In this article I will analyze the features and costs to select which is the best operating system for servers as well as the services that each one of them brings to us.
Note: I am not an english native, please excuse poor grammar and syntax.
They are groups of people in the world that defend free versions of OS
(Operating Systems) like Linux and FreeBSD and hate Windows. But those that
love Windows and Microsoft also exist and they hate the free software. Each one
of these parts has very strong reasons to affirm their approach… but… Who
are better?
Here we will demonstrate that none of the two groups
is right because Windows and UNIX (Linux, FreeBSD) have advantages
and disadvantages. The best solution is one that adapts to the necessities and
each client’s scenario. Let us begin to characterize each OS and for that reason
we will make it a chart of features. We will give values from 0 to 5 (worse
– better). This table has been made with values gathered from a
series of tests done with two kind of hardware: 1 – Professional Server
Hardware (Server with Intel Xeon 2 Processors 1.0Ghz, 40GB Disks SCSI, 1GB RAM,
100MBits Network Card). 2 – Standard PC (Pentium 4 1.6Ghz,
40GB IDE Disks, 512MB DDR266 RAM, 10MBits Network Card). And we do
that with Network Load. Of course, we fist use Hardware type 1 with FreeBSD
and Windows 2003 and later we try with Hardware type 2 with the same
Operating Systems. Optimization has not been made to any Operating System. We
use standard installation and with proceed with minimal configuration options. We use standard PC
hardware because we were curios about the behavior of the OS in that kind
of hardware (there were rumors that Windows does run with low performance and a
lot of errors in PC Hardware. In our tests that didn’t happen). Well, let’s
begin
| Feature | Linux,Freebsd | Windows 2003 SBS |
| Easy Deployment on a Network (Clients) | 3 | 5 |
– Installation and configuration of Windows on the Network was very easy. We use | ||
| Easy Administration | 3 | 5 |
– Windows 2003: It has a lot of Wizards that guide you trough the process of | ||
| Easy Adaptation to Changes | 3 | 5 |
– Active Directory: Is the key of the adaptation. Suppose that we want to merge | ||
| Easy Client-Server Integration and Flexibility | 3 | 5 |
| – Windows: Microsoft build XP and 2003, this OS communicates perfectly using technologies like Active Directory, GPO, Exchange Server-Outlook, Windows SharePoint-Office 2003, and so. (Remember that Exchange and SharePoint comes with SBS version) – FreeBSD: This OS has the problem that has other UNIX OSes. There is not Integrability. It has a lot of tools and a lot of applications but there is a mess. There is not Version Control (Each tool controls it’s version separately) and there is a lot of version of the same thing. Of course the network administrator can make a line of software and can force clients to use it, but there is a “Easy” tool that do that Automatically? | ||
| Easy administration of LAN Networks | 3 | 5 |
– Windows: We have Active Directory to manage users, we have Group Policy | ||
| Consumption of Resources | 5 | 0 |
| Microsoft has made a very good job with Windows 2003 comparing with NT and 2000, but FreeBSD won this battle. Windows loads some unnecesary services and FreeBSD only loads those things that you want to. Windows has a constant graphical interface and FreeBSD not. Windows loads All Hardware in memory (You can deactivate someones) and FreeBSD only loads there ones that you want to use. FreeBSD has a better (and configurable) memory management than Windows. To corroborate that last idea, we did this test: We build a script that uses the “cp” command on FreeBSD and the “copy” command on Windows (Bash vs Cmd). We create a file of 10GB and we begin to copy it from one location to other. Windows and FreeBSD handled this (Performance in FreeBSD diminished a little). The Problem was here: we create 15 000 files of one byte each one and guess what… We begin to copy it from one location to other and Windows Performance diminished a lot (You opened Explorer and it doest open, the mouse was blocked in intervals, and the processors was 100% each one). How could it be possible? | ||
| Best performance (OS) in the same Hardware | 5 | 4 |
| This is relative because performance has many aspects. There are Official Comparisons between Samba vs Windows SMB, Apache vs IIS, PHP vs ASP, Java vs .NET, Postfix vs Exchange and there are many others. I gave one point more to FreeBSD because in my own scenario FreeBSD worked a bit more quickly than Windows. I evaluate these protocols SMTP, POP3, DNS, DHCP, SMB, HTTP (Using Postfix, Exchange, Apache, Samba, IIS) and the behavior of System’s Performance in general, using benchmarking software available on Internet. I didn’t keep in mind how fast Apache vs IIS ran, i only saw the load of the system. Of course this is a polemic thing so, i recommend that if you are interested to know what is better (Apache vs IIS or other comparison) i recommend you that remit you to the Official comparison available on Internet. | ||
