Comments for edgeblog

Comment on Top 5 Ways Windows is Better Than Unix or Linux by Matt

Matt — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 02:18:53 +0000

Hi guys
Windows is better in some ways, but Linux is better in more ways.

Comment on Top 5 Ways Windows is Better Than Unix or Linux by Rafal

Rafal — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:01:08 +0000

I cannot agree about Exchange 2007. Probably Lotus Domino 7.x or 8.x is far better than Exchange.

Comment on Top 5 Ways Windows is Better Than Unix or Linux by Berto-Fett

Berto-Fett — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 12:42:58 +0000

Bill,

I miss your views sometimes… Just sometimes.

For any of you who may not know me, Bill and Jerry both were there as I “grew up” in the IT world. My views on the particular debate were directly influenced by these two gentleman and they both taught me to look at systems with neutrality and with the mindset of what is best for the particular situation.

I am pretty sure that ALL operating systems suck in some way. I surely wouldn’t give a fresh copy of Ubuntu to my father nor would I give him a copy of Vista for that matter.

For the “masses”, Microsoft has definitely cornered the market. However, it has cheapened the administration and engineering aspect experience for me.

We recently implemented an exchange cluster and the amount of money we had to throw at licensing made me shutter. But, we definitely will not have to worry about exchange going down any time soon.

As far as DNS, IMHO, BIND is the better product for stability. IIS vs. Apache, MSSQL vs. MYSQL… we know the pros and cons.

The bottom line is that MS has created the “Vanilla” product that will work exceptionally well with their own products and services. The same holds true with Red hat, Solaris and any other *nix flavor. IBM has one of the best databases out there, but the typical company doesn’t have money to burn on a 400.

It’s not a matter of what is the better product; it’s a matter of integration and how much money you want to throw at licensing and administration. Jerry once told me that the typical UNIX guy can do Windows administration with ease, the opposite is mostly untrue. The reason why I wanted to become a UNIX administrator was the fact that I could make a little more money, there are far less UNIX administrators out there than Windows administrators. (Fog this mirror, here’s your MCSE)

It’s impossible to say that one is better than the other and give hard evidence to support the argument.

Bill, keep plugging along and thanks for the topic. It will NEVER be solved or answered, but it will always provide a subject for a debate.

–Berto

Comment on It’s Still the Latency, Stupid…pt.2 by Stewart at Expand

Stewart at Expand — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 19:08:10 +0000

Murda and others,

Not many of the WAN Opt appliances have much help for Citrix/ICA or VDI/RDP traffic. While Expand cannot change the speed of light, we can optimize the Citrix and RDP traffic including the ability to aggregate packets, to mitigate to a certain extent the effect of the WAN on that traffic. We really offer significant benefits when it comes to dealing with Citrix congestion/remote printing issues/graphical applications as well as adding more users or less bandwidth. See the link above to start and call Expand if you want to discuss your use case. http://www.expand.com.

Regards,

Stewart

Comment on In Search of Five 9s - Calculating Availability of Complex Systems by Hisham Ghanem

Hisham Ghanem — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 14:13:02 +0000

Hi,
Great article and formulas posed through the site:
http://www.availabilitydigest.com./public_articles/
article “Calculating Availability - Redundant Systems”.
I notived though that the “Multiple Nodes, Multiple Spares” formula has an issue with the (-1)!, when #of nodes = # of spares.

Did I miss a point when reading the article?

Thanks.

Comment on It’s Still the Latency, Stupid…pt.1 by Josh Betz » It’s still Latency

Josh Betz » It’s still Latency — Sun, 25 May 2008 17:19:11 +0000

[...] edgeblog » It’s Still the Latency, Stupid…pt.1. Here’s a great article about how your problems with network speed may have more to do with latency than bandwith. Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]

Comment on When good security goes bad by JR

JR — Wed, 21 May 2008 01:38:15 +0000

I have a schwab account and just the other day i went to log in..for the last character of my password i hit the wrong key, and it logged my in. So i decided to sign out and sign back in hitting the wrong key agian…and In I am logged!?!?!

