Doesn't this patent simply describe apache (which existed before 1996) ? Apache uses a single parent process to receive all requests. This parent passes off requests to its children, which often generate dynamic content.
Last time I checked, there was a package, I think called rumba, that implemented a samba client in user space. Also, you can always use smbclient from the command line if you just need to get the occasional file.
Kryotech sells refigeration units for CPUs. Basically, it's a little refigeration motor about the size of a shoebox that sits under your PC, connected to an appropriately sized little cover for the CPU.
It's news just because it's cool to have a chip running at 1G in a commercially viable environment (kryotech already sells systems with K6's and alphas).
I may be mistaken, but I thought RH stopped distributing all of the above software precisely becuase none of it was free. Going to the redhat website, the only thing I can find for sale that is not free is their version of Motif, and standard motif distributions cannot be free.
Some of the items that have been bandied about is stuff that is obscure and difficult to figure out. For example, I wouldn't expect even a fairly skilled Linux user to know that the 2.2.2 kernel had problems with TCP and windows clients.
However, anybody even vaguely familiar with the linux versioning system should know always to get the lastest version of the stable kernel. No one getting paid to administer a Linux machine should look at a list of kernels 2.2.1 - 2.2.5 and decide to download 2.2.2 !
Moreover, some of the mistakes they made (compiling samba with -O instead of -O2, setting the number of servers to 10 initially and 1 spare) show a lack of even basic Unix and apache administration skills. While it may not be fair to expect them to nail every possible optimization, there's no excuse for neglecting basic stuff like getting the latest stable kernel and telling apache to start enough servers. Even if this sort of information does require a fair amount of Linux knowledge, who in their right mind would pay over $25,000 for a machine and not even hire an admin with a basic knowledge of its operation ?
Even if they didn't hire a competent Linux admin, I'd pit Linux's performance under a newbie admin against NT's performance under a newbie admin. The ZDNet article claims that performance tuning information for apache is much more difficult to find than that for IIS. But, if you go to the apache web site and click on the big link named 'Server Documentation', you'll find links to both general and platform specific performance tips. The section on general performance tips includes *gasp* a couple of paragraphs on the importance of setting the StartServers and MinSpareServers directives appropriately. In contrast, the Microsoft site requires you to navigate through a maze of links to try to find information about IIS. I frankly gave up trying to count the number of links until I could get server performance tips for IIS after ten minutes of wading through MS's marketing classifications (am I an enterprise customer or an IT professional ? which support option do I need ? Why don't many of the forms work in Netscape? etc. etc.). The reason that the ZDNet author believes that the IIS information is easy to find is because he's used to using that information, just like the authors of the study found NT easy to tune b/c they were used to tuning it.
However, if such a newbie-Linux-vs.-newbie-NT-on-an-enterprise-class- machine-for-loads-greater-than-those-han dled-by-Yahoo study were done, it would be quickly dismissed as patently ridiculous. Mindcraft was smarter than that, so they actually pretended to tune the Linux box, but that doesn't change the fact that they were testing the performance of of an enterprise class system and ridiculously high loads under a clueless admin.
Lastly, I challenge you to call up the Microsoft Tech Support line, tell them you're running a perfomance benchmark on NT and would like some tuning help. I seriously doubt you'd get anything even resembling a helpful response !
Lots of people have commented that gcc is far different from most utility contributions, because a good compiler is simply much more difficult to write. That assertion is certainly a true one.
However, writing a compiler is not an impossible task, by any stretch of the imaginaton, and the pay off in reputation more than makes up for the limited number of people willing and able to take on such a project. Even though there may only be a few thousand people capable of writing a decent C compiler, the motivation to write a free one would be huge if one did not already exist.
As an example, I present to you lcc, a compiler developed at Princeton that is mostly free. I know that its license is not as free as gcc's, but it is free enough to show that the creation of a free compiler is not an unrepeatable task.
MySQL is free for all use, you just can't sell it. So I could setup a CD indexing server and charge for each connection and still use MySQL for free. However, if I tried to sell a CD containing the CD indexing software, I'd have to pay the nice MySQL folks.
