 32 bit pre-emptive multitasking. (at this point I went to OS/2 which built a 32bit OS around windows 3.1 before M$ could go 32 bit). Now they want us to wait for windows 2k. What a crock.
#end rant
-- Moondog
maybe it is the truth.
Oh wait, it can't be. It has anti-linux comments, it must be a lie.
Thank you thank you! I had to go almost a third of a way down through the comments before finally getting the Token 1984 Comparison. I was beginning to get a little bit worried!
Why not? I, for one, would like to hear it.
of course, bill was RIGHT from a biz standpoint..
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
They are expecting something. Media warfare or some such business. Stockholders asking too many questions perhaps. Their statements will get increasingly histerical as Linux takes market share from them. I bet the next one they release will have exlamation marks dotted throughout it.
Linux does not provide support for the broad range of hardware in use today; Windows NT 4.0 currently supports over 39,000 systems and devices on the Hardware Compatibility List. Linux does not support important ease-of-use technologies such as Plug and Play, USB, and Power Management.
Funny, PnP, USB and PM are exactly what NT4 officially doesn't support...
Sometimes, I wouldn't mind being hugely overpaid by MS so I could make a great living doing nothing and spreading bullshit.
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
True, administrators can't dispense administrative priveleges (various ones) in quite the same manner or flexibility that NT can, inherently... but in unix, you don't NEED to! One admin can handle TONS of stuff.. MS likes to treat NT like it's a huge office building with managers and sub-managers and a board of directors. One guy can't manage it all. Unix, on the other hand, is like you are GOD>
Beowulf != HA (High Availability) clustering
99.9 percent os-level uptime != 99.9 percent system-level uptime guarantees (hardware can fail too, as can applications)
Here here.
Finally a sane comment. Im sick to death of seeing zealots for one OS or another claiming their OS is perfect, others are crap, and so on ad nauseum.
No operating system is perfect, including linux. It has many faults, many of which are being worked on right now. Windows NT also has many faults.
It's all a matter of using the right tool for the job. You dont try to move furnature in a sports car, or do rally racing in a truck.
You dont hammer nails in with a screw driver, or use a crowbar to open the case on a computer. It's the same with Operating systems. Different ones suit different uses, and just because *your* particular use of computers (for example running a web server which needs good uptimes) works best with a certain operating system does not mean its the be all and end all for every possible use.
Anyone that thinks that is deluding themselves.
SP4, out for about a year, added power management.
AWFULLY would be an understatement... Aaahhh, I'm sure the guy who wrote it was secretely celebrating Monty Python's 30th anniversary!
muahahahahaha
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
Can anyone PLEASE tell me how something can be antiquated (30 years old) AND unproven at the same time ? And why have I only seen one Linux crash ever (unplugged a SCSI drive while the kernel wanted it) but I can get my NT box to crash three times in a row (winlogon.exe dies, taking the OS with it, no explanation) ?
I heard this from a person in the telephone industry:
In the telephone industry you have two measures of reliability. Three nines and five nines. Three nines are 99.999%. Five nines are 99.99999%
If you try to sell three nines graded equipment to the large companies they will laugh at you.
(Heavily paraphrased)
I agree with this. It looked like something written by a challenger to me the first time I read it. It is worse than they first real attempt to discredit Linux : now there are only defensive arguments.
MS is getting to a point where the marketing will not save their OS products.
I used IE5 under 98 and fonts look great.
You are wrong. I am using a beta of Windows 2000 and I can assure you that it is NT based.
Three Step Plan:
1. Take over the world.
2. Get a lot of cookies.
3. Eat the cookies.
I have a 1.8gb swap partition, and i've seen 400mb in use - don't tell me to upgrade - proprietary mb, i have 160mb ram and it only gets used at home :)
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
Let's not forget either that Microsoft claims it's based on entirely new technology (NT) while their actual "Next-generation" kernel is based on a modified version of the BSD kernel. Worse, they took the reliability out of that by letting graphic drivers run in the kernel.
The Microsoft article is mostly corporate lies put together by a team of smart suits following a preset agenda. First buy some bogus benchmarks. Then, little by little, start beating the drum while screaming out those results. Buy some articles from mainstream computer magazines and web sites announcing the "technical superiority" of NT and so on. In general: make a lot of noise. The MS deadline is probably somewhere around the mediablitz before some megalomanic "Windows 2000 for every Harry, Dick and Tom" campaign.
It's easy for MS to throw mud at Linux saying things like "the Linux community says yadda yadda", as the "Linux community" is not organized enough to launch a full scale media retaliation. So reaction has to be brought to a larger scale and screamed out so that everyone and their dog will know the actual facts. Eat the media and spit at Redmond...
This topic is sure to generate loads of messages with low SNRs. But stay calm, focus, and aim your kick for the groin.
PS. Is Hotmail running on NT? I wonder...
Errr. Ever heard of CHKDSK? Ever had to wait for a 20+GB NTFS array complete one? Better yet, please point me to the NTFS filesystem repair tools please...
I'd say that this point is invalid, at least.
Windows NT and windows 98/95 are about as different as two OSs can get, at least in there internal workings. The reason that they can both run the same software is that the win32 API has been ported to both. The first version of Windows NT was marketed as 3.5 (I think), using the same versioning numbers as windows 3.1. Windows 95/98 was also a completely new operating system in many respects, although it did share quite a bit of code with windows 3.1 and it's brethren. Officially labeled 4.0, it could be said that is the latest version of DOS (as it runs dos code well, unlike NT)
It's the same situation with Linux and other unixes; Linux was completely rewritten, from the ground up, and has been changing evolutionarily since then. In contrast, the *BSDs are merely an evolution from the original Unix of 30 years ago.
Nether Unix, Linux, Or windows NT could really be called '30 year old technology' as they have all been gradually changing over time. In terms of 'modern ness' each is only a few years old. They only 'look' the same to applications.
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Just to let you know, the font isn't a bit better with Win98/IE5+Web Fonts. Seems to be bad page design, not just incompatibility this time.
With typical memory sizes in the 64-256M range swap files are becoming irrelevant for most people who use operating systems that don't leak memory in any case.
Posted by Synsthe:
All systems are vulnerable to security issues, however it's important to note that Linux uses the same security model as the original UNIX implementations- a model that was not designed from the ground up to be secure.
There's over 300 comments here already, and the chances that anybody gives a damn about this one in 300 is slim so I'm not going to delve into huge detail...
...but seriously, Microsoft has the balls to attack Linux security, accusing it of using a system that was not design from the ground up to be secure?
I think that describes the MS Windows 9x and NT operating systems to a T. Neither were designed from the ground up to be secure - MS made their operating system with one thing in mind to begin with; dominate the desktop. The desktop, where when they started, a machine was very rarely connected to another, where the only security necessary was setting a CMOS password to keep sneaky house mates out of your stuff.
Without a single worry of other possible security issues. Then came the internet, and widespread use of LANs in the home.. and I for one would not dare accuse MS of trying to develop a secure operating system in light of that.
After all, as windows2000test.com showed us, the best way to secure an MS box, is to make sure it's never up and running for anybody to try and crack it.
If you want to Slashdot their servers, use https:// instead of http:// - an IIS bug allows you to request *any* document through SSL.
Gee. I wonder why that is. Hm. Let's see. Microsoft has literally TONS of bandwidth. Do you a small private site could possibly live up to that? I think not. This isn't due to the operating system they're each running: it's simply how much $$$ each of them has spent on their connection. Do you think that Slashdot is running NT, since they're up and running fine? Somehow I doubt it.
Will
Notice that Microsoft says that WinNT 3.5 has a C2 security rating. 4.0 has no such rating, because the government is no longer doing this service. Thus no OS can boast a C2 rating anymore. There has been a lot said that 4.0 is not C2 secure, hence the large # of patches. As for the all or nothing at all delegative powers, as usual they're full of sh*t, as any good *NIX administrator knows.
I use MS products. VoteZone runs on SQL Server + NT + IIS. So I hope my critique of this "article" carries a little weight. ^_^
"Linux fundamentally relies on 30-year-old operating system technology and architecture."
[ This statement is obviously intended to make the reader think that Linux is somehow decrepit, obsolete, old and crusty. Well, when you "take a step back" as they say themselves, and realize that Windows NT -- the "new" technology and architecture -- has major shortcomings and reliability issues, you may think to yourself, hey maybe there are some ADVANTAGES to "relying on a 30-year old technology." ]
"Linux was not designed from the ground-up to support symmetrical multiprocessing (SMP), graphical user interfaces (GUI), asynchronous I/O, fine-grained security model ..."
[ A cynic might point to the steady stream of NT bugs and security alerts and respond by saying "Well, Linux may not have been designed from the ground up to support those things, but NT doesn't appear to have been designed from the ground up to support things like, say, reliability, security, fault tolerance, or remote administration. Not that those things matter much when you have 'asynchronous I/O' woohoo!" ]
"For e-commerce workloads using secure sockets (SSL), recent PC Magazine tests showed Windows NT 4.0 with Internet Information Server 4.0 delivers approximately five times the performance provided by Linux and Stronghold."
[ LOL!! Whoever wrote this article apparently doesn't know about: "IIS Causes Memory Leak When Using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)" http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q 192/2/95.ASP ]
"It's interesting to note that there is not a single TPC result on any database running on Linux, and therefore Linux has yet to demonstrate their capabilities as a database server."
[ This is a good point, but worded in truly irritating newsgroup trolling fashion. ]
"These architecture constraints limit the ability of Linux to scale well past two processors."
[ This may be true, but I haven't heard about any noteworthy NT SMP installations lately either. And you can bet that Linux will rapidly and competently address any such weaknesses if there is a demand for it, something that I think cannot be said for NT. Service pack 7, anyone? ^_^ ]
"Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 has been proven in demanding customer environments to be a reliable operating system. Customers such as Barnes and Noble, The Boeing Company, Chicago Stock Exchange, Dell Computer, First Union Capital Markets, Nasdaq and many others run mission critical applications on Windows NT 4.0."
[ What Microsoft conveniently fails to mention here is that all of those customers developed and maintain their NT apps with the help of a LEGION of FREE Microsoft consultoid help. I have reliable testimony that this is a FACT in at least one of these cases, and knowing MS, I'd wager it's true in ALL of them. It makes business sense -- MS needs customers to prove their platform and make statements just like the one above, so they'd be willing to pay to make it happen. ]
"There are no OEMs that provide uptime guarantees for Linux, unlike Windows NT where Compaq, Data General, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Unisys provide 99.9 percent system-level uptime guarantees for Windows NT-based servers."
[ As someone once pointed out on a builder.com thread, 99.9% uptime sounds impressive until you actually calculate what it really means in hours of downtime. There are 8760 hours in a year. 0.1% of that is 8.76 hours. So let's turn that statement around to say that Compaq, Data General, HP, IBM, and Unisys provide 9 HOURS OF DOWNTIME PER YEAR GUARANTEES FOR WINDOWS NT BASED SERVERS. ^_^ Yes I know that statement is logically faulty but it sounds funny, and you get the message. ]
"It's important to understand that licensing cost is only a small part of the overall decision-making process for customers."
[ Duh! ]
"Therefore, commercial support services for Linux will be fee-based and will likely be priced at a premium."
[ Um, priced at a premium to WHAT? To NT support services?? As if those legions of freshly minted burger-flippers-turned-MCSE's actually know their way around a mission critical high performance server because they passed some standardized test?
Having seen some of the MS certification tests, I can personally vouch for the fact that these tests are actually quite stiff. But anecdotal evidence from friends who have gotten certification indicates that a lot of these new support staff have very shallow computing experience (after all how many GENUINE experts are there REALLY? I don't consider myself an expert in critical-server support, after 5 years.) ]
"For example how many certified engineers are there for Linux? How easy is it to find skilled development and support people for Linux?"
[ About as hard as it is to find skilled dev/support for any other platform - nearly impossible. ^_^ As for certified engineers - see my comment above. ]
"Linux uses the same security model as the original UNIX implementations- a model that was not designed from the ground up to be secure."
[ I'm not very knowledgeable about security so I'll defer rebuttal of this piece of FUD to an expert. ^_^ ]
"Linux as a desktop operating system makes no sense. A user would end up with a system that has fewer applications, is more complex to use and manage, and is less intuitive."
[ Today, I agree with this totally. ]
"Linux clearly has a long way to go to be competitive with Windows NT 4.0."
[ HOOWAH .... ! One word: "instant-loss-of-credibility-for-this-article-assu ming-it-had-any-to-being-with-which-it-d idnt" ]
Crusade against lame software! votezone.com
Even as competitive analysis, this is a poor showing... most of it could be garnered by reading /., not by doing an objective analysis of the operating system.
One more observation: the true Linux gurus seem all to willing to point out the shortcomings of their software, while the MICROS~1 marketing droids seem genuinely unable to tell when they are lying about their own products... let's not lower ourselves to their level and respond to FUD with equal and opposite FUD!
This is simply an example of how scared M$ is. They fear the possibility that Linux will steal their customers. Mickeysoft should get their facts straight before releasing something like this. All or nothing security? BS. Not designed from the ground up is partially true, but they aren't taking into consideration the big picture. And all those "independent" tests done by PC Mag? We all know how "indifferent" they are.
-Leo the LionMan
-Leo
Regardless of what benchmarks say, what the TCO of NT vs Linux is, GUIs, installation, or whatever FUD that gets spread around, consider this:
Under oath, Microsoft claims that Linux is a threat.
Now the PR department claims that Linux isn't competetive with NT (non-threat).
One way or another, Microsoft is lying.
Do you want to support such an unethical company?
--- A Jesus Fish eating a Darwin Fish only proves Darwin's point.
Security bugs get found at varying times. Even in the OpenBSD audit (arguably the largest single source-code security audit ever done), security bugs were found days, weeks, and even months apart. It is simply, and obviously, not possible to find "all" the security flaws in a complex piece of software all at once.
Thus, it is obvious that a maximally secure operating system will correct security flaws piecemeal, as they are discovered. There is no way to provide for an "all-emcompassing" security patch kit or Service Pack without delaying fixes. Delaying fixes very obviously hurts the end-user and substantially decreases security.
Having worked closely with Microsoft in the past to facilitate correction and disclosure of security problems, I can state with confidence that Microsoft's approach to dealing with new security problems is not only not modern, but also deceptive and ineffecient. As is the case with most commercial software vendors, Microsoft is slow to acknowledge problems and even slower to fix them. Microsoft is the archetypical slimy vendor when it comes to security issues.
However, my anecdotal evidence of Microsoft's poor security posture pales in comparison to the evidence Microsoft itself gives when it advises potential customers that the "Service Pack" approach to security is superior to the open-source standard of full disclosure and near-instantaneous repair.
TrueType font servers are available that allow you to use Windows fonts under X (and are included with some distros). Click here for details.
I mean, let's face it, we can't afford (oh, ok, except for the IPO crowd) to hire our own PR and Marketing divisions, so if we let them do the research for us, we can avoid all the countless hours of focus groups, usability testing, and other things that to many of us are like watching paint dry - and, instead, use that time to fix the code that their research shows could be presented in an unflattering way to us.
Cool!
Could we give Bill G an award for Service to the Penguin? I mean, since he's working for us, when you look at it that way?
Will in Seattle
I find it funny that the mandrake site (which I assume runs linux) has succumbed to the slashdot effect, and the ms site (on NT) is fine.
...it means you actually DON'T have to buy new machines to expand your network to the web, you can use the "old" machines that can't run win2k (wants>300mhz) but humm along with free stuff.
+&x
can't wait to see the responses on this one. i don't know, they almost swayed me a little about the 30 year old OS remark, how accurate is that?
Myth: Microsoft are shaking day and night as Linux improves and takesover the industry
Reality: It's DAMN true! Linux Owns!
The only reason non-MS users would ever visit that page if Slashdot posted a link to the story, which, of course, it did. (I'm not saying it shouldn't have.)
The page's purpose is to just serve as an argument for the NT lovers to those in charge of spending money on hardware and software.
--
You said it much more elquently than I could. Moderators, please moderate this up!
Do not read this
It's not the latest one- which, I believe is 6.X if memory serves. I think NT's up to 3-4 at this point. Fact: Millenium, the consumer version of Windows 2000 is NOT based off of NT- it's a 95/98 derived "OS". Why do you suppose that is? Could it be because they can't get DirectX effectively on NT and keep it stable AND secure?
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Linux is weak in the aio, it's getting better though.
The list as a whole reminds me of some of the FUD that went on between IBM and MS during the OS/2 war. A lot of the differences were at too technical a level for most IS folks to understand and there is lot's of ho-huming. There are a lot of ISPs and other businesses that have run linux very reliably for a long time, the unfortunate thing is that they are usually companies that are sized just wrong enough to be covered by typical enterprise surveys and it's really just a point that they can get away with because there hasn't been a lot of focus on disproving it.
the performance issue is also kind of ironic, I don't know that I've ever seen NT beat linux in a really common environment. I'll give in that NT beats it on some high end and some exotic configurations but on your average department server or typical lan server linux will go toe-to-toe with NT.
they're running scared.
The truly hilarious thing about this page is that about everything it says is in fact quite mythical. An apt title. Microsoft has merely collected it's FUD myths together in one place.
Jim Ewel
I love it! Just the attention means Linux is working.
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I just might read it.
Actually, no one seemed to notice the faux pas about the 128 meg swap file. They said The Linux SWAP file is limited to 128 MB RAM. Since when do you put your swap file in RAM? Well, with microsoft's swap algorithms you never know.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
AFAIK, putting NT on a network renders it non C2 compliant. Also having a floppy drive in the machine removes its security rating.
Well, it is true. Linux has its roots in Unix, which was created in the 1970s. Linux was written to be compatible with Unix, because Linus Torvalds thought Unix was cool and wanted a Unix for his own use. He also had the Minix source code to look through as a reference.
The cool thing about Unix is that it was designed as an infinitely flexible basic foundation on which to do anything. It was developed originally to play Spacewar. From there, it was moved to text processing applications. Now we have Netscape, StarOffice, Gnome and KDE - all four of which are indisputably late 20th century programs.
The big advantage of that 30-year development is that we know it works, and works well. It's been honed to the point that there are minimal amounts of bugs. That's a tremendous advantage over NT, an operating system that was created under strict deadline pressures unimaginable in the Unix and open source worlds.
The foundation works. There's little point to changing it, especially since it outperforms NT as it is in many if not most situations.
D
----
It most likely was not optimized, while the NT box most likely was. A study on Something like this needs to be in the educational sector - not the commercial sector - in order to be taken seriously.
Yes, they have DirectX, but only v3. v6 was supposed to go in with SP5, but I could never find it anywhere.
And I quote, from the article:
d .htm
"Linux clearly has a long way to go to be competitive with Windows"
But, look at this press release: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/doj/10-13recor
towards the bottom of the page. There MS states:
"And, of course, Microsoft is not in a monopoly position in the software market, however narrowly that market is defined. In operating systems it faces competition from IBM OS/2, PC-DOS, Caldera OpenDOS, Apple Mac, Linux, Novell NetWare...."
Interesting, eh?
----------
"They misunderestimated me." --George W Bush, Nov. 6, 2000
My favorite quote:
:-)
"The very definition of Linux as an Open Software effort means that commercial companies like Red Hat will make money by charging for services. Therefore, commercial support services for Linux will be fee-based and will likely be priced at a premium. These costs have to be factored into the total cost model."
And microsoft's policy of charging for support is any different? Well ok it is, you pay for the product and then the support
What a complete joke. They must have upped their two-drink minimum in marketing to 6 or 7. I had to laugh at this.. snipped from their page. "Linux fundamentally relies on 30-year-old operating system technology and architecture." Actually if you count electricity, it's more like 200 years. Enough. This is a linux-bash-fest. How about our own set of myths? M$-Myth #1: It works. M$-Myth #2: We care about you. M$ Myth #3: NTx.x is bug-free. and finally, the biggest myth of all: M$-Myth #4: We're not in it for the money. At the very least, this should gie the DPJ something to point to when Microsoft complains that Linux is "a threat" and a "real competitor" to their desktop.
What they're talking about is that you queue an I/O, and you get a notification when it completes. I.e, instead of calling write and expecting a result, you call something like write that sets a semaphore, and semaphore is released when the bits are actually on disk and the filesystem metadata reflects that. In classic Unix, you really can't do this - write just stuffs the bits in the buffer, and only blocks if there's no buffer space, so a return from write doesn't mean the data is on disk. You can call fsync, but then you have to wait. You can wait in a thread, but this gets ugly if you're doing a lot of transactions at once - you start filling up your process table. The same is true on read - you can't really doselect on a disk file, for example - it'll always say ready, even though it isn't, and even if you hacked select to say "yes, there's data in the readahead buffer," there's no way to ask how much, or to say "do you have the 4096 bytes starting at location 131072 yet?"
