IBM Exec Says no Large Web Servers on Linux 251
Accidental
Angel writes "As reported in
InfoWorld, Tony
Occleshaw, IBM's software strategist for Europe, Middle
East, and Africa said at CeBIT today that
"No
one runs large, million-hits-per-day Web sites on Linux." "
Well, we served 640,000 pages on Wed on this Linux box. And the
server load is only 2.00-3.00. I figure this box can handle
around a million. The
adfu server (also Linux) did around a million hits total that day,
if you combine banner ads + layer HTML).
Guys - this is true. (Score:1)
The crashes a few weeks ago were more or less because of administration mistakes.
If not Linux, FreeBSD! (Score:1)
You like cherries?
How you like them cherries?!
Not in my experience (Score:1)
for the portal, the stuff is solid and dependable
I submit that configuration is ALL and can make or break a business, be it router/network config or local system config.
DEJANEWS.COM IS RUNNING LINUX (Score:1)
FreeBSD does it, but sucks as well - I disagree! (Score:1)
I've run several FreeBSD systems in various roles from high traffic Samba, HTTP, and SMTP servers to the not so high traffic internal servers and even on a few desktops. I've _never_ had a problem with any of these systems.
A FreeBSD install gets me a fully funtioning machine and source for all of Userland and obviously the kernel. I use CVSup to sync my source with the latest patches/updates/etc... everynight. Upgrades are as simple as 'make buildworld; shutdown now; make installworld; exit'. I've the latest system built from latest sources (That's Userland and KernelLand) - You can't do that with Linux, at least not with any distro I've ever seen.
The ports collection makes installation of 3rd party software a breeze. The 'pkg' system on FreeBSD keeps track of dependencies, allows me to build from source, and always gives me a perfectly functioning binary in the end. The 'pkg' database is also _far less fragile_ than RPM.
I ran Linux for years before I made the switch to *BSD. I left Linux because administration was such as pain. Since I've run FreeBSD I've been completely free of most of my administration tasks, these boxes "Just Work".
Not in my experience (Score:2)
part of a team managing a major e=commerce
venture running OpenMarkets Transact on solaris
2.6. Admittedly the machine was initially poorely
configured, but the thing was still seriously
unstable, and it was running on two sun E3000s'.
Frankly for mission critical stuff I would go for
linux solely because I know the kind of probs it
can have, and canget community help to solve them.
Guys - this is true. (Score:2)
It has NEVER crashed due to the web traffic. It has crashed a few times (4-5) during the last two years due to old, cheap and flaky hardware, but that's hardly something you can blame the OS for... (the little downtime there is doesn't warrant me buying new hardware yet)
At the same time, the machine serve as a mailserver, and as my personal toy machine for misc. web projects that involve frequent gcc compiles etc.
So Linux can't handle millions of hits a day?
The problems Slashdot have had in the past, I suspect are more a result of extremely dynamical pages. Most sites stick with a bit more static content.
1Mhit/day is no big deal (Score:1)
Note that the above is the average over a ~2 month period (ie peek values are much higher).
Of course, I wouldn't want to run the above server with Apache or similar. :-)
REAL NETWORKS (Score:1)
internal-roxen-roxen [realnetworks.com] gives a hint...
OK, why is slashdot so slow? (Score:1)
I wish I had the chance to work on a million+ hit web site but so far i haven't been exposed to it. At the other end of the spectrum, I have setup a 386 with 8 MB of ram and a 90 MB drive ... it acts as a firewall for 50 PC clients and blows the doors of the Windows solution that was there before (both speed and reliablity). My stripped down Debian install uses only 33 MB of disk space! I would think that efficiency on low end hardware should translate into good performance on high-end equipment as well.
BSDI (Score:1)
I once administrated windows95.com on a P90 with 32MB of ram running Apache 0.8.X, using BSDI, and it ran like a champ topping our T1 out at around 2 million hits/day(peaked at 4M/day frequently).
There was quite a bit of kernel and apache tweaking involved, but it makes a statement for these technologies.
Guys - this is true. (Score:2)
tech limits (Score:1)
"If you run a commercial UNIX, you can expect close to linear scaling with multiple processors as everything is done very fine grain."
I have to disagree with you; unless you are running code that fits almost completely into the L2 cache you will not get anywhere near linear scaling with ANY OS - I don't care which one (yes, huge L2's help a lot, but I'll bet Linux 2.2 would also fly on an 8-way Xeon with 2Mb L2 cache each).
