Ex-MSFT Employee: Microsoft Should Run Linux

[neiroatopelcc]

[citation][nom]gravitygirl[/nom]Check out the top 40 best performing websites according to Netcraft:http://uptime.netcraft.com/perf/reports/Hosters6 are Windows. 1 is AIX. The rest (including F5) are BSD or Linux. My point is, hosting your website on something other than Windows can't really be that difficult if all those hosting companies are figuring it out and being rewarded with commendable performance. And in case of BSD and Linux servers, you get none of that we're-not-supporting-that-anymore bs, no licensing fees, no must-upgrade-to-next-version-by-this-date fees, no if-you-want-to-use-this-tool-you-must-upgrade-and-relicense-these-other-three-dependencies fees that so many big-business software vendors still use.Too boot you'd also get a really good peer-reviewed security model, time tested software architecture and better performance too.But if you don't want to learn to ride a two-wheeler, nobody is going to force you.[/citation]
I suppose those site have all hired the same super nerds to make it work. I'm not denying it can be done, I'm merely saying that most can't make it work in a secure and reliable manner. Anyhow, no I don't want to learn how to do the same in linux that I already know how to do in a microsoft enviroment. Why bother! Linux is license free, sure, but overall the cost is similar - just with nobody to take responsibility when it does go wrong.

In any event, it really doesn't make any difference to my claim that linux and windows are similar - which is what this is about.
I don't truely care what clusters of web servers are built from, as I only work with esx farms and single servers. And those farms, while running some form of linux, are administered by a piece of windows based software.

 

[palladin9479]

Ok gotta reply so some of this.

For those touting Linux "superiority" because it runs some of the worlds most powerful computers need to STFU because you don't know what your talking about.

Windows is developed to run on the x86 / AMD-64 architecture. There was a version of NT designed to run on the DEC Alpha awhile back, but that has long been discontinued. The worlds biggest computers run dozens if not hundreds of processors with an immense amount of memory. Because Windows is closed source, the tech guys that develop the software to run on the supercomputers can not compile it for their machines. This means it is impossible for anyone to actually install / run Windows on those systems. Not because of some flaw on Windows part but because MS simply choose not to go that route. Linux / BSD on the other hand can easily be tailored to those special hardware setups due to them being open source. Its very manpower intensive to customize them to the point they'll operate, but it's possible.

Windows vs the POSIX systems has been a long debate. What neither side will admit is that each has its own PRO / CON and its up to the user, or system engineer to pick the best one for the job. MS Windows is a standardized rubber stamp OS. Its the exact same kernel / system components across all instances within a specific version (2000 / XP / Vista / W7). My XP Pro x64 systems kernel / system library is the exact same as the guy across the street's XP Pro x64. Only differences will be if we have different service packs installed, with the later ones being mostly bug fixes and not effecting functionality (most of the time).

For application developers and system administrators this is an immense boon. It literally saves thousands of man hours of work because you don't have to customize each application / system on the damn network. If there is a problem on one system it most likely exists on them all. Backwards computability for most applications furthers this ease of use / administration.

POSIX systems on the other hand are extremely customizable and can be tailored to specific needs. This makes the incredibly powerful as servers and data centers. But the amount of work required to reach that level can be astronomical. On a small handful of systems this isn't a big deal for a team of admins to do. But on 500~1000+ systems, like what a real enterprise would have, it would be impossible. Also because of this severe disparity from one system to another, building applications can be a nightmare for system developers. It becomes manpower intensive to ensure your application not only works on all current versions of the target OS. But you then have to ensure that it works on all current distributions / possibly configurations of that same OS. This is why we don't see games produced for Linux / MacOS. It would require too much manpower and wouldn't have a good enough ROI vs just making it for the latest MS OS.