This is a really nice feature, and is something for which I believe there is a Posix spec. Unfortunately, neither Linux nor NetBSD currently implement it. Database vendors in particular consider this to be A Big Deal. The ISC DHCP server has this problem, because it can't grant an address to a DHCP client until it's sure the record of the grant is on disk, which has to be done with fsync. This is probably our biggest bottleneck. :'(
Reality: Linux Needs Real World Proof Points Rather than Anecdotal Stories
[snip]
- Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 has been proven in demanding customer environments to be a reliable operating system. Customers such as [snip] and many others run mission critical applications on Windows NT 4.0.
So my question is, if anectdotal evidence isn't good enough to show Linux is stable, why is it good enough for NT. Where's the "real world data or metrics". All they reference is the DH Brown study saying that the clustering solutions are still under development...It was looking like MS might be making a reasonable arguement. It didn't last past the first bullet item.
:) No registry, guys. Says Linux is all or nothing for delegating administration. Go do a web search on sudo. States Linux doesn't meet any of the "key security accreditation standards" Like NT. Says NT meets C2, or british equiv. C2 isn't anything to be impressed by. Says Linux people must spend time understanding security issues. NT users can go to one spot for patches. Boy, I'm glad I don't have to actually *understand* anything when using NT. Says NT is easier to configure properly for security, using the SCE. You must be stoned. Have you looked at Sutton's NSA paper on what it takes to secure NT?
Myth: Linux performs better than Windows NT
Can't argue with most of these points. We'll likely not see a TPCC benchmark for Linux.. they're way expensive. And frankly, until the problems that hinder web serving and file & print sharing performance, there probably won't be a good reason to run a TPCC benchmark.
As other have noted though, thanks for the checklist. I'm sure MS will be flogged with it later when Linux catches up in performance.
Myth: Linux is more reliable than Windows NT
Reality: Linux Needs Real World Proof Points Rather than Anecdotal Stories
(Followed by MS's anecdotal stories.)
(presumably) factual items mentioned are no JFS (being fixed, as I recall) and no OEM guarantee of uptime. Of course, 99.9 percent is mentioned for NT. That's not too hard, it's 8 hours a year. MS dismisses the Linix clustering efforts. Wolfpack still does only 2 nodes, right?
Myth: Linux is Free
TCO discussion. Cites a report for a different OS vs. NT. States companies like Redhat charge for support (gasp!). States unix is complex because.. umm, well it's unix. How many certified Linux folks are there? (How many MCSEs can actually perform the job they are supposed to be certified for?)
Myth: Linux is more secure than Windows NT
Linux only has protection for file system... umm, yeah, that's all there is.
Myth: Linux can replace Windows on the desktop
Says NT has more apps. This is probably correct. The only category that's really hurting on the Linux side, though, is games. Says NT has better hardware support. Says Linux doesn't do USB, APM, or plug & play. Ahem... NT4 doesn't either! If you want those, you have to buy a laptop from a vendor who has written their own! Again calls Linux complex, gives no reason why. Says Linux app support is limited. Linux app support is different, not neccessarily worse. I've recieved lots and lots of crappy support of Windows apps, thanks. Says more developers develop for Windows. Yes MS, relax, your fight for mind & marketshare has been working great. Why, are you worried about it?
Geeze. I thought MS was going to be more subtle about the FUD. Silly me.
At least we now have an offical MS statement to point to for the kind of BS MS spouts, for those capable of independent thought.
According to Siemens, a Linux-based SAP/3 quad Xeon put down the fastest benchmark set on an 4-way Intel system. Read it here, or check out the story on /. september 13th.
I don't think Siemens is the kind of company to give "anecdotal" evidence about "the capabilities of Linux as a database server". SAP is probably one of the most robust ERP/TP systems out there.
I've got a message for all the beautiful people of the world...
THERE ARE A LOT MORE OF US UGLY MOTHERF*CKERS AROUND THAN YOU ARE!
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]
Microsoft makes some points, but 90% of that was total FUD.
I admit that the SMP in Linux isn't the best, and perhaps Windows NT is better for a small
LAN, or if the system administrators are too stupid. My personal preference for serving is
FreeBSD and I use Linux on my personal workstation.
Yes, Linux is limited to 128mb swap, but you can use more than that with multiple swaps.
Windows NT is clearly not as stable as Linux, anything rushed that much, made by inferior
programmers who don't care about what happens as long as they get paid, with countless
bugs and full heavy GUI cannot be as stable. Once my friend told me, "they should take off all
the boot up messages in Linux, it's giving me a headache." He later realized the stupidity
of his statement. This is in a way how Windows is, masking things so people don't get
headaches, as long as everything goes fine. But when something goes wrong...
It is common knowledge that Linux is more stable than Windows NT, so this point that
Microsoft was trying to make is null.
Linux isn't free? Hmm, maybe Microsoft forgot that you could download it for free, or buy it
for like a buck from Cheapbytes. Why is Microsoft talking about UNIX prices? Hmm, maybe
I'll write Windows NT Myths and talk about other Microsoft product prices.
Whats this thing in security about all or nothing? There are plenty of opensource programs
to do the things Microsoft mentioned. Also, there isn't a central place to report bugs?
Can you say, Bugtraq? It also helps when people admit their mistakes.
Oh ya, its nice to have everything out in the open, but it won't matter if your system
administrators are stupid.
To fine tune this idea:
Could we work through a copy of the statement sentance by sentance? A section for clarification of what the sentance's claim is based on (if anything), and one for replies to this statement (More recent reports (with links), arguements against the validity).
Both of these could be done in a threaded and moderated way.
This would allow us to address these matters with the full force of the community, and to moderate out those with less 'developed' linux advocacy.
Seem like a good idea?
Actually I brought this up on linux-kernel recently and inspired a long thread about the "right way" to implement them. As it turns out, there already is a patch that gives you working ACLs in ext2. Haven't yet tried it myself, though
God Fucking Damnit
Why don't you use raw hard drive partitions for your files. IE. set the proper permissions on say /dev/hdb6 and save/load your files directly to that. Ofcourse you don't get the 'file managment' capabilities of a file system, but you also don't get the overhead (and restrictions).
Big databases do this all the time. Surprisingly, when I played around with microsoft sql server 6.5 on NT 4, it required creating its files on top of NT's NTFS file system - two layers of journalling, come on now...
But I don't want to work with databases. I avoided a CS major because I didn't want to work with databases. Storing more than 2 gigs per file is a perfectly reasonable expectation of a 32 bit computer. Video editors do it all the time on Win NT and they don't really care whether if it's the programming interface, the wind direction, or whether the democrats or republicans were in power that caused Linux to only support 2 gigs.
Ha ha ha!!!! You long hairs!!!!
/ LinuxMyths.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/nts/news/msnw
You can't even play somes great games like Micorsoft Space Cadet!!!!
When reading, you'll notice that though the titles refer only to Linux, that a lot of the body of the "comments" refers to Unix, not Linux...
- AMW
With NT, you can have Uptime, or Performance. Not Both! NT is very stable when it's on a box in the corner with no network/console users. (I am invisible when no one is looking :) NT may have better performance, but it will crash after a couple hours of heavy load. (I can lift a car, but my arms may be torn off in the process :)
I just wrote a beginning of a pun on this article... You might want to have a look at it. It is located on my computer.
You can send me adjustments in the form of a diff patch - that would be much appreciated. I only made a beginning.
I'm pretty sure that the PCweek test that were done were the 'mindcraft III' tests, that we preformed with people from Red hat and other Linux companys onsite. Linux was tuned, and showed a pretty big performance improvment over the first, mistuned test
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Yup, I'm a shining example of how one can start by using NT and end up with Linux. Quite frankly, I was horrified how this new "NT" system could be advertised as being so stable and fully 32-bit, yet run like a _dog_ on a P90 w/64MB and crash literally once a day. I got so fed up I moved to Linux (already had a UNIX background from college) and never looked back. Eventually got a new system, and didn't hesitate for one microsecond about wiping Windows off it and installing Linux. If Microsoft wants to to hear about "anadotical" stories, I'd be more than happy to give them a 10 page essay. Linux has _never_ crashed on me in the three years I've been using it, and the apps keep coming and coming!
Go Linux!!!
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
the funny part of this thing is ms whining about linux people's fud by promising things in the future that nt has today!!!
seriously once ms starts to compete on product quality theyre in SERIOUS trouble -- their whole model is leverage
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
Welll Ive read all this before, hell I have seen it all before. ok lets review some details
....
1. Anecdotal stories:
Well Reliance Mutual look to be moving to Linux. And then there is the My own Company (Who promote NT) whose website runs FREEBSD, then How about the fact that Rodenstock Germany (Big Optical Company) work with Linux as a development platform. The US army think NT is poor performer. No major, and for this I mean AOL, UUNET, DEMON ISP will use NT as its backbone in service provision.
2. Linux Community:
The report uses it to sound denegrating but lkets see. For each app, utility and service there is a clear line of responsibility, opportunity and information. Heck we even know who co-ordinates on the Kernel updates, patches and we can redress the distributors and autors or modules for any extra help if we see fit.
3. Promises of SMP
Well excuse me for not running a superserver but most mid level and small businesses, lets face it they are the ones paying for MS licenses, will not need or require that level of service. Those looking for hight end server perfromance are most likley running 64Bit systems (can anyone say Alpha? Unix?)
4. Late release of FUD
most likely.
As a lecturer in Visual Basic and a seasoned tech support professional in NT and windows I will say this. Out of 20 Students on my part time course in VB over half are llooking to install Linux. Of the 14 People who consult me about installing and upgrading their machines, or getting into the "industry" all will want to install Linux by christmas.
Ummmmmm....
This is the Barn, the horse is gone! do you wish to close the doors?
And thats why Firecrackers and kittens don't mix.
the mindcraft benchmark debate uncovered a few-- check back...some are really good at refuting FUD like this one.
You have a better chance of getting USB on Linux than on NT 4.0.
--------
Oscarfish.com: tropical fish with attitude. Way t
microsofts, or red hats?
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
There is a little something I learned about marketing in school:
-AP
Drive letter exhaustion is getting to be a real worry, if your NT network isn't set up with those limits in mind. And if there's NetWare around, it gets even tighter.
One experiment we did on our network was to set up a Samba machine, and under each user's home directory, we'd smbmount each of the NT Server shares that he or she had access to. Their home dir on the Samba box would then be shared and mapped to a single drive letter on their client PC. So they'd see all their network resources under a single drive letter, and file paths were consistent company-wide. They loved it, at least in the demo we set up.
Of course, there would be a lot of issues to consider before setting up a real network like that, but it sure demonstrated the flexibility in a way that average users could relate to.
>Linux fundamentally relies on 30-year-old >operating system technology and architecture.
Hope no-one mentions that the 30-year old technology is still better than windows...because then people might buy products based on their worth, not their marketing. sigh.
peace,
--e;
I think the thing that made me laugh out the loudest was Microsoft accusing Linux of having weak secuity. This is the pot calling the kettle black with a vengance. But I can dish the fud out as well as I can take it! God knows how many backdoors MS has installed in their products! They embarassedly admit to them on the order of about one per year, and claim that they'll stop doing that. The only way you can be sure you can trust your programs is to have access to the source code for those programs! If I were a MS Competitor I'd think twice before using any MS product in my development process. And don't even get me onto the topic of undocumented APIs!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Well as I sit at an nt box and fire up microsoft's c2 security configuration manager part of nt resourcekit here is what I find. The following configurations fails c2 security because...
1 volume is not ntfs (common for system part)
ms-dos is installed (ok my bad)
os/2 subsystem installed
posix subsystem installed (well nt is posix compliant!!!)
Networking -one or more networking services is installed on this system (gee I thought the point of nt was to network?)
Well those were the worst offenders. I would bet that this makes 99.99 NT installs not c2 compliant, the networking part really makes me laugh.
Why don't you admit that Linuks needs work and fix it.
Good. Well done. Most people, in case you hadn't read any of the other posts, spell Linux with an x at the end. Oh.
And it does need work. It always does work. We always have a list of things to improve. MS seems to have a list of things to buy and then add bugs to.
God is real, unless declared integer.
Quack
"Death before dishonor, but neither before breakfast."
Add this to your .Xdefaults and restart:
! There are 7 font sizes, 1 thru 7. The default font is 3, and the others
! are based on this. The default increment is 20%, which means that the 4
! is 20% larger than the 3, the 5 is 40% larger, and so on.
Netscape*documentFonts.sizeIncrement: 1
Their only real point concerning reliability is the lack of a journaling filesystem. Just because someone out there (such as Microsoft) is willing to guarantee uptime for NT does not automatically make NT stable and Linux unstable. Perhaps Linux doesn't need such a silly guarantee (though someone could make some easy money that way). Sure, they can list some big names that use NT, but there's big names using just about every OS on the face of the planet. That really isn't enough information to prove or disprove that one OS is more stable than the other. In fact, it's really difficult to compare stability through anything other than anecdotal evidence (polling system administrators?).
The article does a good job discounting the free beer myth, but it does not prove in any way that the total cost of ownership for NT is less than that for Linux. It simply says that it has supposedly been proven that NT is cheaper than UNIX, and then tries to apply that to Linux. We then once again see the tired argument that there are no "certified engineers" for Linux. If Linux is so much like UNIX, why not borrow from the pool of UNIX "certified engineers"?
Linux's security model is in no way weak. At worst, it's a tad bit crude. Security is not all or nothing. That's what groups are for. That's why I can listen to music without su'ing to root. Again Microsoft's tired and flawed arguments are provided. Apparently since NT can achieve a government security rating (which they didn't even bother to define), NT is more secure than Linux, since no one's ever tried to certify Linux. I don't really believe that NT also doesn't require "an administrator to be an expert in the intricacies of the operating system and how components interact." I think here the crude simplicity of the UNIX security model actually wins out, if that's their argument.
As for Microsoft's argument against Linux on the desktop, they contradict themselves once again. If NT is supposedly so much more complex, powerful, and well designed than Linux, why would the "complexity of the Linux operating system" inhibit Linux's acceptance on the desktop (assuming NT would be accepted :P).
I think whoever wrote this article worked very hard on the first section. Then they must have gotten sick of the task and simply dozed through the remainder. The article starts out with some nice facts and figures, and even a convincing argument or two, but then suddenly degrades into the same tired old dogma. A lot of it is entirely self-contradictory and quite disingenuous (but what do you expect?). As always, Microsoft only strives to convince the idiot. :P
Perhaps not, but this only serves to polarize people further. The Microsoft faithful will wave this around as proof of their beliefs and the Linux zealots will point to it as more proof that Microsoft is a nothing more than a hive of marketing droids who can lie better than they can write code...
And those, like me, on the sidelines will be pushed more to one side or the other. Even if we might otherwise lean towards the NT camp, I think many will be so embarrassed and saddened by this kind of brookmanship that we may now move the other way. FUD or not, this was a mistake on Microsoft's part. I will not be surprised if the web page dissapears sometime real soon.
Jack
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
This is why the benefits of public news forums, like slashdot and linuxtoday are so important! Even the slashdot effect, and severe mail overloads to the FUD writers is helpful. Usually, a big company's (eg, MSFT) marketing dept can write what they want in whatever trade rag they want (or hire someone else to do it, eg mindcraft). A little commercial company could be totally squashed by these announcements, they can't compete with big bill's marketing muscle.
However, with our free (as in speech) software and the OSS movement, the biggies are competing with a community, nay an entire country (of sorts). We've shown in the past that we'll put our foot down when it comes to blatantly false FUD reports and misleading statistical tests. And we'll continue to do so, and there ain't nothing those thick-walleted folks can do (or pay off) about it! We've destroyed mindcraft's test results (well, the original ones at that), and have thrown lots of egg on PCweek's face in the recent security tests.
We cannot be moved by sheer marketing, FUD, or other means of bullshit. No, the revolution is on it's way! This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius!!!!!
Myth: Geeks like Linux better.
Microsoft engineers have been using Linux for months on their own home computers and when questioned by Microsoft Marketing Goons, they all claim they like NT better.
- Windows NT has 37 percent lower TCO than UNIX. There is no reason to believe that Linux is significantly different than other versions of UNIX when it comes to TCO.
- Uhm, err. There is plenty of reason to believe that, given that the cost of the OS is very signifigant on commercial UNIXen. With the SGI's we have I end up having to get licenses for such 'extensive' add-ons as being able to print postscript to a printer (I'm not kidding). And having a working compiling environment. Commerical UNIXen ship OS's that don't have as many 'goodies' as Linux does, so when you use Linux as the base you don't have to buy as much of the OS at extra-cost as you do with commercial Unixen.
- Therefore, commercial support services for Linux will be fee-based and will likely be priced at a premium. These costs have to be factored into the total cost model.
- Bullshit. They don't have to be factored in unless you actually decide you need them. We aren't all big-time commercial operations that need that sort of thing.
- For example how many certified engineers are there for Linux? How easy is it to find skilled development and support people for Linux?
- I'm sorry, but an MSCE diploma is not worth the paper its printed on. The existance of the ability to get that kind of thing without any actual talent or knowlege just cheapens the value of the certificate. (and is unfair to those MSCEs who actually are qualified and get lost among the hordes.) The existance of hordes of MSCEs is not going to make any real difference to how easy it is to find good qualified employees.
- All systems are vulnerable to security issues, however it's important to note that Linux uses the same security model as the original UNIX implementations- a model that was not designed from the ground up to be secure.
- Uhm, hello, what planet are these people from? The 'original' security model of UNIX has about as much to do with modern UNIXen like Linux as the 'original' security model of DOS 1.0 has to do with Windows NT.
- Linux has not supported key security accreditation standards. Every member of the Windows NT family since Windows NT 3.5 has been evaluated at either a C2 level under the U.S. Government's evaluation process or at a C2-equivalent level under the British Government's ITSEC process.
- Great, so your NT enterprise server is going to be plenty secure so long as it isn't connected to your network at all (That's what C2 refers to). Big Furry Deal. Linux hasn't bothered with the certification because there's absolutely no point to it. It could probably pass it, but so what? C2 doesn't mean anything useful.
- Configuring Linux security requires an administrator to be an expert in the intricacies of the operating system and how components interact. Misconfigure any part of the operating system and the system could be vulnerable to attack. Windows NT security is easy to set up and administer with tools such as the Security Configuration Editor.
- Oh, come on now! Even most Windows advocates will say that having an unknowlegable person set up the security of a Windows NT server is a recipie for disaster. Just because the interface to do so is prettier doesn't alleviate the need for a well knowlegable person to decide what values should be used to fill in the blanks.
- Linux does not provide support for the broad range of hardware in use today; Windows NT 4.0 currently supports over 39,000 systems and devices on the Hardware Compatibility List. Linux does not support important ease-of-use technologies such as Plug and Play, USB, and Power Management
- Windows doesn't run on Macs, nor on Sparcs, nor on Alphas (not anymore), and so on. If you remember that fact, and start a phallus-waving contest of comparing the number of pieces of hardware that are supported, Windows won't look so hot anymore. Windows only supports more hardware if you limit your comparasins to the Intel PC. (And even then WINDOWS DOESN'T SUPPORT THE HARDWARE!!! THE HARDWARE SUPPORTS WINDOWS. Microsoft isn't writing those drivers, the hardware manufacturers are.)
And this one is my favorite (I don't have time to list everything and I'm getting tired, so I'll just cut to the most glaring stupidity): In one section they start by saying:Reality: Linux Needs Real World Proof Points Rather than Anecdotal Stories
Then they immediately proceed to list some anecdotal stories for places that use NT, RIGHT AFTER TELLING US that that same kind of anecdotal evidence is insufficient to show anything:
Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 has been proven in demanding customer environments to be a reliable operating system. Customers such as Barnes and Noble, The Boeing Company, Chicago Stock Exchange, Dell Computer, First Union Capital Markets, Nasdaq and many others run mission critical applications on Windows NT 4.0.
What a bunch of maroons. The sad part is that many a PHB will read this and never once consider that maybe they should take pro-NT information that comes from Microsoft with a little healthy skepticism. For some dumb reason, people who are normally healthily skeptical with other companys' claims drop all skepticism at Microsoft's claims. I don't understand it.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Why is that whnever Linuks does poorly, you start complaining that it was rigged. Why don't you admit that Linuks needs work and fix it.
I bet 500 comments are going to show up about now.
./ isn't going to matter one bit, so I'd suggest using the energy for something useful.
