> From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wed Jan 13 10:07:13 1999
>
>
> On Wed, 13 Jan 1999, Robert G. Brown wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 12 Jan 1999, Timothy MacDonald wrote:
> >
> > > The local NT-head ( and decision maker ) here in the office is basing his
> > > opinion of linux off a sidebar in Windows NT magazine. I think that his
> > > information is biased and misleading, if not wrong, but I really don't know
> > > enough about the Linux kernel to argue against it. I have included parts of
> > > the article below. If someone more knowledgable than I could take a look and
> > > tell me whether it is correct or not I really would appreciate it!
> >
> > This article sounds like Microsoft's standard FUD tactics, now applied
> > to linux. It is really something of a joke, and we should all maintain
> > our sense of humour as we read it instead of getting incensed. After
> > all, until a few years ago, Microsoft couldn't even run its own website
> > on an NT system. Linux, on the other hand, is the darling of the
> > ISP/website provider community because it scales marvelously well under
> > rather large loads and is for the most part rock solid stable, as in 100
> > day uptimes under full load are a rather routine occurence. NT, on the
> > other hand...
>
> goes down more often than Monica Lewinsky.
H3h. Can I quote you on this? 8-)
> Sorry Alan, but you make a good straight-man. I simply couldn't
> resist, having several dozen NT boxes here. Our average Linux box
> is up 100 times longer than our average NT box, 'on average'. :)
I'm currently running a network with about 250 hosts at several locations
around the US, most of which are NT. However, it's noteworthy that all of
the machines that are doing the real "heavy lifting" are running either
linux (RH 5.2) or Solaris.
Typical uptime for an NT server is generally measured in weeks while
the linux/solaris boxes generally stay up until we need to either
physically move them or add/remove hardware to the system. Depending
on M$ for technical support is pointless. My company is currently
a "Microsoft Solutions Partner" or somesuch and we have a rather
deep bench of NT savvy programmers. From time to time, we find
problems that are clearly M$ bugs and it's like pulling teeth to
get useful workarounds or even an admission that there's a problem
in the first place. And that's calling their expensive "incident
hotline" that we get X number of free dippings into. Compare that
to the occasions when I have a thorny linux or Solaris issue...I
generally post a message to the relevant mailing list or USENET
group and have a useful response in an hour or two (sometimes even
faster).
I could go on about horror stories of clients insisting on running
"high availability" e-commerce sites on NT machines, but I'm sure
most of the readers here have gotten bitten in the hiney enough
themselves that it's not worth beating a dead horse.
Readers Digest Version: You want a scalable and robust platform
for mission critical file servers? Avoid NT like the plague.
Chris
--
Christopher Mauritz
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