Slashdot Log In
Sm@rtReseller and good Linux Press
Posted by
Hemos
on Fri Jan 29, 1999 10:33 AM
from the you-best-respect-me dept.
from the you-best-respect-me dept.
David E. Smith writes "The five millionth ZDNet publication, Sm@rtReseller, has a neat Linux article. Basically, given the same hardware, they ran three different Linux distributions and Windows NT and benchmarked them. Guess who won. "
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Sm@rtReseller and good Linux Press
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 93 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Graphs, yes; and it's amazingly realistic for ZD (Score:1)
Please don't take these anti-ZD criticisms personally. We've dealt with FUD from Jesse Berst and the likes for years. S@R, as you point out, has been very fair when doing reviews of Linux (with a few exceptions.) Unfortunately, the bulk of ZD articles comparing Linux and NT have been slightly to extremely FUD-filled. Thanks for proving that journalistic integrity still exists at ZD.
--
Pasc
Tuned apps comparison (Score:1)
The value of OSS is the code. Use it!
hmmmm.. (Score:1)
(Microsoft's) Maritz told Judge Jackson that a flurry of new applications and new vendors supporting Linux meant that relatively unsophisticated consumers would soon be using the operating system. As a result, he said, Microsoft would have to work diligently to keep pace with the market.
Microsoft produced a half-dozen magazine and newspaper articles to support its contention.
IIS vs. Apache and Linux vs. NT (Score:1)
Perhaps they should try some tests with NT using the win32 version of Apache.
SB16 PnP (Score:1)
No kidding (Score:1)
Substantial dynamic content test difficulties (Score:1)
Probably the best you could hope for is a very very minimal one-liner 'hello world!' program executed in the various different platforms to check how well the web server speeds through the calling process... 'best' here wouldn't describe very accurate results of course, just the best you could hope for. ;)
When it comes right down to it, nothing beats full scale implementation and use in the target environment... and if you REALLY want to have that comparitive execution thing going, get the same developer to create multiple versions of your program, run them all in parallel on equivalent hardware, and measure away. The numbers won't be terribly accurate, but for the price of multiply redundant programs you can have the luxury of choosing which one feels the best.
The samba printing test would be interesting. I've run SMB in corporate environments and have had very little complaint, but it'd be nice to see how well it'd work under a heavy-duty printer workload (Say, running a linux box as a rasterizer/spooler pushing 2400dpi 11x17 lino pages in a newspaper or printhouse somewhere). Anyone in the printing industry willing to fess up to a linux rasterizer box in the closet? ;)
--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
Apache performance (Score:1)
--
WebBench (Score:1)
--
Laughing my ass off (Score:1)
"The answer: Linux with Apache beats NT 4.0 with IIS, hands down. SuSE, the least effective Linux, is 16 percent faster than IIS, and Caldera, the leader, is 50 percent faster."
Laugh with me [zdnet.com], unless of course you're a M$ FUDster, then we'll be laughing at YOU!
Now, how about those file server stats [zdnet.com]. ZD sums it up by saying "...Linux kicks NT's butt."
Now, I'd like to see some other alternative OSs put against Linux. Maybe BSD?
Anyway, it's great that this has finally come out. We all knew Linux was superior, even the M$ marketdroids. It's been a long time in the coming. Ironic, we have ZDNet to thank =].
Infoworld: OS/2 on 1 CPU is faster than NT on 4 (Score:1)
Performance comparisons against NT always give the same result. What I would really like to see is an OEM offer two different systems for the same task, one running Linux and the other NT. Let them say that these two systems are comparable in the number of clients they can serve. And let them show that the Linux-based server is cheaper and uses older hardware. Now THAT will get people's attention.
Unfortunately, although major OEM's are beginning to offer Linux as pre-loads for servers, I have yet to see any of them PROMOTE Linux over NT. After all, a person can buy a cheaper system if he uses Linux - and that means that OEM's can't charge a premium for top-of-the-line hardware.
--
Timur "too sexy for my code" Tabi, timur@tabi.org, http://www.tabi.org
I think they should tune more... (Score:1)
Say a Proliant 6500, Quad processor, 512 Meg RAM, 100 gigs on RAID-5, etc...
That's going to be a fairly standard corporate server, and it'd be curious to see the results with say 500 client computers.
Unfortunately only a few places are going to have the hardware to do such benchmarking. I understand that Compaq has such a lab available.
Also I don't believe there was mention of what kind of netbench test that was, it must have just been static content? What about dynamic content from asp or php or cgi or whatever?
I'd also be curious how one might try to benchmark Samba as a print server. Most companies don't just install servers for file sharing, but also for printer sharing...
Illegal Benchmarking (Score:1)
Just imagine a car factory forbidding the owner to bechmark it against another car.
Nobody would buy it
This is Great! (Score:1)
I liked the linux-to-linux-to-linux comparisons but really wished more infor had been given as to WHY some distros perform better at certain tasks. I assume it's build differences, but I'd like to know what tricks you can use to speed up a certain program at compile-time.
