Why windows is not for large scale

[Raistlin]

Originally posted by quackrabbit
After a few hours of formatting and installing we all anxiously waited for the system to boot up for the first time. After we logged in there was just silence amoung us.... After a few tense seconds we all looked at each other and said, almost simultaneously, "Looks like a fucking Mac".

So here we are, we have our brand new windows 95 operating system installed on a test computer in our test lab at the college (gives you some idea of my age I guess)...and the arguement starts:

<Mac Guy to PC Co-Worker of mine> Looks like a fucking mac...windows 95 = mac 85.
<PC Co-Worker> It does not...it looks NOTHING like a mac.
<ME to PC Co-Worker> Leave and give me 30 minutes, then come back.

I proceed to copy the drives out of the "my computer" to the right hand side of the screen, move the trash can down to the lower right corner of the screen, the start menu bar to the top (start menu = apple menu of old) and clean the rest of the icons off the desktop (as many as I could) hiding the rest of them on top of each other behind a folder on the desktop that I created.

I will NEVER forget the look on the guy's face when he walked back into that room and saw, what honestly appeard (outside of the big windows "START" on teh button) to be a mac.

I'm a PC guy, but I know where my roots are..

[throx]

And as a server implimentation, it's hard to argue against 54% of all web servers in the world run apache (as opposed to about 22% which run IIS)

Actually it's a bit closer than that. You have to remember that the Netcraft surveys count by site and not by IP address so a server hosing 10,000 virtual web servers as domain placeholders gets counted a lot more.

The most recent "server" counting (as opposed to "site" counting) was September last year which had Apahce at 54% and IIS at 35%.


As an aside, thanks high_jeeves for saying everything I wanted to in your post and saving me the time of saying it.

[wfj5444]

Originally posted by Raistlin
Actually the mother of the modern OS (read Windows) was the Mac OS, but we won't go into THAT discussion here.

Negative. Symetric Multi Processing, Preemtive Mutlitasking, Paging... etc.

Unix first used these. These more or less define modern OS's. There are other things to look at but those are some important ones.

Oh.. and until just I think OS X, Macs didn't do preemtive multitasking.. I don't think. I could be wrong here.

GUI != Modern OS. I am speaking of features that allow the OS to perform quickly, reliably and as designed.

PS.

How the hell do you use a windowed OS with only 1 button

[throx]

Negative. Symetric Multi Processing, Preemtive Mutlitasking, Paging... etc.

Unix first used these. These more or less define modern OS's. There are other things to look at but those are some important ones.

If I recall correctly SMP was first used with big-iron mainframes, Preemption existed before Unix and demand paging was introduced in 1960 with ATLAS running on an IBM 709. About the only thing I can think of that Unix brought to the table on it's own is the "everything is a file" concept which is arguably good and bad.

[cbreaker]

In the arguement of "Linux vs. Windows" - right now it's not an easy question.

However, I think that in the future it will become easier and easier for people to think more on the Linux side of things.

Linux is free, it's open, it's stable and it's proven. It's only going to get better from here.

Af for the desktop, the folks on the windows side of things tend to believe that Linux is too difficult to use, there's no games for it, etc. They are correct. For the desktop, it's not viable for someone that isn't a computer hobbiest. Sure, for someone that JUST does web browsing and e-mail, it's great. And for someone that loves to tinker with computers, it's great. It's just not there yet for the masses.

Look at linux five years ago, and compare that to Windows five years ago. Linux for the Desktop has made leaps and bounds since then. In fact, ask the average Joe what Linux WAS five years ago, and he probably wouldn't know.

But, this thread was intended for the large scale arguement.

There's plenty of shops with huge windows environments. Hundreds of windows servers, doing this and that. Overall you can get a pretty stable environment out of Windows.. depending on what you are looking to do.

In my own personal experience, large databases, processing tons of e-mail, and heavy duty web serving, UNIX just does better. And yes, it's easy to maintain and administer. There's a lot to be said about the command-line interface. Sure, many times you can't click and make something happen, but overall a qualified administrator can do things extremely well in a UNIX environment. Not to mention they can write up some scripts to get things done exactly how they want them done.

One person agrued "What the hell company would want you modifying the OS?" I think that any smart company should see the benefit in this. Want something done YOUR way? Then make it happen. There's a bug and you can fix it yourself? Why not? Folks that are stuck in the Windows way of thinking believe these to be very poor ideas. They don't seem to realize that this type of thing is done in unix enviornments all the time. It's flexibility.

