Linux vs. Windoze - an experiment

[DanC]

Well... as many predicted, the more I use Linux, the more curious I have become about it. I wanted to know if there was any advantage in running it on industry standard hardware.

For comparison sake, I used a Compaq Proliant 3000 dual-proc PII-450 with SmartArray 3200, and 512MB Ram.

Windoze NT Enterprise 4.0 SP 5 was running at 2.45 Mkeys/sec - and needed a reboot about once every 2 days. Annoying, but I could live with it.

Previously I had only installed Linux on PC's.... This was a pleasant surprise. It took 6 mouse clicks, and another 6 text entries - and about 12 minutes to do a complete Linux Mandrake 7.1 install. A reboot, quick NIC config, and we be crackin' on Linux.

Not a single error, nothing. Perfect one-time install and I'm getting 2.5+ Mkeys/sec. Not a stellar increase, but I was impressed with the way Mandrake handled the Compaq SmartArray. A whole OS on one CD WITH applications.... Thanks Mr. Torvald...

Now... we'll see how long she runs without a problem. I'm betting I can leave this machine up a month or more without a reboot. As happy as I am with Linux Mandrake.... NOTHING beats Klinux. I tried to run Klinux as part of the experiment, but the hardware was a little too eclectic for it. That's not KW's fault though - who could anticipate everything for a FDD distro?

 

[Poof]

DanC - if you go to uptimes.net, and sort through the various uptimes reported from thousands of systems running the uptime client, you'll see which ones have the highest...

I have a linux-based notebook with an uptime of over 6 months. I at one time, had a Red Hat 6.1 Proliant 6000, dual PPro server (similar to yours with a Smartarray controller) with an over 7 month uptime before it got hit with a > 6 hour power fail in the building.

It's an amazing OS and all for free...

 

[vss1980]

Its a shame that you aren't comparing it with Win2K. After all Mandrake is brand new yet your comparing it against a 4.5 year old OS. Hardly sporting.

 

[Poof]

vss1980, the Mandrake ver. that DanC is talking about is less than a year old. Remember, the kernel version is the "key". The 2.2.x kernel is not 4.5 years old but 2K is supposed to be nothing but NT 5.

I have win2k advanced server running on a dual Xeon here. The uptime shows up as 8 days although it hasn't been rebooted in at least 3 months. But if windud wasn't so damn buggy and screwy, the uptime feature in it wouldn't keep turning over after every so many hours/days... And I'm *still* waiting for a non-beta 3Com NIC driver for the 3C595 card in it - nearly a year later... :|

2K has a long way to go before it will truly be considered a real "Server" OS. Perhaps one day I'll be able to telnet into it to manage it remotely without needing something like VNC.

 

[vss1980]

Poof, I'm talking about Win NT 4 being 4.5 years old!!!

Stability wise, I know Win2K still has a long way to go, but performance wise, it should be faster than Mandrake 7.1 (which cant be all that old as 7.2 is out).

 

[DanC]

Actually, I have a Win2K machine running Dnet. It's virtually identical in performance to Win98SE.

My only purpose was to test server to server identical setups with different OS's.
Linux is still much easier to install - and does provide a slight performance edge on the PII platform.

 

[vss1980]

Actually, Dan, what's the comparison like on K6 and K7 based platforms when comparing the different OS's?

 

[Russ]

Both OS's have their pluses and minuses. For desktop/business systems, Linux makes ZERO sense for most people. Windows works just fine and, properly configured, is not the crash pig all the linux geeks claim it is.

For serving, networking and, most of all, flexibility, Linux is a winner. There are so many different things you can do with it, that you can't do with Windows. For one thing, every tool you can think of is right there at your fingertips.

But, Linux takes work. It is far more complicated then Windows. For me, though, this is it's attraction. Frankly, Windows had gotten pretty boring; not really much left to learn.

With Linux, I learn new stuff every day. Sometimes I want to pull my hair out, and throw my boxes in the dumpster but, hey, what's a little stress in the pursuit of knowledge?

Russ, NCNE

 

[Poof]

vss1980 - I understand that but NT with all the service packs, has been touted as the standard server while 2K gets sorted out. The latest SP is up to 7 now I believe (??), and should supposedly put it on par with the latest Linux distros.... However due to the very nature of the 2 OSes, anything that continually intertwines applications into the kernel like windoze can never have the performance of an OS that separates out those apps from the kernel.