| Cost of Licenses | 5 | 0 |
| Windows costs, FreeBSD is Free. | ||
| Secure system | 5 | 3 |
| The security is Relative. Windows has more holes than other operating systems because most of the hackers attacks windows more that other OSes. But perfectly, undiscovered holes of security can still exist in UNIX. Let us also keep in mind that Windows has the best Technical Support, and when being discovered a flaw they corrects it quickly. However we give 5 to FreeBSD and 3 to Windows because historically FreeBSD resists more attacks than Windows and of course there is a time that windows is vulnerable, i refer to the time between the hole is discovered and the Support corrects it. And we must notice something to… The is more software, virus, programs, trojans, etc that runs in Windows than FreeBSD, so this is a good thing for FreeBSD and something against Windows Security that will exist ever. We must declare too that Windows 2003 own many prizes of Security and there are official sites that declares that Windows is the most secure operating system in the world. I respect that. So if you have another opinion you can remit to these official sites of security. | ||
| Professional administration (Command-Line Utils) | 5 | 2 |
| – This is a real thing. FreeBSD like other UNIXes is a command line OS build on the basis of the command line work and Windows is an OS build on the basis of a Graphical Interface (Remember the first NT). Today are improvements in Windows like in FreeBSD… but there are not a Windows “Command-Line” Server so you depend on the GUI to do some administrative tings. And notice that un FreeBSD you have a /etc that holds all configuration and you can modify anything using a text editor. But in Windows the registry is a mystery…. don’t you think? | ||
| System Maintenance | 2 | 5 |
– Windows: Software Upgrades, Patches, Service Packs and implementation of new DLL Hell: Problem that appears on Windows and UNIX. Suppose that you have | ||
| Fast and Secure communications (TCP/IP) | 5 | 4 |
| This is relative too, because there are many opinions about that. I will put here my experience in my custom scenario. I have a Server that is acting as a gateway between Internet and my Lan and of course this requires extreme security because there are many Attacks on Internet. So i decided to configure a FreeBSD Server with it’s integrated firewall and Squid acting as Proxy and a Windows Server 2003 using ISA Server 2004. ISA Server has more features than Squid+fw and seems to be more powerful so why i gave 5 to FreeBSD? It’s a simply reason: the Kernel. We could configure (programmatically of course) the Kernel to only do the functions that we need, and we eliminate that functions that doesn’t interest us. Also we install FreeBSD in Secure Mode, and only install the packages that basically we need. You can imagine which were the results: FreeBSD was Fastest acting as a Proxy/Gateway! Windows: Loads a lot of services that ISA Needs to run, and performance was worse than FreeBSD. But remember that in a real scenario maybe you will want to loss a bit of performance and give more features, so there are not a big difference between Windows and FreeBSD. | ||
| Driver and Hardware Support | 2 | 5 |
| That is classical. Windows supports all kind of hardware because all hardware makers build drivers for it. FreeBSD, and other UNIXes only support drivers built for them and those that the community ports. | ||
| Amount of Services and commercial Applications | 2 | 5 |
| This is the hard reality, there are more companies that build hardware for Windows rather than build it for UNIXes. | ||
| Amount of Services and free Applications | 5 | 4 |
| There are a big community that builds tools and applications for UNIXes. But why windows got 4 and not 2 or 0? Because this tools can be used in windows too. For instance, Apache runs on Windows too. Also exists Windows Services for UNIX, exist UNIX Emulators and many tools that facilitate the port of UNIX software to Windows. Of course software generally runs better on the native host operating system. We could say that from UNIX to Windows software can be ported too, but, WINE (Tool to port from Windows) runs stable running a windows Program? mmm… i don’t think so. | ||
| Technical Support | 2 | 5 |
| Windows costs money… so it has the best technical support in the world. We could notice Windows Update, TechNet, MSDN, etc. | ||
DISCLAIMER! This table represents my own research and it is not extracted from
an official post so it is not an official comparison between OSes, this is only
an exposition of my experience.