Another reason that Unix is big in the "large scale" market is it's portability. You can have very large SGI machines and very small x86 Linux boxes, and they are similar systems. In a shop that runs their own applications, they can fairly easily port their stuff back and forth with a minimal degree of effort.

One of the big things about Windows systems is that quite frankly you don't have to be very "good" at sysadmin to do it. I mean, you can get many things done without really knowing how things work. The interface is consistent. I've never met a seriously incompotent UNIX admin, but I've met scores of incompotent Windows admins. I do believe that a Unix admin is more expensive to hire then a Windows one, and it's usually because the Unix admin, as a general rule, is more interested in computing and more knowledgable then a windows admin. They charge more because of it, as they should.

Last but not least, when was the last time you saw a Windows box with 128 processors? Perhaps when Windows gets used on IA64 machines, we might see it. And at the same time, Linux will be there right beside it.

[don'tdoit]

I hate to reply so soon, because this one might make me sound like a MS zealot while i'm not, but...

There's a lot to be said about the command-line interface. Sure, many times you can't click and make something happen, but overall a qualified administrator can do things extremely well in a UNIX environment. Not to mention they can write up some scripts to get things done exactly how they want them done.

I will admit that *nix does have a much better cmd line, but most people don't realize that NT4/W2K have a pretty damn good one too. I'm a cmd line junky and I can do just about everything from the cmd line. And if I can't, then I can just whip up a script (perl, cmd, wmi) to do what I need. Just like in *nix, omg! I'm not saying you dont' recognize this cbreaker, just making sure the other side is known.

I've never met a seriously incompotent UNIX admin, but I've met scores of incompotent Windows admins.

I have met both, personally. Hell, some of each work at my company. Just the other day I had to tell a Unix admin wtf rsh was. And had to write a shell script for her that would issue a particular rsh command depending on which day of the week it was. I will give you that the ratio is skewed in *nix's favor, but I couldn't put a number on it. But idiots are on both sides.

Oh, and I will also admit it's alot easier to fake it in windows. Meaning that if you aren't very good, you can just click around till you find/fix it, etc.

[wfj5444]

Very good points Throx. I suppose I should have qualified that with something like

Unix was the first OS that is now availabe for the desktop or is the first mainstream OS that did those things.

Then my question is wasn't Unix was the first to bring them all together?

I think we can agree it comes down the the Administrator. Comparing Win2k vs Linux in the server market is like comparing a Ford and a Chevy, how much difference is there really? They do things differently but can they both be used and used well by competent people. Yes.

I think though most of us agree that the zealots are the worst of our kind. Those who think one way is the only way.

Each OS is better than the other at specific tasks. But you have to give Linux credit.. They make MS cringe like no one else has ever been able to do. Not Novell, not Apple, not Sun.

[sam]

You guys probably think I'm a linux zealot or something, but I'm not. I have installed windows machines at work and for other companies, as well as linux machines. If they are small and dont plan on scaling up very fast, then I recomend windows. Its simple, does the basics with great ease, and doesn't require really anything special. If they are thinking they want to have a web server and maybe a mail server within the next year, and possibly an ftp server, and then some other stuff as they get larger, then I always recomend linux. If they say they want a desktop machine to do word documents I say, go with windows and install office.. if you dont have the money budgetted then install linux with open office.

It is very correct to say that you should go with the right OS for the job, but I'm not trying to argue that. I'm trying to argue which OS is better at being an OS.. and I probably should have clarified it earlier on and I probably still havn't clarified it to the extent that I should have. I labeled this thread with the text of, "large scale", thinking in terms that companies would want the most efficient OS, but I probably should have made the subject, "Windows Kernel vs Linux Kernel".

An OS's job is to run apps and manage hardware efficiently/reliably. So which OS does this the best, windows or *nix? Nix sure seems to be the correct one here. Windows is flaky... it does weird things without asking... it has a large, bloated gui attached to it... ts not modular in any way. I see nothing that windows does better when it comes down to being a simple OS (run apps and manage hardware efficiently/reliably). You may take a little longer to install some newer hardware drivers on linux than windows, but once done setting up your hardware and telling your OS what hardware you have, which one is going to use that hardware in the most efficient way? Windows is the king of bloat... it does extra trash that you dont want just because it has to watch out for the grandmothers of the world trying to accidentally delete system files and other stupid shit. Nix lets you do what you want and you save cpu time/memory.

