   Nerd fits
  What is it about the capability of Windows software that gets ubernerds in such a tizzy? Lately there was an article on Slashdot that offered anecdotal evidence suggesting that W2003Server can have as much as 20% more uptime than your average Linux distro. The main reason given for this is readily available documentation allowing for shorter downtime.WELL. When the nerds caught wind of this, they just had to grab their graphing calculators and pick it apart. To say nothing of the overwhelming outrage, some posters did have the sense to mention that controlled studies are what they are. But then you have replies like this:Quote:Let's just say a Linux server has 24 hours of downtime a year (higher than the "survey" says). That leaves 364 days of uptime in a year, 365 days in a leap year. Implied in the article then, a Windows 2003 server would have to be "up" approximately 20% more to satisfy the "claim". Now, I am not a calendar "expert", but I'm having a difficult time believing that Windows 2003 server is up an average of 364 * 1.2, or 436.8 days a year. If it is, I'm buying.This must be that New Math I've been hearing about. Did no one ever set him aside and explain the concept of percentages? Hey, if there's a box of a dozen donuts and I ate 20% more than you did, it's hard to prove otherwise by saying "if I hypothetically ate 11 donuts, you ate donuts that don't exist".Sure, "20% more uptime" can mean any number of things-- but this sort of rebuttal/reasoning can only mean ONE thing.Surely someone here finds this as amusing as I did.   
  Micro$uck.   ;  ... Micro$oft clearly stole the Linux Kernel, paying with the money they got when they handed SCO a few millions to fuel their lawsuits.Edit:  After reading the article tough, you can clearly see it's a load of crap.  The article DOES say "20% more annual uptime," which CAN'T mean a lot of things.  If they said 20% less downtime, then it would be more sensible but still a load of crap.Either way, comparing OSes uptime is dumb since modern OSes do not crash under regular circumstances.  If there's a downtime, more often than not it's a network or hardware problem.  The only downtime would therefore be for applying deep system modifications.  We can all agree Linux is better in that respect, so I guess in theory you could say Linux has better uptime.In practice however, this debate is moot.   ;  Shlashdot people are a bunch of retared linux fanbois. There is nothing wrong with linux, but divine worship to the point of villifying any alternatives is a bit extreme.   ;  What's with talking about Linux users being fanboys? Is that more or less of a waste of time than talking about Linux vs Windows?To each his own? Use the OS that works for you?As for Slashdot, the only time the comments are really worth reading is when people make jokes that are just barely related to the article (excluding the "his server was slashdotted!" comments... they can burn in hell)   ;  I know gamedev doesn't like to get into debates, but I can see a few arguments for Linux...It's just a fact that you can do alot more on linux without restarting because of the higher level of control it gives you. No software on linux will actually ask you to reboot your system. But as far as uptime is concerned. It depends. If we're talking stability, some of the crashes are due to hardware failures, or physical reasons (like power outages). These are things your OS can't protect you from.I would still trust linux a bit more when it comes to stability because of its higher flexibility, giving it more of an ability to recover. If there is a bug that crashes the graphical part of windows, it might take the whole system down. But on Linux, it's possible to run a server without even running x-windows at all. You can strip the system more, making it less prone to failure, and you have more chance to recover if a failure does occur...As far as I'm concerned, I've run a windows 2000 webserver for 2 years. It never crashed. I got up to 3 months of uptime. Always ended up having a power outage or having to change the hardware. However, my system got hacked into at one point because of a security weakness in windows, and there was no windows support for the RAID adapter on my server. But anyways, it was pretty stable. On a server, as long as you don't run buggy software, you're pretty safe from crashes.Now that I run linux, it's faster because of the RAID support, and pretty much rock stable. I also like the better remote management capabilities that come with linux (eg: ssh, sftp). But I can't say it's "more stable", as my windows machine was never unstable to begin with. However, I do have less reboots now, which gives it more uptime.   ;Quote:Original post by Max_PayneI know gamedev doesn't like to get into debates, but I can see a few arguments for Linux...It's just a fact that you can do alot more on linux without restarting because of the higher level of control it gives you. No software on linux will actually ask you to reboot your system. But as far as uptime is concerned. It depends. If we're talking stability, some of the crashes are due to hardware failures, or physical reasons (like power outages). These are things your OS can't protect you from.I would still trust linux a bit more when it comes to stability because of its higher flexibility, giving it more of an ability to recover. If there is a bug that crashes the graphical part of windows, it might take the whole system down. But on Linux, it's possible to run a server without even running x-windows at all. You can strip the system more, making it less prone to failure, and you have more chance to recover if a failure does occur...As far as I'm concerned, I've run a windows 2000 webserver for 2 years. It never crashed. I got up to 3 months of uptime. Always ended up having a power outage or having to change the hardware. However, my system got hacked into at one point because of a security weakness in windows, and there was no windows support for the RAID adapter on my server. But anyways, it was pretty stable. On a server, as long as you don't run buggy software, you're pretty safe from crashes.Now that I run linux, it's faster because of the RAID support, and pretty much rock stable. I also like the better remote management capabilities that come with linux (eg: ssh, sftp). But I can't say it's "more stable", as my windows machine was never unstable to begin with. However, I do have less reboots now, which gives it more uptime.Well, you can run a server on Windows withour running explorer.  As for remote management, both offer plenty of options as to be undistinguishable (you can do pretty much anything using remote desktop).  As for reboots, well, in a typical server environment, you don't exactly install stuff often enough.  Also, most of the time, skipping the reboot in Windows is OK.<Off-topic>I know that you mapped a remote sftp server to a drive on Windows recently.  What software did you use ?  Everything I can find is rather expensive, or at least too expensive for me to consider buying it.</Off-topic>   