It isn't worth discussion. It's clearly just marketing bullshit, FUD, etc. You might as well give up trying to argue about it. (Too bad RedHat and others don't respond when MS dishes it out. You'd think they'd have the money or the balls, alas.)
All the indignation on
By their logic, Windows must be older than Linux/Unix. Since Windows is based on DOS, and DOS is really CP/M-86, and CP/M was based on an old DEC OS, then Windows is also based on old technology.
Even if though some of the points M$ makes are true, and even IF Windows NT really is more stable than Linux...I have to reboot a dual PII-Xeon with a gig of RAM every couple days because Microsoft's tangle of data access crap leaks memory like a sieve, and their workaround involves installing not-yet-released service packs while standing on one leg and chanting "Bill Gates is the antichrist".
I think it's most interesting that Microsoft would actually make a page to defend themselves. It shows how seriously they are taking linux as a threat. They do have some good points though. (1 or 2) Such as desktop on linux. It's not a problem but something that needs to be addressed before linux can attack Windows 9x and 2000. Although some of the facts are terribly wrong. Such as linux not having power managment or the filesystem being limited to 2 gb. Seems like Microsoft is a little behind.
Since many people here on /. like me, probably work for a PHB. Is there a site I can point him to in order to refute this FUD? Is there a honest Benchmark page at all? if not perhaps I'll start one. TOTALLY unbiased. I believe Linux is the better OS, but CIO's don't have time to test this stuff themselves, so they stick with the status quo. Actual quote: "If in wasn't for NT i'd have to cut my staff in half!"
Hello! I am Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die
I'm sure this post is preceded by the usual trolls and flamers, so let's just ignore them.
I just finished reading the article and considered writing a point-by-point analysis. As Rob pointed out there are some good points and some bad points made. It shouldn't take much time to evaluate each claim and write a reasonable response. So should we?
The fact is we are starting to see more and more of these (hey, it's almost Halloween again, isn't it? (: ). Another fact is that some of these claims clearly are FUD. "Security on linux is an all-or-nothing proposition" (paraphrased from the document). Huh? Claims like this are flatly wrong, either intentionally or accidentally (should we expect everyone to know about sudo and groups?).
I believe that what linux truly needs is some sort of a PR "department". No not a fuddish (cool word) marketing department or bloodthirsty advocates for a particular distribution. Just a comprehensive document developed by a variety of people that addresses some of these common concerns and myths. Does such a document exist? Where?
-Scott
Hey boys and girls! I think it is great that Microsoft gives us critisism. It is great because of a few reasons, but the most important one.. Microsoft has understood that it can also take part of the GNU generation. And they do! They are acknowledging Linux. Not only, they are telling us things that they think we should do. What better compliance to the GNU ideal can we get? Now for the marketing part. Who in his/her right mind believes ANYTHING that a vendor puts on its web? If I want NT Server facts, I would rather go to some reliable source, rather than to Microsoft. While the redmondians has given us an excellent chance to do something about things, I dont think that they will honestly benefit too much from it. FUD if you people like, but to me it really doesnt matter. I am a part of a GNU generation, and GNU is a part of me. I can care less about it all. Thank you BillG, you and your staff has been most helpful. Sincerely, Alexander
Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. -Ayn Rand
There's something an old English/History teacher told me when writing persuasive essays or documents; always give positive points to the antithesis of your subject, otherwise your just writing something that's useless.
This Microsoft document shows that their falling back on usual FUD tactics to re-assure all those imho, *ahem* braindead *ahem* MCSE/NT Admins that their jobs aren't at risk and that their still useful.
My favourite line though is:
"Reality: Linux Needs Real World Proof Points Rather than Anecdotal Stories"
I have setup linux boxes at my old job and even though I've left 5 months ago, those servers/gateways have still been running with the exception of one which had to be shutdown to be moved.
NT ? No thank you, I'd rather have my brain ripped out with a plastic fork.
I, as a Windows user... hold on... damn, gotta restart hold on...
Ok, I as a Windows user think that this is completely correct. Windows is... SHIT bsod....
OK that's better ok I think that Windows is MUCH more stable and secure than... WTF is that? I never went to that porn site? Back... Oriface? what the fuck?
Uhmmm... hold on....
OK Linux is so crappy I mean come ON you need to memorize all those commands (why the HELL does clicking on that icon stall the whole OS?) and... shit, looks like I have to reboot again... ok... as I was saying... FUCK reboot AGAIN why the hell do I need to do that? Cancel. BSOD?!?!? WHAT THE HELL!!! CANCEL!!! GPF!!!!!! ARGHHHHHHHHHH!!! It's that damn anti trust case not letting Microsoft innovate so their product is now beginning to lack!!! Come ON you retarded Linux us*Disconnect at 34:23:12**Reboot*
PS: I am a Linux user. This was a satire. Get over it.
If you think you know what the hell is going on you're probably full of shit. -- Robert Anton Wilson
jdube is who
"Windows NT 3.5 has been evaluated at either a C2 level under the U.S. Government's evaluation process or at a C2-equivalent level under the British Government's ITSEC process." Apparently the box that they gained this security level on was switched off and had no network card, keyboard or mouse. Now try and crack that.
As for performace. Our mail server at work is a 486DX 2/66 running linux, and happily serves our 30 staff. Try running NT on that.
What's wrong with verdana?
---
Re "sudo":
Linux, and UNIX systems in general, do have
a very real security problem owing from their
architectural dependance on the "root"
superuser. While "sudo" does superficially
mitigate the risks of giving all administrators
"full root access", it does so in a manner
that is fairly questionable (it effectively
creates limited-access SUID programs out of
programs that were not designed to be SUID).
But administrative access aside, the whole idea
of the "root" user is bad, and has been
acknowledged as bad. The problem is that the
system both expresses privilege in a more-or-less
"binary" fashion (all or none) and also
requires that the "all" privilege be exposed to
normal users from time to time (SUID programs
and root-owned daemon processes.
A better design for a secure operating system is
to utilize a different "privilege" or "capability"
for each privileged operation. For instance,
where Linux relies on "root" to signify the
privilege needed to open a raw socket, a better
system would use a "raw socket" privilege.
The end result of this approach is that instead
of SUID "root" "ping" programs (for example), you
have "raw-socket privileged" programs. The
obvious benefit is that if you find a security
flaw in the "ping" program, the attacker only
gets the ability to open a raw socket, not the
entire system.
While this is a real flaw in the Linux/UNIX
security model, I am unconvinced that the Win32
security model is much better. Win32 also has
an omnipriveleged superuser ("Administrator").
What's worse, Win32 systems have a terrible
multi-user design, which also compromises
security.
And I am absolutely unconvinced that
Win32 is even comparable to Linux in terms of
real security, since Win32 is a large, closed-
source software project with a demonstrated
history of stupid bugs (poor input validation,
etc). In the open-source Unix community, a new
class of "stupid bug" is followed by a period
in which code is swept through in an attempt to
eradicate those bugs. There is no evidence to
suggest that the same process occurs in Win32.
However, it would be unfortunate if dogmatic
allegience to Linux prevented people from
acknowledging its more serious flaws.
8gig is about the performance limit of ext2. After that it starts to take significant time to simply mount the disk read/write. (Lots of structure to copy into memory). 25+gig arrays take an indecent amount of time. And don't even talk about e2fsck.
When linux crashes (not if, this is a high load box) recovery time is astronomical.
They missed one point, though. No good way to backup large volumes. Dumpe2fs craps at about 8gig... lots of 64bit problems. Tarballing a 30 gig array as a "backup" solution just dosn't cut it... no good way to do incrementals.
Hopefully we'll see some decent large-filesystem support by 3.0, since theres a few different projects working on it already.
--Dan
NT 4.0 "pioneered" Async I/O? Hell, even Macs have had that forever.
As a linux newbie, who would stumble upon contrary reports of the NT vs Linux battle anyway, I am thankful to those who contribute insightful and informative content and comments, and thankful to /. as a forum for that. I've been tooling around for a while with Linux, and finally It's becoming functionally superior for me, rather than solely philosophically superior. I add my own yada-yada about having crashed NT several times, and why it's an impolite OS, and that I have NEVER crashed Linux. Neophtye linux geek
Vaporware, just like Windows 2000...
(some definition of Vaporware advocated here)
Things are heating up in Redmond. This actually seems like they are taking Linux seriously. I guess they are changing their minds :)
Ah well...they still have a killer marketing department.
I've seen wild comparison scores before but these are just ridiculously biased.
2)Myth: NT is more reliable than Linux,
I keep hearing stories from NT admins about how they dream of that 99.95% uptime but just can't achieve it, at least my newest Linux box (6months old) has never once crashed and has only ever been down because I kicked the power plug out
What is Microshafts obsession with being commercially proven ?
Does a system have to be commercially proven before it's good? I don't think so. A large amount of technology currently in use was developed by government and by the public and then adopted by business. I think Microsoft's stance here is something of Peer pressure, if we all do it, you have to do it.
Myth: Linux is Free,
Now this is just a joke. Of course you have to pay for Linux support, not everything is free, and I'm sure you'll find it a lot cheaper to build a Linux network even if you have to spend twice the manhours to build it.
Myth Linux security model is weak -
"Linux only provides access controls for files and directories. In contrast, every object in Windows NT..can be regulated as appropriate." Every object in Linux is a file, Linux doesn't rely on the f*(king registry.
Come on everybody laugh, Microsoft just made a joke.
Heck I see this as great news, MS finally considers Linux to be a big enough competitor to start the FUD flowing freely and openly. With all the other things they've said and had said against them lately this can only help the cause.
IMHO we should all down a few v-beers and call this a victory.
--- Juggle juggle@hitesman.com
I'd really like to see things that MS avoided on purpose.
Linux - can read any multitude of existing file systems.
NT - well, uh, can I interest you in an NT file server and NT worskstation solution? You really don't need to talk to OTHER computers with foreign file systems... networking is not where it's at... other computers are danggerous (look at the G4, TANKS!) and full of securtiy holes... and they don't have any cool features... look here.. Solitaire while you wait for the next patch that will fix this very small insignicant security hole... no the Blue Screen is completly normal, just hit the reboot switch and let the system take 15 minutes to reboot.
Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
-quaint, member emeritus of the committee for natural selection. P.S. on a more serious note, thanx for the worklist Bill. :)
Configuring Linux security requires an administrator to be an expert in the intricacies of the operating system and how components interact. Misconfigure any part of the operating system and the system could be vulnerable to attack. Windows NT security is easy to set up and administer with tools such as the Security Configuration Editor.
NT requires something like 300 modifications to make it secure, including many undocumented or poorly documented registry hacks. Does anyone have the URL for that paper on making NT secure? (written for the US government - NSA/DOD/???). I read it, and it is extremely long and complicated. Linux security isn't easy to set up either, but they can't say NT is.
Customer Testimonials - See how these leading companies and organizations have deployed Windows NT Server 4.0: Nasdaq, Barnes & Noble, Dell Computer Corp, The Boeing Company, First Union, Chicago Stock Exchange.
Anyone notice that Microsoft is missing from this list? They still haven't been able to get Hotmail working on NT.
Reality: Windows NT 4.0 Outperforms Linux On Common Customer Workloads
Look at the system requirements for Windows NT (or 2000), then compare those with Linux. NT will run OK on a system less than a year old, but the majority of hardware isn't that new.
The very definition of Linux as an Open Software effort means that commercial companies like Red Hat will make money by charging for services.
What? Microsoft will give you free support? I don't remember reading anything about free NT support.
The cost of the operating system is only a small percentage of the overall total cost of ownership (TCO).
I agree. The cost of upgrading your computer every two years to keep up with WinNT system requirements is much higher than the cost of NT itself.
Linux only provides access controls for files and directories. In contrast, every object in Windows NT, from files to operating system data structures, has an access control list and its use can be regulated as appropriate.
OK, one good point. Linux needs better access control. ThirdPig has modified the Linux kernel (2.2.2) to include process based security. They'll have to release it under the GPL, right? (I haven't found any source or GPL info on their site.)
"The largest file size Linux supports is 2 GB versus 16 terabytes (TB) for Windows NT 4.0" Does NTFS even support partitions this large, or is this just the theoretical limit of the operating system? I know NT has large file system support, but didn't think it could scale this large.
On the other hand, the article did have some valid points about shortcomings in Linux when deployed as a large enterprise server.
I will address each bullet point with IMHO remarks.
Performance ;) What happens when it doesnt stay up 99.9% of the time? do they refund you in hours? minutes? or seconds? ;). ;) ;)
The PC Week web server tests exposed a weakness in the Linux IP stack (this is a good thing, cuz now the IP stack is better) Serving static web pages is not a very good test of modern web server performance.
SSL development and deployment is hamstrung by the moronic rules of the US gov regarding encryption and open source. So I would not be surprised if Linux lags a bit there.
There are no TPC results for Linux yet, because the DB companies just ported their stuff to Linux recently. Give it time
Ok, Linux does not scale well past 2 processors. One word, Beowulf
Linux is in the process of providing a fine tuned SMP kernel. Linux is in the process of providing a fined tuned *everything*. The improvement process never stops.
Reliability
Microsoft has been disproven at Hotmail and Walmart (and others I don't have on the tip of my tongue). People didn't develop Linux just cuz they don't like the weather in Seattle, there is a need for it.
Ok, you got us, we don't have a journaling file system. At least we don't lie to people and claim that we have one.
Commercially proven clusters? One word, Titanic the Movie (shutup, i know that was 3 words)
99.9% uptime eh? woooo! only down 1 day a year (ebay should run NT
Free?
Ok, it aint free...your time is valuable if you use linux, and it aint worth a dime if you use NT. *ahem* sorry, TCO for NT is lower eh? You get what you pay for I guess
Fees for service in the computer industry are outrageous whether you are running Solaris, NT, or Linux.
They do have a good point, it is hard to find skilled Linux engineers.
Security
File security, everything in Unix is a file, you do the math.
Ownership, groups, etc etc...this one is just a case of ignorance
C2 eh? Did you make sure that CAT5 cable is plugged into your NIC? NO? oh...i c nudge nudge
CERT + redhat.com is what I use, writing posts like these tho is a real time burner (I type with my tongue)
Yes it is easy for a newbie to leave doors open on UNIX boxes, therefore do not let newbies administer UNIX boxes. Let them play with NT until they grow up.
Desktop
ACK! THEY GOT US AGAIN! Hardware support on Linux sux.
CDE on linux, CDE on Solaris...
Do you have a phone list for that 13%? BTW only 10% of the ISVs are in the top 10% of their field.
Did you mean 'hacker' or 'cracker'?
Do you know the diffrence? I don't think you do.
Myth: Microsoft is not afraid of Linux, according to Microsoft.
Reality: Microsoft is scared shitless of Linux, this webpage is proof.
Also, does the text on that page look like crap to anyone else? I'm using Communicator 4.7 on a Mac and I can't even read the small text.
I lost it completely reading just the first line from this article. Microsoft advising people to "step back from the hype"? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAHAHAHA!!!! OOOHOOHOOHOOHOOOOWOOOHOWOOOOO!!! HEEHEEEEEEHEEEEE!!!!! It hurts. Ouch. But too funny. They are running scared, it would seem.
Edith Keeler Must Die
After a quick review of the article, it would appear that Microsoft is bringing back every FUD tactic:
1. UNIX is old. Linux is UNIX-like. Linux is outdated.
2. UNIX is hard. Linux is UNIX-like. Linux is hard.
3. Linux is unproven.
4. Linux support is either via Internet or pay-per-incident from Red Hat, etc. (Just like MS...)
There are a few good points made, such as scalability issues. But I don't think its very difficult to debunk the myths, and once you do, the article is VERY short indeed.
Windows really just runs on two platforms, x86 and alpha
Well, not from here on out, since M$ officially dumped AXP as a target architecture for Windows NT. They're back to x86-only. Surprise, folks.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Ah, the sweet irony.
--
I can see that you've never looked at the NT source. You see, NT is actually a _lot_ better than Linux. More stable, more features, better all around. But it has a unique design feature. Main memory is on the disk, and it swaps to RAM. I'm not really sure _why_ this is done, but most of the times when NT crashes it's because of bad sectors on the disk and other shoddy hw manufacturing.
Why, if MS would put main memory in RAM, it'd smoke Linux's ass. It's unlikely to happen though, because MS firmly believes that it's a feature, not a bug.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
MS's site says Linux does not support Power Management. Am I crazy? I thought that my Linux system did, and I use it regularly. Maybe I'm schizophrenic. Really? Maybe I am too.
Microsoft already has other sections on their website saying "NT is better than everything else". This is just another. Don't take it personally - Microsoft is a bully like any other. The attention actually _encourages_ Microsoft to make more evil statements, just like any bully. Ignore it. Linux long and prosper
Shouldn't the title be Micro$oft Obsfucates Linux Truths?
This is almost funny. If this is the case, then why does my VAIO run Linux better than Windows 98. And why does NT not even install? -Andrew BTW: NT does not support USB, power managment, or Pnp.
Even though they used a font that in pretty much unreadable with the default redhat/netscape configuration, I still managed to find the line that says: "The Linux SWAP file is limited to 128 MB RAM" Perhaps true, I wouldn't know, but htey don't mention that that is irrelevant, because linux usually uses a swap partition instead. Personally, I've got over 300 megs of swap space.
Who picked the fonts there. They're tiny and blocky when viewed on my Linux browser. I'm sure they look great under IE5 on a winblows machine though. Ah well. Can't have my workstation be unstable just to view pretty fonts now can I? I'll get an SGI if I need that.
I'm not sure why we pay so much attention to MS propaganda pages. Does anyone actually read that stuff?
/. or some journalist shines the spotlight.
From a cursory reading, it seems to be the MS equivalent of those airline brochures which claim that their peanuts are fresher and that their flights are smoother. Face it - nobody really reads this stuff.
It only gets attention when
But that's only NT 3.5, and only when it's not hooked up to a network.
-Brent--
Boeing: http://www.m-tech.ab.ca/linux-biz/boeing.html http://www.theregister.co.uk/990811-000001.html Dell: http://www.idg.net/crd_ibm_dell_9-126405.html http://www.dell.com/linux/press.htm SGI: http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/1999/31/ns-9268.html IBM: http://www4.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164, 2267514,00.html http://www.theregister.co.uk/990930-000020.html Compaq: http://www.digital.com/inFORM/issues/issue27/ln02- linux-story.htm Intel: http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/1999/32/ns-9301.html http://www.linuxia64.com/ Fujitsu: http://www.theregister.co.uk/990929-000017.html Microsoft: http://www.vcnet.com/bms/departments/nt/bugs.shtml http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q 150/7/34.ASP http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q 194/8/34.ASP http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q 224/7/93.ASP Other side: HP: http://www.theregister.co.uk/990920-000020.html
It is nice to see that Micro$oft is able to povide ample evidence as to how much better Windows NT is. They have the first myth covered with three reputable sources. I have problems with the magazine's bias, but before you guys decide to shoot me down, I would like to know where the results are for another magazine such as Infoworld, or Byte Online where they focus on the business aspect of computing. Other then that Microsoft used reliable sources to explain their results, but my question is where are these sources? The few links that are provided are from customers of Microsoft and Microsoft's own web sites. Besides, it is always nice to see that in Microsoft's rants and raves, they neglected to mention the numerous bugs in Win NT in fact, there is a feature article in last week's Infoworld about the security flaws in NT. Another item of interest is an old Slashdot article about the Army swithching over to Macs because of NT's security. Oops. I guess in the end, this was just yet another PR stunt to justify NT's existance.
I went to a Microsoft recruitment session at my school, mostly to see a friend who works at Microsoft as a Program Manager for the Windows 200 0 kernel (yes he does like his job, and yes he makes gobs of money).
The funniest thing was the video they showed about interning at MS. They painted a glowing picture of the influence and satisfaction the interns get. Near the end, one of the interns was saying, "you really get to help people...I mean people cut and paste a lot, making that easier would be great." It was all I could do to not stand up and shout "that's what the middle button is for!!".
The point isn't that MS is staffed with idiots. Indeed MS employees are, on the whole probably very bright people, but I think they have the problem that a minority of the people that work there have experienced different operating system paradigms.
OS zealots are like religious zealots in their fanaticism, but like true religion, OS zealotry without world experience is empty and meaningless. This is as true for Linux, and Mac zealots as it is for MS zealots, but due to OS marketshare, at least Linux and Mac (and Be, *BSD, etc.) users have experienced other ways of doing things and should have a personal basis for their beliefs.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
$ls -l binary~3.iso
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 639516672 Oct 6 00:54 binary~3.iso
$ time rm binary~3.iso
real 0m22.431s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m0.330s
Is this typical/unreasonable? That's on ext2fs on a 5400 rpm, DMA (not UDMA) hard drive. At least it's not taking cpu time.