So whether it be a desktop or a server, a nix OS is better than windows for doing OS tasks. A program that runs on windows may do something really nice, pretty, and wonderful for my grandmother, but its wasting a lot of resources to do it the windows way.

Yes I know that linux isn't redhat... linux is very small... its a 25meg or so compressed source file that you custom compile for your system/cpu and come out with a file around the size of 700K + 1meg or so of modules. The Linux OS is that 700K+1M set of files... you can't telnet with it... you cant do anything with it... but when you do, it does them better than windows ever could dream of doing them.

Now with windows, you don't get a nice small 700K file that is tailor made for your system(s), you get this nice standard block of pre-compiled shit that bundles your GUI and many other things all into one friendly package, which most of it you'll never use. Whats that?.. my OS was compiled on a 386?.. wasn't that back in 1990 or so? Oh.. look... its eating up 75 megs of ram with nothing else running... how efficient. Oh wait, its got 20 megs of that already cached to my hard drive... but I got 2gig of ram... why is it caching... oh well, at least I can use it since I'm a dumbass! Wow... EQ is using 300 megs of ram and 300 megs of virtual ram... back to my 2gig of ram question... oh thats right... I'm too stupid to know any better.

Technically the actual kernel for windows does not include the UI completely, but you cant load system drivers or run any apps without the UI in some basic form. The actual linux kernel can.

Here's another way of looking at it in terms of my arguement. Lets say we live in a fantasy world called, "Verant". In the verant world we only have to think of an application and it appears for us to use and does things as efficient and and flexible as it can on whatever OS we are using. Which OS would you be using? WIndows has a lot of useless overhead that you CAN NOT remove or work around.

So yes, when my grandmother comes asking for a computer to send those email things.. I'm gonna hand her a nice pretty windows/mac computer and sign her up for AOL... cause they are the right ones for the job. Now stop arguing this cause everyone knows it and if you truely think you can use a nix OS for a desktop machine without missing out on some things then you are living in Verant world. I know this, we all know this... but we all should also know that windows as a core OS piece sux some large monkey nuts that have been swelling with elephantitis of the nuts.

[cbreaker]

Originally posted by sam
You guys probably think I'm a linux zealot or something, but I'm not.

[SNIP]

... but we all should also know that windows as a core OS piece sux some large monkey nuts that have been swelling with elephantitis of the nuts.

Uh huh.

I'm the first to admit that Linux isn't the Desktop OS for the masses. However, I recently set up a Gentoo box with all the bells and whistles. It's got KDE (Because I think Gnome is ugly and crap) and xine. I can play UT2003 and it runs great. There's plenty of nice free application for it, and I can also run Microsoft Office on it perfectly. It is an AthlonXP 1700+/1GB/SCSI/GF4-Ti4400. The machine is great!

Seriously, if the next generation of games I want to play has linux versions, I see no reason to run Windows XP on my faster machine. The only reason I can't switch to Linux now is because I still love to play BF1942, Army Ops, and EQ. (Yes, EQ can run in WineX, but there's issues with it that I can't accept.)

Linux is ready for the Desktop. What it needs for more people to accept it is easier driver installation (installing drivers *Can* be easy, it's just that nobody has really make it brainless yet. They will.) easier software adding/removal, and more games. Let's face it, when it comes to a Desktop OS, games drive the market. Faster, more powerful, more memory.. all these things are pushed by the game industry. It's a Good Thing =)

In the Linux vs. Windows arguement, there's one giant point of Linux. Even if linux were a "windows-like" system instead of a "unix-like" system, people would still use it. It's free, it's open, and it's vendor independant. These things are very important. I don't think enough people realize what a Good Thing this is.

Microsoft Windows is like a Tax to run your computer. You have to pay them in order to use it. Don't kid yourself into thinking that you don't; if you want to run all the new games and applications out there, you have to pay Microsoft for the OS to use them on. You might pirate your copy of Windows, but you've probably paid Microsoft for Windows in some other way shape or form.

When MS releases their new OS, you have to pay another Tax in order to run the new games and applications that will require it. You're at the mercy of one vendor to use your computer. Eventually (in my opinion) once everything is networked everywhere, if we're still forced to use Windows, we won't have the option to pirate it anymore. Every time you turn on your machine windows will "authenticate" you. Windows XP already has made steps in this direction.

