A senior Microsoft executive told a BBC documentary that people should use commercial software if they’re looking for stability. “Some people want to use community-based software, and they get value out of sharing with other people in the community. Other people want the reliability and the dependability that comes from a commercial software model. And again, at the end of the day, you make the choice based on what has the highest value to you.”
Microsoft, reliability …. mm mw mwa mwahahahahahahahahahaha … kof kof kof …
ROFLMAO! MSFT stability? So I just keep imagining the blue screen of death I get every 3rd time or so that I try to access a tv function in Media Center then yet have never had a single problem with the same hardware using Ubuntu+MythTV? duuuhhh ok Louie…
Microsoft is out to muddy the waters. Open source is not reliable ?
Hmmmm, does he not understand the principal of “uptime”
Reliable means no crashing, no malware, no slowdown, it means “cast iron constitution”, does that sound like Microsoft fares to you ?
No, Microsoft products are almost.. always LESS reliable than open source, for example
Windows is less reliable than Linux/BSD
IE is less reliable than Firefox
One place they are MORE reliable, is in the Office suites.
Most people do get a sense of worth when they share something, but that is a thing capitalists cannot understand.
However, the programme is to be aired on the BBC, and if you have a look around the BBC websites, they are very much pro-linux and I feel Microsoft will get some abuse in the programme.
Making flying-pig statements without providing any sort of evidence is fun, isn’t it? 🙂
No matter the OPINIONS in this forum, Open Source will always be around, and it will always be MORE stable then anything Microsoft can offer…
The ONLY reason 90% of the world is Windows based, is because people, or the sheeple. do not want to learn anything else….
Microsoft is out to muddy the waters. Open source is not reliable ?
Hmmmm, does he not understand the principal of “uptime”
This is the typical geek-thinking, but when you are in business, there are other meaning for the word “reliability”.
Sadly to say, in these cases windows is to be considered more reliable than any GNU/Linux distro.
Which cases?
This is the typical geek-thinking, but when you are in business, there are other meaning for the word “reliability”.
Sadly only one applies to this scenario and it has absolutely nothing to do with who wrote your software but how well it was written. To broadly generalize that all MS hive produced crap is superior to all privateer efforts is a total load of crap from someone who doesn’t know the difference.
This is the typical geek-thinking, but when you are in business, there are other meaning for the word “reliability”.
Also muddying the waters. What Microsoft is hinting at is accountability, not reliability, and they’re not very good at that, either. When there’s a problem with their product, standard practice is to sit and suffer until an update or an opportunity to reinstall. Open source fixes the bugs and distributes the new code faster. The reliability they talk about constantly in their Get The Facts and bold statements like this is in the assumption that because they have an address and a phone number, you can somehow get solutions from them.
Such as?
I cannot think of a single situation where MS product offerings (office situation) are more reliable than an OSS alternative in any capacity what so ever.
What does “Office situation” mean? Are you discounting Office? Saying besides Office?
I would say Office is easily more reliable than its OSS alternatives.
I’m sure there will be a few posts following disagreeing though.
Microsoft Office reliable? Wow, I’ve never heard that before. I can’t count the number of times that its weird bugs cause system crashes, lost documents, corrupted documents, etc. The only reason people use it is because they are locked into its proprietary formats, and everyone else uses it, so using something else becomes very hard.
Get them before the discussion runs hot! 😉
Seriously, I wish these articles weren’t posted. The only outcome is the temporary revival of an age-old debate and the generation of a lot of annoyed replies toting arguments we’ve seen thousands of times before, and wisecracks about Microsoft that ceased to be amusing a long time ago.
Edit: Corrected lazy spelling
Edited 2006-05-19 20:33
Yeah, the problem is the aruguments are legitmate, and I dont see why Microsoft can write a better OS without completely ripping off the look Mac OS X…
Examples are here:
http://www.eggdrop.ch/fun/macosx.jpg
http://crystalxp.zerackiel.net/_resources/vista1b.jpg
Yes, you are looking at Windows Vista, now tell me nothing is wrong with this picture…
I am just sayin’ 50 Billion and they still can not innovate, and produce something a little more bug free…
I own a small business consulting company, and we’ve rolled out every MS product known to man. We’ve also deployed some Linux/Open source products.
I don’t care what anyone says, experience is the best teacher. MS products, if taken care of, work reliably and fine; POST Win2k. I run OS X, XP, and Linux for desktops, and none is *more* stable than the other. Of course, I like to think I know what I’m doing.
i would go now and tell it to our AIX server thats been running for 4 years now … no, wait, i would have to go to reboot our just crashed windows 2003 server … again.
Same here. But only after rolling XP, 2k sucked comparing to XP. I don’t have to blaim stability either (in fact OSX is the worst here, most of apps are written really poorly and crash a lot, not the OS though, OS is stable).
At least this is while you take stability only into account. Now take all the factors in this equation. You should if you own your company, you can’t account one factor only into any bussines equation.
First description, not to burst bubble of all Windows lovers. A lot of companies are small and they can’t afford expensive MS rollout systems, neither can afford to pay someone to do that job. MS tools are just too painfull for that case. While I know you can click trough setting up cases like that, job is a pain in the a**. On linux making a profile is a matter of twenty seconds (and it took me half hour to make my own custom rollout tool in bash). Or is it just me that hates the pointless clicking of Next? Second thing to be honest about, the next part is valid only for those that are capable of shell administration, bash scripting and creating repositories. They are not valid for someone who barely clicks trough setup, installs XGL by HOWTO and thinks how good he is.
This is at least very valid for me. While I can roll out Linux desktop and forgot about him, Windows desktops need much more attention from my side (all users are limited so they can’t do anything, and this is what my peace with XP is to be accounted to). I can remotely deploy apps on Linux from base OS (simple rpm dependancies and yum server do the job, update on cron, etc.). I can’t do that on Windows (that is in all the cases where customer wasn’t prepared to pay for expensive tools and enterprise like setup, and even if they would admin hasn’t got hands as free as in any *X)
In my case supporting Linux desktops accounts to few minutes a week (and even that only if changes in company occured or new needs were posed in that same week) and 32-40 hours a week for windows. My ratio Windows-Linux now accounts to about 50-50 and I’m changing that in favour of Linux whenever I can, where figuring out the reason why shouldn’t really be a problem.
For those prepared to whine (Linux can’t do that, hardware support sucks) here is the answer. I was preparing for this for last four years and all machines bought in that time were bought according to HCLs on both, Windows and Linux. So no hardware problems (and if any machine would still be against HCL, nothing easier than changing it for another, while using this where it can be used), everything just works. Most of the clients use OO.o for a long time now, and those who don’t (yet) are starting to look at that possibility. Most of the special apps are written by me (meaning crossplatform) or bought as crossplatform and the only app that will be taken out of this equation is bank, which accounts to one computer only per company which would still have to run Windows.
