Windows / Unix server question

IIRC NT5 is Windows 2000. Windows XP is NT 5.1.

Preemtive multitasking means the OS designates which process (or thread or whatever) runs on a particular processor. This scheduling is the whole trick. Scheduling on XP still sucks IMO. Why? I keep hitting the same thing.. Processor indicates 99% idle but the OS doesn't respond to clicks, keys or whatever... Until after a few seconds then everything happens in the order I clicked... I never ever experience that on my BSD machine..

Hotmail used to run completely on BSD I believe. Then MS bought it. They tried to migrate to Windows 2000 but had to stop because W2K couldn't handle it. AFAIK now only the front-ends are windows machines but the backend is still bsd.

Ah. Almost forgot. Locking is another big issue.

I know FreeBSD. They used to have a giant lock. Meaning if 1 processor accessed the kernel the other proc had to wait if it also wanted access to the kernel. With 5.x (SMPng) they're using a more finely grained locking mechanism. This has improved the performance on SMP systems dramaticly.

So the biggest factors IMO are scheduling and locking, from an OS point of view.

So Negative,

He was comparing a non-server beta os to a unix deployment? And a sun at that. OK XP loses. lol. I don't think anyone would argue the speed of a unix installation versus a windows installation on similar hardware back in what was it... 1998? Traditionally Unix machines where faster because they ran on high end hardware as compared to small deployments of Windows. Unix was developed down one path, windows down the other. Server versus workstation. Shoot the fastest decently priced mini frames were Sun and Data General Unix. Both extremely expensive compared to Windows. Hundreds of times the cost. No make that thousands.

Now when we go into this realm of a supercomputer with 30 some processors? Well that's apples and oranges. Since moors law is in effect perhaps some research into a modern reality would be better considering it's 2005. :D Outside of the super computer realm where I would wager unix is king or some of the grossly proprietary OS', when you compare Unix and windows on the same harware they vary in performance based on what you are doing.

Once you cross a threshold though Unix is appropriate without rival. But you pay out the ass for that. In fact many older unix deployments often get replaced by clusters of windows machines that rival the speed at a fraction of the cost.

And as I said ;) :

The Internet : Built for Unix,

Windows : Built for the Internet

Unix and Unix like OSs are king in this area. Networking, TCP/IP, and almost every protocol, was written for Use on a Unix platform. Windows has caught up pretty quick, but they still aren't my first choice for servers.

Costs:

Think of something like this:

You buy a barebones computer and load it up with like 4 GBs of RAM, and dual Xeon Processors. You spent a lot on this and need an OS to go on it.

You can download Slackware or pay for Windows Server. Which one makes that total cost lower? When Microsoft say TCO is smaller, it's because they assume people need to be trained to use Linux, they assume they already know Windows, but what if they already know Linux? Then they have to be trained in XP.

Let me tell you, Slackware, SUSE, and Free BSD would be FAST on that hardware. Though Free BSD MIGHT need to be tweaked, the default Kernel is for 486 CPUs and older hardware, when you run it on high end you have to do another.

gore gore gore....

You and I both know the latest hardware will have issues with Suse. So in respect to cutting edge, faulty drivers on linux could cause more than a performance loss. It could corrupt data. Same goes for windows when driver support is lacking, but in general a harware manufacturer would be better at supporting new windows drivers versus linux. And while on the subject linux is not Unix. TCP/IP was built to be independent of the OS layer. And the internet was not built for unix, it was built ON Unix. That's all there was. We were all experts at the time. You couldn't even connect to the internet with early versions of Windows. Billy missed the boat originally and windows sockets that supported TCP were 3rd party. Trumpet Winsock was the king. And windows did catch on quick, it was 1993 or 1994 the MS release their own TCP/IP sockets, but 3rd pary drivers were better.

Windows was built so that a CPA or Author or Small Business owner could use a computer. Unix was only affordable by large corporations and even then they often outsourced the expense, that is how Ross Perot made his money, selling data like payroll, customer databases, you know infromation storage The nice tools that come along with Linux now were nowhere to be seen. Both have come a long way. What made windows so popular? You could put in a card and actually use it with only a little tweaking versus spending a week installing specific and propietary hardware. It was "open", anyone could make stuff for it. Unlike Data General and Sun and Apple. Isn't that ironic? We applaud Apple now but they would not release any compatabilty hardware UNLESS you licensed it through them versus the PC which had no restrictions because MS was free to provide the OS from harware vendors, especially IBM. Which was the corner stone of Unix mainframes colored Blue and sold everywhere.