The only thing that holds linux back with alot of the distributed computing projects is due to unoptimized linux clients that end up being released.

 

[Sukhoi]

Does anyone here have experience with TurboLinux?

I got a TurboLinux Server 6.0 Lite CD for free with my Linksys network kit. I don't have any Linux experience and I have no computers to try running it on, but I may in the future.

I'm just wondering how TurboLinux is compared to other forms of Linux, such as Mandrake.

 

[Adul]

Mandrake is a great beginer linux, but some of the other distro are dont have have much baggage. Haven't tried the other yet has I am still new to linux. Maybe when i get more familiar with it I will try some of the more challenging distro's

 

[Diffusion]

Don't be insulting Win2k's uptime, I have a P2 350 running Win2k professional with an uptime of around 3 months, with DNet running in the back ground of course, (3 months ago was when I first booted up under Win2k.).

 

[Russ]

<< Does anyone here have experience with TurboLinux? >>



Bwuahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A customer of mine bought the little Linksys switch to expand their home network of Windows machines. They couldn't get the switch working so the wife figured HMM...&quot;Maybe it needs drivers&quot;. So, she says to herself, &quot;Hey! Here's a CD that came with the switch!&quot;

Pops the CD in, boots up the system, bye, bye Windows.

Russ, NCNE

 

[Sukhoi]

LOL, I can't believe someone would do that.

Russ, have you ever tried the Soldier of Fortune game that comes with the kit? I haven't had time yet, and I was wondering if it's any good.

 

[ss59]

Hmm, just something i noticed while reading this thread. &quot;The 2.2.x kernel is not 4.5 years old but 2K is supposed to be nothing but NT 5.&quot; 2k kernel is very new and not very similar to NT variants

 

[DanC]

You know what? This System Rig thing is pretty cool....

I never thought I'd see the day when I had more processing power in Linux than windoze, but... the day has come. Added another node, and switched a Proliant over. I'm starting to actually like Linux (a little)

 

[Adul]

there is plenty to like danc, and sooo many free apps.

 

[Dennis Travis]

Dan, I did some side by side comparisons with ME, 98 SE and Win 2k Pro on the same machine with Dnet. With nothing running in the background and I mean nothing - not even the Asus probe - on my backup system which is a Celery 366 right at 366 for this test, in ME it did a constant 1.02 Mkeys and basically the same in 98SE and in 2k Pro it went up to 1.03 Mkeys. The interesting thing I noticed though, If I run anything in the background in ME or SE and that includes even the Asus Probe that monitors temps and fan speeds the rate goes down to under 1.00 Mkeys and if I surf the web it goes down even more to 930 Mkeys or less. But in Win 2k even with the same stuff running it stays almost at the same rate of 1.03 Mkeys. In other words in 2k I can do some other things and the rate does not drop much at all. I am sure Linux would do even better but I found it interesting that it dropped so badly in ME or 98. Does the same thing on my Copermine 700@900 system but of course at a much higher rate. 2k on both my systems is very stable and I can go weeks without a reboot and even then I only had to reboot because I installed something and had to reboot for the changes to take effect.

Where do you download Klinux? I want to try it on a couple of systems so I can put more systems to work cracking RC5 for Team Anandtech!!

 

[DanC]

Dennis -

You can find it Here.

 

[Poof]

ss59 - that was me who said the stuff about 2K and I said it based on my going to a seminar WAAAAYYYY back (heh... well maybe '96-'97?) about what was then called NT5 (before it was called 2k). Alot of the functionality that you see in 2K was sortof there back then, and there was all this focus on the Active Directory (a feature that had been around in Novell and Banyan VINES for years). But it was (and still is for compatibility reasons), NT at its very heart. I think they had thought about a total re-write but with the 95/98 replacement (ME) on the horizon, it was a bit much. And ME itself was supposed to originally be a re-write and it turned out they didn't have time to do it...

Only thing is, rather than create a kernel that can act independently from the applications using it, 2K's kernel has been made more bloated to help protect apps that crash on it from bringing the OS down with them... [and as an FYI, I installed the newest uptime client on my 2K this morning and it sortof contained a fix to account for win's automatic uptime turnover count that occurs after every 49.7 days of clock time...]

