windows vs linux

sofy60

windows vs linux

Does anyone know the market share of these two operating systems in regard to servers online.
Im thinking linux is bigger but I maybe wrong.

ShawnK

It depends on what you mean by "bigger". If you are talking money then Mircrosh*t is the biggest. But if you're talking popularity then LiNuX iS Le3t

Weedpacket

Which OS has market share w/ regard to online servers? For web servers themselves, Apache still owns the web. And since Apache is more robust and stable on Unix-based OSs (Linux, BSD, etc.) than it is on Windows (which is poor at interprocess communication). Other stats from that site indicate that of the 50 sites that have been up the longest without needing a reboot, nine are Windows machines, while the rest (including the top twenty) are using BSD or FreeBSD. That doesn't indicate anything about market share, but it does say something about reliability.

If you want the actual OS stats from Netcraft, they'll want you to talk to their sales staff. But word is that Un*x is much more widespread than Windows.

Jason_Batten

Warning: below is slightly off topic.

Originally posted by ShawnK
Mircrosh*t

I use to be a "hate Microsoft" clone just like a lot of people. Then I asked myself "Why don't I like Microsoft?", "Why do I pie Bill Gates?".

Every computer needs an operating system. Programs are developed under an operating system and for certain operating systems. IMO it only makes sense to have one operating system. Just as much as it makes sense for the whole world to speak one language.

If you are parranoid about Microsoft spying on you, take a tablet and seek men in white coats to take care of you.

I'm not someone who really gets involved in the OS battle but just would like you to ask yourself the same questions I have.

Windows 98 use to crash on me but mainly it was because I made it crashed. I am now on Windows XP and it never crashes on me. I have no reason not to dislike Windows as an OS. I found some information about Bill Gates and his life, he is just another guy. An extremely rich guy but just another guy.

Just my two cents... Just ask yourself those questions. No point insulting or disrespecting a man or company for no reason.

weekender

Absolutely.

Also, the majority of windows software is commercial, or at least not open source. You cannot make an OS compatible with every program written for it, and when this number is in the millions, it's no wonder that windows needs patching occasionally. Most crashes are caused by people downloading every bit of software, widget, licence crack and media stealing applet they can.

And the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation puts forward 90% of the annual polio fighting budget worldwide. 90%. Bill and Melinda are also credited with the largest single charity donation by any living persons, when they donated $5 billion to their charity in 1999.

Gates is just a figurehead for something that is hated because it is so successful.

Sxooter

Another interesting point. At my last company, they are still (after over two years) trying to replace the pair of Linux boxes we had running in failover with a farm of windows boxes. On Linux, we had Apache, LDAP, PostgreSQL, Samba, and couple of other services, and everything was done by that one box

And, we had our development AND production sites on the same box, with different databases etc...

In Windows, each service is on a different pair of boxes running ina failover / balanced cluster. They have AD, MSSQL Server, IIS, Sharepoint Portal, and a couple of other services. Each one chews up another pair of boxes. There's something like 32 boxes total because they need completely seperated build and production environments to keep it up and running properly.

So, it may well be that there are MORE windows boxes out there, but that's as likely to be due to their more fragile nature and the tendency to run one server per box.

Now, the Linux box is still there, with over 120 applications on it. The Windows farm after two years, has taken over about a half dozen of those applications, and the Windows farm is already running at near maximum load.

So, it's kinda like the popularity contest between MySQL and PostgreSQL. There may be a lot more installations of MySQL, but there's a lot more enterprise class installations of PostgreSQL. There may be more installations of Windows, due to it's inability to run a lot on one box, but that doesn't mean it's more popular, in the classical sense, just more plentiful.

P.s. I don't hate Microsoft anymore than I "hate" MySQL. I just think both are generally unfit for enterprise class use.

dalecosp

IMO it only makes sense to have one operating system. Just as much as it makes sense for the whole world to speak one language.

Just my two cents... Just ask yourself those questions. No point insulting or disrespecting a man or company for no reason.

