So, Windows is no longer cutting the mustard and you need a more scalable, reliable and higher performing environment. You may be running Oracle Financials, PeopleSoft or any of a number of ERP applications. Or you may be looking to deploy a new Web portal with something like IBM WebSphere with a DB2 backend or WebLogic and Oracle.
Linux or Unix: Making the Right Decision
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Windows is no longer cutting the mustard?
I don’t get it. Windows stopped farting?
When???
ok…I got nothin else other than the stinks joke.
of unix is better in high end area, whereas in low end areas linux is better, because it could be installed on a very cheap servers.
The #1 feature that unix enjoys above linux is the stability which of course comes from the integration between the hardware and the software together, exactly like the model of Mac. And when you have stability, you have predictability of how you can improve or scale up if you want.
Most enterprises love to deal with one vendor for all of their problems and needs, in order to hold them accountable for problems and loses when happens.
“Most enterprises love to deal with one vendor for all of their problems and needs, in order to hold them accountable for problems and loses when happens.”
Not with Microsoft. You don’t make them accountable of anything.
>>of unix is better in high end area, whereas in low end areas linux is better, because it could be installed on a very cheap servers.<<
Since when is Linux not scalable? Most super-computers run Linux.
>>Most enterprises love to deal with one vendor for all of their problems and needs, in order to hold them accountable for problems and loses when happens.<<
Good luck with that. BTW: ever hear of redhat? I have worked in IT 27 years, from what I have seen most enterprises have no choice but to use several vendors.
Well, buy yourselves an SGI Altix, and you will see that Linux is equal in quality to the UNIXes.
Most UNIX-Vendors still have their own UNIX variant because they have to serve customers which are locked into their platform, and have long-time UNIX admins.
The software cost is neglectable compared to the hardware cost, so they do not have a big disadvantage costwise.
Then Windows? A little biased comment in the article maybe…
Edited 2006-10-09 02:33
“Unlike Linux, Unix is typically packaged with vendor hardware. Because it is so closely tied to the hardware, Unix offers all sorts of performance and reliability advantages because the operating system has been optimized for a specific hardware platform.”
I’m not so sure it being ‘closely tied’ to the hardware really makes as much difference as all that. Reliability has a lot more to do with whether there’s a nasty bug in the code or not than what architecture it runs on.
Sun seem to be pretty happy to offer Solaris on Opterons as well as on SPARC – you’d think if it was that big a deal, they wouldn’t.
Or for another example, OSX (which Apple likes to tout as a form of Unix) is definately closely tied to Apple’s hardware – but it’s known to have some nasty threading issues, on either PPC or Intel. The hardware has zero to do with that, it’s all a software problem.
“but Linux still cannot scale as much as Unix.”
Yeah right – a quick google turned up one article that suggested that 301 of the top 500 supercomputers run Linux. Hard to say how accurate that is, but I think it pretty strongly suggests that Linux has no problems scaling.
I’m sure there are arguments the other way too – I’m not really intending to bash it just ‘cos I don’t like what it says about Linux, I suspect that they needed to research a little better on both sides of the debate.
Edited 2006-10-09 04:36
“but Linux still cannot scale as much as Unix.”
Yeah right – a quick google turned up one article that suggested that 301 of the top 500 supercomputers run Linux. Hard to say how accurate that is, but I think it pretty strongly suggests that Linux has no problems scaling.
I think the author was talking about scaleability within one copy of the OS. Most of the top 500, and google run many OS instances. Personally I consider these as a collection of computers rather than a single unit. They can (some are) be a mixture of OS’s.
I think the author was talking about scaleability within one copy of the OS. Most of the top 500, and google run many OS instances. Personally I consider these as a collection of computers rather than a single unit. They can (some are) be a mixture of OS’s.
You might well be right, but it’s a bit hard to tell exactly what the author meant because he didn’t explain that part in much depth, or provide any sort of hard data to back it up 😉
>>”but Linux still cannot scale as much as Unix.”
Yeah right – a quick google turned up one article that suggested that 301 of the top 500 supercomputers run Linux. Hard to say how accurate that is, but I think it pretty strongly suggests that Linux has no problems scaling.<<
How many of those 301 are actually clusters in which case you don’t have one kernel controlling everything? Granted the SGI patched kernels for Altix can scale up to something like 512processors in one system image, but that isn’t the standard kernel from kernel.org
Also HPC scalability is in many ways a whole different kettle of fish to commercial workload scalability.
Also HPC scalability is in many ways a whole different kettle of fish to commercial workload scalability.
It depends what the definition of commercial workload scalability is, because neither you or the article has defined it.
* Hardware support and integration
* OS Support
* Comfort level
Couldn’t this be said of Redhat when its bundled with servers from IBM, etc.
>Couldn’t this be said of Redhat when its bundled with servers from IBM, etc.
I don’t think so – the hardware certification is one thing, but having the hardware and software controlled by the same vendor means there’s no ambiguity about where the buck stops for performance, functionality, or stability. That’s not to say that there won’t be open warfare behind the vendor’s closed doors, but there is at least a CEO where the buck stops.
This article does not make sense for Solaris since it is free (and it’s service may actually be cheaper then major Linux vendors).
Linux FTW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I don’t understand why many articles leave out the BSDs OS. They are great OS and in many areas they are better then linux and many UNIX OS. so i choose OpenBSD instead.
Edited 2006-10-09 05:22
Suggesting that BSD is *better* than Linux, without any undisputed facts to support your claims, is like saying dogs make better pets than cats or that apples taste better than pears; it depends on peoples view on the matter.
So your claim is completely subjective and grants you little credibility.
