Date: Fri, 19 Jul 1996 22:10:02 -0700 From: "Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com" <michaelv@HeadCandy.com> To: "Marty Leisner" <leisner@sdsp.mc.xerox.com> Cc: "Craig Shaver" <craig@progroup.com>, freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Opinions? NT VS UNIX, NT SUCKS SOMETIMES Message-ID: <199607200510.WAB20472@MindBender.HeadCandy.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of Fri, 19 Jul 96 17:27:41 -0700. <9607200027.AA14374@gemini.sdsp.mc.xerox.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Really, I don't see how this is very relevant to FreeBSD anymore,
however. Further followups should really be done in private email, or
to FreeBSD-chat.
>>> ><soapbox>
>>> >I'm still trying to understand why people think they have to run NT.
>>> >There are other options, like FreeBSD and OS/2. A lot cheaper and not
>>> >made by Microsoft.
>>> ></soapbox>
>>> Because NT is a very solid server OS. It is tightly integrated with
[etc....]
>>blah, blah, blah, on and on .... del ......
>I've had very negative experiences with OS/2.
[...]
>NT is fine in many regards...but I just have an NT 3.51 installation go south,
>and the "repair" mode can't seem to find my CD-ROM...
Yes, if you toast an NT system the recover process can sometimes bite.
I have had to do clean installs occasionally. I sent email to the NT
guys about it, they loved some of my suggestions, but suggested I
write them because they have too many higher-priority things to worry
about, first. Bummer, but such is life...
>I also was writing some netbios/lanserver emulation code on another machine
>(a sun) running TCP/IP. I obviously had a bug in my program (; -)) and it
>seems I bought NT (3.51) to its knees with my bug (a panic).
>Any OS where a buggy remote application can crash the machine is suspect
>(yes, it can happen, but it points to architectural problems).
Uh, if I nuked NetBSD and FreeBSD the first time they panic'd, I'd
certainly be running something less exciting in their place.
NT is software. Software has bugs. Period. NetBSD and FreeBSD also
fall into this category.
Personally, I think NetBSD and FreeBSD are really kick-ass gotta-have-
it software. But, they're still software, and they still have bugs.
Just like NT.
I still stand by my statement that NT is the most reliable OS I have
run. And I have developed an enormous amount of respect for it, after
seeing some of the hell I've seen it run through.
In our stress labs, we beat the crap out of Exchange. NT gets the
crap beat out of it in the process. I've seen some pretty huge iron
(4 processor 300MHz DEC Alphas with a couple hundred megabytes of RAM)
pounded by and dishing out a hellish amount of RPC traffic, while a
whole rack of RAID drives are going non-stop. (We're talking about
hundreds of client machines running stress apps against a set of
servers, who are also inter-communicating and replicating data at the
same time.) And I have seen *very* few crashes. What's more, every
OS crash has had an NT guy down there debugging it shortly after it
happened. Understand that the NT guys do not take a single crash
lightly. Incidentally, this very environment is where the majority of
the fixes in NT 3.51 SP1 - SP4 where generated.
Out of curiosity, did you have any of the service packs (preferably
SP4) applied to that system you crashed? Were you able to reproduce
the crash consistenly?
>I found win95 pretty reasonable in many ways (I use it somewhat, mainly to
>run win32 applications...and I need to network with it...) In many cases
>installation was pretty plug and chug and it seems much more reliable than
>windows 3.1...
Well, yes, but Windows 95 is a multimedia home OS. We're talking
about server OS's.
>I really get miffed hearing people laud the robustness of NT and
>OS/2... I found both pale to current copies of linux and FreeBSD.
I really get miffed when I hear people dismiss NT off the cuff because
they crashed Win 3.1 or Win 95, and/or they really haven't spent any
time with NT. But, ignorance is bliss, I guess.
I also would assert that NT doesn't belong in the same category with
Windows 95 (a home multimedia OS), or OS/2 (a nice try, but... as you
noted above).
Though I love NetBSD and FreeBSD dearly, and I really get sick of some
of the dumbed-down UI on Windows, I respect NT tremendously when it
comes to running a reliable, industrial-strength OS. And I have
developed that respect solely from watching the abuse it takes without
incident, both on my test and development machines at work, and in the
environments described above.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael L. VanLoon michaelv@HeadCandy.com
--< Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free un*x >--
NetBSD working ports: 386+PC, Mac 68k, Amiga, Atari 68k, HP300, Sun3,
Sun4/4c/4m, DEC MIPS, DEC Alpha, PC532, VAX, MVME68k, arm32...
NetBSD ports in progress: PICA, others...
Roll your own Internet access -- Seattle People's Internet cooperative.
If you're in the Seattle area, ask me how.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199607200510.WAB20472>