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Linux or Windows? You decide

Time: 00:00 EST/05:00 GMT | News Source: ZDNet | Posted By: Robert Stein

We receive e-mail every week from sys admins fighting the open source cause (though often at the same time forced to work with Windows or Solaris, for example), or others who are happy with their Microsoft environments and telling everyone else to grow up.

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#1 By 135 (209.180.28.6) at 12/20/2002 10:45:46 AM

If Linux does end up taking over... I'll probably quit the IT industry and do something different.

I just can't see what the point would be of supporting an OS environment that is no fun to use.

#2 By 8589 (66.169.175.34) at 12/20/2002 10:54:35 AM

This is another inane post. Again I have to answer it with, "Why does this have to be an either this or that situation?" This is in my opinion an attempt to start a flame war with die-hard Linux, and Windows users.

#2,#3 I think the best thing for us to do is ignore any more threads of this nature.

#3 By 135 (209.180.28.6) at 12/20/2002 2:43:24 PM

linuxhippie - You know the chief reason why I abandoned Linux in favor of NT?

It was file and print sharing. I saw how easy it was to setup a file share on an NT server and compared that with the process I had to go through with NFS and the automount service. Then I saw how easy it was to setup printers and compared that to the lack of printing we had on our Unix servers.

It became a no brainer from then on as Unix was just difficult-to-use for what should be very simple tasks.

As far as using simple text-based tools that work on text-based data... you can still do that with NT. But in addition to that you can also use COM automation. So not only do I use simple tools, I can also use complex tools. This world is expanding daily, in a coordinated and forward direction. I keep looking at Unix today and it's still very ad-hoc and chaotic... you aren't creating a culture of sharing... you create a culture because otherwise it's near impossible to do anything.

#4 By 135 (208.50.206.187) at 12/20/2002 7:23:17 PM

z00ker - LOL!

linuxhippie - If you get the chance of setting up Kerberos authentication on a group of Unix machines... then do the same with a Win2k domain you'll see a perfect example of how doing it the Unix way makes hard work out of something that should be simple. :(

bluesky - I'm 34 and have been working with personal computers since 1982. I've always been looking for something better and have switched platforms many times. From CP/M to the Amiga and so on. I bought my first x86 machine only in 1992.

While I used Unix for years, I just never found it exciting or fun. Well maybe I did at first, but after I mastered it I no longer saw any growth potential. And software development was always just such a pain in the ass.

#5 By 2332 (65.221.182.3) at 12/21/2002 1:50:24 AM

#16 - "-a-days in RedHat 8 you click on the Printer Configurator and a very nice, easy, and intuitive dialog comes up"

Oh, so it duplicates the functionality that Windows has had for 5+ years? Wonderful, I should switch right now!

"Microsoft continually does things to try and kill Samba and those innovative programmers deal with the curveballs they throw in short order with regularity."

So people who strive to duplicate functionality that already exists on Windows are now deemed "innovative"?

"This working _against_ the community instead of with it will ultimately be their downfall I feel."

How? Can you give me an example to support this belief? Microsoft works very closely with THEIR community (they have quite possibly the best developer support of ANY company EVER), and it is not in their interest to work with a community dedicated to duplicating everything Microsoft does and including it in a competing product.

"Sony once had a closed end product they wouldn't let anyone else mess with called Beta... MS should be glad people want to write software to freely communicate with PCs running their OS, not be hostile towards the idea."

Oh give me a break. Beta failed because it could only hold about 30 minutes of video. VHS was of poorer quality (and was JUST as closed as Beta... VHS was invented by JVC), but won out because it could record many more minutes of video. It turned out that VHS had the features people desired, not Beta. THAT is why Beta failed... not because of was "closed." Your analogy is both poor and misleading.

"MS should be glad people want to write software to freely communicate with PCs running their OS, not be hostile towards the idea."

Ok, so let me get this straight... Microsoft should be happy to help people create a product that directly competes with Windows so that the product can better intergrate within Windows networks and take away market share? Perhaps if it had significant market share and Microsoft was trying to communite with IT... but not the other way around!

