I have come across what I believe to be a misstatement of information in
an Microsoft publication about Linux. In an unsigned article article
entitled Linux Myths posted October 4, 1999 and last updated Monday,
November 01, 1999, Microsoft says, "Linux performance and scalability is
[sic] architecturally limited in the 2.2 Kernel. ... The Linux SWAP file
is limited to 128 MB."
(http://www.microsoft.com/NTServer/nts/news/msnw/LinuxMyths.asp).
This statement is demonstrably false. 1) The statement implies that Linux
only supports one swap file. It supports 8. 2) The new version of the swap
file format supports much larger swap files on i86 architecture, and 3)
even the older version of the swap file format supported almost .5GB on
other architectures.
The question for this list is this: when did the new swap file format take
effect? My man page for mkswap is dated 25 March 1999, and is associated
with Linux kernel 2.2.4. That is a good six months before the article was
posted. Did the new swap file format take place even before that date? If
so, when?
I am not concerned with whther this is a deliberate lie or not. The error
casts grave suspicion on MS' Linux position papers regardless. My question
is, should the author of the article have known better? The older the
changeover to the new swap file format, the better the case for negligence
on the part of Microsoft's anoymous author.
--
-- C^2
No windows were crashed in the making of this email.
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