And Sukhoi, I have a copy of Turbo and even tried installing it on the very same Compaq Proliant dually server I mentioned earlier, before I ended up installing Red Hat on it. The Turbo I had (ver. 6.0 I think) was sortof.... well... a mess. At least with that server, although it had a nice interface that let you select the type of kernel (SMP vs single) you wanted to install. Thing is, the PNP utilities were sortof weird and I could never get it working. Red Hat 6.2 with the SMP kernel installed in a snap. The co-worker who I got Turbo from had a devil of a time getting it on his workstations at home. I would expect that the newest versions of it are better but haven't had chance to try them. BTW, Turbo is the top distro in Asia, just as SuSE is tops in Europe, and Red Hat/Mandrake are tops in the U.S.

Adul - if you want to venture out (but not get flumoxed by something like Debian - which I'm just now trying), try Red Hat. That's what Mandrake is anyway... &quot;a Red Hat&quot; (meaning the Mandrake folks took the Red Hat distro and their custom interfaces, all licensed under GPL, and modified them for themselves). SuSE is a good one too.

Interestingly enough, my MAIN workstation that I'm use to post here, surf, email, is SuSE (currently I'm running ver. 6.4, although they're up to 7.0 now). My SuSE has been rock solid and was actually the first distro I bought (ie., boxed version) and installed. I like it alot. I also have Caldera OpenLinux here, which is a cool distro as well. My other machines run Red Hat and Mandrake.

I'm still waiting for someone with windoze, to beat my 5 and 6 month uptimes cracking in Linux/NetBSD though... I'm not saying it isn't possible. I have an NT 4.0 server that was originally a Primary Domain Controller that's now sitting sortof idle (ie., not currently being used since it was replaced). It's been up at least that long. But I seriously doubt it would last that long without a reboot if it were online and in heavy use (from my experience)...

[P.S. I ain't gonna start warring with you windoze folks (*grin*) - especially since I have it running here amongst my herd and have to support it at work... ]

 

[Sukhoi]

Thanks Poof. I guess I might mess around with TurboLinux in a few years if I have any old decrepid computers, but I don't think I'll use it in the near future.

 

[Sukhoi]

Oh DanC, why do you have 768 MB of RAM in a Celeron 400 laptop? :Q

 

[Slahr Dzhe]

I can't really vouch for my machines at home, as I don't have stable power where I live. But the some of the servers at work have been up for the past 3 years, and they are running NT4 Enterprise Edition.

We also have a machine that has been up for nearly 30 years, but as you can probably guess, it is a mainframe running its very own version of Unix.

Personally I think Unix is the most stable OS... but then again, the hardware that you run Unix on is MUCH better than your standard PC hardware. As for Linux, it is a great OS, but I work with someone who can crash any machine he sits at for more than 20 minutes, regardless of OS.

SD

 

[DanC]

Sukhoi,
Sounds odd doesn't it?
It was issued to me by Compaq that way. There are those that question the DVD-ROM too.

Actually, the extra really helps with the number of applications I have a tendency to run. The Armadas like lot's 'o memory.

 

[Lord Demios]

SD, I have to agree with you.

My NT 4.0 server, had an uptime of almost a year, before I had to reboot it to upgrade it.

The truth with Linux vs. Windows, is you need to consider what the machine is for. For most people, a windows desktop for games is all they want, giving them linux would probably kill them.

I do want to correct one point. When I was an admin at the University of Utah, we got Solaris to look and feel exactly like windows. It took a lot of playing with, but you can make linux work like windows.

Right now, I am waiting for corel wordperfect to get their act together a little more, and one of my job networks, will be switching their desktops to linux.

For all of you who love mandrake, but are thinking to go to a more advanced linux os.

First, Mandrake is good for learning, but it has some real problems. I have to say, that for a linux, I don't like it nearly as much as debian or freeBSD. If you want a more server/solid Linux os, Debian is great. Not only is the stock edition setup so that EVERYTHING on it is opened sourced, but you can also download non-open sourced software with just as much ease. BSD requires you to do more work on installing software, but it's pretty nice.

Now where do we get these great distros in a nice easy to use ISO image.

From the one and only Linux ISO .org

I can help you guys with Debian quite well, and I can fumble my way around quite a few other linux distros. But if you want to switch to Debian. PM me with your questions and I will try to help ya.

LD

(PS DanC)
Next bench mark is to compair linux distros. The problem is, that Klinux is probably close to the best. All you really need to be running, but nothing more.