The chart speaks for itselt. Each OS has favorable and unfavorable features. So our
recommendation is the following one:
If you or your company are not interested in Computer Services or it is not the main objective and you doesn’t want to spend time and money developing applications the best option is to pay the licenses of Windows 2003 Small Business Server for example. The primary cost will be quite big, but the maintenance is extremely cheap and the stability of the system will be good and it won’t need of a net administrator that makes configurations constantly and maintaining the server daily, because Windows offers many possibilities of Automation. However, if you use some version of UNIX, for example FreeBSD that is the one that I like, you will have to compile things, you will be upgrading the OS every week, and you will have to adapt each service to your necessities using programation or command line tools, thing that with Wizards in Windows can be made.
If you or your company is an ISP or they are devoted to the creation of
applications, or they offers some type of computer service in general, I
believe that the best option would be some free version of an OS (for example
FreeBSD) because they could reprogram the operating system completely and they
can eliminate the modules of the OS that they doesn’t need, as well as to
create new sections according to it’s necessities. Also for a programmer the
best option is this because it has all the freedom to create code and has many
utilities that it can use. The cost of the OS is free.
So I believe that this it is a point to think and to debate. And those that continue
discussing on that it is better after reading this article I tell him:
“Performance and security are not in the operating system. They are in the
maintenance and the net administrator’s dedication.”
About the author:
My Name is Alejandro Tamayo Castillo, I am an student of Mathematics and
Cybernetics of University of Havana Cuba. I have passed many courses of
Network’s Administrator,Windows Server, UNIX, C, C++, C#, .NET Programmer, and
others, and i am intrested on post my own experience. My natural languaje is
Spanish, but i know how to write English (i think).
If you would like to see your thoughts or experiences with technology published, please consider writing an article for OSNews.
“So, i have a proposition to you Fred!
Why we dont rewrite this article and make a new article handling this mistmaching. You agreed with me on some things and have other opinions. Perfect! Why we dont refine this article? Maybe we can do a better work: we have the ideas and you have the language. Think about it.”
Thought about it, but thanks but no thanks.
I lack time and motivation to bother myself with writing comparison articles between *nix and Win*. I’ve written various stuff about various subjects, and I don’t think I’m any good at it at all. Not to mention that I’m a person with an amazing short attention span.
I’m the wrong person to coauthor something with.
First, sorry for my poor english… second: religion out of here… please!
It’s quite clear that your talking from two different points of you… Alejandro deals mostly with enterprise desktop management, while Shaman seems to deal with back-end only services for external clients. (seems 🙂
It’s quite clear that Miscrosoft has a strong technical lead over unix in enterprise clients-server deployments… it’s not only my idea (and maybe Alejandro’s one) but it’s what most of it research groups think… and i think you’re not gonna tell Gartner is endorsed by MS!
Integration between server and clients is what other companies are missing and that’s why other companies failed where MS succeded… take Novell: NDS has (had..) some tech advantages over AD (eg. multivalued attributes replication.. note for ldap lovers!) but WHO cares about that when AD can control all the aspects of the workstations behavior?
Example… with a 10 lines script i can make hardware inventory of thousands of MS workstation passing through WMI… how would you do that in any UNIX environment? WMI is years old and is still the most accessible and complete WBEM implementation out here.
Still another example… with a few mouse clicks i can enforse the use of ipsec transport and certificate authentication from/to any socket on any number of windows pcs… can you explain how to do this on unix?
Please don’t tell me passing configuration files through dfs… you can find many bad experiences out there, just google a little.
Integration is what MS always searched, while unix shines for modularity (does that word exist?? 🙂
All the unix family operating systems (linux first) are marvellous four their flexibility, but they lack of integration when we talk of enterprise networks… and they’re quite useless when talking about edm.