You know . . .
First they ignore you. We're long past that.
So is this the part where they laugh at you,
Or is this the part where they fight you?
I honestly can't tell.
But I do know what comes after they fight you.
"Then you win."
(Oh, and in case anyone was wondering, I did not have a hand in writing this. Probably just as well, too. I don't think I could have come up with anything intentionally that would be as good at making the company look silly as this does by accident.)
--
Someone you trust is one of us.
Linux fundamentally relies on 30-year-old operating system technology and architecture. This is not the least of linux's problems. Linux fundamentaly is meant to run on "computers" which trace their modern form back to the fourties, and can be traced earlier than that in concepts. These computers run on "elecricity" which has existed for several billion years. The only way to be certain that your computer is up to par with today's technology is to rely on an up-to-the-minute marketing department. "windows" has a nice ring to it, don't you think? Try and connect that to any ideas more than 5 years old.... Although some punkass at MIT stole the word "windows" and prefixed with an X, it is still a cutting-edge concept thanks to microsoft. Plus they did him one better and added 2 letters instead of one. Trust ingenuity, trust microsoft.
... we don't need it.
(IANAPRS)
At least not at the official "PR Department" level. PR acts (in the normal business world)as a buffer zone between the media,customers,real world (i.e. public) and the official "word" of the company. It needs to be localized to provide one point of contact, one mouth speaking, one (very important here) point of view. That of the Company. Linux is not, never has been, and never will be a Company. It is a Community. Communities don't have central points of control for information. If you want to know what the Community thinks, you ask it, and you hear many voices, many differing points of view, the overall "feel" of the Community. This is often highlighted by outstanding members of the community, but if they say somethin' we don't like, they get flamed too. Often much too harshly, but heh, this is a wild community, very few rules apply here. BTW: Two sentences back, this "post" turned into a "rant", but, then again, you read it.
And your idea for a nice easy higly distrubuted Myths of Linux: The FAQs (with examples of FUD and rebuttals. I think including 20-30,000 or so examples of "anecdotal" evidence might be enough to sway some people, ahh screw it. Official call to action! If you want to submit a concise (under1page) example of your anecdotal evidence, send it to me at thewah@uswest.net and I'll make it look pretty on the web.)
+&x
IMNSHO, this is another piece meant to inflame the hot-headed, confound the clueless, and merely irritate the informed...but since I'm a bit of all three, here goes.
t ml
1."With all the recent attention around Linux as an operating system it's important to step back from the hype and look at the reality."
Good, good. They start out OK here. Perhaps slashdot could learn from this: if it doesn't run Linux, that doesn't necessarily mean it is anathema...
2.So. Let's see what they say about scalability:
"The Linux operating system is not suitable for mainstream usage...with Windows NT 4.0, customers can be confident in delivering applications that are scalable, secure, and reliable--yet cost effective to deploy and manage."
Mm-hmm. Scalability. Let's take a look at this one. What was that scalability announcement awhile back...lemme try to pull up a url...
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/08/26/128252.sh
Turns out NT's not running terribly well on 64-bit systems...not only that, but they discontinued Alpha support? 'S a long time ago. Perhaps they released another service pack...they've had plenty of time, right? So perhaps they're right here.
In contrast, you can run Linux on just about anything that POSTs. And then some.
3. Security:
"Linux only provides access controls for files and directories. In contrast, every object in Windows NT, from files to operating system data structures, has an access control list and its use can be regulated as appropriate."
All well and good. But this is because the kernel itself in Linux, all its gutty workings, are kept from the user. I'm quite new to Linux, but AFAIK, the only thing the normal user CAN manipulate, really, is files and directories. Isn't it logical, then, to have access controls just for such manipulation? (Someone correct me if I'm wrong.)
4."Linux as a desktop operating system makes no sense. A user would end up with a system that has fewer applications, is more complex to use and manage, and is less intuitive."
Mmm, the heady taste of sensationalism... Is there anyone else out there who feels "crippled" when using Windows? I do. I stumble around, can't get the mouse speed set right, keep looking for my kpanel when it's not there, and find the system locked solid after leaving it alone for a few hours. Any OS can be non-intuitive when one is unused to it. Get a grip, Redmond. You think your GUI's flatulation don't stink.
*In this post, NT and the Microsoft Way
succeeds a whopping 25% of the time!!
{/illogical meandering rant}
There, I feel much better.
Can't sleep, the clowns will eat me...
Just let MS think they've won. So a couple businesses will stay on NT. Microsoft will be happy, and stop caring about Linux. Then one day it'll wake up and realize that it doesn't have it's huge monopoly anymore.
Seriously, if MS starts to believe it's own words, which it probably will after a while, it will get lazy, and that's when the turtle will slowly pass it by.
Another thing: Isn't the whole software release thing being outdated? Linux gets a couple new features: download it, use it. But with Windows, you have to wait until the next release, or some new service pack, which you might even have to pay for(Win98 SE). Even if MS takes a huge step ahead of Linux with W2k, once Linux catches up, it will be maybe 2 years before MS will release a new OS(no way they'll do it in one, they'd piss off too many people), and all the while Linux users will get more and more useful features.
The thing about Service Packs vs. small updates like Linux has is that most of the software is pretty much embedded into NT. Sometimes a hot fix or something may set off a whole chain reaction in a lot of different products. With Linux, they're all different pieces of software, not clumped up. So there's little chance of an update even touching any of the other packages even if the update causes problems in the software that you have updated.
Ok, I just got done with a private converstion with a friend about this press release, and this is what went across. Please correct me if I'm wrong on any of this.
/.ers are way too baised, they dismiss the article too freaken fast for me to get any good data from 'em
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Yggdrasil -> Spurius (Tue Oct 5 18:42 1999): Message
See how many of those points you can refute (with good evidence), and which ones you think could be valid. Too many
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Spurius -> Yggdrasil (Tue Oct 5 18:43 1999): Message
Yep.
I'm takin a look at it.
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Spurius -> Yggdrasil (Tue Oct 5 18:47 1999): Message
One thing that really gets me about this ZDnet study is I recall a zdnet study, I believe it was last fall, before Microsoft invested heavily in them, showing linux samba performance to be over twice what NT delivers. So I'm a bit skeptical about this study.
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Spurius -> Yggdrasil (Tue Oct 5 18:52 1999): Message
Ok, they're pretending that linux can't do online
transactions or something by saying they're not a TPC member. Seing as TPC membership costs almost 10,000$ a year, gee, I'm shocked its not....
There are only 40 TPC members worldwide
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Spurius -> Yggdrasil (Tue Oct 5 18:53 1999): Message
And the exact same thing with security standards (you have to pay the government $$ to rate you). NT, btw, what they
neglected to mention was rated extremely poor on security standards (what was it, C4? something like that? It was pretty pathetic)
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Spurius -> Yggdrasil (Tue Oct 5 18:54 1999): Message
The line that says "Linux Security is all or nothing" is blatantly wrong. Its either a lie or they know nothing about privilages.
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Spurius -> Yggdrasil (Tue Oct 5 18:56 1999): Message
The thing about understanding the latest linux bugs is blatently untrue. cat patchfile | patch and recompile the kernel if its a kernel bug. rpm -U newrpmfile if its a utility. And there are many bugtraq mailing lists. This line is blatantly wrong.
And, however, the opposite is true about microsoft ; )
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Spurius -> Yggdrasil (Tue Oct 5 18:59 1999): Message
The part about linux security being harder to understand goes back to the basic principle that Microsoft has been trying to push that I've seen even NT-prefering administrators refute, that microsoft's point and click interface makes it easy for a person to know where every intricacy of the operating system is. In actuality, you
have to depend on the documentation just as heavily, if not more.
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Spurius -> Yggdrasil (Tue Oct 5 19:00 1999): Message
"How many certified engineers are there for Linux"?
And this means.... what? How does a certificate make you better qualified? If you can fix a problem, you're qualified to fix a problem. How many solaris-certified engineers are there? AIX-certified? VMS-certified? MacOS-certified? Be serious. Only Microsoft feels the need to pass out pieces of paper to make people qualified.
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Spurius -> Yggdrasil (Tue Oct 5 19:03 1999): Message
Red hat tech support is irrelevant in price compared to the cost of a bare-bones NT system.
Redhat tech support has won many awards. Microsoft tech support is almost nonexistant (Have you ever tried to call them? I have at work. Noone at work ever recommends calling them for even the most severe problems)
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Spurius -> Yggdrasil (Tue Oct 5 19:05 1999): Message
Well, I kinda started in the middle, but I haven't found a valid point yet.
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Spurius -> Yggdrasil (Tue Oct 5 19:07 1999): Message
Um... ok, here is a direct lie... they're talking about linux, then they compare the TCO to solaris, and its their own study at that. (its even on microsoft's site, they didn't create some bogus company for it) (TCO=Total Cost of Ownership)
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Spurius -> Yggdrasil (Tue Oct 5 19:08 1999): Message
LAF
and the main difference-causing factor in their TCO study?
The cost of a solaris system! LAF ; ) Most of the TCO difference in THEIR OWN STUDY was the system cost. And they seem to be pulling the rest of their numbers out of thin air, there are no references, just vagueness.
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Spurius -> Yggdrasil (Tue Oct 5 19:12 1999): Message
They claim big companies run their mission critical software on NT without giving any evidence. Every article I've seen
on the net, even some pro-microsoft FUD, shows
mission-critical software generally on neither Linux or NT, but on things like VMS, Solaris, etc.
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Spurius -> Yggdrasil (Tue Oct 5 19:13 1999): Message
The claim of a lack of a journaling filesystem is FALSE. SGI donated their journaling filesystem to Linux. Secondly, a journaling filesystem is designed to keep data safe when the system crashes, which is rather irrelevant for Linux due to a lack of crashes. And, a journallying
filesystem slows down disk access time and takes up more of the disk space. This claim is just dumb AND false
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Spurius -> Yggdrasil (Tue Oct 5 19:16 1999): Message
LAF - NT is one to talk about clustering.
There is not a single NT beowulf in the top 500 computer systems list in the world (was posted on slashdot a while back). And Microsoft themselves has attempted several times to get an NT beowulf to work and hasn't. Isn't linux was what
beowulfs were started on? This claim is just wrong.
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Spurius -> Yggdrasil (Tue Oct 5 19:17 1999): Message
I've never checked in into OEMs that provide uptime guarantees.
Tho, to be honest, I've never heard of anyone collecting on such a guarantee before
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Spurius -> Yggdrasil (Tue Oct 5 19:18 1999): Message
On their comment of SMP, I have a 2 processor system, and I can measure the time spent on SMP. Its almost always under 5% of my total cpu time in load conditions. Usually about 1 to 2%. Its negligable. Its been like this since 2.0.
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Spurius -> Yggdrasil (Tue Oct 5 19:20 1999): Message
The claim linux supports only 2 gig of ram is correct. However, I can't name a single system that would require 4 gig of ram but need so little cpu power that it would be most efficiently done in a single system, can you?
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Spurius -> Yggdrasil (Tue Oct 5 19:24 1999): Message I've never checked about linux swap size. the ext2 filesystem has a max filesize of 2 gigs but linux supports many different filesystem types, several of which I'm sure support very large files. So the claim that the largest file size linux supports being 2 gig is wrong. And their claims of NT features not supported by linux is dwarfed by linux features not supported by NT
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Spurius -> Yggdrasil (Tue Oct 5 19:24 1999): Message
(slashdot had an article which compared what operating systems lacked what a ways back)
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Spurius -> Yggdrasil (Tue Oct 5 19:26 1999): Message
Their claim of NT supporting 39,000 systems and devices sounds rather strange... I'll have to look up their compatability list (also strange they didn't link it). As far as I was aware, NT has been very shoddy in its hardware support.
Their claims that linux doesn't support Plug&play, USB, and APM are all completely wrong.
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Spurius -> Yggdrasil (Tue Oct 5 19:27 1999): Message
Which would you consider a more cumbersome gui, explorer or KDE? Now, which would you consider to be more stable, explorer or KDE? which comes standard with better apps? which is prettier?
And they claim somehow a linux gui would add increased cost? ummmm.......
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Spurius -> Yggdrasil (Tue Oct 5 19:29 1999): Message
As to linux application support, they're focusing entirely on commercial applications for their 93/13% figure. Seing as the vast majorty of linux apps are free/GNU, this figure is completely irrelevant.
Summary: This is a poor attempt at FUD. Don't bother with it ; )
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Spurius -> Yggdrasil (Tue Oct 5 19:31 1999): Message
Hmm... they have testimonials at the bottom, but they're not written by the companies themselves, only by microsoft about the companies systems.
They also added in a footnote that SuSE has a patch that allows 4 gig in linux.
--------------------
Ok... anyways. Did I get anything wrong? I'm interested in feedback if I did. Thanx all.
It's really interresting to compare this "official position" with the halloween documents of last year. Officially they claim that NT beats Linux hands down but unofficially it's the opposite.
/* FUD */
this_doc = !(halloween);
resilience is futile
From someone who learned this on a SCO System V course. When deleting large files, instead of just using rm filename, do the following;
;rm filename
> filename
This forces the OS to make the file a zero length, and free up all the indirect blocks, then removes the file. On SCO systems, this means the free space is reported immediately the file is deleted, not a some remote point in the future after the free list has been updated.
Smile. Everyone wonders just what you got up to...
I don't work in the "enterprise" (I hate that word), but I run a few NT machines. Honestly, I don't have time to check NTBugtraq every single day for the latest exploit. So I've given up. That's right, my NT machines are vulnerable to just about every attack since June of this year. The hotfixes and service packs since SP3 have been a nightmare. If I do get cracked, everything gets wiped and restored from a tape. So..FUCK YOU, MICROSOFT! :)
Notice how when they refer to Linux, they're bugs.. but when they talk about Windows, they're only issues.. the fud runs deep in this article. Maybe we should start calling Windows a "computer speed control system" but keep calling Linux an operating system..
Drat. I wasn't sure about that one. I tried my luck, and disgraced myself. You evil person, you make my feel awful! I think I'm going to cry! ;-)
--------
"I already have all the latest software."
I'd be ecstatic if Linux could just do 4 gigs natively. 2 gigs only store 5 minutes of YUV 4:2:0 video. For 29.97fps you can only fit 2 minutes in a file and it takes just as long to delete. Why wasn't ext2 designed with 64 bits? You need to perform file deletions as batch jobs they take so long.
For /.ing their site so effectively...
The Linux SWAP file is limited to 128 MB RAM. In addition, Linux does not support many of the modern operating system features that Windows NT 4.0 has pioneered such as asynchronous I/O...
The 128 MB limit is long gone away, and IIRC ext2 is asynchronous by default.
Linux security is all-or-nothing. Administrators cannot delegate administrative privileges: a user who needs any administrative capability must be made a full administrator, which compromises best security practices. In contrast, Windows NT allows an administrator to delegate privileges at an exceptionally fine-grained level.
Someone please tell them about sudo!
They do however have a valid point on Journaling FS and fine grained kernel locks which are both in development. I won't even start talking about performance/stability and user friendlyness :)
--
Weasel
I suggest, as others have, an association of developers, companies, distributions, etc to represent the community at large.
I'd be happy to work on such a project. With the amount of interest that andover.net appears to have interest in funding community efforts (like slashdot and freshmeat) maybe they'd be interested in something like this?
If someone out there is interested in organizing this, contact me, id love to help :)
As far as specific concepts for the site.. I suggest that representitives be given status of authority, and authority regarding specific projects, software, companies, etc. Thus we would have a layed out, available line of responcibility and contact, as well as the ability to track and rate the authority and the reliability of info sources. Sound good?
if its not listed appropriatly by slashdot, im at johnston@itactics.com :)
The premise is that Linux is not any good.
Then answer these questions:
If Microsoft was building OS's before Linux existed, and they were superior then, and they are superior now, as stated in the article,
Why does Linux exist today?
It seems unreasonable that so many smart people wasted so much time, working for free, to build an inferior product.
Why is an "inferior" OS growing in usage if Windows NT is such a clear choice?
Why does Microsoft feel the need to write an article that states that everyone should already know everything in the article they are writing? Do they simply love being redundant?
Fear.
That is the only thing I can reason that answers all of these questions. (They are definitely not doing it out of concern for the consumer.)
"We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking." -Mark Twain
Being a tech in the industry, I have a few NT boxes around town, I also have 1 linux based server in town, of the 10 or 12 nt servers we have running, I get on average, 6 calls a week, most of the time the server needs to be rebooted...the one linux box has never had a call, never needed to be rebooted (been in place about 6 months) just sits there and does what it's supposed to do...granted it was not as "simple" as NT to set up, but that's what makes Linux so much fun.
*tap tap tap* this thing on?
I bet Micros~1 can setup working NT servers for $100000 installation fee (Nasdaq, Boston Stock Exchange), but can they setup reliable small and midclass servers with reasonable installation expenses ? I doubt it. I bet Micros~1 gave away their best enterprise class solutions for media purposes only...
This item should have been posted with the Humorous Foot Icon.
Read some of the comments being posted. A few of them are actually good, interesting comments that express valid criticisms of Microsoft and give Linux the same criticism when deserved. But just a few. All the other comments (and if you don't believe me, just look) are basically saying the same thing: something along the lines of, "This shows us that Microsoft is scared of Linux. That means Linux is cool. Microsoft software sucks and Linux rules and I'm too stubborn and thickheaded to admit that both have advantages and disadvantages over each other."
What kind of an attitude is this? Why do Linux devotees invariably find it necessary to scorn Microsoft? Microsoft's products may be buggy, but people, look around! All software is buggy, and honestly, the software that Microsoft has been pumping out recently is some of the best stuff I've seen produced by a software corporation. Maybe Linux is better. Maybe FreeBSD is more secure. They all claim to be more stable. But the truth is, competition is a Good Thing(tm)!
Instead of wanting Microsoft to simply go away, why doesn't the Linux community use the excellence of Linux to push Microsoft to make a better OS? Why don't we encourage Microsoft to make their code better, smaller, and less bloated? Perhaps even opene the source of portions of it? I don't know about anyone else, but I prefer to have a wide choice of operating systems. If Windows were to go away, I would hate being forced to use a UNIX-like OS (when I don't particularly like UNIX), or a MacOS (far too simplistic for my tastes). I want something in between. And right now, the best operating system that fits that category is Microsoft Windows, buggy as it may be.
So instead of laughing at Microsoft and pointing at them like we're small children playing soccer and Microsoft is the big fat kid that keeps tripping over his feet and getting all muddy, why don't we use our big strong Linux muscles to help the poor bloated Microsoft kid to his feet? Wipe some of the mud off him? Perhaps play as teammates?
Kinda reminds me of that good old american world war I/II propaganda. The ones featureing the german soldiers killing babies, and the front cover news paper article about how to tell japanese "eyes" from other asian "eyes". If its not american its wrong. Folks, M$ does not want us computer users to have a choice. If its got a piece of silicon in it and its hooked up the internet, M$ wants some cash. Just another reason why I have not paid for a M$ product ever. Oh, and Thanks for those hefty college scholarships billy
There is a LOT in there. They also use pseudo logic extensively. Kind of looks like the few facts there are provided by techs, then the whole thing was written by Marketing. Still, some small part of it is true. There aren't nearly as many certs in the Linux community.
-------------------------
As easy as herding cats!
then why are they wasting their time puting up web sites and paying for bechmarks? Maybe it isn't as bad as they say. Maybe it is quite good. Maybe they realize that now.
I spent a year working in MS tech support, and never billed anyone for any amount, even one guy who called the 900 number, I gave him the 800 number, and didn't charge him.
The billing is only to prevent abuse. I'd get calls along the lines of "how do I get the screen to light up?" (turn on the machine), and there was the Infamous 'Joan' A woman who harrased MS tech support, Bill himself, and Bill's MOM. She would call up tech support swearing and such.
Microsoft don't want everyone to be a customer. Joan is now excluded.
"There are no OEMs that provide uptime guarantees for Linux, unlike Windows NT where Compaq, Data General, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Unisys provide 99.9 percent system-level uptime guarantees for Windows NT-based servers"
Yeah, of course they do, up 8 hours and a 30 second reboot. Up 8 hours and a 30 second reboot.
What I'd like to see it TIME BASED uptime guarantees. How many of the Dell's, Unisys's, would guarentee that WindowsNT will stay up for any length of time without a reboot?