And the equation? Support for linux computer is half cheaper that support for windows computer (this is a reason why linux is interesting for his desktops). I get a lot more time (and with this possibility to find new earnings, which I can’t with windows, because I can’t split my self) and customer pays less. And the result is: I get more money for my time (a lot more) while customer pays less.
Wisecracks, jokes, insults…whatever. Microsoft vs. linux and BSD. We all know Microsoft is a joke, we know their far from reliable, DUH! lol Microsoft and Bill Gates should seriously just give up, i’m sure everyone is tired of all the problems they’ve made. They have’nt even fixed all the ones in XP so hey!, lets make another OS. Serious, Microsoft is far from one of the best OS’s.
I think you just fell for it.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1965042,00.asp
And the OSS world is free of security vulnerabilities?
Something about X, libpng, and others comes to mind …
You have to remember that the author of the software handles security advisories. Open Source “security vulnerabilities” tend to be extremely small yet marked as critical by their respective teams, while Microsoft tends to hide security issues, lying about them, denying their existence, until they cannot hide it anymore. And then they mark it as less critical in most situations.
Can you provide any source of evidence for those statements, or are they just conjecture on the part of a Linux fanboy?
Go google.
Or visit secunia.
Most security companies are basing their information on collect of information from the dev-teams.
EDUT: I might add that I’m no “linux” fanboy. Syllable fanboy would be much closer to the mark. I like GNU/Linux-systems (at least the sourcebased ones), but you can see from my posts that I believe GNU/Linux has a long way to go to be truely usable. This is also true for the *BSDs, Mac OS and Windows. At least in regard to the end user.
Edited 2006-05-19 22:45
The thing is, all software sucks! It’s just what sucks less than the other stuff. So, you need to find the least sucky software for your needs. For me, the least sucky HAS been the Open Source stuff. It IS about value and it’s what gives me the most value, for the most part.
We got new Dell computers at work and they are running XP Pro and they just suck. We were using Solaris OS for intense graphics and audio and everybody was happy with it. But now we just got this new system and we are all complaining about it.
I will continue running Ubuntu at home at leat.
-2501
I took of a sip of coffee while reading this headline this morning, and spit it out laughing.
Open source less reliable than MS products?
Is that why I’ve been using Linux for 4 years, and have never, I repeat never, had a system crash?
Is that why Windows XP crashed 8 times on me last week while I was working on a large PowerPoint presenation, coying and pasting graphics from Word documents to the PPT?
MS is just laughable sometimes.
I mean, I’m not just one of those MS hating zealots – I use MS products regularily, and even like some of their products (Visual Studio, SQL Server, PPT, Excel, Access, etc).
But Microsoft’s reliability record is astoundingly pathetic. Of any major software vendor, they have by far the worst reliability and security record.
Really, even though Win2k and XP are improvements over previous offerings, Windows security and reliability still sucks, big time. Period. End of discussion. Real life experience for far too many people proves this emphatically.
Again, no joke, Windows XP crashed on me 8 times last week, simply because I was copying and pasting graphics and text from Word documents to a PowerPoint presenation.
Crap like that has never happened to me with Linux. Ever. Sure, I occasionaly get an application crash, but that never ever causes a system crash. Linux just keeps on ticking. The same can be said of any *nix, or AS400, or most other Enterprise OS’s. But not Windows.
And most open source projects (and I qualify that with most, because there is some buggy, unreliable open source software out there), are vastly more reliable than any MS products.
Thank you, MS, for making me laugh my ass off this morning.
Is that why I’ve been using Linux for 4 years, and have never, I repeat never, had a system crash?
Good for you, I had many in the last months. Hard freezes, deadlocks and kernel panics, not application crashes.
Is that why Windows XP crashed 8 times on me last week while I was working on a large PowerPoint presenation, coying and pasting graphics from Word documents to the PPT?
Good for you, I don’t remember when was my last crash, and I’m quite addicted to copy/past. At least it works. Last time I tried KDE, I couldn’t paste from Konqueror to Kdevelop. I am pretty sure it was a bug with the specific release I had (Debian “etch”, around April 2006), but it was quite annoying… Don’t have a better experience with GNOME either (which I am using daily).
My point? Everybody have different experience of their OSes. So, it’s not because it sucks for you that it sucks for me. I have never been lucky with desktop Linux (it NEVER worked flawlessly in the 8 years I have with it) while I know some people having no issues at all. So yeah, I got better reliability with XP! Forget about virus, spywares & the like or slowware like antiviruses, I know how to manage my systems. That said, I have only praises for my Linux servers and I try to prevail with the Ubuntu Dapper installation I made on my laptop… Again, different people, different experience.
Talking of “reliability”, I’m pretty sure Microsoft isn’t talking of stability. Even if it can be REALLY expensive, Microsoft is always there for their customers. From that point of view, they are more “reliable” than a bunch of hackers than could possibly leave their project to dust whenever they want. It’s unapplicable for OSS-based enterprises like Redhat, Novell, MySQL AB or even Trolltech, but it’s more towards smaller projects like your average app on GnomeFiles. Of course, it’s all marketing, since you must spend LOTS of money to be their friend…
In that case you’re doing something terribly wrong.
You do not get kernel panics, period!
If you do, something is terribly screwed up.
they are more “reliable” than a bunch of hackers
[irony]
Hmm.. nice description of Redhat, Novell, IBM and Sun
[/irony]
Good for you, I had many in the last months. Hard freezes, deadlocks and kernel panics, not application crashes.
Just buy next machine according to both, Windows and Linux HCL. For example NForce4, AMD64, NVidia graphics, SB Audigy (but be carefull which one) would be somehow the nicest working machine under all three (Windows, Linux and Solaris)
You won’t live enough to see one HW crash under any OS I mentioned. But the first one you will see you can be 100% sure your HW malfunctioned.
Good for you, I don’t remember when was my last crash, and I’m quite addicted to copy/past. At least it works. Last time I tried KDE, I couldn’t paste from Konqueror to Kdevelop. I am pretty sure it was a bug with the specific release I had (Debian “etch”, around April 2006), but it was quite annoying… Don’t have a better experience with GNOME either (which I am using daily).
No problems with copy/paste for me. At least I haven’t noticed any.
My point? Everybody have different experience of their OSes. So, it’s not because it sucks for you that it sucks for me. I have never been lucky with desktop Linux (it NEVER worked flawlessly in the 8 years I have with it) while I know some people having no issues at all. So yeah, I got better reliability with XP! Forget about virus, spywares & the like or slowware like antiviruses, I know how to manage my systems. That said, I have only praises for my Linux servers and I try to prevail with the Ubuntu Dapper installation I made on my laptop… Again, different people, different experience.
And your first sentence here would be the holy truth.
