7 Reasons to Bar Windows from the Enterprise

[Brett_Tabke]

Very interesting and well presented article on the major reasons why Windows is unfit for Enterprise duty:

[entmag.com...]

1: Windows Just Don't Scale.
2: Crash Happy - You Have to Reboot a Windows Server Every Day
3: You Can't Get High-Availability Out of Windows
4: The Great Licensing 6.0 Rip Off
5: Requires A Patch-A-Day to keep Microsoft Virus and Bug Monsters Away
6: Windows is the Least Secure Platform
7: Windows Servers Are Only Good for File and Print in the Enterprise

[rogerd]

Brett, it looks like the point of the article is that these "reasons" no longer apply. E.g., from discussion of reason #1:

...Microsoft's scalability is now nearly indistinguishable from its Unix competitors.

[Chndru]

for #2...the article says

...Windows Server 2003 is, by most accounts so far, even more reliable and available.

:)

[ogletree]

I have a windows server that has been up since April and has not been rebooted except to upgrade memory and 1 or 2 patches. If you lock down your server right with a firewall and only use it the way it was designed Windows 2000 can be just as reliable. Most of the patches have to do with IE. You should not be surfing the net on your server anyway. I am sure if some novice set up a linux server it would have problems as well. If all the hackers started trying to hack non MS OS's and hated them as much they would find problems as well and there would be a need to have lots of patches. I am tired of Computer people that have all these biases that have nothing to do with fact. Network guys that tell you things as if they were fact when the information they have is based on here say and lack of expertise. They just love to trash MS because it is cool to do so.

All that said I think Bill Gates is an evil person and needs to chill out. It bugs me that they have those comercials saying that they can save millions of dollars by upgrading to Windows 2003. They say that there old OS sucked and that this new one will be so great. The old OS was Windows NT. I am not defending them because of any love for the company just wanted to get some facts out there.

I don't like to see statments like that with no evidense to back them up. Specially when i have evidense to dispute them.

[Brett_Tabke]

> Microsoft's scalability is now nearly indistinguishable
> from its Unix competitors.

Yet Microsoft can't build a search engine.
Core parts of Hotmail still run under unix.
Core parts of msn, apparently still run under unix.

Only one se has ever attempted to run off Windows (wisenut) and even that was repeatidly knocked off line under simple load.

Final proof?

No major site on the internet today will dare run a windows os front to back.

[korkus2000]

>>No major site on the internet today will dare run a windows os front to back.

I don't think microsoft.com uses anything but windows.

[bcolflesh]

No major site on the internet today will dare run a windows os front to back.

How is this assertion related to it's fitness for Enterprise Systems solutions/the article you posted?

[ogletree]

No major site will run on Windows because the people in charge have a bias based on an experiense with a workstation or a server several years ago. There is a lot of peer preasure to not use MS. Most Network guys even if they wanted to use MS would not want to risk being made fun of. LexisNexis Group uses Windows 2003 in the back end. They are a search engine. They are considered one of the best research tools out there. (if you can afford it).

Everyone chose VHS over Beta even though Beta was better. With your argument you would say Windows is the best OS for desktops because everybody else uses it. No major company out there has an all Mac or all linux at the desktop so they must suck.

[troels nybo nielsen]

Hmmm.. I tried to send a comment, but it seems that the server had problems. Let's see if WebmasterWorld's server works better:

> Another category consists of religious arguments.

"Religious"? None of the mentioned arguments are religious. It might be a good idea if the author learnt the actual meaning of a term before using it.

But it IS true that people with a holistic or religious worldview will often have a negative opinion of Microsoft.

[Brett_Tabke]

bcol, If not a single site in the Alexa top 100 run Windows front end to back end, that is part-n-parcel proof that Windows is unfit for full time enterprise duty.

>msn

remember when they found hotmail still running on parts of unix?

[bcolflesh]

I don't think Alexa is good measure of anything in particular - but I also don't want to antagonize you ;)

remember when they found hotmail still running on parts of unix?

I don't remember that - I remember that some of the servers were running FreeBSD:

www.csse.monash.edu.au/~lloyd/tildeMisc/2001/2001-MS-BSD.html

[ogletree]

That does not mena it is unfit. It just means they chose something different. I am not saying I can prove you wrong but your statment does not prove you are right. If everybody jumped off a clif that does not mean it is the best way to dry your hair.