You have to remember that with shared memory SMP the processors have to share access to the main memory; and while the memory bandwidth does not get reduced to 1/N (N=number of CPU's) it does approach 1/N more closely with every CPU added...
Depending on the locality of reference, ignoring kernel locks, a big (>= 512k) L2 cache will give you about 90%-95% cache hits for workstation loads, but for server code you spend more time shuffling data for I/O or doing database searches; hardly L2 friendly. I doubt that more than 70%-80% of memory accesses are served out of the L2 cache on a big server.
Processor contention for memory resources can cause a drastic slowdown; a friend of mine once saw a dual processor box perform at 60% (yes, slower!) the speed of a slower single processor box! (there is an article about that [cpureview.com] on my site)
IBM (Score:1)
OS/2.
Enough said?
More details PLease? CT or Matts (Score:1)
Guys - this is true. (Score:1)
They have TONS of differences. Just because FreeBSD can do something, does not mean that Linux can do it (and vice versa). FreeBSD generally seems to be better at being a server. (witness cdrom.com's record-setting FreeBSD server).
Check his email address )No text) (Score:1)
The problem is on your end (Score:1)
Have you considered your phone lines/isp? It's fine on this T3 connection.
-W,W.
Since we're dissin' /. already (Score:1)
I have to note that the two slowest things about
1) adfu.blockstackers.com is INCREDIBLY slow. I usually have to hit cancel to be able to see the page (which is fully loaded otherwise). This is unacceptable in a banner.
2) images.slashdot.org sometimes does the same thing.
AND, since I'm already on the topic of banners:
/. Feature Idea: Since I have icons turned off, I'd like be able to move the banner to right next to the page title (assuming I have to see it at all). This would give me an extra inch at the top of the window allowing an extra story.
tech limits (Score:1)
the hotmail web page is run on free bsd while their mail servers are run on linux
E3000? (Score:1)
qualify this as a 'major' e-commerce venture?
You know you've been playing too many games... (Score:1)
"nice" SMP and other nonsense (Score:1)
Security is OpenBSD's forte.
FreeBSD happened to be better able to handle brutal loads when Yahoo was setting up shop.
"Nice" SMP is bullshit. Either kernel threads work or they don't. That's all there is to it.
(well, as of 2.2; SMP on Linux 2.0 was poorer)
If you want ultimate scalability and reliability you buy a mainframe. If not, you're taking your chances with hardware that is "only" singly or doubly redundant.
And another thing (Score:1)
This guy probably has to sell AIX (poor SOB) and doesn't want to admit that its JFS is the only good thing about AIX. (yes Virginia, DFS sucks)
IBM ought to concentrate on
1) mainframes in back, and
2) Netfinity boxes running tuned Linux kernels in the middle;
and let the desktop maroons choose their own OS.
I.e. put Linux on a Thinkpad and sell it, now.
Fuck, I'd buy one. (the VArBook 120 is $4000 and my old PowerPC notebook has booted its last)
Stupid ass infighting. IBM is so close to (yet so far away from) the unity it needs to dominate without manipulating the market (ala Microsoft).
Oracle is per-user for deployment (Score:1)
Unlike Oracle, Sybase offers technically adept users the chance to run an older version for free, for full deployment (unsupported of course).
Personally I don't see anything wrong with running the site on MySQL. Oracle is not bug free, Sybase is not bug free, DB/2 is not bug free, and Informix is not bug free. They're just big and baroque, and have been tested for longer.
Postgres is the One True Free RDBMS (Score:1)
Second, it handles transactions.
Third, it is actively developed.
Unfortunately, it has some shortcomings and is not "industrial-strength" in some areas. Plus it's wicked slow. (wait, a wicked slow RDBMS -- that's redundant!) However, for applications that are multiple-read, multiple-write, it is the only choice that's Free. MySQL is appropriate for multi-read, single-write, but not transactions at the enterprise (eg. bank, hospital) level.
Let's blame our configurations! (Score:1)
root@dogbert [~] cd
root@dogbert [fs] cat inode-max
8196
root@dogbert [fs] echo 10240 > inode-max
root@dogbert [fs] cat inode-max
10240
root@dogbert [fs]
Is that what you consider a "recompile?" Perhaps you're berating older versions of the kernel. Would you serve a million hits off SunOS 3? Is it relevant?