Talking of “reliability”, I’m pretty sure Microsoft isn’t talking of stability. Even if it can be REALLY expensive, Microsoft is always there for their customers. From that point of view, they are more “reliable” than a bunch of hackers than could possibly leave their project to dust whenever they want. It’s unapplicable for OSS-based enterprises like Redhat, Novell, MySQL AB or even Trolltech, but it’s more towards smaller projects like your average app on GnomeFiles. Of course, it’s all marketing, since you must spend LOTS of money to be their friend…
Actualy if they would talk about reliability like you say they talk about. You’re dead wrong. I’ve got quite a few customers with subscriptions, etc. And what did I learn. That MS support is the last thing I call (so far their success ammounts to 0% and ammount of my wasted time calling or e-mailing them goes beyond any other support). That MSN is the last search engine where I look for problem solvers and that MS screwed our country code page as much as possible (a long story, but it doesn’t account to MS directly as much as local country MS store whom one can’t declare anything else but gods of stupidity. One can’t believe how many codepages there are for our country, 6 so far and UTF-8 was not counted. And the one being used in default regional setup is dead wrong, because they wanted to maintain compatibility with their previous mistake. One could look at that as good move for customer, but on the other hand coder can’t write a decent app and not follow the same stupid mistake, which means code page can’t move on with the world in this century).
What I can count on?
That I will do a search on Google and find answer very soon? Yes. 100%
That I can call my friends who might get to this problem already and they searched on Google? Yes. 10-20%
It is not Windows support that sucks, in fact it is very good (I can’t remember one case when google wouldn’t be my friend by providing solution to the problem and in the same breath I can’t remember one case when MSN would be). The one that sucks is MS support for their products.
You got that right!
I have had the Blue Screen of Death, 6 times in the last two months!
GO FreeBSD!
In that case you’re doing something terribly wrong.
You do not get Blue Screen of Death, period!
If you do, something is terribly screwed up.
Nice ripping off my post
When do I receive my royalties?
Truth is you shouldn’t get BSODs with Windows 2000 and above.
If you do, it’s likely a cracked version, and I’d expect those to fail miserably. Use a legal version. If not for moral reasons, then at least for your own sake. I’d say both reasons are good.
If the version is legal, take a look at your hardware and drivers. Might be bad drivers, incompatible hardware, faulty RAM etc. I haven’t had BSODs with Win2K, nor with Win2K3 Server. Haven’t used XP much, due to my exam project, which means I’m bound to running Gentoo 24/7 until exams are over (which is fine with me – it works flawlessly, which it should since I did the setup
.
However, since you don’t have the same possibilities to modify a Windows system, as you have with a GNU/Linux system, it’s usually not your fault you get BSODs (unless you’re using a cracked Windows).
Sounds like hardware issues to me. I’ve had bad RAM blue-screen Windows XP and hard-lock Linux on the same computer. I’d look to your hardware before passing judgement on either OS.
If you have had the BSOD 6 times in the last month, you have a driver or harware problem, it’s usually fairly easy to resolve these types of problems, I never have BSODs, but then again, I know how to repair my systems when they act up, and I know how to build them
Name some more detailed reasons why my windows machine would give me the BSOD 4 times in one month. and twice this month….
This same machine has run Linux and FreeBSD, I havent had my system crash with these operating systems…
So whats the story, is it windows or my hardware….?
50 BILLION dollars and they still cant get it right..
I’m afraid I don’t have the time to do your troubleshooting for you, but if you read the BSOD and then do some googling, you may discover why
Again, no joke, Windows XP crashed on me 8 times last week, simply because I was copying and pasting graphics and text from Word documents to a PowerPoint presenation.
Office X for Mac OS X was doing the same thing to me once when I was working on a school project. (2004 has never caused me any trouble, though.) It couldn’t crash the OS, but it managed to take down all the open Office apps. Microsoft just goes nuts with integrating their software. Fortunately, there are some OSes they don’t own.
Is that why Windows XP crashed 8 times on me last week while I was working on a large PowerPoint presenation, coying and pasting graphics from Word documents to the PPT?
That means you have buggy drivers and/or hardware. Please stop spreading FUD.
That means you have buggy drivers and/or hardware. Please stop spreading FUD.
Right….. So problems that everyone has with large Powerpoint presentations and Powerpoint can be blamed on buggy drivers and hardware? Yer. Really see the correllation there.
You do realise that’s the excuse Microsoft has always come up with, and they certainly did with NT4 quite a lot? “It’s your third party drivers, software and hardware, so it has nothing to do with Microsoft!”
Oh, and I do wish people would learn to use FUD in the right context. Accusing people of spreading FUD about a Microsoft product, it’s a case of pot, kettle and black.
Right….. So problems that everyone has with large Powerpoint presentations and Powerpoint can be blamed on buggy drivers and hardware? Yer. Really see the correllation there.
What kind of problems? I don’t believe that Powerpoint presentation of any size could crash NT.
You do realise that’s the excuse Microsoft has always come up with, and they certainly did with NT4 quite a lot? “It’s your third party drivers, software and hardware, so it has nothing to do with Microsoft!”
While I agree that NT4 prior to SP4 was very buggy, W2K was stable since first release; so yes, 99% of stability issues people experience with NT5+ systems are caused by buggy drivers/hardware.
W2K was stable since first release;
That’s news to a hell of a lot of people.
Not really.
I’d have to say that Win2K and above is much more stable than earlier versions, incl. NT4 w. SP6a (NT4 was quite unstable, despite being more stable than the DOS/Windows versions known as 9x and ME).
Calling Win2K stable since first release is correct. Bugfree is wrong, but stable is correct. Anything more complex than two or three lines of code is bound to be buggy in some way, whether it’s due to poor hardware, or badly written software, or just an unfortunate combination of incompatible hardware/software.
And who is responsible for the drivers?
They _are_ a part of the OS. So a discussion of OS stability (and bugs in the OS) should include the stability of (and bugs in) drivers in the given OS.
I don’t use Windows XP often enough to comment on its stability. However, Linux rarely let me down in the last 8 years I’ve been using it as my primary (and very often the only) desktop OS.
“One can consider open-source software a lot like generic drugs. The analogy fits,” Cukier said in the documentary.
Interesting comparison. More so because first hand experience tells me that “generic drugs” are of lower quality in general.
Think that depends on the market…. In australia we have a company called AlphaPharm who produce a heap of generics… Almost everyone will tell you they are of the same quality… sometimes produced on the same production line, they simply are products which are out of patent and get sold under a different brand.
However I am sure a lot of this is due to regulations in australia, and the situation could be very different elsewhere.
Maybe I’m blind, but I see nothing in the article that motivates the headline it got.
Other people want the reliability and the dependability that comes from a commercial software model.
And I don’t see any problem with this either. It’s a perfectly valid statement that gets flamed because it’s a microsoftee that said it…
Yeah, name another commericial OS company that makes something even close to closed-source like windows which is dominating the market by 90%…..
