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New Linux study suggests fundamental Microsoft credibility problems
Linux Watch ^ | 11/17/2005 | Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Posted on 11/23/2005 4:35:13 AM PST by StoneGiant

 

Opinion: New Linux study suggests fundamental Microsoft credibility problems


Nov. 17, 2005

Another day, another lame attempt by Microsoft to show that Windows is better than Linux.

This time around, Microsoft commissioned a study to show that Windows does a better job of serving e-commerce applications than Linux.

Of course, in the study, they didn't use the same e-commerce or back-engine DBMSs.

OK, right there, without saying another word, anyone who really knows anything about benchmarking knows that the study is fundamentally flawed. You're not comparing apples to apples; you're comparing apples and oranges.

It would be a different story, if you were trying to compare the transaction speed and reliability of e-commerce packages, but that's not the case here. Microsoft was trying to prove that Windows was better than Linux.

To do this "study," Microsoft hired Security Innovations Inc.. Paul Thurrott, a Windows journalist, describes the company as "highly regarded."

I prefer to use Security Innovations's own description of its relationship with Microsoft: "Security Innovation is a certified Microsoft partner for security services. We have both the Microsoft SWI and ACE certifications as an authorized professional services provider for Microsoft technologies."

What kind of idiots does Microsoft think we are, anyway?

In the, cough, study, which compared Windows Server System and Novell Inc.'s SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), they simulated both the aforementioned e-commerce applications and an upgrade from Windows 2000 to Server 2003, and SLES 8 to SLES 9, and a year's worth of running, from July 1, 2004 to June 30, 2005.

What did Micros... oh I mean Security Innovations, find out?

Well, first, that by Microsoft's own admission the sample size of administrators was too small to provide conclusive statistical comparisons!

Is this amazing, or what? In the executive summary, Microsoft admits that they don't have real data!

So what conclusions did they reach?

They found that with Linux you could solve problems in a variety of ways, instead of one true, Microsoft way. OK, that's true enough. But, this, this is a problem?

Sorry, Microsoft, I don't buy that paying your prices for your integrated innovation solutions is any kind of real business win.

Go call me a capitalist, but I prefer open-source's competitive product approach to Microsoft's "our way or the highway" communism.

The study also found that Windows was dramatically more reliable.

Really?!

That's not the Windows I know. Server 2003 is a lot better than W2K, but in my experience, and with the companies I know, SLES still stays up longer than Server 2003.

You know, I also recall a few potential Windows security show-stoppers over that year. There was the SMB (Server Message Block) over TCP/IP exploit, and a whole slew of holes in TCP/IP -- and those are only a few of the ones that Microsoft has fixed.

Despite that, the study also found that the patch rate on Linux wasn't quite five times higher than Windows. The testers found that SuSE had 187 while Windows only had 39.

Hey, they finally got one right!

Yes, Novell, like any serious Linux vendor, fixes all its problems as fast as possible. Microsoft doesn't. Even when a problem is a potential system killer, sometimes the boys from Redmond drag their feet.

Oh, and funny this, but the SuSE patches tend to work, unlike some Microsoft patches like two recent critical Internet Explorer patches, or the infamous Windows 2000 patch that blew up ASP (Active Server Pages) pages that were running ISS (Internet Information Services).

Microsoft also claimed that Linux patches took twice as long to apply and broke applications.

What nonsense!

In my office lab, I run a W2K server, two Server 2003 servers, and a pair of SLES servers. As it happens I also, during this last year, updated a W2K server to Server 2003 and one of the SLES servers from 8 to 9.

On those systems, I've also installed a variety of server applications including SQL Server and MySQL.

You know what? First, the Linux patches always, always installed faster. And the only breakage I ever saw from either the Windows or the Linux systems was when I was working on W2K.

Do you know why I support Linux over Windows? Because I don't just write about operating systems. I actually use them, and Linux works better than Windows does.

Lest you think I'm only saying that because I know Linux better than Server 2003, think again.

I literally wrote several hundred pages on Server 2003 in an online reference guide to the operating system. You can see the most recent edition of that over at InformIT.

