I am a software engineer and this is my first review on mouthshut.
Ofcourse lot of matter has been taken from the internet, but here I am trying to put forward some issues in a consolidated way.
I am using windows since NT 3.5 version and a worshipper of this potent Operating System(now onwards OS). In my career I have used Unix and its clones so I am through with Unix use. I have installed Linux. I have always stand by Microsoft products and here I will try to justify why Windows is better than any other existent OS. Firstly, why most of the people(including the judge of Microsoft trial) (https://abcnews.go.com/sections/business/DailyNews/Jackson_010629.html) hate Windows? I think the main reason is that they are jealous of the success gained by this gaint in computer OS market.
Shouldn’t we promote fair competition between OSes based on real facts but not on hearsay or gossip or some other sort of ’’common knowledge’’ which usually surrounds Windows or UNIX.
OK few facts first
- Average availability of J2EE applications is 88% according to a survey (1 day a week application is down in other words)
(https://eweek.com/article2/0%2C4149%2C1388643%2C00.asp?kc=EWMS1
02049T)
- According to IDC Windows again shows top gains in market share for 2002, followed by Linux, the rest OSes see decrease in licenses.
(https://msn.com.com/2100-1104_2-5088233.html?part=msn&subj=cdf&tag=
mymsn)
- Windows beats Linux again as far as setup time is corncerned (4.5 hours for Windows vs 7.5 for Linux Enterprise).
(https://msn-cnet.com.com/2452-7344_3-5088206.html?tag=st_rn)
Now lets see what Unix don’t tell its users. Firstly, OS is not an application. If an application fails, it does not mean that OS is responsible for the same.So if IIS has holes or crashes they would call it ’’Windows problem’’, if computer blue
screens it’s again ’’Windows problem’’, if WINS is not working ’’Windows problem’’ and so on. The common problem with so called BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death) in 90% of the cases called by hardware not being on HCL (Hardware Compatibility List) or drivers not signed by Microsoft or poorly written third party programs.
Windows built on NT kernel is extremely reliable system, there are system integrators over there which would guarantee you 99, 99% of uptime on Windows OS. I have not seen such claims from Linux distributors.
Stability:- As today is the world of internet, so let’s see the difference between IIS(Microsoft Product) with Apache(Sun Product).IIS is as stable as Apache, things which might make it unstable are usually caused (as everything else on web servers) by poorly written applications. If you would host plain ASP pages and
static content I would guarantee that IIS would run as long as any Apache.
Security:- About security. Since UNIX ’’Worshippers’’ tend to claim that they invented Internet let’s ask them who invented HTTP basic authentication, IMAP authentication, SNMP, telnet, POP3 and some other protocols relying on clear text. All that rudimentary protocols are still in use in production UNIX environments.
What authentication Win2000 comes right out of the box? Kerberos 5. How do you authenticate to read your email? Kerberos. How do you administer services? Terminal Services on top of RDP using 128-bit encryption.
Speed:- Another lie from UNIX worshipper? UNIX and UNIX applications run faster then Microsoft . Well usually this remark always comes without any prove. So far I have not seen ANY data confirming this. Here is data showing Microsoft OS and applications superiority over UNIX for web servers
(https://specbench.org/osg/web99/results/web99.html), for SQL servers (https://tpc.org/tpcc/results/tpcc_perf_results.asp,
note that Solaris implementation has 1/2 of the performance and 2x price of Windows).
People around you pushing J2EE in favour of .NET bragging and pointing out on stability and maturity of platform? Here is a survery of J2EE developers showing that average availability of J2EE application is 88% only. Which basically means that J2EE is down for 1 day in any given week.
Linux Vs Windows:- Mindcraft (which might or might not affiliated with Microsoft) decided to make a benchmark comparison between Red Hat Linux and Windows NT. Original test was dating back to 1999 and has shown that NT outperformed Linux in all tests (file server and web server performance). Of course Linux worshippers started crying (as they always do) that test was biased, that
Mindcraft are satanic organization, even Linus Torvalds himself cried about the test (https://mindcraft.com/openbenchmark.html )
In order not to waste your time: NT has shown on average 2x performance in file server tests and almost 3 times performance in web server tests.
Open Source:- You well all know that open source(Linux) is all free.
So you installed Red Hat on your machine and now you want to get updates for your machine naturally. So if you are a novice user, try to find updates on Red Hat site. I don’t really consider myself very new to computers but I was unable after 15 minutes of digging around. BUT! I’ve run several time across proposal to call them.
Free? Of course not, you need to pay. Do you want updates, please pay 60$ a year for conveniece of downloading patches. So you face $60 per year for software updates which somebody told you are ALL FREE (https://rhn.redhat.com/purchase_info.pxt). Let’s say you have you current OS for 3 years, it’s $180! It’s the price you pay to upgrade to Windows XP! And it comes with free technical support, free updates and they are easy as it can be and fully automated.
Is that all? How about you want to build a scalable web solution which uses clustering or load balancing technology, you want also to have support 24x7 since it’s mission critical system (that’s what Linux advocates pushing). How much does it cost? Free? Couple of hundred bucks? No, sorry it’s $2500.
(https://redhat.com/software/advancedserver/)
It goes further. People using Red Hat Linux are actually confirming that there would be no cost savings in moving to Linux in immediate future.
So, they say - ’’Microsoft used their monopoly to crush competition’’, ’’Microsoft using illegal practices to gain market dominance’’, ’’Microsoft is evil as it does not play fair’’. Now, let ask them the same question about decision of a couple of countries
around the world, where government mandated to use open source
software in all government IT infrastructures.
How fair is that??????