Yeah, the guy that said that is from Microsoft, and he is not up on his Open-Source facts to tell you the truth…
If Microsoft and its supporters want everyone to stop knocking them, they should have people come out and EMBRACE Open-Source…
Now, go back to your windows machine….
“other people want the reliability and the dependability that comes from a commercial software model” is not the same as “not reliable or dependable”
Also, just because something is GPL does not mean it can’t follow a “commercial software model”.
This kind of sensationalism is the reason I try to avoid Slashdot.
This from the company that created Windows Me…
I’m sure “Microsoft Bob” was reliable, stable, and dependable commercial software, too.
No?
I haven’t seen any evidence that OSS code is any more reliable than closed code. If we go on bug count, OSS isn’t any more secure. FireFox spiked its bug count over the past few months while IE actually was lower. Does that mean IE is more reliable? Um, maybe, maybe not. But just making blanket assertions either way is ridiculous.
I agree with that in theory, but not in reality.
In my experience:
Crahses –
Linux: Zero Crashes
Windows: Too many crashes to count.
Malware –
Linux – Zero (no virus, worms, adware, spyware, adware, rootkits)
Windows – Too many malware instances to mention, and many $$ spent on anti-virus spyware.
Professional IT –
Linux, and any *nix – runs and runs and runs, with very very rare reboots
Windows – requires, yes, requires regular reboots. Otherwise memory becomes corrupted. I’ve experienced this regularily in 7 years in IT.
Longetivity –
Linu: keeps on ticking. No problems keeping old installations, maintains pristine state of system files.
Windows: Two words: Registry Bloat. Need I say more?
In conslusion:
Yes, in MS “Get the facts”, or in some “Analyst” studies, it might seem on surface level that OSS has just as many bugs, security problems, and reliability problems as proprietary software, if not more. However, in real world experience, and when you look at the severity of bugs/security/reliability problems (OSS severity usuaully very low, Proprietary severity usuaully very high), you realize that OSS usually blows proprietary, and mostly MS, out of the water.
While I agree with everything you said, there are rootkits and viruses for Linux, they just aren’t very common at all, not to mention you can automate quite easily the check for rootkits, and unless you’re a complete idiot or do it on purpose, you won’t get a virus.
There is one thing you can thank MS for. With being a Linux adminstrator, you can set up a server for a company and then they can just lay you off and not have to worry about the server having any major issues. With Microsoft software, they’ll need to keep you around to continually fix/update it. Job Security is what MS is all about
Aahh.. that’s why we should happy for MS?
Windows – requires, yes, requires regular reboots. Otherwise memory becomes corrupted. I’ve experienced this regularily in 7 years in IT.
Are you talking about 9x-based Windows (which doesnt have true memory protection)? If you have experienced kernel memory leaks with NT-based systems — prove it.
Are you talking about 9x-based Windows (which doesnt have true memory protection)? If you have experienced kernel memory leaks with NT-based systems — prove it.
A software company I once worked for had terrible issues with memory leaks on our program. I’m not a programmer (I was telephone-and-email tech support) but I worked closely with the developers. They never could find the leak, which manifested itself on both 9x and 2k/XP systems. This memory leak was so bad that it crashed the system after a period of time. Granted, it wasn’t a kernel memory leak, but nonetheless NT’s “true memory protection” didn’t stop it from happening. I learned from that experience that no matter how “reliable” your OS is, bad code in a third-party program can indeed bring the OS down.
This memory leak was so bad that it crashed the system after a period of time.
If there was no kernel memory leaks I don’t believe the software you are talking about crashed the NT system. Provide more information about BSOD if you are sure it actually did…
Granted, it wasn’t a kernel memory leak, but nonetheless NT’s “true memory protection” didn’t stop it from happening.
Memory protection mechanism is not supposed to prevent memory leaks inside process own memory heap, but prevent one process from writing into another process memory space.
If there was no kernel memory leaks I don’t believe the software you are talking about crashed the NT system. Provide more information about BSOD if you are sure it actually did…
Well I quit working there in 2003 so I honestly couldn’t give you info on the BSOD. And it was definitely our program, or at least one of its libraries; we were able to reproduce it in-house in a controlled environment and besides we’d gotten complaints about it from numerous customers. I left the company before they fixed the problem; I’m sure by now they’ve worked it out.
… You seem to forget that:
I. You have no access to Microsoft internal bug/exploit database. Your only source of data is Microsoft itself (which is an unreliable source, as Microsoft has a vested interest in keeping the count down.) Microsoft may be aware of 100 exploits in IE6, but as they are yet to be discovered by malware/virus writers, Microsoft may try to sit it out.
II. As you do not have access to Microsoft’s source and/or fixes/patches, you have no way to ascertain that a certain fix only targets a single open issue. E.g. In-order to keep the exploit fix down, Microsoft may release fix n claiming that it only fixes issue X, while hiding the fact that it also fixes issue Y, V and Z, again in-order to keep the exploit count down.
On the other hand in the OSS world things look radically different:
I. You have access to the software developer’s data base. There’s no means to sit on open exploits/bugs.
II. There is no way to push multiple fixes as a single fix. Anynody can view the fixed source / patch.
More-ever, in most cases (all?), Microsoft only releases a fix once the exploit has been discovered. (Or long afterward…. WMF anyone?)
On the other hand, check the latest gcc, glibc, Mozilla and KDE/GNOME security bulletins; most of the fixes are for issue discovered by internal audits by the developers themselves.
G.
What MS is saying is BS. But there are proven cases of MS products being reliable and robust if taken care of. Same with open source products. I think it is great that there are open source alternatives and their code quality is usually a lot better than closed source variants (I am guessing because Coverity reports show the open source softwares having very low bug to line of code ratios). If only MS would allow Coverity to scan their code and produce numbers as well then the debate would end once and for all but we all know that is not going to happen.
For the last couple years, I’ve mostly stayed out of these debates because I was only exposed to either Windows or *nix is in an end user setting.
And pretty much all the Unix stuff was just me playing around on home-brew or older machines.
But, for the last few months, I’ve been doing contract corporate support for a BIG multinational. I’m not going to name names but, according to the July 25, 2005 Fortune 500 report, they are one of the top 15 companies GLOBALLY.
They are a largely MS network – except for specialized systems ( they have lots of Unix boxes and mainframes – which, sadly, I have no access to ) but the entire corporate environment is Microsoft – including 250+ ( that’s the number of individual names in Active Directory but nearly 30 of them are clustered) Exchange Servers and 1100 application servers, most running Win2k but an increasing number of Win2k3 and approx 75,000 Desktops and Laptops.
All I can say is, that, if the staggering number of problems we encounter is any indication of the “stability” of commercial software, it’s hardly surprising the level of interest in FOSS.
Seriously, I wish these articles weren’t posted. The only outcome is the temporary revival of an age-old debate and the generation of a lot of annoyed replies toting arguments we’ve seen thousands of times before, and wisecracks about Microsoft that ceased to be amusing a long time ago.