Reminds me of a Stephen Wright quote I heard... "I saw a guy closing a 7-11. I said 'your sign says your open 24 hours' then the other guy said 'yeah, but not in a row'"
But, NT was based on VMS, and since I have no clue on how old VMS is, I won't try to make a tree like you did.. =]
And since when did age tell you how *bad* something is? I usually look at software like wine. Generally the older it is, the better it is. But in a different light then wine, since software has time to improve, update. I don't quite follow the point that MS is trying to make in saying old roots=bad.
Neither is WindowsNT. My perception is that problems with linux are fixed much more quickly. Both do have security holes as do all operating systems. There will come a time when there will be very little technical difference between WindowsNT and linux. I think Microsoft will find ways to adapt and have a faster roll out of patches and upgrades. They may even go GPL. Then it won't matter which OS you have. For now I like to have the source if I need it.
First of all just so you know where I'm coming from I'm not a Microsoft hater... they make some great pieces of software. But I do use Linux most of the time though.
However this page shows how scared they are of Linux.
I usually read these things knowing they are half truths but I see only one percent truth here.. journaling file system... which by the way I know will be remedied.
Just my
Kaypro
Eddy.WriteLinux.Com
> of course, bill was RIGHT from a biz standpoint..
Not long term.
Mac OS switched completely from the 68k CPU to the PowerPC because they built something better, and then built a bridge between the old and the new by providing excellent 68k emulation. Apple is doing it again, moving from the Classic API to the Cocoa API with the Carbon API as the bridge.
Microsoft never looked ahead and never provided any leadership. Windows 2000 has all kinds of kludges for backwards compatibility, but eventually you hit a wall and you have to implement something like their System File Protection(tm) just to get a semblance of security and stability. So Windows 2000 only runs about 75% of NT apps and 50% of Win32 apps. Is anybody looking forward to this thing going gold?
The interesting thing here, is that Microsoft has taken significant strides with Windows Update (for Windows 98, I don't think it works with NT). For those that haven't used it, you go to a web page that matches your system config against the patch list (this is not supposed to send any info to MS, but I'm not sure I trust that), you then download and install the patches that you need. Security patches are separated out, and there is a decent notification feature. Now, big Unix vendors like SGI and Sun have had systems like this for some time, albeit a little more command line oriented. Personally I like the SGI system the best (not the rest of the OS, just the patch and package manager).
RedHat and other Linux distros should implement something of this nature (maybe some of them have). Sure, it's not strictly necessary, but then again very few things are. Ideally it would work from the command line and integrate with the existing FTP servers and package managers. New distributions should be set up to check for updates the first time you connect to the internet after an install, and perhaps weekly thereafter. I'm sure any sysadmin worth her salt has thrown together some scripts to do this already, or is happy with the manual process, but the user base is gettting less experienced and security should be as easy as possible.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
Linux is highly reliable, but ext2 is fragile as hell. The last time I complained about this, someone said, "Well, gee, I've never lost a byte of data, I just used [some disk utility] and restored the 16th copy of the superblock and all was well. You must be a moron."
Wow, that is pretty bad. I would never say that, I would probably just say, "Well, gee, I've never lost a byte of data, because any machine that I've got important stuff on, I stick on a UPS. You must be a moron."
Well, I wouldn't say the last part, but I was trying to keep the point consistent.
-- "God, Root, what is difference?" - Pitr, "User Friendly"
The FUD is coming from both sides. NT isn't nearly as bad as linux fans say, and although Linux has many advantages over NT, stability and performance certainly aren't among those.
The vast majority of business users don't have 4-way servers with 4-GB RAM and 16-TB of disk storage. And while Microsoft would like us to believe that that's the kind of hardware for which IT decision-makers choose NT, the reality is that such high-end hardware is almost always mated with Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, or Tru64 Unix. No, the bread-and-butter of NT deployments is departmental and workgroup servers, which are usually modest machines by comparison. And on such machines, and for such departmental and workgroup needs, Linux and NT will both get the job done.
So, if both will do the job, why would an IT decision-maker choose Linux over NT? There are two reasons, none of which are even hinted at in Microsoft's "Linux Myths" paper:
So, I think that the proper way to respond to Microsoft is not to do it on their narrow terms by responding to the criteria in the "Linux Myths" paper. Rather, we ought to present the bigger picture, where the reality that Linux is superior to NT for business use is obvious. Our message should be clear:
For almost all real-world business use, Linux and NT Server are largely equivalent, with two notable exceptions:
This big-picture view shows Linux's superiority in terms that businesspeople can readily understand -- control and trust. Businesspeople are very aware that computing technology is crucial to their businesses' success. No sane businessperson would willingly put such a crucial resource under the control of an untrustworthy third party, and yet Microsoft forces their customers to do just that.
When we make it clear that Linux returns the control and trust of this crucial resource back to the businesses themselves, business leaders will begin seeing Microsoft's FUD tactics for what they are. Cheers, Tom
This quote, including the hyperlink, is straight from the article:
The cost of the operating system is only a small percentage of the overall total cost of ownership (TCO). In general Windows NT has proven to have a lower cost of ownership than UNIX. Previous studies have shown that Windows NT has 37 percent lower TCO than UNIX.
Why is this dumb? Because the study they link to is entitled: Windows NT Server Compared to Solaris on SPARC
Well, let's see here.. that almost relates.. no wait; it doesn't. Except for the fact that you're talking about Sun SPARC hardware, and buying Solaris, and paying for Solaris support, costs for software/hardware upgrades for proprietary Sun hardware, etc. I think that on the whole, every single cost associated with Solaris is going to be much higher than those incurred under Linux. This isn't to say that Solaris is bad, only to show that it's a crystal-clear example of comparing apples and oranges.
Nonetheless, why would you link to a Solaris study when you're debunking Linux myths? Do they think we're too stupid to click on their so-called (not even 3rd-party) studies' links and read their titles?
I think that even if I bought every single point that Microsoft tried to purvey in their article, I would say that Microsoft merely proved this: `Linux isn't better than Windows, dammit! We swear! It sucks as much as NT does!' I certainly don't think that and it's reminiscent of fragments of lame flame-wars on the 'OS' newsgroups. It's also a far cry from "not competition" as Microsoft's European fruity execs were contending earlier this year.
"Linux fundamentally relies on 30-year-old operating system technology and architecture."
Couterpoint: Democracy was a system originally invented several hundred years ago, I believe by the Romans. 200 years ago, the United States of America made some revisions and set up what has become one of the most powerful countries of all time.
So, should we continue to rely on 200-year-old government technology, or maybe we should try that younger system that Stalin, Lenin, and Mao designed? It's newer, therefore it must be better, right?
As many tests go, I don't think these "on-paper" tests are not so accurate. I've worked with Windows NT and in no way, do I recognize these good points pointed to by MicroSoft. And what multiple processors concern, I think MicroSoft should be made to eat its words. Windows NT comes from an era and environment, where multiprocessors aren't necessary... although it has support for it, it isn't directly designed for it. On the other hand, Unix WAS designed for multiple processor environment. But, where the UI is concerned, I think the Linux community should be up and about. I'd like to see more Graphical User Interfaces, and better end user support in that area, and I'd like to see it to become more "Unix" oriented, and not MicroSoft oriented, which many linuxers agree that linux gui's are. After all, Linux *is* a Unix like operating system, and should remain that... because Unix was designed to be an operating system for Medium to Large sized computers... while NT was designed to be on small to medium sized. A completely different class.
Certification was designed to keep people from
getting jobs. So you get ticked if a young person
comes to get a job and demand a piece of paper
to prove he's good enough. Then he gets the paper, but you still won't hire him because his credential is not based on experience.
Look, if you want experience, ask for it.
If you don't care, then be clear about that. nobody'd get the damn certifications if it wasn't for idiots who create barriers to employment with them in the first place. But you do create them and we do have to get them unless we want sorry jobs testing other people's code.
there are two sides to every story.
I have read as many responses as i can take about this article. Most of you call it a "linux bash fest" or something along those lines. And then what do you do? You turn and have your own "ms bash fest" but the thing is, you have been doing it just as long, if not longer, than ms has. so what exactly is wrong with them giving you a little taste of your own medicine? God forbid anyone ever say anything negative towards linux, or anything positive towards ms.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
Heck, Linux supports PNP better than NT 4.0!
Even the slashdot effect, and severe mail overloads to the FUD writers is helpful.
That's called "mob rule" and it usually doesn't impress anybody.
The lack of a journaling filesystem for Linux is a real problem. Honestly, this lack is the only thing keeping me from deploying this thing as a server where I work. We're all pretty jacked about Linux, on the whole, but we only use it for DNS services at the moment.
Why? Simply because I have lost data from several Linux machines due to power failures.
Linux is highly reliable, but ext2 is fragile as hell. The last time I complained about this, someone said, "Well, gee, I've never lost a byte of data, I just used [some disk utility] and restored the 16th copy of the superblock and all was well. You must be a moron."
Apparently that was a valid criticism from his standpoint, but I have only a vague understanding of the layout of an ext2 partition, and I don't think I should be forced to learn it as an emergency data-recovery measure. I'm pretty geeky, but I'm not THAT geeky, and I don't think I'm ever likely to be, either. I'm interested in using the system to do fun stuff, not mucking about with the actual physical layout of the filesystem. (!)
NT, while it bluescreens and behaves mysteriously a lot more often than I would like, doesn't lose data when it crashes, except possibly the very last bit that was being saved. In my opinion, this strength makes up for many of its other failings. It may not be the most reliable OS in the world. It has horrible security. Administration takes way too much time. It's a tool that Microsoft uses to try to own everything in my life. But by god, it doesn't lose data from simple stuff like power failures.
Every OS has good points, and I think Microsoft really nailed it with two of NT's features: NTFS and their ACL system. I really like both. If I could have ACLs and a real journaling filesystem under Linux, without having to spend more than a day or two setting it up, I'd be very happy to deploy it all over my office.
I don't LIKE NT much... but I trust its filesystem.
"The Linux SWAP file is limited to 128 MB RAM"
Admittedly, I could be wrong, but does this sounds AWFULLY funny to anyone else?
eh, you are correct that Intel Linux should do 64-bit files. But you are incorrect that all video editing should go through the filesystem. (For instance, show me an affordable video editing system that works with uncompressed CCIR-601 digital video on a PC and goes through a filesystem)
Fortunately the buzz on the linux-kernel mailing list is that 64-bit file support for 32-bit machines is probably going to make it in pretty soon. (probably early 2.5)
The kernel work is easy, actually, the real pain in the ass is updating glibc.
This is so poor!
The complexity of the Linux operating system and cumbersome nature of the existing GUI's would make retraining end-users a huge undertaking and would add significant cost
They must have never heard of KDE or GNOME - and by the way - how do you work on an NT system over the network? Anything like X Windows (very old technology) never found its way into the modern NT operating system.
example how many certified engineers are there for Linux?
That's an easy one, let's do it like Microsoft - invent some certificate and give it away to everybody who wants it.
Every member of the Windows NT family since Windows NT 3.5 has been evaluated at either a C2 level under the U.S. Government's evaluation process or at a C2-equivalent level under the British Government's ITSEC process. In contrast, no Linux products are listed on the U.S. Government's evaluated product list.
C2 level means nothing, and they only accomplished it with no network and floppy disk.
All in all, this page is FUD at its worst (or best, from whatever point of view you see it). Listen to any experienced NT administrator and the pile of problems they have and you're not likely to get into NT. The whole page is just a sign that MS is feeling the heat.
Without doing a lot more looking into these numbers and their sources, the first major section of the document is darn near useless. We all know of Microsoft's history for buying the numbers they want...
Just because NT has a number of mission-critical installations out there, doesn't mean that Linux can't also have that. More MS dodging.
"Administrators cannot delegate administrative privileges." Wrong, pure and simple. It's called sudo.
Linux security in general: Yeah, you have to keep on your toes. But it's a lot better than trusting Microsoft to do all the watching for you. While sites are being cracked, and the Linux fix is already being deployed, Microsoft is still writing the "it's not an issue" press release.
In short: ugh.
Interesting read. I'm not sure I agree with their reasoning; in fact I don't even think they pointed out what are arguably their strongest advantages, which implies to me that this was written at a pretty low level without a lot of thought or input. The Halloween documents in my opinion had a much better analysis of what we are doing right and what we are doing wrong.
I started working last winter on a real competitive analysis of Microsoft that I haven't had time to finish. I suppose I never will if I don't put it out for review, so in the interest of understanding our competitor, please feel free to drop by posit.net take a look over the competitive analysis and let me know what you think.
With luck we can form a strong vision of the distinction between Linux and Windows which will help people to understand exactly why Linux is better for their needs.
-kls
LibBT: BitTorrent for C - small - fast - clean (Now Versio
These all are reasons I have NT dual boot. 1) Connecting with MVP (tunneling) to the "firm" via anything other than NT is "Grounds for Termination". --- got'ta love those facist execs. 2) Microsoft Office is the only accepted document format. Use of the prior accepted formats "Framemaker", "Interleaf" and non-Excel spreadsheets are violations of the "Standard Desktop". Violations of the standard desktop are grounds for termination. Damm! 3) From my DSL ISP. They only have Win98/95 driver support and will not even support the NT driver. This one gets wierd. Hope that guy at Alcatel finishs the linux ATM/ADSL driver soon. Like I really feel confidient with Win98 at my net connection.
If you're mircrosoft, the only reason to write this kind if article is if you're scared. Wile they they make some valid points, they make some false ones and even more weak ones.
Having doing some OS study, the fact that Linux is based on Unix technology (yes it's 30 years old) is not a bad thing. In fact for an applicatoin developer it's a rather good thing. The windows API may offer you the ability to password protect your cmos battery but have you ever looked at the Win32 secutiry api...if you have you'd probably realize it's not worth it.
And of course the benchmarks come up again. And of course one lab says this, another lab says the contrary. Benchmarks don't typically mean anything.
And about the desktop thing. If i remember correctly, microsoft had to post an update to windows 98 because it went into erratic behavior if left running for more than 30 days. That just goes to show that not even microsoft can keep their desktop OS up and running. My linux machine has been up for over 59 days as i write...and i have all the applicatoins i need and they didn't cost me a penny.
They claim Windows NT has had C2 security since 3.51. In that case, somebody should fix the C2 standard. Easy example: take the MTF (Microsoft Tape Format) specs -- I believe it's somewhere on Seagate's web site. Throughout the document, there are multiple provisions for "C2-level security". And their password protection? Oh, that's a byte to or from. That's right: FLIP ONE BYTE, and ALL security on the tape goes away... Great! Go NT security!
/* Steinar */
(This comment is of course GPLed.)
Subject says it all.
(look at the section before the "More secure" myth, or line 215 in the HTML Code, where there is a missing )
(PS. This is a joke.)
--mere mortal--
ok, we've all seen the "crack this box and win" pages to prove security, but i've never seen a "uptime contest".
;-)
just think about it, cracking a box is lame because all the script kiddies try to nuke it and lame stuff like that, but you cant really put something much more to the test then by telling people "beat down on this server, last person to connect wins" or something. It's sorta akin to rob's "test this server" thing, but with uptime as the goal. lets see if MS can summon up more lightning storms to blame for their downtime
-confidential
AIM: confdntl98 ICQ: 150685 E-Mail: above... you can figure it out ^_~
with all of this hoopla over the Evil Empire and their biz practices, and as a whole-hearted Mac user, I'm inlined to sit back and snicker but for three things-
1. MS, IMHO, makes a pretty spiffy word processor. I use Word 6 for a LOT of typing. Office 98 gives me hives, though.,..
2. I've been using Hotmail since before MS bought it.
3. I have a 486 desktop and a 386 laptop. These are, naturally, MS saturated.
What I have to say and ask relates to number three, since I'm sure there are a lot of ou out there who will make fun of me for using hotmail and owning a mac (finger to the lot of you who will judge me while never knowing the reason why). I would like to purge MS from both pieces of hardware. And replace the void with Linux. I'm a Mac user and I liek the Mac GUI/OS, so I have no desire to replace any of my Macintoshes.
Is there ANY flavor out there that installs small enough to fit on a 386/25/4 NCR safari laptop with outboard floppy drive? The HD is 75 megs....
AND
What would run best on a factory-issue packard bell with 486/75/8, no modem and a fried floppy drive? Since I can't get anything off of it, i want to wipe it, put Linux on it, and use it as a dedicated MP3 player if that is at all possible with a 486.
Finally, can Linux read HFS and HFS plus formatted disks?
Advance thanks to anyone who can either help or point me to a better place to post this.
Dan
M$-Myth #5. This latest patch will fix all the bugs. M$-Myth #6 We test our products. M$-Myth #7 We use industry standards. And you forgot their great marketing slogan to retailers about windows 95 "Faster and easier, new possibilites, fun!" (I must have heard that a few dozen times at an MS brainwashi^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H meeting"
Many of these attacks are based on benchmarks from companies that clearly have no idea how to tune linux. Linux.com has created a section known as tuneup that aims to collect ideas on how to tune your system or just make it run better. I'd welcome any help to make this a one stop site for for all preformance related tweaks, maybe then we won't have to deal with these attacks.
I apologize for plugging a site I'm responsibe for, but I do think something needs to be done.
- MbM
- MbM
interesting seeing microsoft talking about linux. bill gates vs. linus torvlads next weeks deathmatch? we'll see.
one thing i didn't like is how a lot of their stats were based on PC mag test results. i think we proved that ZD didn't do a very fair job on thier security tests. i have a feeling other mags (hell ZD makes most of the mags that are mentioned in the artcle) did the same errors.
maybe some sort of collective windows vs linux test needs to be done? i dont think we can rely on magazine writers who haven't used linux more than 2 months. we need some hardcore linux geeks testing this stuff. and i bet linux would come out on top if the testing was done right.
tyler
The haloween documents (granted, just a study, not company policy) implied that FUD tactics wouldn't work against free software.
Halloween I, quote #4.
I guess that's not the official line?
One more drink, and I'll move on. --Dave Matthews Band
In NT, as in Linux+large file patches, applications have to be written with support for large files in order to use them correctly. Obviously if an app tries to keep track of where it is with a 32 bit number, or calls the 32 bit seek function, it won't be able to go past 4 gigs (or 2 gigs in the case of linux).
Microsoft is fighting,
doesn't that mean Linux winning is the next stage.
This is very interesting. Could you point
me to some references about alternatives schemes.
Alex.
They finally got 4.0 certified this year, but it's still Orange Book, so no network.
" File I/O API. That API uses signed integers as argument (and returncode), so on a 32-bit system you've got only 2^31 bits, which is 2Gig." So dippy, are you telling me that BE uses the same Filo I/O API as Linux? The VFS in Linux uses signed INT to represent file sizes and offsets. If you run on a 64bit arch you are A-ok.
I went to look at the URL here on my Mac in Netscape 4.7
OF COURSE, since they are Micro$oft, they assume everyone looking at their site uses IE and Windez and the MS web fonts.
Sorry, I don't do Verdana or Arial cause they don't space right for me, and size 1 fonts are too friggin' tiny!
I honestly can't read the damn page, and I ain't about to go changing my font or browser preferences.
The webmasters can go fuck themseleves.
PpoE
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Let's not forget either that Microsoft claims it's based on entirely new technology (NT) while their actual "Next-generation" kernel is based on a modified version of the BSD kernel.
what the hell are you talking about? there's no BSD in NTs kernel. Maybe there's TCP stack, but I doubt it.
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I got NT to boot from a 12GB drive. The secret is to format the drive on another NT box before installing. Also if the drive is IDE make sure you use the ATAPI.SYS from SP4 or later. The old ATAPI.SYS can only 'see' 8GB drives or smaller.
Am I the only one who thinks that they could meet this guarantee by saying 'well, it was up 999 milliseconds before crashing that one millisecond, right?'
;-)
I think having a server down for a day a year (8 hours in a working day, 365 days a year) is unacceptable. Lets work on 99.99% uptime
Well, I don't know about WINE, but what you could maybe do is just get a cheap PC with an ethernet card, install linux and SAMBA and then run AWK over local telnet.
That would probably let you do whatever you wanted, since all you need for AWK is text mode, right?
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
you can have multiple nt swap files -- don't remember how many max, but they suggest using one per drive.
"Nothing was broken, and it's been fixed." -- Jon Carroll
Another little known fact about the certificationis that it was for NT3.51 At a certian patch level running on a compaq. Nevermind that it couldn't be connected to the network, it had to be the same patch level and same machine. (This is becuase of goverments standards.) What does this really mean? It means that once you have been certified if a bugs is found, and you patch it, then you have to have the system re-evaluated with the new patch. MS never did this.. The only reason they ever got the certification was so they could use it in marketing.
On the other hand, the fact that C2 certification is so lame is really Microsofts fault. If people really understood what it meant they wouldn't be impressed.
