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SubjectRe: [offtopic] Re: Microsoft Web Site
On Wed, 6 Oct 1999, Rik van Riel wrote:

> I'm willing to collect those responses and put them up
> on the web as one nice coherent document.

Ok - guess you already have a lot of those, but first of all here are a
couple of definite wrongs that could even be used to sue Microsoft (they'd
do it to us if we wrote something similar about NT - I suggest we at
least contact them and threaten we'll do the same unless they correct
themselves!):

- "The Linux SWAP file is limited to 128 MB RAM":
Entirely untrue. v0 swapfiles are limited to 128 MB, v1 swapfiles have
no limit.

- "Linux only provides access controls for files and directories"
They never heard of ACLs apparently. Hasn't been true for ages.

- "Linux security is all-or-nothing. Administrators cannot delegate
administrative privileges:"
Unless you're intelligent enough to know how to use sudo, setuid or
ACLs.

- "This is made complex due to the fact that there isn't a central
location for security issues to be reported and fixed"
Never heard of bugtraq or cert, have they?

- "Linux as a desktop operating system makes no sense"
No comment - it's obvious they're wrong here.

- "Linux does not support important ease-of-use
technologies such as Plug and Play, USB, and Power Management"
Linux PnP support (isapnp) has been reliable for quite a while, the
PnP support in 2.3 kernels works well, USB works well in 2.3, the USB
patches for 2.2.x work well, Power Management has been supported
forever.
NT 4.0, which they're talking about in the article, doesn't have good
PnP support either...

- "cumbersome nature of the existing GUI's"
Let them show ONE point where KDE and GNOME are cumbersome and Windoze
isn't...

- "The Linux operating system is not suitable for mainstream usage by
business or home users."
No comment...

Now, on to the slightly less obvious stuff:

- "For File and Print services, according to independent tests
conducted by PC Week Labs, the Windows NT 4.0 operating system
delivers 52 percent better performance"
Any OS can be tuned to perform better than any other OS for one task.

- "Windows NT 4.0 with Internet Information Server 4.0 delivers 41 percent
better [...] than Linux and Apache"
Unless, of course, you compile Linux and Apache with the right
optimizations. The mmap patch for apache helps quite a bit too...
And khttpd beats everything for static pages...

- "The Linux community continues to promise major SMP and performance
improvements. They have been promising these since the development
of the 2.0 Kernel in 1996"
And it has happened. Slowly, but gradually, SMP is getting better...
They don't seem to understand 2.2.x kernels aren't supposed to bring
in a lot of new features...

- "Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 has been proven in demanding customer
environments to be a reliable operating system."
Of course they have - but that doesn't mean Linux hasn't.
Let's just send a list of satisfied Linux customers...

- "There are no commercially proven clustering technologies to
provide High Availability for Linux."
There are no open-source proven clustering technologies to provide
H.A. for NT...

- "Therefore, commercial support services for Linux will be
fee-based and will likely be priced at a premium"
They aren't much more expensive than commercial support for NT, and
they're better (how many commercial NT supporters can fix kernel bugs
for you?).
And of course you can get FREE support in mailing lists/newsgroups/...
which usually works better than M$ support...

- "Linux is a higher risk option than Windows NT"
Entirely untrue...
"How easy is it to find skilled development and support people for
Linux"
Very easy... Just look at any technical Linux mailing list/newsgroup.

- "Who performs end-to-end testing for Linux-based solutions"
Red Hat, MandrakeSoft and SuSE, just to name 3 of them...

- "Linux system administrators must spend huge amounts of time
understanding the latest Linux bugs and determining what to
do about them."
NT system administrators must spend huge amounts of time waiting for M$
to release a new service pack that fixes the latest known problems... Or
doesn't!
In the mean time, the only thing they can do about them is switching to
a different OS. On Linux or *BSD, they can just fix it or find someone
who does.

- "Misconfigure any part of the operating system and the system could be
vulnerable to attack"
The same is true for any OS including NT...

- "cumbersome nature of the existing GUI's would make retraining end-users
a huge undertaking and would add significant cost"
Our secretaries have been using Windows and Excel before. Now they're
using Linux and StarOffice without even noticing a difference (except
for the lack of bluescreens).

- "A recent report from Forrester Research highlighted the fact that today 93
percent of enterprise ISVs develop applications for Windows NT, while
only 13 percent develop for Linux"
A recent report highlighted the fact that today 95 percent of open
source developers develop applications for Linux, *BSD, or similar
Unixes, while only less than 1 percent develop for Windows NT.

- What about the "There is no good remote control system for NT" 'myth'?

- What about the "Linux will still work well on a 386/486" 'myth'?

Being in a Linux-only company, I have no idea about the TCO stuff...
Someone else take this. ;)

LLaP
bero



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