If Windows were as reliable as a clean installation of it; we wouldn’t have any problems we have today. Grab a new computer, load Windows XP Professional SP2 along with all the WHQL drivers – all nice and stable.
Then start loading applications onto it from various vendors, install an anti-virus, firewall and other necessities to protect ones self. Then start using the machine; the whole computer is so weighed down, slow and unreliable, Windows XP quickly slides from being a wonderfully snappy experience from first installation to something of a painful existance once you start using it.
Question: Name one operating system that actually slows down once you start installing applications onto it? I’ve been running Linux (various distros), UNIX (Solaris) and *BSD (Net/FreeBSD), and not one of them display that problem of ‘slow down’ – the speed of these installations remain constant, no matter how many things I load onto the damn thing.
Right now, I’ve got *MORE* applications installed that I would on a regular Windows box (because the share number of QUALITY OSS software tempts one to install alot of great stuff), and yet, I have no noticed a single slow down. I have more fonts than yo can shake a stick at, heaps of applications installed etc. and my memory total ram installed is 512MB.
Question: Name one operating system that actually slows down once you start installing applications onto it? I’ve been running Linux (various distros), UNIX (Solaris) and *BSD (Net/FreeBSD), and not one of them display that problem of ‘slow down’ – the speed of these installations remain constant, no matter how many things I load onto the damn thing.
In the case of Windows, it depends on what you install. If you load up Quicktime and a bunch of other crap apps that park themselves in the system tray and run resident (even when there’s no logical reason for them to do so), then yeah .. you’re not gonna last long. If you stick with quality software though, a Windows install will last just as long as any modern Linux desktop distro. You just have to know what you’re doing
I’ve been running a Win2k setup now for 25 months with 30+ apps installed, and it is just now starting to show signs of decay. And the reason why it’s dying is because I don’t have direct control over the apps that are installed. They recently installed some shitty Java IM app that’s reaking havoc on the system. At last check, the f**king thing was consuming 93MB of RAM 
Having said that, I’ll say this … if you experience frequent crashes/lockups with either Windows or Linux, especially right out of the box, something is very wrong. Either you’ve got some bad hardware, a driver that the system doesn’t like, or something else. In general, I’ve found that both of these operating systems will run smoother than a baby’s ass all things considered.
Then start loading applications onto it from various vendors, install an anti-virus, firewall and other necessities
None of that garbage is necessary; most of it is not even useful.
*LOL*
Firewall and antivirus isn’t useful on Windows? HÃ¥hÃ¥
Firewall and antivirus isn’t useful on Windows?
Well, it might be useful on Windows….. ROTFL.
Well, I even have a firewall (if that’s the right word for it) on Linux.
Antivirus, well I have that one too, but that’s because I’m occasionally running IE in Wine.
You have to remember that the author of the software handles security advisories. Open Source “security vulnerabilities” tend to be extremely small yet marked as critical by their respective teams, while Microsoft tends to hide security issues, lying about them, denying their existence, until they cannot hide it anymore. And then they mark it as less critical in most situations.
True. Microsoft will blame and abuse the company who found the bug where as the opensource group will be more ‘thanks for finding that bug’.
Microsoft gets angry about a bug being found (OMG! more work?!) and opensource coders seem to relish the idea that a problem has been found before it has caused problems, and they’re helped out by tracking down a solution to it.
That’s a horrible generalization.
Ignoring for a moment whether or not non-commercial open source software is reliable or dependable, Murray opens a can of worms by suggesting that commercial proprietary software is. Some quick examples of how relying on Microsoft’s dependability would land you in a heap of trouble, in roughly chronological order:
OS/2: Abandoned by MS
Windows 3.0: Delayed
Windows 95: Delayed by 2 years
Windows NT: Delayed 1 year
Windows XP: Delayed over a year. Windows ME was rushed out to fill what would have been a 5 year gap between releases.
Windows Vista: Delayed at least 4 years
Internet Explorer: No major updates for at least 4 years.
IE for Mac: Abandoned
IE for Unix: Abandoned
Visual Studio .Net: Numerous delays of various releases, plus essentially abandons legacy VB6 code.
Microsoft Bob: A terrible idea to begin with, it’s good that MS killed it. But if you were an IT guy who rolled it out or a developer that put effort into working with it you got burned.
Passport: Failed to gain market acceptance, eventually killed.
WinFS: Removed from already-delayed Vista launch; no way to know when or if it will be released.
As a gamer, I think Windows XP is the best gaming OS ever. But if I worked at Microsoft, I would try really hard NOT to bring up “reliability and dependability.” Now Murray, Ballmer, and Gates are going to spend the next week defending the comment.
And I don’t see any problem with this either. It’s a perfectly valid statement that gets flamed because it’s a microsoftee that said it…
Oh pulease, how was Microsoft response a ‘valid comment’ a valid comment actually has a shred of truth, their comment had none of that.
And the fact that they never defined what ‘reliability’ and ‘dependibility’ mean, in context, makes the statement even more stupid – reliability in product delivery? reliable products? reliable support plans?
Its a statement that has no real meaning – keep a public statement as open ended and poorly targeted as possible – its the equivilant of asking how long a piece of string is.
except Don Knuth, and he’s retired from software writing.
We’ve always written crappy buggy software. That’s why the remark about woodpeckers and civilization has been around for so long.
The reasons are complex, but neither the commercial nor the open software development models are particularly better than the other. They each tend to fail in different ways, but they both can be summed up as “the code’s no better than the last developer who touched it needed it to be.”
Right now, the thing we seem to understand the least is USB. I can get XP to BSOD just by letting it try to deal with a USB/tty dongle and a USB digitizer pad at the same time. I can get Linux to oops by giving it certain web cams. I can get NetBSD to take a kernel page fault and panic by plugging in a certain USB composite device. And so on.
Operating systems are hard to do, and the reward (in both OSS and commercial software) goes to feature set, not code quality. That’s the way it’s been since someone coined the comment about woodpeckers, and it’s going to be that way for the forseeable future.
So, maybe it’s time we started to listen to Andy Tanenbaum, after all?
I’ve been quite impressed with my exposure to QNX but it’s a long way from being the next Desktop.
While it’s true that MS is dominant in buisness and home use, remember that a lot of Linux/BSD users have bought Microsoft products. It came preinstalled on our PC’s. It’s true that a lot of Linux/BSD users “tinker” with their systems, it’s also true that many of them have voted it more reliable by using it for all their computing needs. WinXP is a pretty good OS, but I don’t feel as secure using it, don’t like the constant “badgering” of install NET or MS messenger, and other predictions of doom if I do “such & such.” Their are people that will use nothing but MS, but you will also see more people choosing other OS’es. Those who use Open Source don’t need to flame MS, we just need to enjoy our quality OS.
On the server front uptime is HUGE, it is without a doubt tied for first place with security for the biggest factor to consider when deciding what os to use on a server.