Take an example: openldap is good (even if it’s not at AD or NDS level), but there is a big lack of integration with the applications that can make use of it. (that’s why is mainly used as a structured data repository or as an authentication server…)
Example: how can you tell to the 800 Mozillas running in your middle size business that they have to disable javascript on a site you specify (just an example… so please don’t begin telling that your grandmother with mozilla…:-)
Enterprise desktops software (os+office automation) has been one of the most lucrative fields in the whole it and MS has made a big strategic goal betting on infrastructure services like the directory service.
AD is a great piece of software and has been choosen by some of the largest multinational companies around the world (take siemens) to manage tens of thousands of pcs and server… so if MS did something good i don’t see any reason to shoot at it.
Do you hate any kind of corporation and love the academic world? Can you explain why at M.I.T. they have a big active directory deployment?
They invented Kerberos and they’re using Windows! That’s non-sense.
Things like “AD is essentially a bad copy of LDAP + Samba + (broken) DynDNS + (broken) Pam” demonstrate this is just a big religious flame and not an honest technical thread.
(ldap server in AD is technically very near NDS… and faster in reads by different acls inheritance; dns is very good and got full srv records before bind… than it uses ad replication thats light years better than zone transfers to replicate; authentication is very good too due to a kerberos implementation than not only has not been affected by recent bugs found in mit’s one, but ms extended it to use tcp and that has even been RFC!)
Than i have to admit there are a LOT of bad choices MS did and a LOT of pain it caused to thousands of users.
MS always runs to make their systems powerful, putting in second place what many users consider at the absolute first place: RELIABILITY.
The run for gaining market shares has filled MS products with many bugs during the past years and made MS very hated.
For example take windows95-98-me: they’ve been first of all a way to get programmers used to win32 and the normal users able to deal with the interface… and they were ridicolous as operating systems.
That’s very bad from customers perspective (before windows 2000 i neved left my Amiga as a desktop platform… hope you understand i don’t have Bill on my side telling what to write) but has shown to be a quite perfect market move.
In general i think we should always separate the different aspects of our discussion, than take a sum.
You can tell you hate microsoft for the way it treats market, you can tell you don’t like the technical choices microsoft takes… but the duuble statement “i hate microsoft – its products are pure shit” is not believable any more, given that microsoft makes thousands of products and that they are so complex it’s not possible to know them all.
Given that, i think that comparing two operating systems is much more difficult than writing a 2 pages article… but i agree on many important things Alejandro pointed out and i suggest many people around here to take a trip (if they have the opportunity) around big enterprises IT infrastructures to understand what are Microsoft’s technical achievements.
“The security is Relative. Windows has more holes than other operating systems because most of the hackers attacks windows more that other OSes. But perfectly, undiscovered holes of security can still exist in UNIX.”
Ok Windows has the history of being maintained by poorly educated programmers M$ got for cheap. How can holes be undiscovered in an Open Source OS?!
Excellent comments, Sergio! But, I’m afraid, most of the “M$-haters” won’t listen, they’ll tell [quote] Windows has the history of being maintained by poorly educated programmers M$ got for cheap [/quote]
🙁
The original Windows branch was a shell on top of DOS, sure. Current versions of Windows are based on the NT branch, which was written as a 32-bit windowed graphical operating system from the ground up, it’s not “based on DOS” in any way. The command prompt in NT-series OSes doesn’t have anything like a “real version of DOS” under it, it’s a cleanly-written terminal made to mimic a DOS environment.
Theres a much better comparison of Windows Server to Linux (some things in it will likely be more widely applicapble to any unix) at the Register. It deals mainly with security, and various myths relating to the OSes, including several repeated in the article.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/security/security_report_windows_vs_li…
It’s not much better, it’s much more biased, only this time in favour of Linux – but check out who’s the author
There is a reliance on numbers, and evidence instead of merely stating personal opinion as fact with arbitrary ratings, in fact, no ratings are given at all. It also doesn’t paint the usual biased view of linux you’ll get from zealots. (that being that linux is a bug free, exploit free, happy land, full of magic gnomes)
I guess I don’t see any extreme bias in the article, just a slight linux bias. Then again I myself am biased on this matter. But thats mainly bitterness from supporting win98/me machines.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/security/security_report_windows_vs_li…
This debunks several claims that Microsoft has been making.
