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Those results sound about right but.. which linux distribution are we talking about?

???

"Windows 2003 Server, in fact, led the popular Red Hat Enterprise Linux with nearly 20 percent more annual uptime."

It means linux would be having about 292 yearly uptime only (and even that in case if Windows would have 365).

Now,... it is just as stupid as I expected when I read "Yankee Group" and "Laura DiDio".

Now, I always say Windows have terrible uptime (I consider really bad when there is up to 5 days downtime). But I can't even imagine one server having 73 days of yearly downtime. This wouldn't be called server. Hell, installing the worst server OS (win3.1 or win95) on Earth and even that on faulty machine couldn't produce such ammount of downtime.

It is not stupid....

Windows is more reliable than Linux. Of course it is under a new defination of reliable.

STATS can be used to prove anything you like.

The article says the OS is more reliable, but the study reflects more on administration competance across the platforms I think.

And yeah, Anything with under 95% uptime doesn't sound like a server to me, or even a workstation. And how, tell me, with say even a low 90% uptime, how do you beat that by 20%?

shane

...not to defend anyone against anyone...But I would read a statement like that as if Windows' downtime was 20% less than Linux' ditto, meaning that if Windows' downtime was 10 minutes, Linux' ditto would be 12 minutes.... I do not consider it to be a question of 20% of the potential uptime... that'd be absurd, I think!

http://www.iaps.com/2006-Server-Reliability-Survey.html

Thanks, this should clear up some of the confusions here, especially about uptime:

"Windows Server 2003 and Red Hat Linux with customizations and Novell SuSE Linux all reported roughly equivalent per server, per year outage times of just under 800 minutes. Surprisingly, Red Hat Enterprise Linux standard distribution users reported said they experienced 900 minutes of outage per server, per year."

"Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003 recorded the greatest number of Tier 1 reliability related incidents"

"Custom SuSE Linux delivers the highest reliability and fewest minutes -- about 430 minutes of outage per server, per year."

How these results can be spun into claiming "Windows is more reliable then Linux and has a 20% higher anual uptime" is amazing though, to say the least.

Right?

Maybe I understood false, but somebody is getting statistics REALLY false.

Even if Windows had an uptime of 99% and Linux had an uptime of only 98% in this study, the statement "Windows 2003 Server, in fact, led the popular Red Hat Enterprise Linux with nearly 20 percent more annual uptime." must be wrong. It could only be right, if Linux had an uptime of less than 80%, and if that were the case, the setup or the hardware would have had a mayor problem which would have nothing to do with Linux.

Besides, this study has been made by the Yankee Group, which has quite a history making studies which were payed for by Microsoft. The Yankee Group also has a history of denying that the money they were payed for their studies originated from Microsoft. I totally believe their statement, that this study was not payed for by Microsoft. I believe that Microsoft payed someone else to pay for the Yankee Group study. It has been this way already too often (remember the "get the facts" campaign anyone?).

No, those results don't sound right at all. Why is it that I keep reading these articles that Windows something or other is great and has better stability and uptimes that Linux, but whenever I run Windows in the same environments I run Linux in, Windows always comes out a dog?

Sorry, but the only ones little Laura Didio can hope to convince are the computer illiterate. Those of us who actually use them see quite a different story from the one she is painting here.