Artimage.-
First off, I really don't think many of us are that surprised by Microsofts comments. I knew it was coming. All one has to do is look at what happened to OS/2, which is/was a good OS, but IBM doesn't know jack about marketing..., and then there's Microsoft. Which, IMHO has a great marketing dept. (even with all the FUD)
;)
Personally, I have no use for any of the MS products..., but I still have to support them at work, (cursing every day) but then again, our linux boxes just keep on humming along.
Life was hell, then I discovered Linux...
After repeatedly seeing on Slashdot news about FUD from MS, and a lot of enthusiastic reply from our community, I felt that something has gone slightly wrong with us - I feel that we are not countering FUDs effectively. The followings are my thoughts.
/. readers to capture the minds of the helpless-FUD-targets? From an outsider's point of view we look like nothing but a whining mob.
1. Audience
-----------
How many times have you read an article or a reply on Slashdot and thought, "damn, wouldn't it be nice if it were on CNet / Yahoo / Wired"? While Slashdot has gained some attention of the general public, get real - by posting a reply on Slashdot, we are only talking to ourselves. It does NOT help counter the effects of the FUD and MS knows very well that they have better FUD targets than us.
Spread the words to where it counts. e.g. Friends on your icq lists. Co-workers. Your boss. Anyone savvy enough to know about computers but not enough to distinguish facts and FUDs. Suggested action: get some words on redhat.com, linux.com, and maybe wired and yahoo. These are the sites where the curious or the helpless FUD targets are.
2. Reader-friendliness
----------------------
As an extension of the above point, our counters are too unfriendly to our audience (or helpless-FUD-target-IT-managers). Look at the jargons. "FUD" itself is a good one. And the long, way-too-technical counters.
Can't we summarize our points into some short, precise, easy-to-read sentences just like MS carefully does? Short does not necessarily mean vague, and with an open effort, we CAN out-FUD the FUDs. (Yes! It may be surprising, but the effect of FUD *can* be generated even with true statements!)
3. Professionalism
------------------
How many of us have read the advocacy-HOWTO?
I've see far too much zealotry, foul languages, etc. on our anti-FUD replies. While the intention is adorable, an incorrect implementation may result in counter-effect.
MS's FUD technology is lightyears ahead of ours. Study the article. Count the number of formal sentences that they use. Count the number of euphamisms. Realize the inexistence of any bluntant, rude rebuttal to Linux (yes, euphamisms again). We have a lot to learn.
4. Effort
---------
How powerful are many small, personal voices from
Is it possible for us to start an open advocacy/anti-FUD group to gather ideas, make counter-benchmark benchmarks, and make our voices known? How about making some public poll on "the number of crashes you have in NT in a week" vs. that of Linux, and make it a news on Wired?
Facts that are trivial to us may not be so to the helpless-FUD-targets. We must find some good ways to get our messages onto the other side.
Just my $2%
This should be a non-issue since, IMHO, any server should be on a UPS, regardless of OS. No sysadmin worth his/her salt would walk up to server (again, regardless of OS) and pull the plug, but that's exactly what you're doing if you're not using a UPS. If you're data is important enough to worry about losing it, then it deserves a UPS. And, before someone jumps in here and says that WinXX is better because it can be shut down automatically after going to batteries, so can linux. Don't remember the company name off the top of my head, but ars-technica talks about them in their UPS section.
As a side note, I've been using RH5.2 and now RH6.0 as a workstation for about 8 months now, and I'll never go back. I have access to all the programs I need, they run faster and are more stable than they ever were with NT (except Netscape, which still crashes, but at least it doesn't bring down the whole computer like it did with NT).
What's important to me is that I don't curse my computer anymore, and I don't have to reboot at least once a day anymore. Thanks Linus!
Linux is not The Answer. Yes is the answer. Linux is The Question.
Most folks today have been posting about the content of this article. I'm going to talk about the principal. I felt like I was back home in New York last summer, during the Senatorial race between longtime incumbant Al D'mato and Chuck Schumer. The battle began when Al told us how many sessions Chuck had missed as a US Representative. We were presented with documented facts that could be backed up. However, they were presented in a negative way. Al was both scared and resentful at the same time. So he struck. And he struck hard. Then the mud flew. Back and forth all summer and through much of the fall. They were probably the dirtiest campaigns in the history of New York. Most people lost interest; others wanted to see both lose. It was disgusting. It appears that Microsoft, the longtime incumbant, governing our machines for many years now, has struck the first blow. Scared? Resentful? Probably both, just like our good buddy Al. Is this the route that Microsoft will take to win people over? To keep their flock in (no sheep pun intended)? Are Linux users and distributers going to follow the same route? Are we going to reach down and pick up some mud to throw back? Will we be able to find similar, anti-NT slanted articles on the pages of Red Hat, Caldera, Debian, SuSe and the like? I hope not. I really don't want to see healthy competition turn bad through a war of words (or text in this case). Linux has it high spots and so does NT. They both have their flaws. Users should be able to make intellegent decisions on their own without near insults flying across the Internet from the Powers that be. Otherwise, we might stop caring and hope that both operating systems strangle each other to death. And we don't want that to happen. Not anytime soon at least. Then, we'd be counting on our fingers and preparing documents by hand and going to the library again. All because of one article. Yikes.
Ignore the rantings above. Poster is an idiot.
This sounds like something that the Microsoft Merketing department wrote without looking deeply into the facts.
This kind of thing just irks me... Linux does have its problems, yes, but what I really don't like about Microsoft, is that where the Linux community is trying to fix those problems, Microsoft treats any bug or security hole as "bad PR" rather than assuring customers that it will be fixed.
I will be alright in a little while, but geeze these kinds of things irritate me.
Should we give them numbers to prove reliability?
lynx -dump http://www.microsoft.com/typography/downloads/verd an32.exe > /tmp/verdana.exe /tmp/verdana.exe /usr/share/fonts/default/truetype /tmp/IXP000.TMP/*.TTF (or wine_temp_dir/IXP000.TMP/*.TTF) /usr/share/fonts/default/truetype /usr/share/fonts/default/truetype -o /usr/share/fonts/default/truetype/fonts.dir /usr/share/fonts/default/truetype /etc/X11/fs/config by hand..whatever)
wine
(click yes)
killall wine (oh well, it worked well enough)
mkdir -p
cp
/usr/sbin/ttmkfdir -d
/usr/sbin/chkfontpath --add
(or add it to
/etc/rc.d/init.d/xfs restart
(if you're not using xfs, change accordingly)
This piece is surprisingly FUD-free, honestly. It chooses a few of Linux's remaining weak spots and attacks them with an incredible fervor. Compare this to earlier pieces from Microsoft's website which were, in most cases, completely fact-free. At least one can say that at least they've done some research this time around.
The only *problem* with the article is that it focuses on a few pretty minor issues and fails to recognize the strengths. For example: yes, x86/Linux only (!) supports 2 gigs of RAM out of the box, and requires a patch to support the 4 gigs that NT does. On the other hand, any 64-bit platform supports enough RAM to choke a horse. This was by design; Linus knew that 64-bit would be here long before most folks would want more than 2 gigs of RAM in their machines.
Secondly, and I think more embarassingly, this article is mud-slinging. Regardless of its accuracy, putting articles on your website that denounce your competitors is just as bad a reflection on a business as it is on a politician. If I go to a company's website, I want to hear why *their* product is good, not why they think someone else's sucks. (As I recall, they ran a similar piece on Solaris a while back...wasn't that the one where they claimed that the OS had a "fatal flaw" that would cause it to lock up if you started randomly yanking CPUs out of a running system?)
Why is it that every Linux machine I've ever worked with has performed much better than Win NT doing the exact same things? Myths are one thing, reality is another. NO Win NT machine I have experienced outperforms a Linux box on the same platform that I've seen.
http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/nts/news/fud/
--
"Linux security is all-or-nothing. Administrators cannot delegate administrative privileges..."
Ever hear of 'sudo'
I actually appreciate the 30 year old comment... Who would you rather trust your work to? An experienced, seasoned professional... or a newbie who thinks he knows everything? (Like some Paper MCSE...)
If all that was so true I don't think they would be putting so much time/money into proving it's not. All this does is validate that they are scared and gives a nice to-do list that is categorized and everything.
I'd like to see NT perform better on the P75 firewall/file/http/ftp server I have in my room.
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Micros~1 Promotional Ad
Under the NT security classification, that should have been C2, not C4. Typo.
- Rei
Unicode drive letters.
My second hard drive partition is the Kanji for 'Fire', and my Zip drive is the greek letter Omega.
Don't tell anyone.
Linux does not provide support for the broad range of hardware in use today; Windows NT 4.0 currently supports over 39,000 systems and devices on the Hardware Compatibility List. Linux does not support important ease-of-use technologies such as Plug and Play, USB, and Power Management
Aren't those features slated for Win2000, but non-existant in 4.0 to the point where hardware vendors have to write their own power management software for portables?
I guess it really is beginning to show that Linux is a contender when Microsoft has to issue an attack such as that... I hope people that read that take the moment to read between the lines. In case you didn't, what it says is: Oh shit! We're scared!
Linux is not a perfect OS. It does need a lot of work, in many areas. But so does NT.
IT just has to deploy each OS where it performs better for their business. I manage NT, Linux and FreeBSD servers. I cannot say that the NT servers are a burden. No crashes, no fusses. And they're fast. But they're not on the Internet. LAN only. And that's where NT shines: File and Print sharing.
I use Linux and FreeBSD for the Web servers. That's where they rock. I wouldn't use NT as a Web server. I am a Linux advocate, but reality does have to kick in: Linux is not perfect. Neither is NT. You have to take the best of each OS (even NetWare heheh) and apply it where it fits. It's always worked for me!
This page is good news. It means that Microsoft can no longer ignore the threat that Linux poses NT. The Halloween Documents (wow! It's been almost a year!) were one thing...this is Microsoft taking public action to put down the threat Linux poses.
However, it is frustrating to read half truths and a few outright lies. The public's image of Microsoft is changing, however. Bill Gates is no longer revered as the man who realised The Great American Dream (tm). Microsoft is no longer viewed as The Company That Made Computers Usable for People Like Me(tm). Case in point: my grandmother is asking me about the benefits of running Linux on her computer! People (not that many real read this info) aren't going to trust this info just because it's coming from Microsoft.
We have them quaking in their boots, guys (and girls!).
Linux is obviously an outdated OS since it is built on the 30-year old Unix architecture. To take this reasoning further, we should use internal combustion engines rather than rockets for spaceflight since rocket technology dates to pre-historic times and rockets are therefore hoplessly outdated when compared to automobiles. Oh, wait, isn't NT built on VMS architecture concepts? Isn't VMS older than Unix?
If you notice carefully, that is in the last section where it talks about Linux on the desktop. This is how FUD works, you set up a bunch of assumptions (here, we are presumably talking about NT) and then you change the assumptions without telling the reader. Comes off really good, doesn't it? How about Linux has permission for all its files and processes, while Windows does not, therefore Linux is a LOT more secure than NT.
I've only made it about 1/4 of the way through the comments posted about the latest of the Microsoft vs. Linux battles and I already have seen the trend.
/.'ers _are_ part of the other side. Don't sit here and post about how Microsoft is all lie's lie's lie's...explain to NT and Windows users where MS is wrong and _why_!!
Stop preaching to the choir!
People need to get out to the "masses," the joe-schmo who will be reading the paper or watching CNN tomorrow or in a week and hearing what Microsoft has to say without hearing the other side. The community of
I guess in a sense I am saying: Advocate.
Do it in a logical, rational fashion and people will see the light.
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
Sure, the Linux myths may be outrageous, but have you seen the Windows NT myths published by Microsoft? They go something like this.
1. Myth: Windows NT is not reliable.
Reality: High downtime does not mean low uptime.
2. Myth: Windows NT is over-priced.
Reality: High prices do not equal high Cost Regarding Absolute Price (CRAP)
3. Myth: Windows NT is not as good as many free alternatives.
Reality: Define "good"...
They go on and on like this.
(No, not really, but I did.)
1. First they ignore you.
2. Then they laugh at you.
3. Then they fight you.
4. Then you win.
We seem to be at step #3 now. Microsoft must be pretty scared at this point.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
"Linux is a higher risk option than Windows NT. For example how many certified engineers are there for Linux?"
;-) (for those who waded through The Programmer's Stone)
This is my favorite techie Ponzi scheme. All the various certifications you can get from M$, Novell, etc. are just a crock. They've turned into resume merit badges that dense managers use to justify hiring a particular person. "It's not my fault I hired John-the-idiot, he's an MCSE!". And now M$ uses it as an argument against Linux!
Of course the software companies are willing participants in this slush because they reap the money from the classes and testing for this nonsense. For Pete's sake, on the Powerbuilder certification test a few years ago they had questions on the location of menu items in the app! What does that have to do with anything!
There's no substitute for managers taking the time to ascertain if a person knows his/her stuff. Relying on silly certifications and such is just ostrich behavior. Very packer behavior
-- "Vote Democrat. Because the current crop of conservatives are just bugnut crazy."
a) Not unsuspend at all but 'hang' without any visual cue.
b) Unsuspend but constantly blue screen until I reboot.
c) Unsuspend but have everything I try and run (including 'explorer') show one of those nice GPF dialogs.
Whereas under linux I can suspend/unsuspend whenever the hell I want and not have any troubles even running X or whatever?
Good old Microsoft.
I am admittedly no genius, and I have a Linux Desktop that I use at home which beats the pants off NT or 98 as a desktop OS. Right now I have a SETI cruncher going through TkSETI, am listening to the Sarah Brightman CD, have many Netscape windows open, and from time to time do a kernel compile while doing this, or listen to MP3's without a jitter or skip, do graphics rendering or look at girlie pix with Xview or the Gimp.
I got a dual processor Abit BP6 with 2x400mhz Celerons. All I had to do was recompile my kernel for SMP. Viola! I tried to make an NT installation SMP with THEIR utility and ended up with an unusable installation that couldn't be rescued. With another installation of NT I added a simple Creative Ensoniq PCI soundcard, added the drivers, and rebooted to a wonderful BSOD that even happens on the VGA "safe" mode! I tried a rescue and an upgrade and now it crashes worse!
Linux keeps chugging along just fine.
NT is GARBAGE, pure and simple. Someone ought to arrest the jerks who posted those LIES on the M$ website. They are mostly LIES. I pity those who believe the LIES.
==============================
Windows NT has crashed,
I am the Blue Screen of Death,
The filesystem can handle larger files, but unless the application uses special file write calls, then it too is limited.
This is exactly the same with Unix-style OSs that perport to support very large files (eg, solaris); one still has to use special calls to create files greater than 2GB, because the standard calls still use 32-bit file pointers.
This discusses WHY ACLs aren't that great, and presents a possible solution.
http://www.eros-os.org/essays/capintro.html
Around 9:00 pm PST i get this server is down message from microsoft.
Can someone confirm this ?
Well any ideas? Me think it'll be somewhere about 30 lines +long? Personally I find the windows 95/98 people are less annonying then the NT people. Maybe because they actually know their place in the scheme of things.
I guess all this Linux "hype" has the Borg worked up in a frenzy.
.....
It's so funny -- all those smug, arrogant jerks at MS thought UNIX was going to just fade away by now (like OS2 or something). And then along came Linux
What a heartbreaker -- they were on their way to becoming "Big Brother" !
LOSERS !!
One comment was that Linux doesn't support new technologies like USB, they forgot to mention that neither does NT
Says it all...
Acutally your incorrect.
:)
The bitness of the FS has nothing to do with the machine bittyness.
Example : BeOS -- And it's fully 64 bit Journaled FS
We'll have this soon as well
--
"Linux is a UNIX-like operating system and is therefore complex to configure and manage."
:-)
Take that line to ANY english teacher and they will fail you in an instant. "therefore" ?
Where did they prove that Windows NT is any easier? Who did that test?
I suppose they had to write something.
I can't wait until all these problems are fixed overnight because they upset the linux community so much.
If I have learned anything, it is this:
get a linux programmer upset, make him prove his point, and he/she will go without sleep until it is done.
I am off to the store right now to buy some jolt... see you all in a few hours
Even then, due to the inherent instability in the operating system you market you often have to recall the fix because it breaks compatibility with some crucial service!
What's worse, virtually any user of an NT system (even WITH all the hotfixes) can 'root' the box in less time than it takes for me to compile "hello, world"! Atleast under linux I have a very well laid-out method of protecting users' programs from interfering with each other.
And I can download a state of the art firewall for free and have it up and running in minutes on any current linux distribution. That literally costs thousands to impliment on NT.
Linux is insecure? Better go recheck your data...
--
from article: "The Linux community continues to promise major SMP and performance improvements. They have been promising these since the development of the 2.0 Kernel in 1996." We have to do more than say "oh thanks for our 'to-do' list"
---
This is so funny... The first thing they teach you in any "research" class is to find multiple unbiased sources.
What does microsoft do?
Gets all of it's info from either itself or "pc week magazine" (aka: zdnet, microsofts magazine in a pocket). Citing the "midcraft" results, the "oh it's too much of a pain to apply 20 someodd security fixes" debockle, and a number of other things...oh the pain. Some professor at a university isn't going to sleep well today...and the person who taught that FUDers ethics class...oh my.
"There is no reason to believe that Linux is significantly different than other versions of UNIX when it comes to TCO."
Oh. See, I thought that initial purchase price had an affect on TCO. Silly of me.
"The very definition of Linux as an Open Software effort means that commercial companies like Red Hat will make money by charging for services. Therefore, commercial support services for Linux will be fee-based and will likely be priced at a premium. These costs have to be factored into the total cost model."
Uh. Isn't this a scathing indictment of MS's practice of pay-for-play support when they do not use an open source model? For that matter, wouldn't I be more likely to trust a product from someone who doesn't have an economic incentive to release a product which requires support? The buggier Windows is, the more support calls companies pay for. The buggier Red Hat is, the more likely it is to be outsold by competing products.
Myth: This page does not have broken HTML.
"Configuring Linux security requires an administrator to be an expert in the intricacies of the operating system and how components interact."
This is a plus, in my book.
-=Best Viewed Using [INLINE]=-
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I thought the correct Microsoft approved pronounciation of bugs is 'features' and bugfixes 'enhanchements' or 'service' packs... Okay now we can add another synonym, 'issues' Well, I thought IE5, often installed on NT, has quite some nice features too.. 'talking about security..
I always thought it was funny how ZD pubs pushed Micro$oft apps when their apps weren't all that popular...
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
I don't think MS gets it. Anytime Linux is prooven to not live up to something, people fix it. It's like getting a cut on your arm.. =] It's almost a lose-lose situation for MS to post this stuff.
Now that Linux is getting bigger, you have those *ahem* reporters that start labeling these articles as FUD. So, less and less people like MS. Big woop acutally, since there are still more that like them..
And since the developers are so quick and sharp, Linux's shortcomings can be turned around in no time. I, for one, was glad the Mindcraft tests happened. Look what it did for the kernel and Samba. I wouldn't mind if MS funded a few more stress-tests to find where Linux can improve.
um.. wrong end of the animal there.
As in the "not performing to market expectations" kind of Red. Anybody know how Linux is performing to "market expectations?" (If anybody mentions RH, I'm gonna slap 'em.)
I'm an admin running about 20 or so NT4 machines and an NT server. The last two machines I bought are Linux web/file servers. We will not be upgrading to Office2000 or Windows2000 until at least 2002 if at all. It's not worth the downtime, now that's everythings M$table. The need to upgrade doesn't exist for most small/medium companies. Microsoft can't have customers not buying software for a couple years. And then after those two years they buy free software, that hurts the 50% annual growth very quickly. How funny is it when an 800-pound Gorilla panics?
+&x
"It's interesting to note that there is not a single TPC result on any database running on Linux, and therefore Linux has yet to demonstrate their capabilities as a database server."
Ok, that's just dumb. A TPC result would not be a bad thing, but the lack of same does not mean that Linux hasn't been demonstrated as a database server. And it's interesting that Microsoft is learning that Linux is a community and not a company but still missed it here: "their" in reference to Linux (not the Linux community.)
Regarding 99.9% uptime guarantees - of course people will sell you a 99.9% guarantee on NT. You pay lots of money, and when it doesn't meet the guarantee, you get some money back. I wonder what the terms of those guarantees are? Sure an NT box by itself is pretty stable, but what about when you want it to do actual, useful stuff?
About commercial support being fee-based. What the hell does Microsoft think? Commercial support will of course be fee based. The difference is that fee-based commercial support is not the *only* method of support, as it is with MS. Who wants to put a $195 charge on their credit card just to *talk* to MS support personnel?
Sure there are some good points in the "article," and a lot more bad points. Most of the bad ones are so obviously stupid that it's not worthwile even commenting on them.
Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two.
Well a buddy of mine works as a circuit board designer at Ericsson Telecom. The hotshots in HQ, Stockholm wanted to exchange their Sparc computers used as CAD workstations with the equiv. in NT. The outcome was that an NT solution was not realistic as they could never use an OS that needs to be rebooted every other day. The circuitboard simulations in some cases needs to be run for several days, and NT just doesn't cut it...
FUD FUD FUD... its like propaganda with M$. This is the one from that page I like the most:
"Linux only provides access controls for files and directories. In contrast, every object in Windows NT, from files to operating system data structures, has an access control list and its use can be regulated as appropriate. "
DUH!! If they had actually done some research into this they would have seen that EVERYTHING IN LINUX IS REPRESENTED AS A FILE. Devices, interrupts, and data structures. Not only does this give a working security model, but it allows for more consistant administration of the machine. Besides, the Windows NT "security model" is ambiguous at best. Look at networked file sharing for example-- you set permissions on a file, then share it, then set MORE permissions on the same damn file. You don't need that to have protected file sharing across a network.
The day I choose Win over Linux is the day I lose my free will.
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
Sorry Micros~1, but your TCO argument's bogon emissions are dangerously high, like - it's glowing blue.
As I sit here writing this on my Mandrake 6.1 dual Pentiun II 400 machine I think, gosh maybe I should go back to using Windows 2000.I am interested in all OS's but prefer to use Linux because of all the tweaking and custom X stuff I can run. On the other hand Linux doesn't have any decent music software or drivers for the music hardware I own so I still need to use Windows 98 most of the time because this is what I use a computer for. My Linux machine is fine for e-mail and surfing the web but you won't find a Dreamweaver or Net Objects fusion to run on it.Try creating Flash. I still can't replace my Quicken. Give Microsoft a little credit. The fonts and printing on Windows it light years ahead of Linux. I hope there will be a day when Linux truly is the coolest OS out there but it ain't there yet. I also don't want to have to say in two years" I wish I had some other option than this damn Redhat Linux,Iguess since it's free there is no longer any competition." I think BeOS is cool for some stuff but that also has a long way to go. All I'm saying is quite crying like a bunch of two year olds and just use your damn PC any way you want but don't start telling me what I should run! Vampire Tap
GodBrain http://www.godbrain.net http://www.alienfaktor.com http://www.tril0byte.com
microsoft caves in, spinning off the windows division, entirely to kill it.
a microsoft unix (or linux) flavor/distribution comes out, MSPL'd.
microsoft announces that windows was always the enemy. microsoft has always been at war with windows and closed source software. microsoft and linux had actually been in an alliance and always had been.
Linus, ESR, CmdrTaco et. al are all now unpersons, and never existed. our chocolate rations were actually increased to twenty gram[me]s. and everything was doubleplusgood...
Oddly enough, they say the largest filesystem that linux supports is 2 gig..hmm...I'm running kernel 2.0.31 (I know it's old, but it works great), but I have personaly formated a 12 gig ext2 partition with no problems, used it for a while...worked great. hmm...2 gig...nada!
http://www.xpurple.com
the other site I put that on (my normal site) doesn't have too much bandwidth (the machine is just fine however) so I mirrored my rant on enlightenment.org
see http://enlightenment.org/rant.html
--
Geoff Harrison (http://mandrake.net)
Senior Software Engineer - VA Linux Labs (http://www.valinux.com)
Geoff "Mandrake" Harrison
Some Random UI Hacker
Sure Unix is more complex, but doesn't that mean it is (potentially) more powerful and configurable? *nix admins know their sh*t, period. Not to say that many MCse's aren't smart, but they simply don't have to know very much to keep their OS running. All they need to know is how to reboot (OK, that was a cheap shot, but I've done my share of it, so I'm entitled).
And let's talk about web servers... I worked for a web development group, and IIS would just die for unknown reasons and require a restart. Not good for "mission-critical" apps, I wouldn't think...
Microsoft jabs at Linux for "promising" things such as SMP, etc. Hasn't Microsoft been promising Win2000 for quite awhile now? The cool thing about Linux is how rapidly the development moves. You would think Microsoft, with billions of dollars and tons of bright engineers, could beat a bunch of hackers strung together by the Internet, many in their "spare time". You've got to admire that.
Yes, Linux has some progress to make as a desktop system, but it is stable, unlike Win9x, which crashes on me constantly. And, it is infinitely customizable, for those who are willing to take some time to learn. Is it right for John Q. Public right now? Maybe not, but perhaps someday. Is it more complicated to run than Windows? Yes, but again, remember the trade-offs.
Well, I could go on, but it's nothing that 99% of you don't already know. Just thought I would toss in my $0.02 as a corporate Windows developer/user. BTW, I just ordered my new desktop... w/ Linux pre-installed).
Let's be honest about Linux's weaknesses, and fix them. But in the same vein, let's not put up with any FUD... As some other /. readers have noted, we must intelligently REFUTE the FUD, not rave about it madly. That doesn't help our reputation any.
--"A man's Palm is his best friend."
--"A man's Palm is his best friend."
(IIIx, that is...hehehe)
Here's but one example:
"The complexity of the Linux operating system and cumbersome nature of the existing GUI's would make retraining end-users a huge undertaking and would add significant cost."
Cumbersome nature of the existing GUI's? This particular lie ignores the existance of KDE. I have a friend who had no previous UNIX experience, yet was able to start using KDE almost immediately, since it is so similar in function to the Windows UI. The person who wrote this is either:
a) uniformed
or
b) dishonest
Take your pick. Since MS has sited KDE as an example of competition in federal court, I would be inclined to go with "b".
TedC
Question: So, uh, where would we find this functionality in Windows NT?
Answer: You don't.
This smacks of the Microsoft FUD about Sun machines wherein Microsoft had a good laugh about the fact that you actually have to TELL the operating system that you are removing a backplane to let the machine prepare for it, all the while not bothering to mention that you can't do that on Windows NT period.
Learn to type and speak English, and then wait 'til you're past 12 to support our cause. It will be much better that way. Maybe by then you will realize that this sort of unsupported badmouthing hurts us more than it hurts MS. If people like you keep it up, we'll start looking like Mac users.
-Splat
all it takes is one person to find it and tell their friends about the article for it gain credibility. I have a custome that believes ANYTHING he hears as long as it isn't from us. i swear. We installed the patches to update his server (NW 3.12) for y2k bugs. One week later he told me that he wanted to switch to NT 4.0 (before sp4 was out) because NetWare wasn't y2k compliant even after the patches, but NT was. If we ignore theese and/or don't respond then the great PR blitzkreig called Microsoft marches on.
(we did talk sense to him in the end. 2 of his mission critical apps were NetWare specific)
Its quite blatin that microsoft is just a tad worried about Linux. I'm sure Bill gates isn't loosing any sleep about it. Why? He's the richest man in the world, his company is doing wonderful. But, for some reason he feels he has to go about and try to stop people from tring linux? Isn't that an act of fear?
laters
TedC
People,
What we have here is what MS loves to do; marketing. It's all about money. When MS says "your product is inferior," they are simply generating much needed competition. And when most people run around like chickens with their heads cut off over these meaningless numbers and pseudo-facts, MS sits back and watches the interest in their company grow, and their chances of being recognized as an anti-trust enforcement candidate decrease.
People, just let them say what they shall. Their remarks are not going to make any Linux/UNiX/Other users switch (the corporate world is different..). If someone says something rude about your favorite OS, just smile and walk away; it is their loss. I've never been so productive or happy with a workstation in my entire life until I found the OS of my choice.
For the corporate world (I'm no specialist here), if an exec wants to make a major move to MS products, there was obviously something missing from her current setup, so perhaps a company should market a corporate tech revitalization service so that some one else won't feel tempted to make a drastic (and usually costly, troublesome, less powerful) switch.
A perfect example would be a company I did some administration service for. They have 3 SUN servers that handled http, pop, smtp, and some file sharing. The hardware and software were extremely old; I almost wanted to take a picture and frame it. They also got rid of most of their admins due to cutbacks. Hanceforth, due to the lack of real admins and new equipment (or the knowledge of what to buy), this company was (may still be) on the verge of being coerced into a new OS layout.
Just some thoughts here, but enjoy your OS for what it does for you, not what someone tells you it can do for you.
with the advent of reparse points and letterless drives in Windows 2000 (this was possible under NT 4.0, but not used), this is not really an advantage that's going to last long. I estimate a late December-early January for Win2K to be in the stores.
Text based log files are not remotely administrable, so you must establish some form of secure local administration practice such as ssh to manage them. That doesn't scale if you have to manage (say) 1,000 servers.
The list should be seen as a list of things to do by the Linux developers. Not as a thing to respond directly to. You'll never compete with MS's marketing people. So don't.
Andrew van der Stock
It's not exactly tidy - it's not all true:
_A_ Linux swap file may have a limit of 128MB, but you can have _more than one_ swap file, which is probably on a completely different paradigm than that of the Microsoft developers.
And what the heck are groups for, if Linux security is all-or-nothing? Hehehe..
And I'm sure there's more, but I'm not qualified to debunk this crap properly. I'll be waiting for the line-by-line ripping.. =)
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
Fair is fair, but you obviously don't know enough about NT to have servers reboot themselves.
Linux Mythos -- A (Fictional) Microserf's Perspective:
- ---------------------------
- ---------------------------
- ---------------------------
- ---------------------------
- ---------------------------
"With all the recent attention around Linux as an operating system", I'm surprised you haven't taken a long enough look at it yet to see most of the stuff we sling at it for the crap it really is. "First, it's worth noting that Linux is a UNIX-like operating system". Since UNIX is 30 years young, Linux fundamentally relies on a stable and well-honed architecture. "Linux was not designed from the ground-up to support symmetrical multiprocessing (SMP), graphical user interfaces (GUI), asynchronous I/O, fine-grained security model", but since these can easily be plugged into an OS as robust as one expects from anything based on UNIX, not much to worry about there.
Myth: Linux performs better than Windows NT
-----------------------------------------------
Reality: Unless You Run a Pentium 450 with 256MB RAM and a > 2GB HD, This Is True
Since most PC owners cannot afford to upgrade to the newest and most expensive equipment to be able to run Windows NT, they are still afforded the use of their old 486/66 machines by running Linux. So the rest of this topic is pointless to argue with.
And if you are running a PC with more than 2Gigs of RAM or handling files as large as this, then all the power in the World to ya, because you're gonna need it!
Myth: Linux is more reliable than Windows NT
-----------------------------------------------
Reality: Linux Doesn't Know the Meaning of the Phrase "Blue Screen of Death"
So why are these known to occur in NT?
"Linux lacks a commercial quality Journaling File System", but wouldn't you prefer an OS which has Journaling File System have one but is not known to crash very often, to one that has a Journaling File System but finds it rare to count up time in months.
"There are no commercially proven clustering technologies to provide High Availability for Linux", but if you're performing clustering, you've probably moved on to much better options than Linux OR NT 4.
"There are no OEMs that provide up time guarantees for Linux, unlike Windows NT where Compaq, Data General, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Unisys provide 99.9 percent system-level up time guarantees for Windows NT-based servers". But believe me, those guarantees from such companies have no concerns for the following topic on Total Cost of Ownership. Also note that Microsoft itself does not count in the companies promising such up time levels.
Myth: Linux is Free
-----------------------------------------------
Reality: Free Operating System Means It's Free -- Do You Need a Definition of 'Free'?
"The Linux community will talk about the free or low-cost nature of Linux". And whether you like it or not, it's completely true.
"The cost of the operating system is only a small percentage of the overall total cost of ownership (TCO)". However, since all previous white papers we have paid for show comparisons against a non-free version of UNIX and a not so inexpensive system it runs on, anything said in favor of NT winning against Linux in a TCO fight are no more than wishful thinking on our part.
"The very definition of Linux as an Open Software effort means that commercial companies like Red Hat will make money by charging for services". But then again, so do we, so maybe we shouldn't have brought this one up.
"Linux is a UNIX-like operating system and is therefore complex to configure and manage". And hey, so is Windows NT 4! After all, a system that is not "complex to configure and manage" would not require certification for administrating it, would it?
"Linux is a higher risk option than Windows NT". Since this is mere opinion based on the false premise of a smaller count of 'certified engineers' for Linux means higher risk, take it as you will.
Myth: Linux is more secure than Windows NT
-----------------------------------------------
Reality: Linux Security Model Is Good Enough
"All systems are vulnerable to security issues", and this includes NT.
"Linux only provides access controls for files and directories". But since this includes everything in a Linux installation...
"Linux security is all-or-nothing". This is based strictly on the security model straight from NT. However, if you look at it from a UNIX administrator's viewpoint, there are levels of security that are available and can be described as "granular'.
"Linux has not supported key security accreditation standards. Every member of the Windows NT family since Windows NT 3.5 has been evaluated at either a C2 level under the U.S. Government's evaluation process...". However, if you want to hook it up to a network, you're out of luck on a good rating for security evaluation. You want a PC that's 100% secure? Keep it locked in a vault.
"Configuring Linux security requires an administrator to be an expert in the intricacies of the operating system and how components interact". And really, isn't that the way it should be? Do you plan to trust the security of your systems to your receptionist?
Myth: Linux can replace Windows on the desktop
-----------------------------------------------
Reality: Linux Makes No Sense at the Desktop -- That's Why I Run It On My Servers!
"Linux as a desktop operating system makes no sense". Unfortunately, this is only true for the beginning PC user. As they get more experienced, they begin to realize the more power over the PC they have, the better off they are.
"Linux does not provide support for the broad range of hardware in use today"; Of course, don't try to run NT 4 on anything other than an Intel or Alpha computer. And if you plan to upgrade to Windows 2000 (oh by the way, we're sorry for the delays that are causing IT planners uncountable headaches and cost overruns), stick to Intel please. As for training any users, don't worry, the next time we change the interface (and we will, you know we will), you'll have to invest heavily in it.
"Linux application support is very limited", but I figure all the basic and many of the advanced applications are to be found for it, as well as the fact with each year's passing, the percentage of those developing for Linux keeps going up drastically.
Summary
"The Linux operating system is not suitable for mainstream usage by business or home users". And as it's Microserf telling you this -- and we NEVER lie -- you must accept it as truth. Now look into my eyes. You are getting sleepy... sleepy.......
I can't seem to read it. Since Microsoft considers itself important enough not to use standard web style fonts. Instead choosing some weird non-standard fonts that only look good through the eyes of MS software... I can't read it.
Who do they think that they'll convince? Where I work, we have what seems to be three groups, the undecided, the decidedly anti-anything-but-MS group and the group that's actually tried Linux.
This may look great to anti-anything-but-Microsoft people, but to any reasoning person this looks like standard Anti-Anything-but-microsoft fare.
I can barely make out the statement "Windows NT 4.0 Outperforms Linux On Common Customer Workloads". I am intrigued until I see that it links us to the old PC Week tests... hrmmm, I work for a huge corporation and even we aren't running quad-xenon boxes with multiple nic's, for web servers (or anything else). And while we're at it why didn't they also include links to c't magazines similar tests?
Again... (I'm looking at this article by pasting the text into gnotepad...sad really) Linux Needs Real World Proof Points Rather than Anecdotal Stories.
This is true, but it has more than stories. I have personally seen good reliability with Linux. I have never personally seen it on NT... for you that's a story. For me it's proof.
Next we have some FUD about TCO... they don't actually show any numbers... just point in the general direction of classic UNIX and say, it's probably like that!!!
Then some more blah about security. But, yet as the very recent PC Week "hacker" (ugh, get the word right please, its cracker)tests prove... security is in the hands of the person who built the server.
Finally some fud about the desktop... even though it was supposedly some looming giant during the anti-trust trial, ready to kill MS on the desktop.
What a happy day. MS has lost its grip on reality, here's just more proof
Get a life, not a lifestyle. - Hikem Bey
Linux does not support important ease-of-use technologies such as Plug and Play, USB, and Power Management
K.
-
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
For comparison purposes, NT equiv. to Win2000.
So we will not compare performance. NTFS is slower, but journaled, compared to faster ext2, but crashable (like Fat).
If you compare memory usage, NT leaks, Linux doesn't. If you look at video IO, NT is faster, but it's right in the kernel so if it's not that stable (driver dependent) everything can go down, and isn't an Xclient or Xserver. But the Xserver/client model is by necessity slower, more stable, but still crashable, but not that low in the ring.
Just a blurb. :)
Linux does not provide support for the broad range of hardware in use today; Windows NT 4.0 currently supports over 39,000 systems and devices on the Hardware Compatibility List. Linux does not support important ease-of-use technologies such as Plug and Play, USB, and Power Management Since when does NT support USB?? We won't even get into Plug 'n Pray! FUD FUD FUD FUD!!! Come on now, Everyone Sing! FUD FUD FUD FUD FUD
Really, folks, they DO make some good points. Stories of better security and reliability are pretty much anectdotal. It's one of those things that's taken as truth among the faithful, but if there's a good way to measure these things, I've yet to see it.
To be sure, for MS to claim better reliability on NT would be equally disingenuous and unproven. But more to the point: repeating the claims that "Linux is more secure" or "Linux is more reliable" without proof will eventually cease to be effective. MS has already managed to portray NT as being as fast or faster than Linux; claims that Linux is faster don't impress people anymore.
Rather than beating the "more reliable; more secure" drum, advocates should emphasize Linux's proven and unambiguous advantages. For example, you can install Linux without a GUI if you want to. There's no way to FUD that. Another example: the Unix file system tree is far more flexible than drive letter mappings. (No matter how much money Microsoft has, they can't add letters to the alphabet.) Text-based log files score another big win for Linux in my book, and troubleshooting is generally easier in Linux.
Concentrate on quantifiable differences; speed, reliability, and security are the kinds of things that a good PR machine can easily turn to their advantage.
Okay, while it would be reliable to attack the whole document as FUD, I just want to touch on some of the security issues that they bring up.
Linux only provides access controls for files and directories. In contrast, every object in Windows NT, from files to operating system data structures, has an access control list and its use can be regulated as appropriate.
Can somebody please tell me why any user process would need to manipulate OS data structures? It seems to me that this is an inherently bad thing to do.
Linux system administrators must spend huge amounts of time understanding the latest Linux bugs and determining what to do about them. This is made complex due to the fact that there isn't a central location for security issues to be reported and fixed. In contrast Microsoft provides a single security repository for notification and fixes of security related issues.
Whoever wrote this is obviously living in a cave. Linux administrators probably spend less tim trying to understand the "latest linux bugs" then NT administrators spend on NT bugs. At least if there is a linux bug, you can either go in and fix it yourself, or after a quick post to the relevant mailing list, get the patch in a day or so. As opposed to NT, where you have to whip out the tea leaves just to divine where the bug is coming from, and then hopefully figure out a work around, since God knows Microsoft will not get around to fixing it unless you're lucky enough it's in the next service pack 8 months down the road.
Configuring Linux security requires an administrator to be an expert in the intricacies of the operating system and how components interact. Misconfigure any part of the operating system and the system could be vulnerable to attack. Windows NT security is easy to set up and administer with tools such as the Security Configuration Editor.
Wrong. Incorrect. It doesn't require an "expert" at anything, let alone the OS. What it does require is either a working knowledge (or the ability to read a HOWTO) of various programs that are *NOT* part of the operating system. If sendmail is vulnerable, don't install it. Whereas the very fact that you have NT installed probably opens you up to hundreds (thousands?) of security holes.
All in all, this article made amusing reading for the fact that some people will actually buy in and believe this tripe. There are some valid points raised in the article, and those points should probably be addressed, but it's hard to abstract from all of the FUD.
--------- Beware the dragon, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.
This ones a real beauty, previously owned by an little old lady who only drove it to church on sundays!
Ignore the sawdust overflowing from the transmission! What smoke?
As I can find a Verdana font for X. For now, I've got Netscape overriding document fonts, using my speficied, but I actually like looking at some of the pretty fonts web pages has to offer. Yes, Verdana is quite a nice font when you're using Windows, and quite ugly in linux. I'm sure that's why the page is set up as such =)
static kernel...weekly, or daily, reboots!
A jillion IIS hacks...FrontPage frontrage) extensions...ASPs...need I say more?
As if NT does PnP or USB?
--------
Oscarfish.com: tropical fish with attitude. Way t
gee, i thought one of their major arguments in the
doj trial was that they have competition, and they
pointed to linux for that... now they say that linux is no competetition?
before they criticise linux smp support, ms should get their left and right hands to communicate a little better...
Of course you are supposed to have a file on your boot drive (C:\) at least equal to the amount of RAM for core dumps when she BSODs.