Personally, I like the Windows interface. It's clean. It's very functional. I just don't like the cost. The cost is freedom.

[sam]

cbreaker... isn't that quote taking things out of context or something?? Come on... give me a break I did point out the useful places for windows, and I did admit that I recomend windows machines to people that would benifit more from them than they would from something like Linux... see, I'm a good guy, I'm not a zealot.

[high_jeeves]

I'm the first to admit that Linux isn't the Desktop OS for the masses.

Followed by:

Linux is ready for the Desktop. What it needs for more people to accept it is easier driver installation (installing drivers *Can* be easy, it's just that nobody has really make it brainless yet. They will.) easier software adding/removal, and more games. Let's face it, when it comes to a Desktop OS, games drive the market. Faster, more powerful, more memory.. all these things are pushed by the game industry. It's a Good Thing =)

First, huh?

I'm sorry, I actually beg to differ 100%.. Linux is not ready for the desktop. Can you, as a basic desktop user, manage, run, and administer your machine without ever using the CLI? No? Then it isnt ready for the desktop, period... Until Linux gets rid of its CLI dependance, it wont be ready for the desktop... Lets not even talk about my grandmother here, lets talk about my fiance.. she has been working in technology for > 5 years, she knows how to do just about anything in windows... She doesnt even know what the DOS prompt is, she never needs it. I recently build a HTPC to hook into my HDTV, running linux... she can do basic stuff, but most of the things I take for granted, she cant do, without me writing some basic UI scripts for her... a prime example: I use this system to run a number of console emulators (And AdvanceMAME)... AdvanceMAME is CLI based... you have to know the name of the game you want (their codename for it, actually).. this is NOT something that the average user can do.. As soon as you say "I can TEACH you how to use the CLI", people are disinterested...

It's free, it's open, and it's vendor independant. These things are very important. I don't think enough people realize what a Good Thing this is.

Yes, this is very important... to a large company, this means "DO NOT USE IN PRODUCTION"... I now work for a very large company, a rival to MS, actually... what do we code on? Windows, what do we test on? Windows... We do web apps, what browser do we support? IE.. why? because developing linux apps, and supporting linux on the server side for our code, just isnt worth the money... Now, in larger installations (We are talking $10M+ installs) we use Unix (Solaris, usually) on the server side... Why? They just dont sell x86 boxes that can support the load we use. We ONLY support windows on the client? Why? Its the only reasonable choice for a client machine...

The bottom line is still simple.. best tool for the job.. linux is not, and never will be, the best tool for ALL jobs.. it is the best tool for some jobs, no doubt.. but so is windows... hell, people still install VMS, various mainframe OSs, and even OS/2 for that matter.. Why? Because they all serve their purpose...

One person agrued "What the hell company would want you modifying the OS?" I think that any smart company should see the benefit in this. Want something done YOUR way? Then make it happen. There's a bug and you can fix it yourself? Why not? Folks that are stuck in the Windows way of thinking believe these to be very poor ideas. They don't seem to realize that this type of thing is done in unix enviornments all the time. It's flexibility.

I've worked for alot of different companies, large, small, medium sized.. I have never seen a company that says "hey, we have this production box, lets edit the kernel code on it"... I mean, if it was somebody on my team, I would immediatly ban then from building the kernel on any box at the office... The last thing in the world I need, is to set up time to QA my OPERATING SYSTEM! Now, I can see people possibly wanted to make changes on an internal, non-mission-critical server, but any production manager that allows his OS kernel to be modified by some developer who likes to hack the kernel at home, is irresponsible at best... at many places I have worked, they would be liable within the company, if the machine failed in production..

I really think, that outside of the geek-elite, NOBODY wants to edit their own OS.. its too complicated of a system to just go screwing around with.. that is why lots of large companies would rather pay lots of money to other large companies, and let them deal with it..

--Jeeves

--Jeeves

[sam]

Originally posted by high_jeeves
"It's free, it's open, and it's vendor independant." ... Yes, this is very important... to a large company, this means "DO NOT USE IN PRODUCTION"

What are you smoking? Thousands of large companies use linux as production boxes. We use them where I work and we add more every year. What the hell is IBM doing? Maybe about 5 years ago a company would have said, "I dont trust something that is free and doesn't come with support", but since then, you can get guaranteed support from 3rd party companies that know how to admin linux, and they'll ssh into your "production" box if you let them and they'll fix your problem in a matter of minutes.