When MS speaks of TCO they are speaking to "Total", meaning support, hardware maintenance, licensing, application development, etc. Out of the box, Linux is cheaper and in general performs better. But there is a higher overhead of continued maintenance depending on the application set. Now if you already have in house expertise then that cost is lower so there are many variables. But then you limit yourself to a single point of risk. In your example windows would be fast as well. But definitely would cost considerably more, unless you had to spend hundreds of hours on the linux box tweaking it.

Even the initial install is more, if you are paying someone to do it like a technician. Probably 2 or 3 hours more per box. In most cases people will need to be trained to use linux. It's just a fact that many people have never even seen it let alone use it. You would have to analyse your help desk calls to see if the TCO would surpass what is currently the intalled base.

But all in all, especially in the security realm on the server end, away from end users I deploy Linux for one reason... its cheaper. :D It takes more time but time can be washed away easier than initial licensing cost, and in reality I have seen and built linux systems that end up being more expensive of the life cycle of an object.

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Originally posted here by RoadClosed
gore gore gore....

You and I both know the latest hardware will have issues with Suse.

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My laptop is brand new, and SUSE 8.2 is running on it right now. That's almost 2 years old but works out of the box on a brand new laptop. It depends on what hardware you buy, this is a discussion about servers, SUSE Enteprise is amde for servers, the hardware shouldn't be a problem.

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So in respect to cutting edge, faulty drivers on linux could cause more than a performance loss. It could corrupt data. Same goes for windows when driver support is lacking, but in general a harware manufacturer would be better at supporting new windows drivers versus linux. And while on the subject linux is not Unix. TCP/IP was built to be independent of the OS layer. And the internet was not built for unix, it was built ON Unix. That's all there was. We were all experts at the time. You couldn't even connect to the internet with early versions of Windows. Billy missed the boat originally and windows sockets that supported TCP were 3rd party. Trumpet Winsock was the king. And windows did catch on quick, it was 1993 or 1994 the MS release their own TCP/IP sockets, but 3rd pary drivers were better.

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IBM is a good friend of Novell, and even Dell and HP support Linux for server purchases. The only one I can think of that I'm not sure about for Linux is Gateway, and who the hell uses them?

And for Windows, their TCP **** was taken from BSD ;)

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Windows was built so that a CPA or Author or Small Business owner could use a computer. Unix was only affordable by large corporations and even then they often outsourced the expense, that is how Ross Perot made his money, selling data like payroll, customer databases, you know infromation storage The nice tools that come along with Linux now were nowhere to be seen.

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But when Windows first came out, there was no Linux.

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Both have come a long way. What made windows so popular? You could put in a card and actually use it with only a little tweaking versus spending a week installing specific and propietary hardware. It was "open", anyone could make stuff for it.

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Heh, like when Microsoft tried taking out Netscape for making a browser that worked on Windows and wasn't IE?

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Unlike Data General and Sun and Apple. Isn't that ironic? We applaud Apple now but they would not release any compatabilty hardware UNLESS you licensed it through them versus the PC which had no restrictions because MS was free to provide the OS from harware vendors, especially IBM. Which was the corner stone of Unix mainframes colored Blue and sold everywhere.

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Before the PC, Microsoft sold Xenix.

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When MS speaks of TCO they are speaking to "Total", meaning support, hardware maintenance, licensing, application development, etc. Out of the box, Linux is cheaper and in general performs better. But there is a higher overhead of continued maintenance depending on the application set. Now if you already have in house expertise then that cost is lower so there are many variables. But then you limit yourself to a single point of risk. In your example windows would be fast as well. But definitely would cost considerably more, unless you had to spend hundreds of hours on the linux box tweaking it.

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What if it's a company who uses legacy things on 486 machines? Windows won't run on that anymore.

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Even the initial install is more, if you are paying someone to do it like a technician. Probably 2 or 3 hours more per box. In most cases people will need to be trained to use linux. It's just a fact that many people have never even seen it let alone use it. You would have to analyse your help desk calls to see if the TCO would surpass what is currently the intalled base.

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Umm, you can install on every machine at once. Linux and BSD can be installed from anywhere. All you need is an NFS server, or like with SUSE, you can do the installs over SSH or a VPN and all that needs is 256 RAM. I'd think Windows would take long you actually have to be at each machine from what I understand.

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But all in all, especially in the security realm on the server end, away from end users I deploy Linux for one reason... its cheaper. :D It takes more time but time can be washed away easier than initial licensing cost, and in reality I have seen and built linux systems that end up being more expensive of the life cycle of an object.

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Don't forget to tell those companies when the next big Worm is laying hell across Windows they don't need to worry ;)

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My laptop is brand new, and SUSE 8.2 is running on it right now. That's almost 2 years old but works out of the box on a brand new laptop. It depends on what hardware you buy, this is a discussion about servers, SUSE Enteprise is amde for servers, the hardware shouldn't be a problem.

