Re: Linux Myths...

[Marek Habersack <grendel@vip.net.pl>]

* Thomas Strohm said:

> (c) The scalability issue: Sure, Linux supports only file sizes of up
>     to 2 GB. But the 4 GB stuff works on the ix86 platform. And if
>     more scalability is needed, one could switch to the 64bit Alpha
>     platform. This is not possible anymore with NT [4], and this fact
>     has to be pointed out.
But what's the use of NT's claim that they support 4GB files when the NTFS
supports at most 4GB disk partitions? It means one file per partition? :))
Linux supports much larger partitions.

> (d) What is asynchronous I/O and what are completion ports? Was that
>     pioneered by NT? Does anybody know?
Asynchronous I/O is when an application isn't required to poll for event to
happen, but is notified when it happens. The signal is delivered
asynchronously - that is it may come when the application is doing anything
else. The traditional Unix select() or poll() calls don't work this way.
Unix usually blocks waiting for an operation to finish. While it is possible
to write an asynchronous (OS-wise) app under Linux, it requires a few tricks
to be employed. That's roughly the issue.

> (2) Myth: Linux is more reliable than Windows NT
> ------------------------------------------------
> 
> (a) Reliability: They cite some of their customers. There are also
>     a lot of companies which trust in Linux. These should be listed. A
>     lot of critical web servers run Linux/Apache. But to claim this is
>     not enough. We need to cite some.
Name Dell, IBM, HP, Corel. That's for start. It's enough to look at the
Corels rationale on why did they chose Linux. The sole fact that Corel ships
a Linux distribution says exactly the same.

> (b) Journaled file systems are underways (XFS, ext3), but they are
>     still not a part of the standard kernel. There is also (at least)
>     one HA project, but the same as above applies here. The only thing
>     to do is to wait...
XFS is a melody of future for now, but it will surely come with time. AFAIR,
there are patches for ext2 to add the journalling feature to it? I might be
wrong here.
 
> (3) Myth: Linux is free
> -----------------------
> 
> (a) TCO: Once again they claim something without proving it. The funny
>     thing is the transitivity they use: (A): TCO(WinNT) < TCO(UNIX)
>     ["in general"]. (B): TCO(UNIX) = TCO(Linux) ["There is no reason
>     to believe the contrary"]. (A) and (B) imply (C): TCO(WinNT) <
>     TCO(Linux). GREAT!
Traditional Unix TCO was much higher because the machines on which it was
used were much, much more expensive. SOmebody also stated the cost of
calling up M$'s tech support is $US 38. Linux support is free.
 
> (b) Commercial support services: The situation is the same as with
>     NT. You can get commercial support but have to pay for. And you
>     can get support for free from the internet.
Hmm... it requires comparison of costs of calling the commercial tech
support and connecting to the Internet. But I guess Linux support is much
cheaper and, what's more importam, much more responsive and reliable than
M$'s (and, for that matter, of any other commercial vendor).

> (c) Complexity of managing Linux. We know that Linux is not at all
>     more difficult to manage than NT. Do we need to make a survey by
>     asking system administrators?
Yes, the survey would be really a Good Thing(tm). Also... to configure Linux
you get all the documentation with most of the distros out there. To
configure NT you have to a) take a course | b) buy an expensive manual from
M$ | c) join MSDN which is not cheap at all | c) all of the above and
possibly more. I remember trying to configure DNS on NT - took me three days
to figure out where the config files are (and I got the information from a
pirate copy of MSDN - shame on me) :)). On Linux it took me 15 minutes!

> (4) Myth: Linux is more secure than Windows NT
> ----------------------------------------------
> 
> (a) There was some note (in LWN if I remember correctly) that the US
>     Army does not use (anymore) NT, because its not secure enough.
>     Does anybody have a link to this note?
I remeber an article in the Linux Journal about the US Army using e-mail
based system to pass targetting information between the troops. The machines
were Alphas with Linux, AFAIR. I can dig that issue out and give more
detailed info.

> (a) They claim that Linux does not support PnP, USB, and APM. I use
>     PnP cards with my Linux. USB and APM also work (partly). Correct
>     me if I'm wrong. On the other hand, NT 4.0 does not possess full
>     PnP support, and APM, IrDA, FAT32 neither. About USB I'm not sure.
No USB support in NT4 till SP4.
 
> - We also should look a bit to the future and already address features
>   that are promised for Win2k. See [7-10].
> - Why do so many ISP's use Linux as web servers, firewalls, mail
>   servers, etc? Because of stability, reliability, and because it's
>   cheap.
  - Linux supports much more file systems and partition types than NT ever
    will.
  - Linux can access network resources via NFS, Samba, Coda while the
    standard NT just Samba
  - Linux can act as a Novell server, Samba server, NFS server, Coda server
    all at a time
  - With a standard Linux distro you get a full set of utilities ranging
    from basic net support, through printing, development up to games.
  - Linux has much smaller hardware requirements. A functional Linux router
    can start off one diskette. Can NT do that?

regards,
  marek

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