Preserved Topic: unix vs. N/T

I am in the process of putting together a shopping cart. Aside from the money issue, should I know anything prior to deciding between hosting the site on unix or NT 2000? Pros/cons would be helpful.

thanks
CRO8

i think i made it before it's too late...check out this site. very informative, even if they seem to be biased.

i hope it helps.

blue
- if at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried...

Well if you want power go with the unix. If you want your boss to be able to mess up your code, and access files he should not be playing with, then I have to say the NT is the way to go

Blue, thanks for the article. I can use some of the material in case my client disagrees with hosting cost. Mage- point well taken.

CRO8

hehe. no problem. i especially like the 'bugs and high-profile failures' section. what's really funny is microsoft replaced it's own os, nt, with sun solaris' os to run hotmail. an anonymous source says, "the engineering team did its best to run nt - and failed." hehehe. they can't even get their own os to work right...

_____
blue

That's actually not even right, hotmail ran on freebsd forever and a half, until they finally managed to get a win2k cluster doing it. Do you realize what it would cost using solaris?

CRO8, there are no pros to running windows, really, there aren't. I'd suggest OpenBSD, just because its easier to keep secure if you don't really know much about unix. That and the whole free, fast, stable thing.

well, i guess you know what you're talking about...i don't keep up with microsoft. at least i try not to anyway...

free, fast, and stable is always good...

_____
blue

Hi GP, glad to see another *BSD'er here.

I'd actually recommend FreeBSD for someone new to *nix. The OpenBSD ports collection is improving fast, and OpenBSD is beyond a doubt the most secure out=of-box experience you can get. But FreeBSD's ports collection, plus the great mailing lists and archives, plus _The Complete FreeBSD_ (book by Greg Lehey), make it a better choice for the uninitiated.

The nutshell is: if you're hosting with a company, and they say they use BSD/OS, FreeBSD, or OpenBSD, you can bet that you'll get solid, stable service.

This is just my opinion and paranoid suspicions, but it comes from 10 years of microsoft experience;

quote:

---

Microsoft does not want people writing code on the microsoft platform.

---

what are my facts to bolster such a ridiculous claim?

1. COM - jeez, what a nightmare. Even Microsift doesn't know how COM/DCOM works.
2. NT - a billion lines of "if {} elseif{} elseif{} else{}" code and counting.
3. VC++/VB - here's a clue; ask a microsoft employee if they use MSVC to write
their own code?

I could go on, but you you can add your own observations, i'm sure.

the only thing i can say, being pro unix and pro win2k is:


how many times do you reboot in a week? ( via win32 platform )


that should give you the tip-off...
besides, everything made for win32 ( asp, CF.. yadda ) has been ported to the unix platform as well.

{ kat ; mmm.. a site! }

Well, I reboot maybe once every 2 to 3 weeks with my 2K system.

When I run linux, i have to reboot all of the time, mainly due to hardware problems, those who run linux... I don't remember the last time they rebooted

Can't wait for the new box to come it

My record was 5 weeks with an RS/6000 (AIX), and that was a VERY busy 1-processor machine.. My record with win2k is 2 days - and it was just sitting there... Granted, I think it's a hardware problem on the laptop, but it pisses me off none the same.

Maybe Doc should have a forum on holy wars???
Could you imagine the topics?

NT Vs. Linux?
Apache vs. IIS?
NetScrape vs. Exploder?
S-bus vs. PCI-bus?
VI vs. HTML Beauty?

We run BSD/Apache on our boxes, and it works great. We've got some Win2k/IIS boxes that we're playing with and it works ok as well. Since our infrastructure is Win2k/Active Directory based, we're going to eventually switch over to Win2k/IIS. We've run sites on both platforms, and as long as both are properly configured, they work fine. Granted, it's a little more work on the IIS side. But you do get the benefit of .asp and all that.

As for rebooting, we rarely need to reboot either system. Most of our workstations are rebooted every couple of months, mostly do to a requirement following installation/deinstallation of some software package or Service Pack.

Personally, I'm more of a Windows person, from an admin point. Hence our desire to move over to Win2k/IIS.