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OK I'll give you a taste of some real world shark bites since I am loading my 3rd Win2k Server this week...

SuSE enterprise corrupted data through a new off the shelf SCSI controller and took out a critical database that encrypts some pretty cool **** to prevent fraudulent documents, that cost my ass and reputation and forced an outage that cost me 10 years off my life. But I still use SuSE. :D It's not a mecca of perfection by any means.

On another project a SuSe network probe keeps locking up after about a week of packet sniffing. Reboot fixes it and to get the entire node up initially, it took about a week of tweaking MySQL and fixing dependencies in YaST. Today I loaded Win2k and SQL and had it up in about 4 hours. In this instance I had to kill a linux box to keep the application up and servicing. So one wonders was it the OS, the Application, the hardware layer or just bad configs. It's all relative. So its hard to state the OS is the cause or the cure. In any modern circumstance.

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IBM is a good friend of Novell, and even Dell and HP support Linux for server purchases. The only one I can think of that I'm not sure about for Linux is Gateway, and who the hell uses them?

And for Windows, their TCP **** was taken from BSD

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Windows has taken a lot of **** from Linux. Gzip is the latest, behind the scenes in the latest OWA release. At the same time linux copies windows look and feel and methodology within modern interfaces. Damn thing looks and feels like Win9x. Which I like. Of course you can pick the interface and sometimes I like the big eyes and multiple consoles (you know what I mean).

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But when Windows first came out, there was no Linux.

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When windows first came out there was unix and early versions of linux were nothing more than old unix basic clones. At least the way one interfaced them. I used the first release I could get my hands on, downloaded it from an old FTP server from U. Mass. I had a constant habit of forgeting to switch to binary mode to dload apps. I was pointing out that windows was never designed to be a server. That came later when MS realized the potential of the internet in the server market. Before that Bill cared less. It pisses me off when people compare Windows and Linux within a time period that Linux didn't even exist. LOL. Hell now that I think about it, windows boxes didn't connect to Unix either to get "connected" they connect to Novel. lol. Unixe just served up TCP/IP based services and many of them had to be retrofitted to do that.

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Heh, like when Microsoft tried taking out Netscape for making a browser that worked on Windows and wasn't IE?

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MS pissed me off with the netscape fiasco. I remember the service update that did it. I deleted windows and restored from backup just because of it. Didn't use IE until years later when interfacing ASP based business partners forced me too. But MS never made it so Netscape would not run and they never tried to sue Netscape, it was the other way around. I have never stopped using it, although I like Mozilla better. But AOs spell check appelet has bee crashing it. So I have been using IE for the past week or so.

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Before the PC, Microsoft sold Xenix.

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The entire history of MS is interesting, which key moments turned them into the biggest company on earth.

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Umm, you can install on every machine at once. Linux and BSD can be installed from anywhere. All you need is an NFS server, or like with SUSE, you can do the installs over SSH or a VPN and all that needs is 256 RAM. I'd think Windows would take long you actually have to be at each machine from what I understand.

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True for windows too if you add in additional components like an NFS server for Linux. Neither is fool proof and ONLY works if the hardware is pretty damn close in all cases. Unless you go to some terminal services instance where the image is held on a server. I was refering to actually getting something to work on it like from Zero install to a full blown database server. Windows wins unless you get a full blown and configured distro image. But that would be the same for windows as well.

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What if it's a company who uses legacy things on 486 machines? Windows won't run on that anymore.

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Dude, if modern Windows won't run a legacy 486 windows app, linux aint going to do it either. By the way I have a few DOS apps! That are in live production. They are running on 486 and 386 machines with Okidata printers. However linux makes use of a great way to use old machines to run linux apps.

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Don't forget to tell those companies when the next big Worm is laying hell across Windows they don't need to worry

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He he, and you don't think I am not worried about all the MY SQL server databases and my own personal PHP Nuke. The level of worry is equal, and in the major MS cases it was patched months in advance. But MS is a larger target so a firewall comes in handy. Since MS is smacking down their installs the next big worm could just be cross table My SQL exploits, worse PHP problems and in case you don't check up on Apache I don't know how many patches I have applied this year. Lickily, unlike the past linux is making that easier and easier every year.

Heh, for a walk down memory lane:

For the record. Netscape came BEFORE IE, Billy copied netscape's feel but instead of making it better, they made it worse. It sucked in fact so why the hell would I let MS force me to use it? Damn that thing sucked back in 1992 or whatever.

IE was made from Mosaic ;)