 

[palladin9479]

[citation][nom]neiroatopelcc[/nom]True. Many a gateway or web server runs linux of some sort. But that's probably because those running them are hardcore nerds and happen to nkow their stuff. Microsoft's the friendly giant. Forefront is intuitive and a kind of click-and-play working system. iptables is a lot more complicated. as a consequence our company, roughly 450 employees and I would assume about 40.000 clients (no more than 2k at once), has had more breakdowns associated with the linux gateway (exterior gateway) than with any of the internal tng servers - and they're even running beta software![/citation]

I would appreciate if people would refer to the Linux/Unix/BSD series of OS's by their proper name, POSIX. POSIX based OS's tend to be better firewall / routers because they can be striped down to the bare level of services running and ports opened. Iptables is a complete PITA to get working right if you have any sort of complicated setup, but they make a bunch of firewall managers for POSIX out there. Try shorewall, its pretty intuitive to figure out and it'll do all the iptables magic for you.

As for webservers, that is a big misnomer that the Linux guys like to throw around without really knowing what their throwing around to begin with. MS doesn't actually provide a comprehensive webportal package. IIS is really just for small sites. And MS Sharepoint is more for LAN Office automation and collaboration within an enterprise. This leaves very few alternatives then Apache for any internet facing website. Apache by the way can be compiled to work on windows, so its entirely possible that some of those "Linux" webservers are actually just Windows servers running Apache.

The next boost Linux + Apache gets is that you as you strip down the linux machine to be a secure webserver, you also can cluster it up with several like machines. This lets you run 5~10 striped down webservers together to handle one site, all without the user knowing any different. For extranet / internet facing webservers there really isn't any alternative then linux + apache.

 

[neiroatopelcc]

[citation][nom]palladin9479[/nom]Iptables is a complete PITA to get working right if you have any sort of complicated setup, but they make a bunch of firewall managers for POSIX out there. Try shorewall, its pretty intuitive to figure out and it'll do all the iptables magic for you.[/citation]
Thanks, but we're already so tired of the linux firewall that we've decided to go for a tmg server instead. All our other servers are being replaced with 2008 servers anyway, so why not the firewall
ps. our linux gateway doesn't like us anyway! Monday morning one of the 14 lan adapters had stopped working (for no good reason), and the dhcp server wouldn't start if it was enabled.

ps. We only use IIS for things that demand it (autodesk vault etc) ; apache and mysql on windows for the remaining stuff

 

[ossie]

[citation][nom]palladin9479[/nom]For those touting Linux "superiority" because it runs some of the worlds most powerful computers need to STFU because you don't know what your talking about. Windows is developed to run on the x86 / AMD-64 architecture. There was a version of NT designed to run on the DEC Alpha awhile back, but that has long been discontinued.[/citation]
You don't even know the history of your darling toy o$...
windblow$ neanderthal technology was at first available for MIPS too, beside Alpha, and the next two versions on, shocker!!!, also PowerPC. The handheld flavour also supports ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, SuperH. You also forgot the Itanic (these are even current versions)...
[citation][nom]palladin9479[/nom]Because Windows is closed source, the tech guys that develop the software to run on the supercomputers can not compile it for their machines. This means it is impossible for anyone to actually install / run Windows on those systems. Not because of some flaw on Windows part but because MS simply choose not to go that route.[/citation]
Really? What about the cluster HPC "server" version? m$ tried, but the limited success is of course someone else's failure...
[citation][nom]palladin9479[/nom]I would appreciate if people would refer to the Linux/Unix/BSD series of OS's by their proper name, POSIX.[/citation]
You're really good informed... POSIX is an ISO standard, Unixes are mostly "fully compliant" - even OS X - while Linux, and other *nixes are just "mostly compliant". Even micro$uxx has a POSIX subsystem, and offers windblow$ services for UNIX.
The rest of your "academical" review of OSs, and their features, is not even worth mentioning.

 

[captaincharisma]

geez ossie do you ever stop humping your Linux CD? man, your the biggest fanboy ever

 

[ossie]

[citation][nom]captaincharisma[/nom]geez ossie do you ever stop humping your Linux CD? man, your [SIC] the biggest fanboy ever[/citation]
Just got your daily micro$uxx a$$ rape session, and feel funny?
It seems, there are no english teachers in your wintarded m$ hole...

 

[captaincharisma]

o....k i didn't think they allowed the inmates in the mental ward to use a PC