Hope this helps, (but realizes it probably doesn't).

Pat Richard
A pixel is worth a thousand words.
http://www.gurusnetwork.com
ICQ 23113317

You do realize that you have no idea what is in the IIS code, while you can check out the source the apache.

This also goes along with the source of BSD being freely available, while windoze is completely off limits. I would not want to trust my life blood on something that I do not have complete control over.

A split from the Apache opensource declaration is IBM's HTTPS product.
Sure, it's Apache and all, but you can't recompile the HTTPD to save your life -
they have some silly proprietary SSL mod, AND the WebSphere (WebSmear??)
Apache mods that they DON't provide the source to, causing all sorts of
compilation problems... Hell, you're better off probably running Apache / Tomcat.

ooh, did someone say uptime?

osmium        up 487+15:52,     0 users,  load  0.00,  0.00,  0.00

zirconium     up 484+21:19,     0 users,  load  0.14,  0.14,  0.16

iridium       up 411+14:56,     0 users,  load  0.04,  0.01,  0.00

time          up 379+18:41,     0 users,  load  0.00,  0.00,  0.00

mailhost0     up 379+19:16,     0 users,  load  0.00,  0.00,  0.00

mailhost      up 299+21:33,     0 users,  load  0.00,  0.00,  0.00

francium      up 259+14:38,     0 users,  load  1.00,  1.00,  1.00

intranet      up 257+23:48,     0 users,  load  0.00,  0.00,  0.00

bsdbox        up 242+14:03,     0 users,  load  0.00,  0.00,  0.00

platinum      up 237+11:30,     0 users,  load  0.01,  0.00,  0.00

erbium        up 217+16:08,     0 users,  load  0.00,  0.07,  0.07

uranium       up 125+17:01,     0 users,  load  0.00,  0.00,  0.00

These are FreeBSD boxen on my network.

and vi OWNS!

Here's an interesting argument against NT. (basically a company that offers "hacker" insurance is charging clients more if they are on NT)

I think any *nix platform is waaaaaaaaaay more developer friendly and also way more widespread I think NT us mostly the choice of IT managers than web dev peeps.

I'd run apache on a *nix box (pick your flavor) as a server but I still use Win2K for my day to day desktop. I have to it runs all the apps we use at work (Lotus Notes, word, excel)

As an aside the Hotmail argument is crap. Hotmail was developed on a Unix platform and then the company was bought by Microsoft. re-engineering the whole damn thing to work on NT would have been a huge waste of money just to run their own servers.

Also the boss messing with the files thing is also not a great argument. If you are the Admin on Win2k it is extremely flexible in its security settings. You can actually lock down files quite tightly on that platform.



Walking the Earth like Kane

In my experience the bottom line is drawn on how you use your OS. Windows seems to do a half assed job as a server (even win2K) but is a great workstation (Mine hasn't crashed once since I installed it on my new machine 3 months ago.) Just try and get a solid workstation (running a gui) on *nix, I've yet to see it done (and I'm sure there are those of you who have, somehow). There is no competition when it comes to servers running *nix of course.

Those who complain about windows NT (4 or 5) crashing every other day, either have crappy hardware or just don't know how to use the damned thing!

$.02
-D

-It never hurts to always be right-

Hotmail is just a webmail setup, its not like its some magical unix only thing. You need a webserver, a mail server, and a database server. There are several of each available for both unix and windows. And its not that it would have cost to much to try moving it over to NT, they *did* try, and NT 4 couldn't handle it. Once win2k came out they moved it over to that, there was no big "re-engineering" or any other nonsense. And you can change permissions on files in unix too, with the added bonus that most unix filesystems don't waste as much space as NTFS, don't get fragmented, and are faster. Also, staroffice will handle excel and word docs just fine, and there is a nice howto out there on using notes in linux

Drakkor:

Setting up a stable GUI in unix is the same as setting up anything else, you install it, start it, and there you go. I don't know what kind of stability problems you are talking about, but x windows is pretty good. The only stability issues I have seen are that netscape crashes all the time, its horrible. Konqueror is better anyhow though.