And yes, Sergio, Gartner is not-infrequently accused of being a Microsoft shill.
http://www.google.ch/search?hl=de&q=gartner+shill&btnG=Google-Suche…
What?! Details?! Numbers?! Did you, guys, read the authors (Petreley) bio?! It’s just the same as “Get the facts”, only reversed!
Anyway, what I can’t get at all, is why people can’t understand the fact that Linux as an enterprise OS is just the same as Windows – why? O.K. It’s just a money making machine for RedHat, IBM and Novell (and some smaller companies), although all those companies telling the tales about open-sourceness and freedom and anything else, they’re just trying to sell their products or consulting services or hardware – and they have to compete with very strong player – Microsoft, which is just the same, only with different product. Isn’t it obvious? All of them use Linux or whatever not because it’s good or bad or secure or anything else – they just sell what they can.
So it’s funny how all of us are trying to win in these stupid holy wars, actually most of us use all that to make money too – because we’re admins/developers and so on.
A very poor article, I knew rehathat, suse, solaris, and apache guys where wrong?!!! jajaj
they should change to m$ !!! jeje 
!!!!!!
Well, although I respect Alejandro attempt to make a paper, certainly I can’t say I agree with it for a lot of reasons:
* It shows no methodology. Which tools where used to make any benchmarking? ¿How were the tests made? There was no answer to those questions, and that for me brings this paper crdibility down to 0. If you’re doing a head to head, show some methodology, describe the environment used to make those test!
* It’s biased towards windows. I don’t think it’s intended, but more a question of lack of knowledge, the basic example is the AD stuff, but other stuff is the lack of citation of other papers that repeteadly have suported the superiority of Unix over Windows. If you’re doing a serious head to head, please chek other papers, you might learn a thing or two.
* Has very poor argumentation: Saying that linux is more secure just because Windows suffers most attacks is at minimun, an unsuported argumentation.
* Puntuation is overall arbitrarily asigned, why a 4 to Linux for it’s core dump -ok, you can get tons of info from a coredump- and a 0 to Windows? I don’t like windows at all, but it’s clearly arbitrary.
I read it twice before writing this, and I don’t care about your spelling as long as does not interfere with correct understanding of it. Just one more thing, don’t react as agressively to critics, Try to learn, many people here have tons of real world experience -myself 13 years as system administrator on Windows/Linux/Ultrix……- and you can’t despise your opinions with harsh comments, that only weakens your position and makes you appear as young, and unexperienced.
In this discussion group are people that knows what they are talking about and see the facts not his preferences. I respect that you love UNIX, but see what is real.
Shaman, you could be a great IT with 30,000 Machines, but you are acting as a Newbie like others that have said stupid comments. This article is poor and it is shit? Could it be… but you dont said Why. You must say the reasons of your opinion and they must be strong reasons. So dont bother me saying that its stupid because it is, ok?
Second, I dont want to say that there are stupid people, but people that says:
“OSnews.com = pulling article = re-publishing article = lame = I’m gone and so should anyone intelligent!
Alejandro Tamayo = no clue, defensive and busted. ”
If they are not stupids they act as stupid.
They are good comments on this post but there are others that smell like shit.
And talking back about the Article. I agreed with Zak Fenton, Mischa Kroon and Sergio. There are a lot of people here that hates Microsoft, and because that reason only they dont eval Windows, and only knows what the people says: “Its bad, unsecure, it cost a lot….. and so” and dont want to recognize the good things that Windows has.
And talking with you again Shaman, I have never worked with a Wireless network, but i have been working with Wide Enterprise Networks and i have been working with Windows to do it… and when you work on a Company with headquarters and branches Windows could be usefull. A employer on this Company can login on any of the branches and can get his perfil his documents his emails and can do the same work like if they were on his machine. Do you know what i mean? This could be done with Exchange Server and Windows Enterprise Edition.
So i dont saying that with a UNIX OS i cant do this, i am saying that Windows is created to do this work and works pretty good.