This is a lie. (Score:2)
Linux and current hardware of the Intel IA32 or Alpha or Sparc generations have no problems saturating a 10 Mb connection for an entire day, week, or year. Of course, as you add in server side dynamic content, memory bandwidth and CPU requirements jump. It's the server manager's responsibility to make sure the hardware can meet the demands; if you need more CPU because you wrote scripts that require it, either tune your scripts or buy a faster CPU. Cluster your machines, do some DNS tricks, and farm out your web jobs. Perhaps invest in an SMP Alpha machine with plenty of I/O bandwidth an RAM. These are all server manager duties, and because so far the operating system has posed no problems, there is no call to "blame" the operating system for any of it.
I would love to debate your argument on purely technical terms, instead of hypothetical duties and theoretical loads, but you don't seem to present any technical arguments against Linux. In fact, I would classify all your current arguments as FUD, plain Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.
There's your standard FUD. "Oh no, there was a HUMAN ERROR in the past, what would happen if we extrapolated that to some fantasy future scenario and blamed it on the COMPUTER? Things would be mighty scary, indeed! Run from Linux, it is all things evil!" I'll tell you what would happen if Linux was serving an e-commerce site. Since this company has a brain or two, they have a backup web server, mirrored RAID systems, and do nightly backups. The main box goes down, the system administrators' beepers go off, they run into work, and see that the backup has automatically taken over web services for IP www.xxx.yyy.zzz. They get the original web server back on its feet, do some internal testing, sync the disk contents, and turn it back on. They go back home.Say the company wasn't so smart, didn't have secondary machines, and had to deal with not meeting performance. The system administrators, knowing the server scripts and hardware, would then look for things to optimize. Perhaps the machine needs more RAM, so it gets it, and they go home.
If the machine isn't running in an hour, and the company loses a million dollars, then the system administrators are told they are now free to find other jobs.
Tell me where, in those situations or others you may know, where Linux was a limiting factor here (I can only touch these hypotheticals because I have never seen Linux fail to serve content becuase it was suffering from any operating system problems). Mr. Sergeant don't include a single example of where a server didn't meet its expected load; I can only assume he's being compensated for his words by some third party. I would love to find out where he works, and what he's done with his life, but last I checked, his posted web address simply fetched a nicely printed Microsoft ODBC database connection error.
I almost forgot to include your "inodes and shit" argument. Since no one here knows what you meant by that, and don't appear ready to explain, I can only guess that you are talking about maximum volume sizes of ext2 partitions on 32-bit machines. These are 32-bit architecture limitations, and here's a tip: get better hardware; buy an Alpha. Perhaps you want smaller inode _block_ sizes? Perhaps larger? Use a different filesystem, or at least give me a single, detailed, technical argument in favor of your sanity.
FUD? (Score:1)
Linux does 64 processors, too. (Score:1)
Only on Sun boxes, but it is true.
Plus, we have the (hands down) fastest network layer and process creation times.
try again (Score:1)
the mail servers are Solaris
no, only a grain (Score:1)
Your bandwidth problems... (Score:1)
...do not constitute a Linux flaw on our part.
17 database servers. (Score:1)
What about multi million hit NT servers? (Score:1)
This is grand news for linux!! (Score:1)
IBM is way too big to focus 100% on something. OS/2 users know this first hand. The people within IBM who talk to the press are seldom technical people, they are seldom technically competant... This was one guy and linux probably competes with what he sells, he struggled and struggled to learn his product or get funding for it or something and now a free system is going to step on his turf? Not in his mind yet. This will get worse, IBM makes a lot of products that compete with linux and the people in those organizations are going to resist it. IBM also hires a huge number of "programmers" who only know Visual Studio and MFC, wait until you hear what they are going to say about linux when they start talking, it will boil your blood. This all just means that people are noticing linux and people are being expected to support it, it's really good news.
In some respects his statments are correct, I don't think most thinkpad customers would be into linux at this point. Even with gnome and kde and staroffice and all the great stuff, it's still a little nerd oriented. On the server end, linux is awesome but it still hasn't proved itself under heavy fire, IBM ran the olympic site with absolutely huge amounts of traffic and it all kind of worked. Linux has run some big sites but not that big, yet. The people who pulled off the really big stuff will be the last to accept linux.
