Re: Just My 2 Cents
Comments inline:
---Richard Lyon <rlyon01@ozemail.com.au> wrote:
>
> I guess the 'real' truth is that most of the
> microsoft stuff is actually quite good. With the
> latest versions of service paks installed things
> are very slick on windows NT.
The real truth is that Microsoft pushes products out before they are
ready and count on their service packs to fix _real_ problems. Linux
& UNIX have patches yes, but they are usually to add to the
installation or fix minor issues not to fix gaping holes in the product.
> I have debian and winnt-workstation running on two
> machines on my desk. Sure at first glance it appears
> that linux is faster, but look at all the services
> running on NT and what they do for me. If I install
> new hardware on my winnt box at least I don't have
> to compile and link a new kernel. Another
> interesting comparision is application installation.
> I wonder how many people really prefer to use
> dselect to the microsoft way of doing things.
Linux _is_ much faster for exactly the reason you give - the lack of
services running. Linux has the same functionality of the NT
'services' without the overhead by using daemons. What do these
services really do _for_ you - explorer.exe is using about 3M right
now except I'm not 'exploring' - I'm idle. Even sitting here Idle I'm
using 63M of 64M physical RAM with no file cache. I have 64M RAM at
home & I never hit my swap no matter what I do - when I used to run NT
Workstation on the same machine it thrashed constantly - same stuff;
web browsing, text editing, etc. I was using IE on it so that may
have been part of the problem. I use NT here at work because that's
what I have to do but I really can't stand the lethargic behaviour of
this system - twice as powerful as my home computer by the way. From
my experience if you add a hardware device to an NT system you may not
be able to get back into the OS to worry about software configuration.
I'm no novice either - I have my MCP status (BFD) and have been
installing and troubleshooting NT since 3.51. It's head and shoulders
above Windows 9x but there is no comparison to Linux. I have been
working my _entire_ day trying to get a brand new NT machine to accept
a NIC - three physical NICs, about 20 reboots and probably 8-10
lockups later I think I have it. This same configuration loaded up
Hamm without a hiccup using the stock HP NIC driver. I'd rather use
Linux with modules than NT with drivers any day. I do however agree
that software installation could be made a bit more uniform and
consistent and I don't use dselect anyway - I just dpkg -i everything
but it's a small price to pay for control over the installation /
deinstallation.
> Both systems to be very stable and reliable.
You haven't used enough NT machines then. With optimal hardware and
'kid glove' treatment NT can do a fine job as a desktop OS for most
people but it is not now and will never be a good server OS - at least
not without a complete rewrite from scratch. In my location we have
had in the past week two NT server crashes that brought down basically
the whole place not to mention the IIS problems that have been
plaguing our intranet.
> Perhaps a more interesting question is; how many
> unix applications would windows users like to run
> on their machines?
I run anything I want on my NT desktop by linking to my Debian system
with ReflectionsX server. I run multiple xterms, xbill <g>, slrn,
elm, vi and anything else I've ever tried. Using my real applications
this way is vastly superior to using Outlook or MS-Word.
> Maybe the real benefit of linux is that it
> encourages people not to have one dimensional
> thinking and consider alternatives.
I think the real benefit of Linux is that it's better, cleaner &
faster. Sure it takes a little or a lot more effort but it's well
worth it. I don't think it will be a big desktop OS for a while
because most people couldn't handle it but it's been viable as a
server for quite some time.
Regards, Gary Singleton
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