Still, this rocks! Print out the graphs and show them to your boss!
--
Almost unfair... (Score:1)
File Servers, NT, & such (Score:1)
NT so often comes out last in performance compared to _anything_ else. It is difficult to understand why folks defend it, even here on
Almost unfair... (Score:1)
No graphs? (Score:1)
For Windows file serving, NT peaks at 8 clients and lags behind after that. Caldera peaks at 8, but much higher than NT (about 30 Mbits/sec vs. NT's 22 or so). Red Hat is basically a shadow to the Caldera line until 30 or so clients, where it is a little bit ahead. SuSE peaks at 12 or so. At the end of the graph, with 32 clients, NT has long since bottomed out at about 10 Mb/s while all three Linux distro's are still going strong in the 20-25 range.
For Web serving, all the lines stay pretty much level across the graph. At 32 clients, Caldera is still handling 70+ requests a second, Red Hat about 60, SuSE about 50, and NT about 45.
As others have said, Linux would have been even better if it had been tuned somewhat. (It'd be interesting to see how the NT box works when properly tuned also, just to make it a fairer fight.)
Graphs, yes; and it's amazingly realistic for ZD (Score:1)
Right. Do things in the proper place. (Score:1)
do things with your server? You can have your own
GUI on your own PC with Netscape... to administrate Samba remotely, a possibility now standard included.
So, no need to run X on the server. Just Apache,
which one probably would do anyway. Or an X-server on your PC. There's many ways to do a thing. But bolting a GUI to a server OS is *really* crazy.
Absolutely! (Score:1)
And I got the contract! 100 client samba server to go, on hardware that is so much more than would ever be necessary.
No Subject Given (Score:1)
Finally, a published article truly telling the world how much Linux kicks NT's butt. Too bad they didn't tell how many times NT crashed to the gound during the tests. I bet it was more than a few.
[drew@s196-237 drew]$ queso 127.0.0.1
127.0.0.1:80 * Linux 2.0.35 to 2.0.9999
[drew@s196-237 drew]$
Graphs, yes; and it's amazingly realistic for ZD (Score:1)
I was amazed at the lack of FUD, the lack on install nonsense, and the generally very down to earth tone of the entire article. Did ZD just start up this Sm@rt Reseller, or just buy it? Maybe they haven't had a chance yet to destroy it. I've seen it around for a few months, which may mean ZD stuff hasn't come out of the print pipeline yet.
--
No graphs? (Score:1)
So much for credibility. Go ZDNet.
--
ZD to review competing OSS (Score:1)
Linux beating NT but because it compares competing
OSS. For ZD and other commercial magazines to
survive they must have competing products to review. If they are ever going to support OSS
they too need a way to make money off it. Comparing different OSS products (Redhat versus Caldera, Sendmail versus Exim, or even Apache built with GCC versus Apache built with PGCC) is the way ZD can profit from OSS.
And guess what, if they benchmark properly they'd actually be doing something useful.
Linux VS NT hardware support (Score:1)
Linux (RH 5.2) works fine.
Engineering benchmarking? (Score:1)
Graphs, yes; and it's amazingly realistic for ZD (Score:1)
Steven, Senior Technology Editor, S@R
It's a typo (Score:1)
Steven, Senior Technology Editor, S@R
Skin grafts advised (Score:1)
Steven
Illegal Benchmarking (Score:1)
Not Enough Clients (Score:1)
I think they should tune more... (Score:1)
will this be used in court? (Score:1)
On the other hand they don't want to add any legitimacy to any real competition.
I don't think this article would do their case any good. How can you explain the ability to charge $800+ for a file server that is outperformed (2.5x) by a $50 linux distribution!
MS is in a position where they want to portray Linux as immature potential future competitor. To do this they don't need any articles that actually include facts. They want articles that talk about how great it is if you are a Unix genius but otherwise it's impossible to install.
CM
Windows NT requires 16 GB disk space....... (Score:1)
"Linux kicks NT's butt." --ZDNet Sm@rt Reseller (Score:1)
--------
Almost unfair... (Score:1)
Hardware support (Score:1)
Quoting article:
"Where Linux does fall behind, however, is driver support and hardware discovery. Although Linux hardware support is improving, you must check each version's supported hardware list to be certain that all of your customers' components will function properly."
The same is true of NT, I saw a video card installed in an NT system thet caused a bluescreen every time you booted. Not only that, it hosed the install and required a complete reinstall, every time. The installer later found out thet NT did not support the card. Unfortunately I do not remember what video card it was.
"Trouble is, just because it's obvious doesn't mean it's true"
not really unfair (Score:1)
"Trouble is, just because it's obvious doesn't mean it's true"
Graphs, yes; and it's amazingly realistic for ZD (Score:1)
In the few cases where I've seen FUD filled articles there, it has been opinion pieces, clearly marked as such, and they have been quick to include articles representing the opposing view.
Imagine, actual journalism from a ZD publication :-)