“I done something like this with FreeBSD+QMail (Im talking about e-mail only) but i had to modify QMail to acts as a POP3 Gateway on multiple servers… (I think that Yahoo! Uses something like this)”
And talking about FreeBSD… many people says that it is not an Enterprise OS and it is not as strong that others… but Yahoo! is strong…. and is in FreeBSD 4.x. And if we talk about sites, there are a lot… for instance http://www.hotmail.com in a begining it was over FreeBSD… later it was on Windows… so what is so wrong about Windows or FreeBSD at all?
erm, what does Petreley’s “bio” have to do with the fact that his article has a solid foundation in statistical evidence which he links to in its entirety?
Dear Windlord,
I will answer your questions:
1 – About the metodology: My intention was not to face two great os that i love. My intention was to test on my hard whats goin on with this two os. When big companies make a benchmark they uses the best hard of the market or that one that is certified to that OS. I test these OS on a common hard without certifications. I use bechmark programs from Internet (I will mention some) and i use some scripts created by myself. And to make a qualification i merge Bechmark+People Experience+My Experience+Logical Results by the enviroment (Errors or things that happend during the test)
For each feature i implement it based on my experience and based too on articles on INTERNET. Why Internet? Because everyday teams or companies creates new software. For instance when i was evaluating “Easy administration of LAN Networks” first i made test based on my experience and made a initial conclusion… and later i seeked on INTERNET if there where another way and seeked how other people do the job… and then make a final conclusion. When i was testing “Best performance (OS) in the same Hardware” i used HTTPERF that is a program to create LOAD on a Web Server availble here ftp://ftp.hpl.hp.com/pub/httperf/, i use too a C++ program that moves alloc and disalloc memore (Compiled with gcc and VisualC++) and use the System Monitor of each OS to see the numbers. When i was talking about “Secure system” i make a poll, i use my own experience and i read some important security whitepapers. When i was talking about: “Driver and Hardware Support” i selected a random of devices, older devices and newest, i try to found drivers for each os and i try the devices that i have. For instance Windows won the USB contest. USB Support was weaken on the other OS. And so.
If you want more details about a specific point i cant post it… Just ask if you want ok?
2 – * It’s biased towards windows: I really dont think so but i respect your opinion. First i said:
“Here we will demonstrate that none of the two groups is right because Windows and UNIX (Linux, FreeBSD) have advantages and disadvantages. The best solution is one that adapts to the necessities and each client’s scenario”
(and when i said UNIX(Linux, FreeBSD) i tried to say UNIX Like OS like Linux (RedHat) and FreeBSD)
Also, it could be true that i write more about Windows Technologies, because i think that there are a lot of people that knows a lot of other technologies used in UNIX os and really doesnt know Windows Technologies, so i tried to introduce this technologies to create a debate about it. And if you look the comments i have been right, there are a lot of people that Hates Windows.
3 – * “Has very poor argumentation: Saying that linux is more secure just because Windows suffers most attacks is at minimun, an unsuported argumentation. ” Its my opinion because i dont count how many errors Windows has and if they are less o r more than other OS. There are a lot of “Windows Security Updates” that Microsoft address that i dont have in mid. For instance Windows Media Player, Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer, DirectX etc, because in a Server we dont use any of this technologies. What are the real errors of Windows? RPC Buffer Overflows, “Red Code Virus”, IIS Problems, etc… and if we analyze it… these are not errors to, because if you have a good Firewall you could have the error but… the problem doesnt exists. IIS is a security problem? Ok, use ISA Server Firewall to filter communications or install Apache acting as a Gateway. IIS have .NET, ASP, ASPX, CGI, and many technologies that are good… so you can create a Front-End with Apache and the problem dissapears dont you think? And look, an OS has thousand of thousands of C++ code pages. Do you think that any man could review all the pages to keep the system secure? This is a polemic theme too, so i will not opine on this.
4 – “Puntuation is overall arbitrarily asigned” Could it be, but is the punctuation that i belive. Really, who has the absolutely truth? Commercial bechmarks? I dont thing so because if we look commercial and official sites, Windows was the Best OS and the more secure on the World on 2003 so, on who do you belive?.