IBM is not a monolith... (Score:2)
Everyone here is taking the approach that IBM is some sort of monolithic entity, as if one person at IBM being interviewed is speaking for IBM as a whole.
I really doubt this is the case. IBM is, IMHO, more like a bunch of companies flying in loose formation. And fighting much of the time.
If IBM had any unity at all, OS/2 might have beaten Windows on the desktop.
This is just a way for one Pointy-Haired Manager to say something that serves two purposes:
I doubt this person cares at all for how IBM does; he'll trade that away just to see his division out in front.
His idea of "burying the competition" means taking market share (or simply destroying the market share) of a division down the hall.
This is why everyone uses Windows instead of OS/2, and why, if IBM as a whole doesn't do something to deal with its unity problems, it'll wind up like Digital is now, IF they're lucky.
Phil Fraering "Humans. Go Fig." - Rita
tech limits (Score:2)
Of course, one would wonder how many people require that kind of scale, but businesspeople are (rightly, so) anticipating insane scalability requirements over the next decade as the herd "gets on the Net".
While DejaNews does scale well, I think he's probably talking about more than database access here: we're talking commerce transactions and decision support systems (with complex querys).
There are some things that are so large that you'd probably *want* to buy a Sun or Alpha box. Solaris is an excellently designed OS (and the source code is available to prove it)... Linux on those boxes probably would do a decent job too.
Whether this will be true down the road (Linux 2.4/3.0) is another story.
This also isn't just about scale, it's about reliability. Nothing is completely reliable of course, even amazon.com goes down the odd time.. BUT.. Slashdot *HAS* had some noticable reliability problems in past (mostly due to MySQL if I recall correctly). Sun boxes are known for their reliability vs. Intel boxes where unless it's a 1st tier vendor you don't really know the quality.
just my 2c
Linux 1,000,000+ hits/day sites (Score:1)
Are you sure that those would be anywhere near 1million hits/day? I mean, /. is "only" 600khd, and I can't imaging that they would be hit as much as /. is.
Sure, they get a lot of ftp traffic too, but ftp traffic doesn't count toward hits/day. (Besides, ftp traffic is "easy" compared to most web traffic.)
This doesn't make sense to me... (Score:1)
There is more than a grain of truth to this. Linux doesn't scale to a 64-processor, multi-GB RAM, multi-TB disk systems. It is just that these same people don't realize how much you can do with a 4-processor, 1GB RAM, 200GB disk Linux box, and how many PC users would think that is a large server.
Guys - this is true. (Score:1)
Sorry, I love Linux (and
This is a lie. No it's not. (Score:1)
It required a kernel recompile and a reboot. So there.
And to the other guy talking about static HTML - I'd trust Win95 or an Amiga to a static HTML site. That's not something to go by - any machine can serve 2 million static HTML pages a day.
Actualy smart (Score:1)
IBM has 3 other high end server OSs. AIX, OS/400 & OS/390. I they put Linux in the same market they just fragment themselves more and loose money. Let them call Linux a low end server. It doesn't matter because people who deploy high end servers can dig through hype OK. If they couldn't NT would have supplanted AIX long ago.
Linux doesn't need to be marketed on the high end. It just needs to be sold and supported. VA Research ships 8 CPU boxes next month. Linux care supports them immediately and IBM gets to discover high end Linux when it owns the market
REAL NETWORKS (Score:1)
Thisisarealoperatingsystemfromthefreeworld1.2alph
Linux users include Slashdot, register.com, and Deja News.
====
http://www.netcraft.com/cgi-bin/Survey/whats?ho
====
It's probebly Appache. but boy did they customize
How to fight FUD (Score:1)
For instance Dataquest among others routinely publishes rankings of market penetration of various computer manufacturers products in a variety of different markets, or of operating systems into various broad application areas. From this a manager can read these published results and point at a source which states that the penatration of Windows NT into the million+ hit per day web server market is 99 and 44/100 percent or whatever the results say. These results are made from a poll of approximately 10000 companies.
Here's where Linux runs into problems. Linux in general probably isn't even mentioned in the survey questionaires handed out to the various I/S managers who report these things to Dataquest. The sites most likely to be surveyed are also least likely to be polled by the Gartner Group, the people who run Dataquest. Slashdot for instance, while providing a valuable service to a rather large segment of the internet community doesn't register as a blip on their radar. It's just a few guys running a server as a hobby or if they're feeling kind a small business.