Edited 2006-10-09 06:00
But BSD IS better… And Dogs ARE better… and Apples ARE better… What’s your point?
What distributions of Linux does Oracle support?
The following distributions are certified and supported by Oracle:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS and ES (RHEL)
Novell SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server (SLES)
Asianux (only supported in the Asia/Pacific region). The products supported by Oracle, as part of Asianux, include:
Red Flag DC 4.1 Asianux Inside
Miracle Linux 3.0 Asianux Inside
RedHat is awfully expensive! And there ar ehundreds of security holes in the 2.6 kernel … of course that matches Oracles hundreds of security holes.
The following distributions are certified and supported by Oracle:
Those are distributions Oracle say they will support, but I’ve seen Oracle running completely well on Debian or Gentoo.
And there ar ehundreds of security holes in the 2.6 kernel
That statement blows what little credibility you have left away. What security holes are these, where are they, are they serious and exploitable and are they any worse than using a certain other OS?
Sure, it runs just fine on other distributions. They are all Linux and are all pretty similar, at least for the parts that Oracle uses.
But Oracle doesn’t support the other distributions. And when you call up Oracle to fix your multi-thousand dollar Oracle installation and tell them you are using Gentoo, they won’t help you. Much of the point of paying lots of money for Oracle licenses and supoprt is that you get the support.
This is just one entry on Secunia for Oracle:
http://secunia.com/advisories/18493
“82 vulnerabilities and security issues have been reported in various Oracle products. Some have an unknown impact, and others can be exploited to gain knowledge of certain information, overwrite arbitrary files, conduct SQL injection attacks and compromise a vulnerable system.”
Do yourself a favor. Try SQL Server.
Are you kidding me? Oracle is a lot better than that SQL Server crap, Oracle is a truly RDBMS and we also have PostgreSQL which is even better than anything else.
Edited 2006-10-09 10:12
Oracle on Debian/Ubuntu
http://oss.oracle.com/debian
This is just one entry on Secunia for Oracle:
Hmmmm. What you’ve done there is pull up a page for issues in all of Oracle’s products. Not particularly comparable, or credible.
I assume you are talking Sybase SQL Server.
Given the topic is about upgrade paths for people wanting to move get past the limitations/issues of desktop platforms.
assume you are talking Sybase SQL Server.
No. Microsoft.
It has the top 6 on the TPC-C price/performance charts.
http://www.tpc.org/tpcc/results/tpcc_price_perf_results.asp
No security patches for SQL 2005 (and its been out for a year).
Even SQL 2000 hasn’t had a security problem in the last 2 years.
Edited 2006-10-09 15:12
It has the top 6 on the TPC-C price/performance charts.
If someone put the money into testing PostgreSQL on comparable hardware, methinks the equation would swing another way.
Perhaps. We obviously can’t say without testing and benchmarking (which always causes debate over the way the tests were performed. The trick is that even if PostgreSQL were proven to be the superior product it still doesn’t change the fact that MSSQL 2005 is a pretty darned good product (boy, do I hate to admit that). I actually have more of a problem with the fact that I would have to run Windows to use MSSQL than I do with the product itself.
The trick is that even if PostgreSQL were proven to be the superior product it still doesn’t change the fact that MSSQL 2005 is a pretty darned good product (boy, do I hate to admit that)
That’s because it is based on Sybase. And you’re right, in terms of Microsoft software, SQL Server sucks less.
However, it’s exceedingly expensive as most enterprise DBs tend to be and a smart IT person would be wise to consider PostgreSQL and re-invest the money into superior hardware or fail-over systems. Not to mention staff training. When you are talking about millions of dollars difference in deployment costs (no joking), that money goes a long way towards building a better mousetrap with open source products. Hell, you can even modify them for your own use, you have source code… and if you’re ethical, you can submit those changes and see if your ideas stick to the wall.
This isn’t the 90s. Many IT shops have grown up, and so have the software packages in the open source world that really matter. PostgreSQL is one of the best examples.
All valid points. I also agree that it is quite expensive. So is all Microsoft software when you start getting up to the enterprise level, as the number of licenses becomes almost ridiculous. I was just saying that SQL is one of the products that Microsoft markets that is well designed and robust. Some of their software became popular because of ease-of-use, some because it actually works, and some because you don’t get fired for buying Microsoft.
Then we concur.
assume you are talking Sybase SQL Server.
No. Microsoft.
MS SQL Server is based on Sybase. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_SQL_Server )
Like most half-decent MS products it was aqcuired rather than developed in-house.
Exactly which unix is this article speaking of?? I was thinking solaris or apple until I saw the part about hardware/software stuff.
All of ’em. Or rather, all the surviving ones on proprietary hardware, which basically means AIX (from IBM), Solaris (from Sun) and HP-UX (from Kellog’s, naturally 😉 ).
Yes, I know Solaris also runs on Opteron and HP-UX on Itanium; nevertheless, they are still considered proprietary hardware vendors.
Yes, I know Solaris also runs on Opteron and HP-UX on Itanium; nevertheless, they are still considered proprietary hardware vendors.
How is a GPL (Ultrasparc T1) based CPU proprietary???
Next time you talk about proprietary, just add AMD and intel to the list.
https://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinfo/compare/wintercorp-survey.msp…
SQL Server is being used in some of the largest Data Warehousing and OLTP sites in the world.
“Great Progress in World-Class Rankings
• Third largest OLTP database in the world, by rows
• Sixth, seventh, and tenth largest OLTP databases in the world by volume run on SQL Server
• Eighth largest data warehousing database in the world”
What is this? A Microsoft ad?
Of course anything that doesn’t conform to the GPL-fascism on this site must be an advert for the Evil Empire.