No, I know Linux. I know W2K and Server 2003. And the people who wrote this "independent" study of both certainly didn't know Linux well -- and I have my doubts about the Windows side, too.


--Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols


TOPICS: Computers/Internet
KEYWORDS: bestofgoldeneagle; linux; macos; suse; wasteoftime; windows; xandros
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To: Golden Eagle

You mean like the 'Hundreds of Developers'??


61 posted on 11/23/2005 10:42:11 AM PST by N3WBI3 (If SCO wants to go fishing they should buy a permit and find a lake like the rest of us..)
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To: antiRepublicrat
"which is shipped with every iBook"

Which most users precede to lose and then whine and complain because they can't display their screen. Except for the G4Power Books and desktops Apple has never used standard video outputs. I had one situation where Apple didn't bother to tell anyone they had changed pin assignments on the video adapter in the middle of a model run. This was a multi-system project and it took us over two weeks to get Apple to acknowledge the change
62 posted on 11/23/2005 11:02:21 AM PST by sticker
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To: ShadowAce
Your pronoun is wrong

No it's not, just over your head apparently.

63 posted on 11/23/2005 11:05:38 AM PST by Golden Eagle
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To: N3WBI3
Yes, according to here and elsewhere Red Hat has a few hundred paid developers working on Linux that they subsequently give away to China for free. I already gave another link showing they contribute more to Linux than any other entity. You knew all this all along, too, I don't have to post these links over and over again, but I do because I like the look of egg all over your face, each and every time.
64 posted on 11/23/2005 11:14:35 AM PST by Golden Eagle
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To: sticker
Which most users precede to lose and then whine and complain because they can't display their screen.

My Dell laptop came with an adapter cable for video, too. Can I whine if I lose it?

I had one situation where Apple didn't bother to tell anyone they had changed pin assignments on the video adapter in the middle of a model run. This was a multi-system project and it took us over two weeks to get Apple to acknowledge the change

That one is messed up. But I still understand the need to get away from old technology, like old VGA, serial and parallel adapters. It causes some transition pain, but Apple seems to be the only company willing to do it. For some reason my new PC laptop wastes a lot of space with a parallel and serial port, and I haven't used a parallel port device in over six years, serial for about ten.

65 posted on 11/23/2005 11:23:03 AM PST by antiRepublicrat
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To: LIConFem

66 posted on 11/23/2005 11:29:37 AM PST by A CA Guy (God Bless America, God bless and keep safe our fighting men and women.)
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To: StoneGiant
And also in the news:

GM Study indicates Toyota quality problems.

Yahoo Analysis - Google Market Share Falling

I'm sure you can find a few more.

67 posted on 11/23/2005 11:35:23 AM PST by InterceptPoint
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To: Golden Eagle
Thats not what you said, you said:

Red Hat has literally hundreds of kernel devs and you have no proof of how many total contributions they have made.

So pretty please show me all these kernel developers..

68 posted on 11/23/2005 11:36:46 AM PST by N3WBI3 (If SCO wants to go fishing they should buy a permit and find a lake like the rest of us..)
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To: antiRepublicrat

What model Dell do you have? If you lose it you can whine all you want, just don't expect someone to save your butt. I use my serial port all the time, most control systems use RS232 for both programming and control


69 posted on 11/23/2005 11:40:48 AM PST by sticker
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To: A CA Guy

70 posted on 11/23/2005 11:46:26 AM PST by Golden Eagle
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To: Golden Eagle

LOL


71 posted on 11/23/2005 11:48:38 AM PST by A CA Guy (God Bless America, God bless and keep safe our fighting men and women.)
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To: Golden Eagle
LOL! You link to a post by someone who's making SWAGs just like you in order to bolster your argument?

Sad, really. It'd be humorous if it wern't so pathetic.

72 posted on 11/23/2005 11:55:01 AM PST by ShadowAce (Linux -- The Ultimate Windows Service Pack)
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To: advance_copy
They say they don't make cars or houses like they used to...

Thank you, Lord!!!