I currently have a 230 day uptime with my linux server and I don’t have to shut down and reboot to update or make changes, the same goes for FreeBSD or Solaris. When I am not making any changes or or installing updates the system is completely hands off…… sometimes I don’t touch it for weeks… even months.
I don’t really like Microsoft, but I guess I’m not really anti Microsoft, I think it has it’s strong points and weak points but reliability and uptime in the server market is definitly one of their weakest points.
Security is a little more relative…. it very much depends upon the administrator. That being said Linux, BSD, Solaris are all more secure by default (generally) but windows can be made secure.
I think server uptime is HUGE only in the minds of geeks with some machismo fixation about it. Ridiculous uptimes of a year or two mean you’re running an old kernel, unpatched and likely vulnerable to something out there in the wild.
Why is constant uptime so important anyhow? Really, any server that important should have some redundant failover in place anyhow (or several) to kick when the first node goes down.
It’s nice that with UNIX such feats as very long uptimes are possible to be done, but it doesn’t mean that we should actually be doing them…
It’s really not that important, but it’s still somewhat important. All that is important is that an OS doesn’t go down unscheduled.
For sites/servers where reliability is so important, they are usually clustered and taking one server down for a few minutes to reboot won’t be that much of an issue.
Granted, not having to reboot would definitely be nice.
My problem with someone from Microsoft claiming that proprietary software is more reliable than open source software is that Microsoft software is the most unreliable crap I have ever encountered in my life. Within the past two days I had the same problem with two completely different systems on two completely fresh installs. I rebooted after installing the drivers and when I went to right click on the desktop the whole computer froze. In one instance it actually crashed the computer. Windows has always been completely unpredictable. Sometimes you launch an application and it loads instantly. Other times you launch the same applications and it takes 30 seconds to load. Sometimes applications just hang indefinitely until you have to kill it.
Linux is much more predictable. I don’t have random lockups and slow downs. I have brought my computer to a halt but only because of things I did that in retrospect probaby weren’t good ideas considering I have only 256MB of RAM. Compiling software, chatting on IRC and AIM, running a python IDE, and listening to music (with rhythmbox) while opening 20 or so tabs in firefox gives me no problems. I know that if I load about 10 more tabs on firefox then I’m looking for trouble, but I don’t mind because I know the limitations of my computer. When it comes to a a Windows computer the real limitation is Windows itself. With Windows I can’t even burn a CD and do ANYTHING at the same time, WITH 1GB of MEMORY! Try moving around large files and doing anything at the same time.
In the server space Windows isn’t even a competitor when it comes to reliability. I have Linux servers that have run for years. I can’t set up a Windows computer (and never touch it again) to do simple routing for a SoHo network without having to reboot it every so often.
What it comes down to is that Linux is much more “set it and forget it”, while Windows needs constant tending. You never know when you will get a blue screen, or a lockup or a weird slowdown. Linux just runs.
Do you have DMA turned on for your burner? If it’s off, then you’re going to be unable to do much while burning.
hog wash. can’t speak for linux becaues of the buggy kernel but FreeBSD and the other BSDs servers has gone for years without a need of a reboot. that is more then any microsoft windows server has gone.
Oh really?
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html
Go away, troll.
Oh really?
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html
Go away, troll.
You of course did notice that the OS columns were pretty much all filled with BSD? The reason why this happens is because the servers are sitting behind caching and load balancing servers not running Windows. This allows a site to run mutiple Windows servers behind that load balancer whilst appearing to have perfect uptime.
It bares absolutely no relation to how reliable Windows (or indeed anything else) is, and its ability to stay up whatever the weather.
Read his post please.
BSDs servers has gone for years without a need of a reboot. that is more then any microsoft windows server has gone.
http://www.antliateam.it
1240 days
Windows 2000
Microsoft-IIS/5.0
I proved him wrong. I said nothing about reliability.
Read his post please.
BSDs servers has gone for years without a need of a reboot. that is more then any microsoft windows server has gone.
http://www.antliateam.it
1240 days
Windows 2000
Microsoft-IIS/5.0
I proved him wrong. I said nothing about reliability.
—————–
Yes but that server is heavilly unpatched, lol…
Yes but that server is heavilly unpatched, lol…
That’s one possibility, but it is possible, and it is done, to load balance over caching or proxy servers to mask patching, rebooting and unreliability. That’s what makes this a meaningless response.
Additionally:
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/accuracy.html
We only report uptimes for systems where the operating system’s timer runs at 100Hz or less. Because the TCP code only uses the low 32 bits of the timer, if the timer runs at say 1000Hz, the value wraps around every 49.7 days (whereas at 100Hz it wraps after 497 days). As there are large numbers of systems which have a higher uptime than this, it is not possible to report accurate uptimes for these systems.
The Linux kernel switched to a higher internal timer rate at kernel version 2.5.26. Linux 2.4 used a rate of 100Hz. Linux 2.6 uses a timer at 1000Hz (although some architectures were using 1000Hz before this). (An explanation of the HZ setting in Linux.)
FreeBSD versions 4 and 5 used a 100Hz timer, but FreeBSD 6 has moved to a customisable timer with a default setting of 1000Hz.
So unfortunately this means that we cannot give reliable uptime figures for recent Linux and FreeBSD servers.
So that means no Linux 2.6 based servers in that list either.
Edited 2006-05-20 21:25
That server has been running for 3.39 years, impressive for a Windows machine.
That server has had no reboots, therefore, no MS updates.
Imagine the spam it “could” be sending out, it has missed critical updates for over 3 years.
With *nix, you apply any updates, and at worse, stop/restart the service, no rebooting and no downtime.
“Imagine the spam it “could” be sending out, it has missed critical updates for over 3 years.”
No kidding.
When I was a pure WinDip systems administrator I remember there being an advisory against that from Microscr@p.
http://www.antliateam.it
1240 days
Windows 2000
Microsoft-IIS/5.0
I proved him wrong.
You can nit-pick words and highlight them in bold all you like, but I suggest you read my post. The evidence you gave that you say proves him wrong is flawed. Pulling one site out of that list means close to zero, and even if the OS does say ‘Windows 2000′ it is almost inevitably running behind Microsoft’s ISA server.
It’s a well worked way that people have found out about to boost Windows’ apparent uptime on places like Netcraft to make it look better. It means nothing. Couple that with the fact that sites on that list are basically doing nothing, including the Apache driven ones, what you’ve quoted is not a great response to his post.
For example, an admin can take a Windows server down for patching or another issue, have to reboot it, and during that time other servers will keep the uptime of the site ticking over nicely, when in reality, that most certainly a true reflection of its reliability and robustness.
I said nothing about reliability.
Uptime implies reliability, because if your server has gone down as a result of the reliability of the software you’re using, its security or its need to reboot often, then it isn’t reliable.
Sigh, are you really that dense?