#6 By 135 (208.50.206.187) at 12/21/2002 2:48:48 AM

ArkiMage - "Now-a-days in RedHat 8 you click on the Printer Configurator and a very nice, easy, and intuitive dialog comes up."

I've seen that. But it does not appear as though all applications are designed to work with this printing system. There appears to be several competing solutions.

The other problem is that the most common printing solution appears to be to dump out Postscript and then render it with Ghostscript. Not terribly ideal, and the print quality is not as high as the native drivers one finds in Windows.

Granted, it is getting better... but I mean come on... this one stop printer setup was easy on the Amiga back in the mid 80's... Even the Macintosh(of course you only had a choice of two printers, both made by Apple! lol!)

"Sony once had a closed end product they wouldn't let anyone else mess with called Beta... "

Beta was no more closed than VHS. Both Sony and JVC licensed their respective technologies. It just didn't hold as much on tapes, and so it wasn't attractive to consumers.

"not be hostile towards the idea. "

The only hostility is towards those who demand government barriers to free market trade because of an unwillingness to compete based solely on product merit.

#7 By 1845 (12.209.152.69) at 12/21/2002 1:50:45 PM

Mage your argument is more rediculous with each additional post.

"Actually you've been able to setup printers on Unix and Linux for years."

Since you admitted that previous Linuxen didn't easily enable a user to setup printers, why don't you just concede the point? It's been pretty point and click easy on Windows for many years. Seem only the most recent Linuxen have become so easy. Guess that means, RMD's statements still stands.

"It's only when they start doing so _better_ than Microsoft themselves that MS strats throwing in monkey wrenches."

So, I'll echo RMD's question. What are the monkey wrenches Microsoft has thrown at Samba? Including remote desktop software in Windows really has NOTHING to do with your FUD about Microsoft and Samba.

"An implementation of samba on a Linux server at the same timeframe as Windows NT4 could serve data and printers to a bunch of Windows clients faster than the NT4 box. (Unless of course you believe the paid-by-Microsoft _tests_ which show just the opposite) :) "

First, I'd like to see the data to support your claims. Second, NT 4 is 7 or more years old, right? I'd hope by now, somebody would be able to outpace them. Interesting that you didn't compare to a more current server like Windows 2000 or Windows .NET Server 2003. That would have been a more accurrate comparison. Since you didn't provide links to support your benchmark claims anyway, your claim has no merit.

"Remember these are developers making Windows products and finding themselves in direct competition with MS a year or so after coming out with their innovative ideas."

You seem to close your eyes to the fact that this is how business works. Currently one might say that Microsoft is a partner of Apple. Apple, though, has many applications that compete with Microsoft applications written for the Mac - Media Player vs. QuickTime, Microsoft Office vs. AppleWorks, etc. How 'bout Dell? A collaborative deal between them and HP just ended when Dell announced they would ship a Dell branded printer. Sony is a Microsoft OEM vendor, yet they also compete with Microsoft in consumer electronics. Business is based on competition.

To further dispute your claim, most of the time when Microsoft includes a new application in Windows which competes with one of its current partners' applications the Microsoft app is usually either licensed from a partnet (NTFS defrag in Windows 2000 is a good example) or very much dilluted (Remote Desktop vs PCAnywhere is a good example. As a software vendor, you don't need to look over your shoulder for Microsoft, you need to look over your shoulder for all your competition. Microsoft is one among many.

#8 By 135 (208.50.206.187) at 12/21/2002 2:34:23 PM

linuxhippie - "I would not be a bit surprised to see some legal action against Samba sometime in the coming year. "

Actually I very much doubt this. This is one of the fundamental problems the Linux zealot arguments have... since you can't justify your hatred based on facts, you present arguments based on imagined actions.

Microsoft's history does not support this claim. The only thing Samba hurts is the licensed Windows SMB host software from companies like Sun, etc. It doesn't hurt Microsoft in the least.

