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SubjectRe: Stupid MS challenge
Paul Flinders wrote:

>
> I've noticed a distinct tandancy to knock NT in the Linux community -
<SNIP!>
> is ignoring the fact
> that it does a prefectly good job for many people most of the time.

I think what you tend to get is two schools of thought.

1) Anti-establishment people who just don't like to be pushed around by
a company (MS) who has a lock on the OS market and knows it,

and

2) People who do deal with NT somewhat/quite a bit, and don't like it's
stability or unpredictability, especially for a server.

I tend to fall in both categories :)

Two cases:

One. The NT based PBX that I managed. Most of the time it ran pretty
well, although the voice mail software would glitch every once in
awhile.

However about once every month, usually in the middle of the night, it
would die a horrible, horrible death, blue screen, lock up the console,
network down. It would take two reboots for it to come up right again,
which usually took about 15-20 minutes. Meanwhile I would have EVERYBODY
asking me every minute on the minute if it was back up.

This happened like clockwork. And according to the vendor, it was pretty
normal. The only thing it was running was the PBX software. Oh, and
WinAmp for the hold music (It wasn't winamp, it did it before I
installed Winamp). This has been my experience for most NT systems that
I have delt with that are not turned off each day.

I would compare this to the extremly overloaded Sun Sparc Ultra I was
running as the primary server (this was for a network of about 15
stations, pretty high volume), which was running all of our e-mail,
internal web server, SecurID server, MSQL server for a help desk
application, Netscape calendar, LDAP, SAMBA for file and print services,
the primary print queue, VPN server, ssh server, occasional telnets (for
PINE), and it rebooted 3 times in 1.5 years, one of which was operator
error, the second was an unknown spontanious reboot (it came right back
up), and the third was for a move.

Two. I work in the security field. It has been my experience for the
last 3 years (excepting the last 6 months, in which I have been out of
the loop), every NT firewall I installed ( probably about 10 of various
vendors), was VERY unstable, and would usually have an uptime of less
than 1 week. This was accepted as normal by most of the customers who
had NT.

EVERY UNIX firewall I installed (probably about 75 of various vendors)
except 1 particuar vendor's was extremely stable, even if I didn't
particularly like the firewall or it's administration. This was on both
PC and Sparc hardware.

I guess the reason I get frustrated with NT is because I know it could
be better than it is, but feel that it never will be. I like Linux/UNIX
because it does run more reliably, faster, and I can understand
EVERYTHING that happens on the system. I especially like Linux because I
'know' the people developing it, can talk/e-mail them if I wish, and
they are TRUELY concerned with making Linux better in every way they
can.

With NT, there is this "pay no attention to that man behind the curtain"
attitude with it's design, and more often than I would like, the 'man'
is an evil troll that is hard of hearing.


My 2 cents.


Oh, and please let this thread die..... (I say NOW, after writing an
essay...)


--
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+ John Fulmer | "UNIX was not designed to stop +
+ Linux, security, | you from doing stupid things, +
+ and paranoia....Ahhh... | because that would also stop you +
+ | from doing clever things." +
+ jfulmer@appin.org | --Doug Gwyn +
+ | (I gotta check my sources..) +
+ "The opinions contained may not reflect those of anyone.." +
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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