Originally posted by high_jeeves
I've worked for alot of different companies, large, small, medium sized.. I have never seen a company that says "hey, we have this production box, lets edit the kernel code on it"... I mean, if it was somebody on my team, I would immediatly ban then from building the kernel on any box at the office

I cant wait for that huge security hole to come along that possibly applies to all OS's tcp ip protocol so everyone is vulnerable. Yet later in the day after the hack is discovered, you see a post up on a redhat forum by a qualified linux kernel dev, which says all you have to do is change the number 1 at this line on this file to a 0 and then comment out this other line... and that will keep you from getting hacked until a new version of code is available. The next day you go log into your linux kernel cvs site and.. wow, look at that... its the new version... lets download that and compile it so we can keep from getting hacked. Poor window users probably got at least a month before windows could push out a patch... so those windows boxes out there are screwed.

There's a time to say, "no", to new and untested things, and there's a time to say, "roll with it", when it comes to things that have potential. I respect you for your experience, but there is a time when people go out of date... maybe you should consider looking at things outside the box again because you seem to think highly of an OS that has no business being in large business. But this is getting back onto the topic of the right tool for the job which is right, you and I just lean in different directions.

Next time you hear that new guy say he can make things more efficient by doing such and such... dont shoot him down without giving it some thought... he's younger than you are and he's thinking a little fresher/faster than you ever will from now on. I'm terrified of growing too old and becoming a dinosaur... like in my company, we have a ton of C programmers...C is great but java is taking over for large scale web development. But we can't move to Java because these older C guys we got here can't learn how to think more object oriented. Just remember, the internet is here... its not going away... things move faster now and if you don't move fast with them you'll stagnate and fall behind. Nothing wrong with being an inovator.

[Dedpoet]

/em backs slowly away from this thread...

sam = Linus Torvalds? :-P

[bonkersbobcat]

While keeping up with technology is important and so is being agile, staying in business is also important. Be careful about the young vs. old argument. Our industry has just completed a grand experement in young and new vs old tried and true. You have heard of the "dot com bubble" right? I hope you have noticed that a lot of people and companies who based their decisions solely on "being fresh and new", "being cool", and "being with it" are no longer employed or in business.

[high_jeeves]

Here, here, bonkersbobcat.. I worked for a dotcom for a while.. we did all sorts of fun stuff.. we then went out of busines.. All those young guys that worked for me? Well, a few of them are re-employed (note, company went out of business 18 months ago).. quite a few of them have had to either move cross country, change fields, or take SIGNIFICANT paycuts (going from $100K to $40K..).. 3 people that used to work for me are now back in school, because they couldnt find any jobs...

Oh, and as for old vs. new.. I'm not even 30 yet.. not exactly a dinosaur...

I want to bring this thread back to the original statement:

Why windows is not for large scale

I think we can all agree now that this is total crap.. there are VERY large and succesfull companies that are 80%-100% windows shops... As much as this is gonna give you a heart attack, the most succesful software company of all time, is a 100% windows shop (Microsoft)...

At the dot-com I worked for, we used Windows (with Netscape Web Server) as our first tier.. we used Windows (with our Java App Server) as our second tier (because Java is slow as hell on any OS other than Windows... although linux is starting to catch up.. Solaris is the worst, tho).. we used Windows (And SQLServer) on our third tier...

We looked at upgrading our 3rd tier to a linux/unix system... First, we talked to sun.. They loaned us (for testing) a small server (8 processor, 8GB RAM, etc...) We got Oracle installed on it (although, that took our very qualified UNIX admin almost 2 weeks, before it worked correctly..) We saw a performance DROP when switching to this system (even with the sun guys coming out to help us tune..) AND, the system was going to cost us almost 10x what our Dell/SQLServer system costed... So, we tried linux, running on a similar box... we couldnt even get oracle to install correctly on linux, and the Oracle support team was approx 0 help... So, we said screw it...

The bottom line is, we can argue all day about whether an unsupported OS, or a internally hacked OS, is good for production... In my opinion its not worth the liability it exposes the company to (in mission-critical apps).... But, I think we have proven, beyond any doubt that:

Why windows is not for large scale

Is false, AND is a zealot point of view...

--Jeeves