Even if linux results were tallied there is a good chance that it would be further sub divided by distribution. So for instance, Red Hat would be a seperate operating system, Debian would be, Slackware would be etc. This might be fixable if these companies referred to themselves as value added distributors of Linux loudly enough that Linux is the product and RedHat, Debian et al become distributors.
To help Linux be visible in polls it would be useful if a non profit company or co-operative were created which the various small businesses who rely on Linux could operate under. All of the information on servers, database size, web hits etc. would then be collated by this pseudo-company and delivered to the various fact finding organizations. Maybe small fees to be member (and to keep the company legally on the up and up) from which the entity can become an official client of one or more of the services.
Doesn´t Deja News use Linux? (Score:1)
They must take millions of hits per day.
Maybe the exec just doesnt know which sites run Linux because they dont get shouted about.
Clue Hammer? (Score:1)
Are there any "1,000,000 transactions" sites? (Score:1)
Nice try there, but no dice... (Score:1)
A trained monkey could do the same thing as you just described at any corporation you could name. Nobody in their right mind would do that- and that doesn't constitute "fickle" or capricious. To attribute what you just claimed to that is intellectual laziness on the part of the claimee.
However, having said that, I will agree to some extent that this is all due to a percieved fickleness to the OS. Something we're going to have to work on for IBM.
Oracle on Linux is NOT free. (Score:1)
IBM is too big (Score:1)
IBM (Score:1)
There is no "They" from IBM. You won't get a consistent opinion from everyone at IBM, merely different opinions from different heads of divisions. The clown who said this will be corrected, eventually. Assume the opinion comes from a much smaller company who has never dealt with the Americas. If you want to know how HUGE companies appear to the public, read this;
http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-1999-03
Microchannel (Score:1)
Microchannel was the pre-cursor to today's video board design: Peripheral device intelligence reduces the load on the CPU. IDE vs. SCSI, no? It was a good idea.
The only bad idea was that they tried to make money by licensing the design. VHS vs. Beta?
nope (Score:1)
---
More details PLease? CT or Matts (Score:1)
While not an expert here is my thought...
I have heard that high end databases use there own filesystem for the database, and therefore don't have problems with clusters or inodes. On the other hand I think MySQL uses the linux filesystem for its database, and therefore is subject to the limits of the files system. So, rather than being a kernel problem this would actually be an issue of using a database not designed for the load being put on it.
This doesn't make sense to me... (Score:1)
tech limits (Score:1)
I think there are some scalability limitations with linux right now.
3,000,000 hits per day here! (Score:1)
Slashdot's Pretty Fast... (Score:1)
11M / 7 days / 300 = 5,238 (Score:1)
I'm not so sure on this. Maybe Slashdot Slashdot? (Score:1)
You need to remember something though.
/. != Linux.
Yes Slashdot is running on Linux. But CT is always playing around with it. Also, as the kernels improve, so too should performance.
Slashdot tested in on it's new box fairly solidly, and the errors received were more due to bugs in the code for the pages than from any load-up on the kernel.
I propose that we attempt to Slashdot Slashdot.org with all our might for a solid week. Just to test the stability of the box under heavy-duty loads.
The only reasons the IBM people are saying "nobody runs it on million-hits-per-day servers" is because:
{Pokes CT in the shoulder}, HEY ROB! YOU LISTENING?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Where on earth do you work? (Score:1)
... then use junkbuster or squirm+squid (Score:1)
If you use a proxy you wont ever have to see adfu again (I don't). Rob isn't going to advertise this - he makes money off the ads, after all. You're expected to know better. For those that don't, well, deal with the ads.
I haven't seen a adfu ad for months; /. is really fast for me, all the time. Well, during peak hours it might be a little slow.
what about postgres? (Score:1)
Guys - this is bogus. (Score:1)
$ ll access_log.1 access_log.2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 215507840 Mar 20 01:05 access_log.1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 214266973 Mar 19 01:06 access_log.2
$ wc -l access_log.1 ; wc -l access_log.2
1083612 access_log.1
1079518 access_log.2
$ uname -a
Linux server 2.0.36 #1 Tue Nov 24 05:29:56 PST 1998 i686
And so, please pay no attention to the funny man with the "Thimk" license plate -- it is mearly more silliness from the people who brought you Microchannel(tm).