He said something, it was wrong. A windows server has been up for “years”.
The end. Finish. Over. Stop reading too much into my posts and trying to argue it still.
Dooh, sappyvcv, don’t be so childish. A windows server can run for a long time if unpatched and doing virtually nothing, like the case you point out. Especially when being protected by FLOSS-servers handling the hard loads.
Put real pressure on a Windows-server and it’ll fail miserably. Just take a look at hattrick.org.
Windows Server + Access = Major Disaster
That’s not what the argument is here, and I was never trying to make it out to be. I pointed out a flaw is the guys post, the end.
Oh really?
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html
Go away, troll.
that is what i said freebsd and the other bsd has gone a long time without needing a reboot making them dependable. i don not know how dependable linux is with the current buggy kernal. it was even mention the linux kernel was buggy.
Other people want the reliability and the dependability that comes from a commercial software model.
I’ll belive it when i don’t hear another case of a multibillion dollar company servers getting hacked or infected with a virus. or atm machines never giving a BSOD when customers are trying to get their money.
You forgot Windows 2000; that was delayed as well; it moved from being a ‘grand unification of Win9x and NT’ to something of an upgrade for Windows NT 4.
IIRC, back when Windows 2000 was being developed, the former SCO executive said, “and what does 35million lines of code do!?” – good question, what does 35million lines of code do.
Its already been shown with the web hosting example, how many steps Windows has to go through to serve up a webpage vs. Apache/*NIX.
The problem with Windows NT; it was designed as a reaction rather than simply designing it as a product – if they wanted a stable, reliable and scalable operating system, had they continued down the Xenix path, upgraded their SYSV UNIX, bolted a nice ‘n sexy interface ontop of that, they would have had all the stability of UNIX, the ease of use of a nice gui, and there would never had been the need for the ‘growing pains’ of transitioning to NT.
That’s a horrible generalization.
Back your assertion up with facts.
Individual who logs a bug report with Microsoft, asked to pay $50 (reported here on osnews.com)
Individual who logs a bug report with an opensource project, free.
Doesn’t that tell you where the priorities lay when maintaining their code; the first one would rather not know about the faults in their products, whilst the later offer a forum where by end users can submit their bug finds, and solutions, if they’re technically inclined.
Edited 2006-05-20 05:23
You back on your assertions with fact.
You made a generalization, there is no two ways about it. I’m sorry if you can not accept that.
The one case you are talking about with Microsoft was blown out of proportion. There are a few ways to report bugs for free.
You’re taking ONE case (where the guy was an idiot) and trying to apply it across the board? Please, that’s not going to work.
Just by being open source, it doesn’t guarantee a software become reliable and dependable. If you see Source Forge, only 1% of OSS listed there is reliable and dependable, and the rest become abandonware and unmaintained. How can I depend on a software that its developer can leave anytime, and when it happen, I don’t know when the new developers will take over?
The statement from MS is just a single line and they make the headline out of it. The same way they could have chosen the tilte “Opensorce is Better – Nicholas Negroponte-founder of the One Laptop Per Child project”
This is highly subjective and manipulative!!! Stop writing stuff like that. This is ugly!
Reliability, Dependability, Durability, Security are the last thing MS can claim. If I were managing MS I will concentrate on Speed of windows, depth of features, amount of windows applications and the easiness of the OS.
MS will never get out of this situation unless they drop the bad windows NT design and go to something new.
Linux OSs are all very good alternatives to windows but only if you are a super user, computer genius, one of a kind … but, even then if you are that good you will hate the speed disadvantage of all linux distros, and you will propably end up using a true Unix OS like FreeBSD and Solaris.
These Unixes are as snappy as windows on x86 hardware, and at least 2-3x more stable than all linux distros(mainly due to file system and network stack superiority).
But again, the problem that will pop up in the above stepulation towards finding you computing nirvana is the hardware compatibilty; Image if you try to install freeBSD or solaris on x86 system by yourself and you start to experience freezes of crashes that you finally pinpointed it to a malfuctioning device driver, then you will start to look for certified Unix machines and you will propably end up buying a Sun solaris/Sparc system or an IBM AIX/Power system.
One and only one alternative exists right now for window users IF they don’t want to learn a CLI (command line interface) mandatory OS like linuxes or Unixes while at the same time keeping the power of commercial application at hand; this alternative is called Mac OSX.
In the case of Windows, it depends on what you install. If you load up Quicktime and a bunch of other crap apps that park themselves in the system tray and run resident (even when there’s no logical reason for them to do so), then yeah .. you’re not gonna last long. If you stick with quality software though, a Windows install will last just as long as any modern Linux desktop distro. You just have to know what you’re doing
I’ve been running a Win2k setup now for 25 months with 30+ apps installed, and it is just now starting to show signs of decay. And the reason why it’s dying is because I don’t have direct control over the apps that are installed. They recently installed some shitty Java IM app that’s reaking havoc on the system. At last check, the f**king thing was consuming 93MB of RAM 
It seems that all application vendors are doing that these days; the memory and cpu hogging virus checkers, which are a must; the stupid libraries loaded in the background to speed up Microsoft Office loading, to the rediculous popups every five minues over whether I’m interested in MSN, a tour or some other shit.
If there is a reason for all these problems, it clearly resides with Microsoft.
Having said that, I’ll say this … if you experience frequent crashes/lockups with either Windows or Linux, especially right out of the box, something is very wrong. Either you’ve got some bad hardware, a driver that the system doesn’t like, or something else. In general, I’ve found that both of these operating systems will run smoother than a baby’s ass all things considered.
Agreed; I’ve run Windows XP and Windows 2000 Advance Server, the only time I ever saw a BSOD was due to a dodgy Pinnicle Capture Card/driver combination; I promptly returned that device to the shop.
Also, if you’re experiencing alot of application crashes, run memtest86; Windows, Linux, BSD etc have built in ‘tolerances’ for these things, but when it goes beyond what has been programmed in, problems can range from quirky application behaviour to BSOD’s/kernel panics.
For example, on comp.os.linux.advocacy, a guy named Pete complained that KDE applications kept crashing ‘all the time’, after pushing and pushing the issue, he ran the memtest86 overnight and found that one of his memory modules was rooted; he replaced it, ran the test again (no errors), and now experiences no KDE random crashes.
Apache, FreeBSD, Mozilla, MySQL, <add project here> are so damn unreliable!
(omg lol what a joke)
Firefox actually is a bit unreliable. The others are pretty good though.
“Firefox actually is a bit unreliable. The others are pretty good though.”
What about IE? Hey very reliable compared to Firefox?
I didn’t say anything about IE.
But I don’t think it’s all that reliable security wise.
However, stability, it was always more reliable for me than FF ever has been.
It appears to be an opinion as some people got a positive view with Firefox reliability side.
All products have people with good experiences and people with bad experiences.