73 posted on 11/23/2005 11:59:25 AM PST by gungafox
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To: ChinaThreat

If there's anything Fedora 4's giving away to Windows I couldn't tell you what it was.


74 posted on 11/23/2005 12:02:00 PM PST by gungafox
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To: ShadowAce

Red Hat currently has a couple hundred Linux devs, according to every source I've seen. If you think you can prove they have less, by all means let us see it. But of course you can't, you're just stalling/distracting/distorting things like you always do.

This all goes back to the fact that China renames those free copies of Red Hat to Red Flag, then distributes them accross Asia without any compensation back to Red Hat. You're welcome to take that one on someday too, but so far you can't seem to face up to it.


75 posted on 11/23/2005 12:26:59 PM PST by Golden Eagle
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To: Golden Eagle
Red Hat currently has a couple hundred Linux devs, according to every source I've seen. If you think you can prove they have less, by all means let us see it. But of course you can't, you're just stalling/distracting/distorting things like you always do.

You did not say Linux Devs, you said Kernel Devs! Now youre changing your story because you got caught on it..

76 posted on 11/23/2005 12:31:01 PM PST by N3WBI3 (If SCO wants to go fishing they should buy a permit and find a lake like the rest of us..)
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To: N3WBI3

You're the one still eating your ankle since you attempted to claim Red Hat didn't help design the Linux kernel. While no one knows for sure how many of their hundreds of programmers work specifically on the kernel, we do know that they contributed more than anyone to it, hence your original claim is still 100% bogus. If you want to somehow try to defend yourself go ahead, but attacking me instead just makes you a sore loserman.


77 posted on 11/23/2005 12:40:04 PM PST by Golden Eagle
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To: LIConFem
Apparently not well or efficiently enough to be used by any firm requiring a high degree of performance or reliability.(re: Macintosh)

Some folk would have a different opinion!

Hardware

Compute Nodes:

1100 Apple Xserve G5 cluster nodes with the following specifications:

* Dual 2.3 GHz PowerPC 970FX processors

* 4 GB ECC DDR400 (PC3200) RAM

* 80 GB S-ATA hard disk drive

* One Mellanox Cougar InfiniBand 4x HCA*

* HCA added from third party and not a build-to-order option

Compile Nodes:

3 Apple Xserve G5 nodes with the following specifications:

* Dual 2.3 GHz PowerPC 970FX processors

* 4 GB ECC DDR400 (PC3200) RAM

* 3x250 GB S-ATA hard disk drive

Storage:

1 Apple Xserve RAID unit with 1 Xserve NFS servers.

Total available user storage: 2.7TB

Operating System:

Apple Mac OS X 10.3.9

Beate Schmittmann, Professor, Physics

Some current projects are:

* Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics

* Non-equilibrium statistical mechanics

* Phase transitions and critical phenomena

* Driven diffusive systems

* Vacancy-mediated dynamics

* Percolation and stochastic evolution models

* Field theory and renormalization group analyses

* Monte Carlo simulation techniques

78 posted on 11/23/2005 12:56:14 PM PST by pageonetoo (You'll spot their posts soon enough!)
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To: Golden Eagle
I never said Redhat did not help with the Linux Kernel, I said they were handed the kernel for free initially. You however claimed that there where 'several hundred' kernel developers so please tell me where is the meat on that claim?

While no one knows for sure how many of their hundreds of programmers work specifically on the kernel,

Funny a few post back you were pretty quick to say there were 'several hundred' kernel developers... now you don't know... Where I come from thats called lying son..

79 posted on 11/23/2005 1:04:08 PM PST by N3WBI3 (If SCO wants to go fishing they should buy a permit and find a lake like the rest of us..)
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To: Golden Eagle

BTW: 'to somehow try' is a split infinitive, you should have said 'to try somehow', or 'somehow to try'... Just thought if you want to play grammar Nazi you should act the part.


80 posted on 11/23/2005 1:08:25 PM PST by N3WBI3 (If SCO wants to go fishing they should buy a permit and find a lake like the rest of us..)
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