Gates is just a figurehead for something that is hated because it is so successful.

Therefore, we don't hate him, as a person...or at least I don't (although it doesn't really bother me that I have to shoot an effigy of his head down to win "Defendguin"). Furthermore, I don't necessarily hate M$. They have come close to their vision of "a computer on every desktop", and that has put some bread on my table. It has done even more for my brother, who has no other source of income than his IT job, and makes more than I do. I don't necessarily hate Microsoft, but I don't really like their OS. I like "Age of Empires". I like their icon set. I like their Open Charity Licensing program (but if your charity can get along with Linux or BSD, you're still probably better off). I like the online clip art, and to some extent, I like a few other things, possibly at least the idea of Windows Update. BUT ---

I don't like 'flattening' a computer because it makes more monetary sense to do so than to fix the issue --- it feels wrong, but it would be wrong to my customers to actually charge them for the time it would take to fix a really munged up Winbox.

I don't like telling people that they need a new computer because they need a new version of Windows. (That might be different if I sold computers instead of merely working on existing ones....)

I don't like the fact that the underlying OS only exists to provide me with a GUI, and that they are so strongly tied together that:

a. When the GUI "freezes" the entire system has to be taken down...there's no other terminal available, and remote access is dead as well.

b. When a segmentation or page fault, null pointer error, or other programming bug hits an application or a part of the OS itself, my system, rather than I, decides if a reboot is appropriate; and furthermore, if I instruct the system not to reboot, I'm simply greeted with the BSOD and forced to reboot anyway.

c. A hung application interferes with my ability to get work done by inhibiting app switching while the system tries to recover. This does occasionally happen with other OSes and various window managers, but by far and large it is Windows that does it more often and for longer.

I don't like the fact that sh or csh, written when I was a child or teenager, are more utilitarian than the tools built into the Windows XP command line, which was written when, since I've been married, at least, or even since I've been out of college, or even this century?

I don't like the fact that loads of processes that most users don't know about run as root. I especially don't like the fact that most users run as root, and know nothing about what not to do or allow when connected to the Internet.

I don't like the fact that for years, Windows did no ingress filtering when connected to the network. Furthermore, now that the firewall is set up "on by default" or whatever, I don't like the fact that it still won't do egress filtering or really allow me to write rules in English instead of checkboxes.

I don't like the fact that I can't read the source code without signing an NDA with the company. Not really a good gripe, because that's true with most software companies. But I can read Linus' code, or BSD's, if I want to. This becomes particularly important only about 3,289 times a year when a security flaw is exposed on the Internet and it takes 47.9 days before a patch appears on "Windows Update". OK, I'm pulling those figures out of wherever .... but anyone who deals with this from the viewpoint of supporting end-users has probably felt that way at one time or another; probably real frequently, actually.

Finally, I don't like the fact that I have to pay at least one hundred bucks to have one computer run one copy of this OS, which is superior in some respects to other OSes, but inferior, in several other rather important reasons, to almost every other OS on the globe, many of which don't cost me a freakin' dime.

By and large my few Windows systems run OK, but my other systems run much, much, better, longer, more stably, and with less babying.

I'd strongly encourage you to find some reasons why you actually like Microsoft, compare them with the reasons why Microsoft often is called Micros**t or whatever, and really gain an understanding of what you do think. Start by plugging "Why I Hate Microsoft" into Google, and read Frank Van Wensveen's rant on the subject. There's certainly a lot more to this issue than some touchy feely "let's all have OS unity" claptrap....

Sxooter

I would point out that my hatred of Windows the OS is based on reproduceable data that points to it being a pretty crappy OS under any kind of real concurrent load, plus the fact that it is quite an easy thing to "Wedge" the OS config in such a way as to require a re-load.

However, my dislike for Bill Gates and his business practices run far deeper. When you read over and over again the things that his company has done to other companies, you start to realize that his company is predatory in the extreme, and making a deal with Microsoft is quite often the same as making a deal with the devil.