Just read around the night. You’ll find a lot of people with issues. Random crashing, memory hogging, corrupt profiles, exetnsions breaking in new versions, etc.
Thats’ not reliability. That’s not to say it’s not a good product — it is.
What did you expect a *Microsoft* executive would say? “We suck, use Linux”? Come on, there’s nothing newsworthy here.
This is a joke!
I am not going to bore every little detail regarding “MicroScr@p” reliability.
So what do I gain by using “MicroScr@p”? Everything! Seriously. “MicroScr@p” is the perfect operating system and it keeps getting better. “Vist” shows perfection is even getting better. It reduces the need to upgrade older equipment and brings a “hole” new feature set. IT departments globally will love the company for this.
How about that security of “MicroScr@p” product line. Say goodbye to your virus checker, spam filters, and malware removers. Although “MicroScr@p” is not immune to viruses and malware, it comes extremely close. To this date, so-called “MicroScr@p” viruses do not exist in the wild. They only exist in the tightly controlled labs in Redmond. Remember, “MicroScr@p” was purchased (er … ah) designed with security completely in mind.
Any flaws within “MicroScr@p” code are well-advertised by the company. It is not unusual for the company tech staff to detect those Linux crackers have a fix created in a few minutes in the least. Several hours at the most. “MicroScr@p” don’t have to wait for the next major release or huge service packs like those Linux fan-boys do. “MicroScr@p” is rock-solid stable due to its security.
The stability of “MicroScr@p” is absolutely legendary. It’s been observed that Linux users must reboot their machines one or more times a day especially after their constant security patches and third-party software installs. The “MicroScr@p” users talk about running their systems for months and even years before needing reboots. The looser Linux users must deal with constant “Illegal Operations” and “Black Screens of Doom”. These are just not part of the “MicroScr@p” experience. When a single application fails in “MicroScr@p” it absolutely does not bring the entire operating system down with it. That’s “MicroScr@p” power.
“MicroScr@p” is a true mutlitasking and multi-user system. It’s been known to have hundreds of individual users operating from a single “MicroScr@p” server. This number includes running enterprise-class databases, programs, mail, and web servers from a single server. Poor Linux and pathetic BSD servers and all their “ilk” will never know this kind of money (er … oops) reliability.
As a company, “MicroScr@p” does everything possible for its users to make money without spending a single dollar after purchasing an initial copy. No money matrix, no milking of local, state, and federal government, private companies or public ones. All “MicroScr@p” upgrades are free and our code was recently completely opened up to everyone and not just a select few developers like the Linux base does. That must be a hassle to the Linux communists (er .. hmm) people.
Best of all, “MicroScr@p” is completely free of legal hassles. You never need to worry about whether you’ve kept a copy of your operating system license. You are free to make legal copies and redistribute them as long as you’ve paid for your license. Even better, you can sell them. Our little partner S-C-O and its CEO McBriddle has told us all the Linux base belong to them and will soon defeat other companies like GM and IBM.
So go out there and buy a copy of “MicroScr@p”. It’s secure, stable, powerful, easy money, and free of any legality. A senior “MicroScr@p” executive tells the BBC so.
Edited 2006-05-20 15:04
^5
That was horribly childish. I hope you are proud of yourself.
If you can’t stand a joke. Then go get a job in Redmond. They deal with `reality`, such as it is, on a daily basis.
How witty of you. Childish again. What a shame.
Very childish, but in this forum you will get 5 mod-ups for playing with Microsoft name, and 5 mod-downs for playing with Linux name (e.g. LinSux).
İf you are looking for stability use IIS6&MS Server 2003 &.Net framework 2.0 all of them rocks (!). Thesee products offers more stability and rapidly making you crazy: every moment of your administration they always have a problems (i dont know where they come?). For Stable job; use and offer MS products.
I work in a `blended` server environment. Please tell me how `reliable` the “MicroScr@p” product line is. More reality. I find it ironic that one Linux person does the job of about, well, three or four MSS techs.
Truth Happens!
Edited 2006-05-20 15:30
*LOL*
I’ll remember that in a few hours when the Hattrick-servers are down for maintenance again (which happens pretty much on daily basis – they should have used FreeBSD, Apache, postgreSQL and PHP instead).
Changelog
21052006-054325 – I clicked “Submit” too fast so I’ve edited the post. Added “that” as third word on line three
Edited 2006-05-21 03:43
I use Linux at home but at work they use Windows XP. I find it funny how different applications like Explorer or Dominoes stop working and the employees have just gotten used to restarting the PC or even worse just holding down the power button until the box restarts. You would have thought that problems like this would have been eliminated with Windows XP. If I had been on linux I would have checked to see what process was mucking up and restarted the process or server. The interesting thing about Windows is how people have gotten used to working this way on crippled systems all the time they just ignore the stuff that doesn’t work. Only when the box completely stops working is the tech person called.
I also use Linux at home and XP at work. Our IT department has yet to roll out SP2 due to their concerns over certain stability and security issues with the service pack. This, from a heavily pro-Microsoft IT group. Our IT manager has multiple MS certifications and absolutely detests the concept of open-source software, yet he is very unhappy with the current state of MS software. Personally I applaud his paranoia, as our systems have yet to be compromised in the 2+ years I’ve worked there, and we have a lot of really stupid users who I feel would have brought a less secure environment to it’s knees long ago.
LOL. I’ve seen this so many times with MicroScr@p users. Especially those people who surf porn (er .. woops) sex-related cracker sites. They wonder why all their settings changed, their DSL or modem has smoke coming out of it, the registry is corrupt, and worst of all … the machine sent out their private credit and bank statements to some internet cafe in Iraq or Afghanistan.
<sarcasm>You guys can’t write software, only *we* can write software! All those guys we sold the tools to can’t actually write anything worthwhile.”</sarcasm>
I’ve always suspected just how MS feels about independent developers, they’re just finally coming out and saying it.
If you were to actually Open Source a MS product it would instantly turn to unreliable shit.
Oops, too late.
http://en.uptime-project.net/page.php?page=toplist&content=profile&…
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,125775,00.asp
Symantec moves to halt Vista
Unless you have faulty hardware or are REALLY stressing a server or love installing software and piddling with it, I don’t see why windows or linux/bsd/*nix would *not* have uptimes of years.
Where I work, (badly funded library…) we have a 2k3 server, solaris8 (soon to be sol10, yay!) server, plus several debian based machines being used as firewalls and/or VPNs (between our network and branches).. They ALL have uptimes over 100 days. And the only reason they are that low is because we had a huge storm system come through that knocked out power long enough for our battery backups to get completely drained.
heck, our old anti-virus server I decomissioned last week had the same uptimes as everything else and it was running NT4SP6.
In other news, Ford says they have better cars than GM.
I guess my servers that I administrate aren’t reliable. I mean, the uptime counter is only at 8 days….
Oh wait, it got so high that it reset itself.
Microsoft is so full of crap.