-}Creon
IBM questions Linux's scalability? (Score:2)
Right tool for the right job -- don't expect a smallass Pentium to go up against big iron, whatever the operating system. But provided you're willing to throw the right hardware at it, Linux can compete against the "big boys" just fine.
This is at least highly bogus (Score:1)
Would this also mean that if Linus (or whoever worked on that piece of code) would have set a higher limit then you would consider linux suitable for a million pages a day ?
Is it just me or do your statements just merely indicate that Rob and you spent a night hacking and cursing until you found why MySQL bombed and that you are pissed that it was just because of a silly, unnecessary limit set in the kernel?
I'm glad you helped Rob getting Slashdot to work but please let your unpleasant experience not obscure the view on the whole issue. You can say you wouldn't run a high end web server on a plain vanilla RedHat/Debian/Suse/@&^%$&^% install, and everybody would agree. You could argue that there should be an easy to understand kernel configuration option "Configure for server [y/N]" that would raise some limits, and most of us would agree.
The bottom line I seem to be getting here is that a lot of people got linux based high traffic web servers working after some tweaking, but there appear to be different opinions on how much tweaking is acceptable. This could be easily solved by releasing a distribution that is configured for high end servers (higher limits, some desktop stuff removed, basic server packages preconfigured and running, serial console, firewall,
Jennicam.org (Score:1)
That why IMDB, TuCows, and JPL run Linux, right? (Score:1)
But don't we just forget FreeBSD which has what might be the fastest tcp/ip stack for that kind of hardware. Just look at this nice bast*rd of ftp.cdrom.com who didn't let me in just because there were already 3600 users logged in. I guess this beast just explodes regularly most records and NT clusters Microsoft (r) can find.
--
FreeBSD does it, but sucks as well (Score:1)
muuuuaaaaaaarrrhh.
sorry, just kidding.
--
xoom.com running redhat linux (Score:1)
they get a million hits a day easy and they run
redhat linux
Slashdot performance... (Score:1)
I DO THIS EVERY DAY! (Score:2)
I wrote this in reply to that article: (Score:3)
get millions of hits a day, and Linux handles the load perfect, without
complaint, and without problems or crashes. In fact, we use an Irix box
for a file server on some of the sites and THAT machine crashes
frequently.
As far as we are concerned, Linux is the best investment our
company has made. The machines it runs on are cheap and plentiful. The
operating system is low cost and very fast and reliable.
I think IBM is wrong when they say it shouldn't be used in these
situations.
In addition, we also use Linux on the desktop for almost all
employees. (There are a number of people in the company who need Word and
so they don't use Linux.)
IBM mainframe competition (Score:1)
IBM (Score:1)
Guys - this is true. (Score:1)
Nobody is going to bet a serious business on an OS where they can tune the kernel to meet their particular needs that easily?
You don't have the slightest clue what you're talking about.
A serious business won't rely on an operating system where you *CAN'T* tune the kernel that way.
I work for FedEx. We have recompiled kernels to meet specific needs thousands of times.
Are you meaning to suggest that FedEx isn't a serious business? I bet we do more business every day than your company does in a year.
Huh? Pardon my cheese? (Score:1)
and we have SMP, for 4-8+ way fun.
Oooo, 8 whole processors!
It gets awful after 4, sorry; circuit-switched SMP is like that, and always will be.
Solaris scales well up to 64 processors right now, and the stuff in development is orders of magnitude beyond that. (Can't say more, under NDA, sorry.) HP-UX is the same way.
Linux kicks ass on the low-end box, and when you put lots of low-end boxes together in a Beowulf cluster you can kick the pants off the big boys in terms of bang for the buck, but let's not do ourselves the disservice of calling it all things to all people on all platforms. That's Microsoft's style.
Linux does 64 processors, too. (Score:1)
Linux does 64 processors, too. (Score:1)
Here's what Linus Torvalds has to say on it, from his section in Open Sources:
Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) is one area that will be developed. The 2.2 Linux kernel will handle four processors pretty well, and we'll develop it up to eight or sixteen processors. The support for more than four processors is already there, but not really. If you have more than four processors now, it's like throwing money at a dead horse. So that will certainly be improved.