Take Go computing as an example. They were the leaders in tablet based computing nearly a decade ago. They signed cross-NDAs with MS to let MS look at their OS and help them port MSOffice to the tablet OS they had. After 6 weeks of looking over Go's OS, MS said, never mind, we don't want to do this, thanks though.

A half year later, MS came out with their own tablet os and drive Go out of business.

They did something similary shady with OS/2 and IBM as well.

So, I consider them an unethical company. And I don't like dealing with people who are unethical.

dalecosp

Originally posted by Sxooter
So, I consider them an unethical company. And I don't like dealing with people who are unethical.

There is that, also. In your opinion, do many people just not care about stuff like this, or is it ignorance?

M$ was proved to be in violation of US AntiTrust legislation in a court of law. I'm not sure I want my computer software developed by a corporation that was found to be criminal. Note, that it's not the employees, it's the corporation.

Of course, the corporation is made up of people....

Jason_Batten

Anti-Mircosoft people just have watched the MOVIE Anti-Trust one time too many!

Sxooter

Netnerd:

Actually, for a much more truthful and even more scary view of the inner workings of Microsoft, read "The Microsoft Files" oh man, I Bet most people don't know half the stuff about MS that's in there.

And I don't hate MS because of that movie, I hated them long before that.

I'm proud of the fact tha the OS I used before Linux was AmigaOS and OSF/1. I've never paid a dime for Microsoft software and probaby never will.

To say Bill Gates is just another rich guy is disingenious. He's the head of a company that has worked long and hard to deny you any choice in OS or application suite. he's not just another rich guy, he's a rich guy who wants to make sure you are beholden to him and his software and preferable have no choice but to use it. Why do you think MS is pushing patents in Europe so hard?

Ah well, maybe someday the scales will fall away and you'll see. But it's not my job to pull them off for you.

Dalecosp: I think people just turn a blind eye. Most folks would gladly wear a gold and diamond ring made by the misery, blood, and / or death of others and never flinch. I guess most folks don't believe i karma.

Weedpacket

To add to a. b. c.

d. The memory protection between applications and each other and between application and the server is so leaky that an application crashing in one place can potentially take down other applications with it through no fault of their own (I've lost count of the number of times IE went tits-up on me (and before you ask, no, I wasn't using IE because I wanted to, and no, I wasn't using any funky Active X controls - the Windows Update site has been known to cause IE to barf on me) and in its freezing and becoming garbled it manages to take the whole desktop (Windows Explorer) winds up as collateral damage.

e. As well as the memory leakages, due to the ad-hoc grafting-on of access control features onto an older code base that didn't support anything other than a single-user environment, there are just too many ways for an application to get access to parts of the system it simply shouldn't need to get to. XP is an improvement, but it's still a graft on older code. (Yes, you mentioned this, dalecosp, but between d. and e. it's indicative of an even more systemic failing than just focussing on access control alone would suggest.)

All in all, whenever I've had Windows servers in my care I've never been able to sleep as comfortably at night as I'd like.

I don't like the fact that sh or csh, written when I was a child or teenager, are more utilitarian than the tools built into the Windows XP command line, which was written when, since I've been married, at least, or even since I've been out of college, or even this century?

There is stuff running on my computer that is literally older than I am! Not because it's antiquated, but because decades ago it had already reached such a state of refinement that it was to all intents and purposes perfect: no-one has been able to improve on it since.

Weedpacket

Originally posted by dalecosp
There is that, also. In your opinion, do many people just not care about stuff like this, or is it ignorance?

Probably a mixture: How many people think Bill Gates invented the Internet? You know, in the local regional newspaper here, there is about once a month saying what a successful guy Bill Gates is as a buisnessman (or "wealth creator" as the favoured phrase of the letter writers has it). Never is it explained (or even mentioned) just why he's such a great businessman, or just how he's been able to become so successful. Funny, that.

Weedpacket

Originally posted by NetNerd85
Anti-Mircosoft people just have watched the MOVIE Anti-Trust one time too many!