I tried to make an intresting article that people can read and can debate. I think that i realize that because a lot of people said his opinion about my article…. the majority biased towards UNIX and two or three towards Windows. My conclusion not was what is best my conclusion was “none, The best is that one you can handle”
5 – “don’t react as agressively to critics, Try to learn, many people here have tons of real world experience” I accepts critics because i can learn of it… but there are people that say words without any base based on his preferences and if we analyze that there are a lot of comments that said “This is shit because it is Shit”. Do you think that i can learn from it?
Your critic was good man, and your comment was wise that people that said “Shit, Crap, etc” must learn of you.
“and you can’t despise your opinions with harsh comments, that only weakens your position and makes you appear as young, and unexperienced. ” It could be right, i will be more flexible about that people.
Anyone wants any other detail? Just Ask ok?
Well Alejandro,
1st: It’s a start, your metodology is questionable, but at least it’s a start -one can’t draw general conclusions from personal experience, I for one, despise microsoft because in my experience there’s nothing in Windows that can’t be done with *Nix, with less cost and higher reliability-
2nd. Your answer still proves my point that you didn’t make a concscious choice of elements to bias the article toward windows, but there’s a bias, when talking about windows tecnolopgies and not its *Nix counterparts.
3th. If you’re expressing an opinion please, say so, don’t write it as fact or as a conclusion from your study. It’s not a good policy to mix one own opinion with facts in a paper.
I admit that you can dismiss SOME of the vulnerabilities attached to desktop features, but what I don’t admit, nor anyone seriously can, it’s that you dismiss most problems with IIS, they exist, and they’re the cause of many sucessful attacs in the real world. No system can be made absolutely secure as long as you have open services, but you can’t hide the security issues -that even Gartner Group admits and thus, makes it’s advice to use apache instead of IIS http://reviews-zdnet.com.com/AnchorDesk/4520-6033_16-4206453.html – inherent to Windows. Also as you say many of the application you siad, are desktop features, barely used on a server environment, but due to the tight integration and direct access to the kernel space they’ve is a security issue to be considered seriously. If Windows used a real microkernel approach, instead of having nearly all services making inroads into kernel space to gain speed, it won’t be as insecure.
Ok, not a single person can maintain by only himself the security of all the code that makes an OS, but that’s not the case: Microsoft has a team of programers on it, Linux has it, *Bsd has it, etc… I think this is a bit pointless. If you were reffering to the fact that not a single person can maintain a server trhough proper patching, I disagree, though I admit that maybe, *Nix may have a higher learning curve for admins, but once you have a certain level, you’re able to maintain several servers at once.
4th. When I said your punctuation was arbitratily asigned, I meant that looks you’ve not used any uniform criteria to assign it, at the end it looks capricious and biased.
5th. Understand this: many people are tired of papers prone to flamewar due to be biased, poorly structured, lacking knowledge, and tired enough not to argument their opinion. Don’t restart to use your experience as an authority argument, because some of those people can certainly have tons of experience on the subject.
At the end, one must use whatever OS his employer has decided to use, or it’s OS of preference if he has the possibility as long as it dosn’t affect the wellfare of the company he works for.
at root:
#rm -fr /home/eugenia
#rm -fr /home/osnews
haha never get junks
“Technical Support 2 5
Windows costs money… so it has the best technical support in the world. We could notice Windows Update, TechNet, MSDN, etc.”
Linux distributions come with support. Official, 3rd party, etc. Just like with the Windows OEM world.
“Windows supports all kind of hardware because all hardware makers build drivers for it.”
Linux supports more hardware than Windows. Far more architectures to start with.
“System Maintenance 2 5”
How the **** this is so sick. You have to run Windows Update which is MSIE. You need to have MSIE on your system. Broken software and ridiculous that its mandatory. On say Debian you only have to issue apt-get update && apt-get upgrade and you’re secure. Same for other Linux distributions. Frontends? Exist, no problem. Automate it? Sure, try cron-apt and do the disco every 4 AM or so. FreeBSD is IMO harder but still flexible. Really, look into this.