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
Define "SMP Performance" If you are talking about raw CPU eaters (thats what smp is good at right?) Linux kicks NT butt by so much it isn't funny (overhead from 2 * 1 cpu can be measured in just a few hunred cycles per schedular quanta!). If you mean SMP systems, w/ networking and file I/O.. 2.2 can be beat by a properly tuned NT, 2.3 with KHTTPD accelerator, currently kicks NTs ass in the mindcraft type test.
Linux hasn't been limited to 128M swap since 2.0
Assuming 99.9% Annual Uptime and Ten Minute Reboot period... .999) = 525.6
Min_Per_Year = 60 * 24 * 365 = 525600;
Minutes_Down = Min_Per_Year - (Min_Per_Year *
Reboot_Periods = Minutes_Down / 10 = 52.56
Reboot_Periods_Per_Week = Reboot_Periods / 52 = 1.01...
Just the hard numbers, to provide a more intuitive calculation enviorment:
60*24*368 = 525600
525600-(525600*.999) = 525.6
525.6/10 = 52.56
52.56/52 = 1.01...
Of course, Microsoft would point out that on leap years when hell is freezing over and Jesus is returning to claim the open-source market....
Kspett
Kevin "Cash Money" Spett
Ignore your rights and they go away.
That little gem might well be the straw that broke the camel's back for Microsoft.
Imagine that you are a top technical employee at Microsoft, well clued up on Windows and on the free operating systems (probably running Linux or a BSD at home), and you read that heap of steaming incompetence being disseminated by your company. How would you feel about it? Professionally soiled by association with the Microsoft name, that's how.
And feeling that way about your employer is the first step towards seeking another. Microsoft may be in the process of losing a proportion of its best technical people, just because of their PR department's lack of analytic skills and a greater interest in good-sounding copy than in technical fact.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Linux is based on UNIX, 30 year old tech that microsoft is just now catching up with i remember just a few years ago when my mircosoft machine didn't even have virtual memory, something unix has had since the late 60's early 70's!
If they really want to point out all of each others flaws, then we should merely compose a paper which points theirs out, simply and concisely. If our paper is strongly backed and referenced, then this shouldn't be hard. You could make it into a top 10 list! READ BACKWARDS UP!
Top 10 Stupid Things Said by Microsoft:
*BONUS* "Where do you want to go today?"
1)We have the most stable operating system in the server market
2)We have real Java
3)We're cost effective
4)Linux isn't all that good
5)NT is more competitive than UNIX, and more practical (keep in mind that many more computers will run some version of UNIX than NT, it is still standard, and for many things, one would not even CONSIDER using NT instead of unix)
6)NT is more scalable (lets see, 128 processors/beowolf vs 4 processor "NT Workstation" -- Must say like someone who believes what they are saying)
7)We are the industry standard
8)We comply with industry standards
9)Open source means that it costs more money
10)We're compatible
Linux only provides access controls for files and directories. In contrast, every object in Windows NT, from files to operating system data structures, has an access control list and its use can be regulated as appropriate.
I thought almost everything in *nix is represented as a file. Your devices (/dev/*) are all files, the processes (/proc), regular files, etc. What isn't a file?
Redhat, Mandrake and others should post an equiv. page disputing all the Windows Myths.
http://enlightenment.org/rant.html
Microsoft has a team dedicated to the threat of Linux...and I'd bet my pinky and more they're perusing this column of postings seeing where they made mistakes (like the security issue) and gaining more ammo (the people who say "I love Linux, but they are right about this point: ...)
/. quotes tossed around by MS one day.
I wouldn't be surprised to see some of the
I think they threw Slashdot, and the Linux community, some bait and we swallowed it hook line and sinker.
Microsoft really loses on this point I think. They complain here that Linux really doesn't have a lower total cost of ownership and that licensing is just a mere fraction of total cost of ownership. I'm sorry, but I disagree. My ex-boss from my summer job tells me that dealer cost on licenses for NT are running about $20 a pop. Admittedly, they have packs of licenses that you can buy for a modest discount. However, if I'm a big company with clients that connect and use the box everyday, I sure as heck don't want to pay $20 per system that connects to the machine. That's a pretty good chunk of change. Another thing they assert is that companies like RedHat charge for per-incident tech support. HEY! MICROSOFT DOES THIS TOO! How about that??? Last time I checked, their rates weren't too attractive either. I might also add that MCSE certification is right around the same amount of money for certification on RedHat's Linux distribution. >For example how many certified engineers are >there for Linux? Certification is overrated in many instances, and by no means guarantees that the person won't be a complete idiot. I was amazed at how pointless many of the questions were on the A+ certification test. I refused to take it on the basis that, A. Nobody in our city cares about it, and B. felt it was unnecessary since the PC industry was built by a bunch of people working out of garages anyway (kind of like the open source movement). Was Bill Gates certified in anything but being a college dropout when he started Microsoft? Seems a pretty weak point to me. For me, personally, I have found a knowledge of Linux to be quite rewarding...financially, especially nowadays. My boss from my summer job contacts me frequently with Linux related questions. A local ISP that has been running NT almost exclusively is now experimenting with RedHat Linux and the president of the company makes many comments about how fast it is on dual PII's (even though Linux was never designed to run on SMPs). I'm by no means a Linux expert, but I believe I'll be in demand. ;)
Microsoft had boosted the power and reliablility of IIS by changing the name of Apache to IIS when queried and deployed it instead ;)
...That is what Linus said.
...Fat, dumb and happy, but you have never seen a penguin charge...
People will eventually come around FUD or not. Like with all businesses someone will ask, "Have we tried Linux?" and then they will. They will see that it is good. They will come to love it despite it's weaknesses. They will embrace it. It will remain.
Remember, the one main layer in the model, layer 8, is religion. No marketing can change that. If a CIO's buddy runs Linux and says it is good then it is good.
mercenary_4_hire@hotmail.com
I sense a deep fear of Anecdotal Evidence at Microsoft. Every day, more and more stories are being spread of Linux success stories and NT nightmares. And worst of all, these aren't coming from Linux zealots; they're coming from their (former) customers.
Keep the success stories coming. They're more meaningful than phony benchmarks. They know it and they're running scared.
It makes me ashamed to use windows.
Anyway, I just think that these articles by die hard NT people are just trying to convince themselves that NT is still the only answer. With all the training and MCSE courses one has to take to be a certified NT Admin, NT admins have to justify to their bosses that it was worth the money. NT admins are scared that they may be phased out in a couple of years due to Linux. I am not saying all NT admins but as soon as the more popular apps move towards the Linux platform, so will the jobs. I would be scared to if I only knew NT and I was pig headed about not learning a new OS because I didn't want to. Its too hard to learn a new OS because I am too lazy and I want to get the kickbacks from Microsoft. My life is really easy now and I don't understand why the world doesn't eat, sleep, drink, and sh#t Microsoft.
P.S.
I hope you caught my sarcasim. I was laying it on pretty thick.
I was amused by this tacit admission of monopoly:
"The complexity of the Linux operating system and cumbersome nature of the existing GUI's would make retraining end-users a huge undertaking and would add significant cost."
By existing GUI's I guess they mean the market leaders BeOS and MacOS...because they can't be suggesting people shouldn't switch because they are already entrenched in the marketplace, can they?
since you can't read it, i suppose you use a mac like me, or Linux/X
embrace and extend (again) what else did y'all expect?
I love it. I can't think of a better way for MS
to give linux credibility.
I think when this Micro$haft gorilla panics (it won't take that long), it will be a real *sight*. Dripping foam from the mouth, trashing everything in sight, and growling at a zillion bells. Then it will have stroke and drop dead on the ground with a THUD! so loud that will gets everyone attention and scare a lot of people witless, and their stock will drop faster than computers can keep track of it, bringing down a LOT of other bussiness with it (they had it coming). Then there is going to be a *deep* silence for quiete a while... Myself, I'll throw a ***party***!!! :) :) :) gacp
Linux fundamentally relies on 30-year-old operating system technology and architecture.
Darnit! I just realized that my car is based on 70 year old technology! I wish that some company as innovative as Microsoft would build one from scratch, rather than improving current models, like those old fashioned UNIX people do! =)
After a very quick read of their page, here is my response to some of their points:
- Windows NT is more secure than linux
The two levels of security for storage on NT make it so complex and so prone to mistakes in the settings. There's always a problem somewhere. On unix, file sytem securities are really easy. And usually, if a company needs something more flexible, they'll move up to some distributed file storage such as afs, coda etc. Those have their own securities which are more flexible but that still work.
-windows nt tco is lower
They say that the tco is much lower than a unix system. That alone I don't believe, because management of unix machines is really much easier thanks to existing technologies. Also, they refer to unix, so I'm guessing Irix, Solaris, AIX, etc. Those have typically been much more expensive and support comes from a single company which makes it no so great and maybe expensive. Linux, however is free (i mean in terms of money), and support can come from different companies and from linux users in general, so it's cheap (0 if you want) and it's much more effective.
That's what I think about some things...(ie. my 0.005 cents)
Maan
hotmail.com is running Apache/1.3.6 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.8 SSLeay/0.9.0b on FreeBSD
TRADEMARKS. Microsoft, MSN, Hotmail and/or other Microsoft products and services referenced herein are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft.
http://www.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/dasp/hminfo_s hell.asp?_lang=&beta=&in=yes&content=to s
BTW, its about that time in my life... where exactly can I sign up for those M$ scholarships??? ;) Ben
1: In extensive testing, the NT5 box was the only option that ran a Quake 2 server (with a minimized client running crusher demo looping), a Quake 3 server, IIS +ASP (or alternatives on the Linux platform with similar functionality), a database server, File sharing to the tune of 1 GB a day, and the required front end GUI application for the end user clients, continuously for 1 month. Linux didn't really like this test. It crashed completely several times over the month. NT5 (and 4) ran the test with only 2 explorer.exe crashes, which left the remaining tasks running fine and explorer promptly opened up again. (and the server is still running quake 2/3 servers, and a 5000/day web site. With only one major downtime (client installed a shareware app that didn't detect it was running under NT and suggested restart at end)
2: The GUI aspect was essential to the project. A simple VB6 app with an HTML front end managed all major tasks on the NT box, and used common and recognized methods to allow the user to do tasks. (Things like complete keyboard control and intuitive interface) The Linux options in this department, however powerful they can be, were not as simple to properly effect. For instance tab order for the Linux front was inadequate, and no options were provided for a GOOD LOOKING intuitive interface. CSS+HTML in a VB app is an awesome way to make a good application with a good custom UI. No such way, short of building it from the ground up, exists in Linux.
3: Windows networking was part of the foundation of the clients business. They run 18 computers with Windows 98, running a custom shell replacement designed by my firm, for the purpose of providing a multiplayer gaming environment. We had to get the servers data to those machines for the purpose of organizing tournaments and whatnot.
So you really have to test each platform for what you need it to do. I have to say, I'm a Win9x user converted to Linux user converted to WinNT user, though. It was incredibly easy to deploy and maintain the client's solution end to end, without worrying about conjuring my ailing C skills. Yet still maintaining awesome ease of use and a uniform UI (Oh yea, and I like my games)
this is coming from the people who run their Hotmail server on a BSD flavor. Yet BSD is based on UNIX, a 30 year old system, security flaws, blah blah blah.
Lets talk screw ups. MS-DOS is based on UNIX, and Windows 3.** is based on MS-DOS, and Windows 9* is based on Windows 3.** AND Windows NT is based on Windows 9* (with very little security additions in between)
I do not run Linux, nor do I run NT, yet I will run Linux before I run NT (I am currently a Windowzer, because I use the families computer, I cannot REALLY change the OS, for I only have a 1.2GB HD)
We use NT at my school, and it is pathetic. Crashes without warning, Dr. Watson NEEDS to be killed, for he closes applications at will. The list of reasons for NOT running NT goes on.
I am not stubborn. I am right!
Try doing something like fseek on a 32-bit machine. The standard C function calls that we know and love don't support file offsets greater than 31 bits (signed int). On a 32bit machine.
So the only way around that is to come up with a set of equivallent functions that take 64 bit file offsets. But this problem is not a Unix specific one. It'll also exist on Mac and NT.
The underlying filesystem SHOULD support files greater than 2GB. No excuses.
Tom
Yeah, Linux is like a fresh young girl, firm and ready. It's hard to tell through the sweatshirt, but underneath she wants it bad. She wants her breasts to be fondled and her nipples pulled on. And that's why we'll win this thing, and come out on top of Microsoft, that toothless whore.
Go Linux, you naughty thing!
NT is a huge bloated POS, as is almost every MS product. The bug fixes end up adding more bugs, it doesn't even support everything MS claims it does, and the only reason that anyone uses it is because some people actually believe FUD.
Remember, MS FUD is not designed to make Slashdotters change their ways. It is designed to sway people considering Linux, who might not know better (like the exec in charge of buying all the stuff and forcing it down admins throats).
I know a guy who interned for MS. Some of the people working there secretly use MacOS and Linux. Those who look at the source code know for a fact how bad Windows really is.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
look there IS no long term. understanding that is the difference from 90% (m$) desktop share and 3-5% (apple). there's no real advantage in being technically superior, bill knew that if he came out with NT that didn't have backwards compatibility that vendors would all have to recompile for new target, users couldnt use their visicalc spreadsheets, and a HUGE opportunity for someone like apple to come in would appear out of nowhere. i mean, if "windows 93" can't run my old apps, i might as well look at other os's out there??? granted apple made a nice leap to ppc architecture...but if bill could do it all over again, would he do it different? not likely.
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
I wonder this myself.
.02
I can't really fault slashdot - I mean, this is why it's here. But can we expect anything less out of MS? Have they EVER shown themselves to be fair or even remotely honest? If there was any truth in that page, how can they expect us to take it at face value?
I really hope the community learns to dissect what they say and extract the true shortcomings of Linux - then work to fix them. Let them be the unyeilding, ever-critical eye. Let their FUD be the impetus for the *nix crowd to collectively squish their bloated, POS Operating System into oblivion.
My
Quux26
My
Quux26
www.crashspace.net
I agree, anything with interesting data should have a UPS. I'd still like to be able to use XFS now for my fileservers, but I'll wait at least 6 months for people to work out the bugs.
I've been fairly pleased with Best Power UPSs. They come with free UPS shutdown software for all major Unices, which includes source code (but no, it's not really OSS, sorry). The new Patriot Pro line is smaller and cheaper than the Ferrups ones that I had been buying. Even my fileserver at home is on a UPS. My data is worth it.
Yes, very, very, funny. Sure, Linux does not have a journaling fs (but it is coming), but what good does it do NT?? I've had to reinstall NT after power outages! Just a default NT install on the most common hardware...
These comments they make are just amazingly stupid...
Ok, this is bringing back bad memories from when I used to have to come into work late at night to reboot NT servers...
Just thought of something, it's funny how they mentioned how long fscking can take, whoever wrote that must never have had to wait for M$'s chkdisk program to run...
Whew, enough, these memories are painful!
FYI, I'm not a serious M$ basher, this just struck a nerve.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Sure, we can help the fat, bloated kid up. But it would be essentially stupid: as soon as our collective back was turned, there'd be a knife in it.
Microsoft didn't get to where they have by being nice. They play serious hardball. Either you are a customer or you are prey. They cooperate only when they must and destroy most of their partners. Examples: Citrix and Sybase.
They are *bullies*, and treating them any other way is simply asking to lose teeth. Or worse.
I've run Half Life on W2k up down and sideways since Beta2. I've had over 20 people using it as a server while I've played on it. It runs great. In fact in my experience it doesn't just work on W2k, W2k is the *best performing* platform for it. For a start, HL doesn't ever crash the OS. Have you just come from Mars, or did you make this up?
what the HELL does that mean? there is no way to logically find out if a fine-grained, course-grained, blue-grained or red-grained security model is good. it's like comparing grains to security models. doh!
As you are aware, people are working on JFSes for linux. In the mean time, try formating your FSes with 4k blocks (redhat 6.1 does this automatically on new installs now for big partitions).. Doing so cut my fsck time on my 190GB array to 1/10th it's orignal time.
2gb files is NOT a FS limit. Ext2 supports ungodly sized files, but the Linux VFS is current'y limited by the size on INT on the platform it's on. On Alpha, Linux does not have this limitation. There are *expirmental* patches that change this, perhaps 3.0...
Several posts bounced around the idea of AIO on Linux. While AIO has been around long before NT, it has not yet been implemented in Linux. Being thre reader of the Linux Kernel mailing list, I think I can offer some input. An idea has been posted that all read calls return immediately - the actual hardware work would be done when the application actually accessed a particular page of data. Memory allocation (on Linux, not NT, btw) already works this way - pages are allocated only when actually accessed. As for signal-based AIO, there is a library out (can't remember the name) that handles the waiting for the program.
As we might expect, this document has a lot of errors and a lot of useful information. I haven't seen any attempts at critiques, so I'll go through myself.
;-). I'm concerned more about where they're right.
I'll categorise each point as good (a valid criticism which we can address), bad (a valid criticism which we can't fix), or ugly (an invalid or pointless criticism). Unfortunately, I won't distinguish between 'ugly' fixable and 'ugly' unfixable; this is the nature of us hackers.
I'm going to mention mainly 'good' things here, because everyone else has covered where MS is wrong
good: Linux was not designed from the ground-up to support symmetrical multiprocessing (SMP). We can fix this byte by byte, painfully. However, it's not a shortcoming to users; it's a shorcoming to those of us working on adding SMP.
good: graphical user interfaces (GUI). Designing a GUI into the OS isn't good. Designing an OS _for_ a GUI would be great, but NT wasn't built that way. Linux can be built this way, but we're not going to do it -- there's too many advantages to being Unix-like.
good: asynchronous I/O. NT I/O is asynchronous, meaning that an app can request I/O and then go do something else. Linux requires that each I/O request either shut the task down, or force the task to poll. And then you have the good old "thundering herd" problem which was so recently fixed.
ugly: NT supports 4GB of memory. No it doesn't -- it supports two gigs protected, and sets aside two gigs for shared memory.
good: asynchronous I/O, completion ports, and fine-grained kernel locks. Let's add 'em!
ugly: The Linux community continues to promise major SMP and performance improvements. And we continue to deliver.
ugly: Linux isn't reliable. Um... Right. Either NT has a low TCO, or it's reliable. Never both. Linux, OTOH, has a low TCO at the same time as it's reliable.
bad: Linux is risky. Or more accurately, risk control takes a little more thought. I mark this as 'bad' because it's not a programmer issue -- it's marketing.
ugly: Linux is insecure. I hate to slam this one, because it's also a good point (I hope we continue improving). However, NT's security system is at best baroque -- it's capable of more security, but it takes so much effort to get that security it's not funny. Add in automatic update for handling security fixes, as with Debian, and you get real power.
ugly: Linux does not provide support for the broad range of hardware in use today; Windows NT 4.0 currently supports over 39,000 systems and devices on the Hardware Compatibility List. Linux does not support important ease-of-use technologies such as Plug and Play, USB, and Power Management. This one's cleverly worded -- they fail to note that NT doesn't support the things which they proudly proclaim that Linux doesn't support.
I'm trying to cover mainly things which others didn't already -- although due to my multitasking someone likely beat me to it. Well, I make do with what I've got.
-Billy
Why would anyone trust their enterprise to a company that displays such a lack of integrity?
TedC
"Linux as a desktop operating system makes no sense. A user would end up with a system that has fewer applications, is more complex to use and manage, and is less intuitive. "..
Less intuitive.. that's a good one..
EOF
Linux can compete with Windows without being competitive with Windows.
The use of the word "competition" in the second MS line you quoted means that Linux is an alternative solution. It doesn't mean that it's a good alternative. If Linux was actually close to being as good as NT, then it would be "competitive". Get it?
:)
Nice. Does anyone really read any of these posted messages? I mean...why the do you keep posting if you have nothing new to say. Is it some kind of therapy or are there just too many yes-men around? I have tried Linux. You know, installed applications, compiled, played with settings, compiled the kernel etc. I was not impressed. And from my experiences Linux is not even stable. Also, I didn't find any proper use for Linux. An OS is needed for applications. If, for some strange reason, there is a promising application for Linux, only 'messy development snapshots' or screenshots are available. And of course, you have to upgrade 50% of your libraries to be able to compile it (this probably breaks your system too). Currently I use Win98 (what a jerk) and I feel very productive. With MS Windows you can choose your applications. I use MS Office, some Java IDEs, Visual Studio and some RAD tools. DirectX and MFC are great, Internet Explorer 5 is the best available web-browser etc. Just thinking...What if Linux really sucks? Could you take it? Not a geek