I haven't even seen it once.

But if we're going to lapse into such mindlessly stupid generalisations (like, is that the best rebuttal to the arguments presented you could come up with?) then the thread might as well end here.

Jason_Batten

But if we're going to lapse into such mindlessly stupid generalisations (like, is that the best rebuttal to the arguments presented you could come up with?) then the thread might as well end here.

I tried to lighten the mood :bemused: Anti-trust is a very good movie and in a way comical. If you had seen the movie you would know it is very blown over the top and takes the "mickey" out of Microsoft.

So perhaps you should watch it before you comment. Another case of forum-minunderstanding.

planetsim

Originally posted by NetNerd85
Anti-Mircosoft people just have watched the MOVIE Anti-Trust one time too many!

Ive never actually seen the movie even if I did Id still hate micro$oft. I hate having to do the samething all the time for instance. Buy windows, require patch, require another patch, require a patch for the patch, upgrade windows again pay money, require a patch.

This keeps repeating itself time and time again.

Jason_Batten

A lot of programs need patching and upgrading gives you more features plus they got to make money some how. It's like all those web hosts that give you 200megs space and 5 gig transfer, we all here know that is nothing but some poor people pay the money. I don't hate anything, it is too strong of a word.

My original post was saying I use to dislike Microsoft when I was younger because other people did. I realised there is no point disliking something if there is no valid reason. Other people might have their valid reasons which is fine. We are all different and like different things and have different experiences.

planetsim

Originally posted by NetNerd85
A lot of programs need patching and upgrading gives you more features plus they got to make money some how. It's like all those web hosts that give you 200megs space and 5 gig transfer, we all here know that is nothing but some poor people pay the money. I don't hate anything, it is too strong of a word.

Good point, however most programs do not require a patch for a patch. Something very M$ like although improved somwhat, they have a long way to go. I never said Linux didnt require patches, however knowing that I do not have to pay for the upgrade is good I usually donate something to the distro.

My only concern, what features have M$ added in there upgrades?

XP was just 2000 with a nicer looking GUI. 2003 Server was just 2000 Server with a XP GUI wrapper over the top and some added security. Longhorn (project name) is just XP with again a new GUI, although I havent used the Beta so I could be wrong however from what Ive seen and read on micro$oft its almost identical, especially with there new file system not going to be ready.

I dont mean to criticise however from my experience this is all ms does, and just to think they are cutting back on some security issues on longhorn just to get it out on time.

Jason_Batten

You don't have to pay for Microsoft upgrades 😕

I went from Windows 98 to Windows XP and I can tell you there is a huge different in performance. Like I said, Win98 use to crash a fair bit, WinXP has not. Overall I can't see a huge change just some new MS programs and more functions. Thats all an upgrade from version ?.? to ?.? ever is.

Operation Longhorn? that the latest in Iraq? 😃 sorry, I saw some screenshots and yeah looks like XP but blue and my friend who used the beta said nothing new.

XP was a great replacement for Win98 and two more versions down the track I am sure I will upgrade. My only beef is DOS games. I wanna play Theme Hospital, woot! :bemused:

Microsoft are big money makers. What company doesn't want to make money? They don't like competition. Who does? :evilgrin:

planetsim

Originally posted by NetNerd85
You don't have to pay for Microsoft upgrades 😕

Did I miss something completely in the micro$oft memo about free upgrades? I guess I did Ive never seen a free upgrade. You gotta pay for the new operating system, unless of course you obtain it illegally, which in my opinion isnt even worth the hassle.

XP was a great replacement for Win98

I never went from 98 to XP when i used it. I was 98, 2000 then XP. If you do it in that order there is nothing new except the GUI of course they keep the standard default. So I suppose there is some difference.

My only beef is DOS games. I wanna play Theme Hospital, woot!

Im positive on M$ you can download DOS to play it.

They don't like competition. Who does?

No Company does however no company purposely changes things so other programs will not work within it. Take for example JVM, microsoft changed it so you had to use the ms version of it.