But, if people want sixty-four processors they'll have to use a special version of the kernel, because to put that support in the regular kernel would cause performance decreases for the normal users.
In other words, Linus says EXACTLY the same thing I do! So grow up and stop doing Linux the disservice of claiming it's all things to all people. That's the tactic that's shooting Microsoft in the foot right now.
Make them retract their statement (Score:1)
-El C.
Guys - this is true. -- Or is it? (Score:1)
IBM Unity (Score:1)
I'm not sure if IBM really "unity", because they are just too damn big to sell an integrated solution like Microsoft does. If they did, it would be centered around the big iron mainframes, because that's where their money is. (And that is what they tried to do with OS/2 1.x.)
Just the fact that they sell a Unix solution and are considering x86/PPC Linux prove that a little disunity is good over at IBM. (Although, let's face it, most of their revenue is from the installed base.)
--
FreeBSD does it, and better. (Score:1)
Anyhoo - administration is simple for anyone with a moderate unix background. And, FreeBSD has been proven again and again to be able to handle higher loads with greater stability than Linux.
17 linux servers running DejaNews? What does that prove? 17!??
-lx
What are you smoking? (Score:1)
It is very sad to see that many suits seem to think the way you do and take decitions based on irrelevant stuff.
AFC.
tech limits (Score:1)
And let us not forget: the godhead search-engine Google [google.com] runs on Linux. I bet they get more than a lousy million hits a day.
Linux 1,000,000+ hits/day sites (Score:1)
e;
More details PLease? CT or Matts (Score:1)
This is a lie. No it's not. (Score:1)
Linux doesn't scale to a 64-processor... (Score:1)
we almost do it (Score:1)
I agree with the posters who have already said that IBM probably doesn't give a damn about Linux competing with AIX. I believe that the reason they're offering Linux as an option is because of the unbelieveably huge amount of publicity and hype that has recently been thrown around the OS.
(I personally believe that most of the publicity and hype is well-deserved, but that is of course just an opinion)
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Paranoid
Realnetworks (Score:1)
Those people piss me off.
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Paranoid
nice try. I have a cable modem (Score:1)
And within the last week, I've read slashdot at each of the 24 hours a day contains.
Seriously, check your own setup.
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Paranoid
It may be your browser (Score:1)
Realnetworks (Score:1)
tech limits (Score:1)
About slashdot's stability, read rob's explanations of what happened. The instability usually falls under one of two categories:
1. mySQL crashed from some bug in it.
2. Rob saying, "noone should ever give me the root password to anything"
Solution to 1: use a better database. mySQL isn't built for great scalability or much complexity, though the way that it is handling slashdot on not very much hardware is a decent testiment to it's scalability.
Soltuion to 2: Don't give rob your root password. I.e., make sure to hire qualified administrators. This isn't a dig against rob, but I think that even he'd say that it isn't a fully qualified administrator for this kind of site, though has learned a great deal and is learning. (I'm not calling myself a qualified admin either, btw, so this isn't any sort of attack.)
FreeBSD does it, but sucks as well (Score:3)
Its all in what your used to I think, not really an issue of true useability but rather human limitations in how we 'stick with what we know'
Actually.... (Score:1)
The argument about whether or not Linux can serve a million hits a day sort of misses the point: a million hits a day, in the grand scheme of things, doesn't require very high-end hardware. I'm pretty sure a two-processor Sun UE 450 could handle that with no problem, and that's a *workgroup* server. You'd need throughput of about 4MB/second for the peak, including processing....yeah. Should be doable.
Guys - this is true. (Score:1)
IBM (Score:3)
I can easily imagine an AS/400 manager thinking that Linux is his chance to make his machine even more relevant to the world. I can also imagine anyone who sells CICS or IMS or other highly proprietary software seeing Linux as just another enemy. (Someone in this position would be an ally of Java and EJB, however.)
IBM will never be "on our side". Their interests may, in some situations, align with ours. Let's hope there are many such situations.
I strongly recommend "Big Blues, The Unmaking of IBM" by Paul Carroll. It shows how a combination of arrogance, incompetence, and infighting led to the dominance of Microsoft at IBMs expense. You can't read this and not begin to see Microsoft emulating IBM. The book is also fascinating because it shows how a big, scary company can do such a consistent and thorough job of shooting itself in its foot over an extended period of time. Due, primarily, to "not getting it".