#9 By 2332 (65.221.182.3) at 12/21/2002 5:36:29 PM

#26 - "One of the patches in service pack 2 for Windows 2000 causes Windows to deliberately send an invalid command so that it can check that the error message that comes back is spelled exactly the way they do it. Samba's error message was worded differently, and Windows could in this way determine that it was dealing with a non-Microsoft product, and refuse to work in such cases."

What is your source for this information? If "the Samba folks" don't offer any confirmation, where are you getting this from? I would have thought this would be a major Slashdot story, but I've never heard anything about it.

I've personally run Samba 2.2.0 with Windows 2000 SP2, and everything worked fine... so it must have been a pre-2.2.0 problem?

"Why don't you concede the point that a bunch of volunteers on their own time have been able to produce a pretty darn good product."

I didn't realize that point was ever brought up. I've personally always been impressed with how much time people devote to something like Linux. See, I'm quite happy with Windows, and have been since Win2k arrived. I have almost no motivation to create a rival that is destined to only play catch up with Windows.

"The point I was making was that the latest and greatest version of printconf from RedHat was _very_ nice and easy. That goes back to my statement of improvments happening all the time.. They have been for a long time and I hope they continue."

Catch up, catch up, catch up.

"It was around the time of NT4's heyday that Samba started coming into it's own and actually appeared on the radar screens of Microsoft."

There is a program called AppleShare IP. It allows Macs to use NT file shares, and visa versa. It's always worked well, and was developed completely independantly from Microsoft. It's debut was during the "heyday" of NT4, and allowed a segment of computer users FAR larger than those using Samba to integrate into NT networks. If Microsoft is so hostile to non-Windows environments, don't you think that Microsoft would have killed ASIP in the same way you suggest their trying to kill Samba?

"I'll state again that I think Microsoft should be 2 companies and it's a shame the antitrust stuff didn't split them up."

How would making Microsoft 2 companies have any affect on Samba?

"Microsoft has been up to their old tricks a _long_ time :) "

Many of Microsoft's "tricks" were actually simple incompetence on the part of the people who though they were the victim of those tricks. RealPlayer not working on Windows? Turns out Real was just writing poor code. Windows not running on anything but MSDOS? Again, an outright lie.

Please, be my guest... list some of Microsoft's so called "tricks", and we can discuss not being quite so gullable.

#10 By 1845 (12.209.152.69) at 12/21/2002 8:02:18 PM

RMD, add to the list QuickTime not working. That came up during the anti-trust case and was shown to be an Apple error.

#11 By 931 (67.35.49.207) at 12/22/2002 2:19:11 AM

"I remember the DOS and Win 3.1 days of having to deal with different drivers per application."

.. funny I sure dont remember having to deal with different (i assume you mean print..) drivers per application under win3.1 setting up and using printing has always been the easyed of just about any process under windows. I'm actually interested in what was meant by this comment cause I cannot recall having any real printer issues with win3.1 or wfw 3.11 while I supported a 750 user office with about 50 printers in a mixed novell and nt 3.51 environment.
As for macs' microsoft's file sharing for macs always worked as well.. (it was weak..lol..but it did get the job done.)

#12 By 2332 (65.221.182.3) at 12/22/2002 1:36:09 PM

#30 - That error is caused because ActiveWin is using the data type VARCHAR to store posts. VARCHARs have a maximum length of 4000 characters, and so if your message is greater than 4000 characters, SQL Server will generate an error.

ActiveWin could easily use a data type of TEXT, but those are difficult to work with in stored procedures because you cannot declare a variable of type TEXT.

The solution I usually choose is to have a self joining table where if a message is greater than 4000 characters, I create a child record with the overflow text... and repeat as needed.

You can work around this problem by splitting up your posts into messages of less than 4000 characters.

#31 - "that's because MS SQL can't handle it and it's such a piece of shit."

Ah... that's like saying that an integer data type is a piece of shit because it can't handle decimals. Grow up.

#13 By 4240821 (45.149.82.86) at 10/25/2023 10:51:59 PM