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Doesn't this patent simply describe apache (which existed before 1996) ? Apache uses a single parent process to receive all requests. This parent passes off requests to its children, which often generate dynamic content.
Last time I checked, there was a package, I think called rumba, that implemented a samba client in user space. Also, you can always use smbclient from the command line if you just need to get the occasional file.
Kryotech sells refigeration units for CPUs. Basically, it's a little refigeration motor about the size of a shoebox that sits under your PC, connected to an appropriately sized little cover for the CPU.
It's news just because it's cool to have a chip running at 1G in a commercially viable environment (kryotech already sells systems with K6's and alphas).
I may be mistaken, but I thought RH stopped distributing all of the above software precisely becuase none of it was free. Going to the redhat website, the only thing I can find for sale that is not free is their version of Motif, and standard motif distributions cannot be free.
Some of the items that have been bandied about is stuff that is obscure and difficult to figure out. For example, I wouldn't expect even a fairly skilled Linux user to know that the 2.2.2 kernel had problems with TCP and windows clients.
However, anybody even vaguely familiar with the linux versioning system should know always to get the lastest version of the stable kernel. No one getting paid to administer a Linux machine should look at a list of kernels 2.2.1 - 2.2.5 and decide to download 2.2.2 !
Moreover, some of the mistakes they made (compiling samba with -O instead of -O2, setting the number of servers to 10 initially and 1 spare) show a lack of even basic Unix and apache administration skills. While it may not be fair to expect them to nail every possible optimization, there's no excuse for neglecting basic stuff like getting the latest stable kernel and telling apache to start enough servers. Even if this sort of information does require a fair amount of Linux knowledge, who in their right mind would pay over $25,000 for a machine and not even hire an admin with a basic knowledge of its operation ?
Even if they didn't hire a competent Linux admin, I'd pit Linux's performance under a newbie admin against NT's performance under a newbie admin. The ZDNet article claims that performance tuning information for apache is much more difficult to find than that for IIS. But, if you go to the apache web site and click on the big link named 'Server Documentation', you'll find links to both general and platform specific performance tips. The section on general performance tips includes *gasp* a couple of paragraphs on the importance of setting the StartServers and MinSpareServers directives appropriately. In contrast, the Microsoft site requires you to navigate through a maze of links to try to find information about IIS. I frankly gave up trying to count the number of links until I could get server performance tips for IIS after ten minutes of wading through MS's marketing classifications (am I an enterprise customer or an IT professional ? which support option do I need ? Why don't many of the forms work in Netscape? etc. etc.). The reason that the ZDNet author believes that the IIS information is easy to find is because he's used to using that information, just like the authors of the study found NT easy to tune b/c they were used to tuning it.
However, if such a newbie-Linux-vs.-newbie-NT-on-an-enterprise-class- machine-for-loads-greater-than-those-han dled-by-Yahoo study were done, it would be quickly dismissed as patently ridiculous. Mindcraft was smarter than that, so they actually pretended to tune the Linux box, but that doesn't change the fact that they were testing the performance of of an enterprise class system and ridiculously high loads under a clueless admin.
Lastly, I challenge you to call up the Microsoft Tech Support line, tell them you're running a perfomance benchmark on NT and would like some tuning help. I seriously doubt you'd get anything even resembling a helpful response !
Lots of people have commented that gcc is far different from most utility contributions, because a good compiler is simply much more difficult to write. That assertion is certainly a true one.
However, writing a compiler is not an impossible task, by any stretch of the imaginaton, and the pay off in reputation more than makes up for the limited number of people willing and able to take on such a project. Even though there may only be a few thousand people capable of writing a decent C compiler, the motivation to write a free one would be huge if one did not already exist.
As an example, I present to you lcc, a compiler developed at Princeton that is mostly free. I know that its license is not as free as gcc's, but it is free enough to show that the creation of a free compiler is not an unrepeatable task.
MySQL is free for all use, you just can't sell it. So I could setup a CD indexing server and charge for each connection and still use MySQL for free. However, if I tried to sell a CD containing the CD indexing software, I'd have to pay the nice MySQL folks.