Comment on e-Tipping - How To Keep Your Favorite Blogger Blogging by I can has tip jars? « The calm at the center of a pearl

I can has tip jars? « The calm at the center of a pearl — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:28:19 +0000

[...] people believe that you’re supporting the bloggers you read and that it’s more of a sign of [...]

Comment on Top 5 Ways Windows is Better Than Unix or Linux by kalabumba

kalabumba — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:40:03 +0000

yea the kernel panic joke was nice .. rly

Comment on Top 5 Ways Windows is Better Than Unix or Linux by Liviu-Theodor Vîzdoagă

Liviu-Theodor Vîzdoagă — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 08:18:37 +0000

I have something to say:
“If you cannot recognize the areas where Microsoft excels, you are artificially narrowing your view of the world” - true, but you can say that also about linux (and the latter is a mistake made by most people, because they have seen only Windows all around them, and say that it is easier - but it is actually like someone from UK will say that english is the simplest language spoken).
#1. Windows XP is the best productivity (and gaming) desktop.
I must agree that Windows XP is better than any other OS for gaming, but for productivity I can not agree. I find new linux distros much easear to use in office/internet browsing than Windows XP/Vista, and linux or multiplatform internet browsers better than Internet Explorer 7, which I find very unstable (and I decided to install other browsers in the network I administer). Also it is much easier to install programs in linux (and if you want with a GUI, use yum in Red-Hat based distros and Synaptic in Debian based distros). Also, you can find rpm or deb packages just ready to install on your PC. And you said you paid 100$ for Windows XP. OK, that was the price, but what about the rest of the programs you wrote about: Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, MS Project, MS Visio, AutoCAD? They also cost money, they are not for free cost, and they are not cheap. And if you want to install them on a network with (let’s say a small one) 20+ computers, you need to buy a copy on each PC. And if you have a bigger network, the issue grows even more. And yes, you can run these programs in linux, but you still need to buy them. So please, put the price for all such programs in your calculations, and not only the price for the OS, to be fair (and with the new numers, see if they remain with the lower end-user support costs, for both an individual and a network). Also the price for Windows seems to be inflated from one generation to another. And I do not think the Linux programs that make the job of the programs you mentioned are just clones, I think thy are just another ways to do a job, some will find them better, other worst than their windows counterparts.
“Windows XP = more powerful applications” - may be, but they are not part of the OS, but third-party made. What I mean is that a CD of a linux distro contains much more useful and usable programs than even a Windows dvd - in fact, the latter contains only the OS (unless you classify notepad, wordpad, paint and such as useful programs).
#2. No comment.
#3. What? There are linux alternatives to Windows DNS (and can be used in the GUI too). And I rarely seen Windows domains on networks (to be fair, one network using domains was installed by me, with Windows NT 4.0). And if Windows DNS is best, than why on my work network is used Fedora instead? And the OS-es used here, beside the Fedora servers, are Windows (98, XP Professional, Vista Ultimate) and (K/Edu)Ubuntu, also it is onother server with SUSE linux.
#4. I totally disagree. I find Exchange the worst groupware application platform and Outlook unusable.
#5. Windows has better hardware support with vendor-supported drivers. Yes it is true, but now the hardware comes more and more with linux drivers. And I have seen also new hardware that does not work with either Windows or Linux. Why that? I don’t know. And I have seen hardware which works well on linux and not at all in Windows. And if you want proprietary drivers in linux, you cand find them too (let’s say for video cards - both nVidia and AMD/ATI made such drivers, and I think they both made a very good job).
I agree with the last statement you made. We must choose the most usable environment available, but with one comment: we must not go broke for that one. And one word for about me: I also worked/learned with Solaris and UNIX, and I have seen also Mac OS (but not the new one, Max OS/X).
In the end, you can find and run proprietary programs also on Linux, and open-source programs on Windows, if you really need and/or want them.
Latest: nice joke about the kernel panic, but Windows too has a kernel, and if it had a panic, than you surely have to reinstall all OS and applications, whereas in Linux, all you have to do is to restart the GUI (sometimes to reboot).