I think the top 100 in alexa is a good list of sites that get hit real hard.

[Yidaki]

>I think the top 100 in alexa is a good list of sites that get hit real hard.

Disagreed. They just get hit by the same toolbar users.

[Brett_Tabke]

>FreeBSD

Right

[freebsd.org...]

"It is derived from BSD, the version of UNIX® "

[Marcia]

The 8th reason - IBM. IBM has always been the diva of Enterprise systems, since day 1. They had a sweet little Netfinity server as far back as 6 years ago and haven't stopped developing yet.

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103_2-5092958.html?tag=tu.hwblog.6571

http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/linux/xseries/

IBM=mainframes

[ogletree]

So you think that there is a site in the top 100 on alexa that does not have more than one server. I did not say they were the actual top 100 but I am sure they are in the top 500. If only 5 computers were causing it to be in the top 100 the server is getting hit hard. There are a ton of people on WW that have the toolbar and they are only 275. A server would have to get a lot of hits to be in the top 100.

Brett was just trying to give a list of sites that are hit hard. I don't think what he said about alexas detracks from his point. I dissagree with his point but not the alexa part.

MS benchmarks [microsoft.com]

[richlowe]

Brett, did you actually read the article? The subtitle is "Seven Bad Reasons to Bar Windows from the Enterprise". The article explains why all of these reasons are hogwash.

We've been using windows for years and 2003 is truly impressive. 2000 has been very stable and XP is an excellent desktop.

We also use OpenVMS onb ALpha and AIX on the P650 and Macintosh on a large number of desktops.

Richard

[mcavill]

[uptime.netcraft.com...]

[Brett_Tabke]

> actually read

We have a winner we have a winnner!

Check out how many responses it took to get to that point rich!

Point is proved: people DON'T read articles - they skim! You can say one thing and mean entirely another.

Look at how easy it was to flip the meaning of the entire article by dropping one word - just one word from the title.

This concludes the WebmasterWorld SEO lesson for the year.

[Yidaki]

>A server would have to get a lot of hits to be in the top 100.

ogletree, i highly doubt this. The rank numbers are pretty relative. Just those servers are taken into account which are hit by the Alexa Toolbar. Looking at some of the local ranks (country specific) the numbers say nothing about how hard a server gets hit - just look what sites are ranking top in germany ie. Not the high traffic sites you'd expect.

However, it might be *hard* for a windoze server to get hit by simple web requests since it has allready to a lot to do with all the formmail, messenger and netbios traffic. So hats off if it doesn't crash. :)

>This concludes the WebmasterWorld SEO lesson for the year.

Brett, as soon as people drop arguments, i tend to read and answer them before i read the actual initial post. Now i gonna read the article but it won't change my biased opinion about windoze servers. :D

>Macintosh on a large number of desktops.

I use them as servers allthough there are (hogwashed) arguments against this too.

[edited by: Yidaki at 7:24 pm (utc) on Oct. 21, 2003]

[Timotheos]

Point is proved: people DON'T read articles - they skim! You can say one thing and mean entirely another.

Good point. Always, always follow up on the sources.

But will we every trust Brett again ;-)

[sullen]

Lol Brett!

I used to use that trick when I was teaching!

But a good lesson nonetheless. Fabulous.

[troels nybo nielsen]

?

Am I misreading rogerd in message #2? To my naive eyes the point was already there.

[mcavill]

LOL - I wasted all that time on netcraft!

[Yidaki]

>To my naive eyes the point was already there

People skim posts too. Lol.

[rogerd]

Thanks for noticing, Troels! ;) I guess I was a bit too subtle in noting that the article said the opposite of the original post.

Don't worry, Brett, next time I'll let you have it with both barrels! ;)

[ogletree]

I actually just read the article. I made several of thsoe points without reading it. Well it was fun. I was tired of the same old posts on WW anyway. I love a good debate. I wish we had more. Thanks for the fun Brett.

[bcolflesh]

"It is derived from BSD, the version of UNIX® "

It's derived from BSD UNIX, but FreeBSD is not UNIX, as it has never been certified by Opengroup. This is common misconception.