"Out of this cauldron was born the CONVENTIONAL WISDOM! that said, that NT would be the only OS left standing in a few years.

"Which brings me to my (real) point. It is irrelevant to compare NT and Linux as enterprise-ready operating systems, because neither system is enterprise-ready. In the future both will be, but for now, the enterprise belongs to Solaris, HP/UX, AIX and other Unix systems. Those 30 years of experience do count for something after all. Even Microsoft isn't rushing to replace enterprise Unix servers with NT yet."

Complete story. ' ,'author' => 'dwj' ,'postdate' => 'Oct 11, 1999, 01 :39' ,'keywords' => '' ,'sn' => '10980' ,'showauth' => '0' ,'news_src' => 'Rob Yampolsky' ,'ltsn' => '1999-10-11-002-05-PS' ,'reads' => '4828' ,'seenon' => '' ,'seenon_url' => '' ); $arr_talkback = array( '0' => array( 'tbsn' => '10980' ,'date' => 'Oct 11, 1999, 02:30:24 ' ,'name' => 'Bojan Smojver' ,'email' => 'bojan@binarix.com' ,'subject' => 'Only if...' ,'comment' => 'Only if you define "enterprise computing" as high-end, never-stop, fully fault tolerant, hot-swap-all, above $1,000,000 systems.

On the other hand, you can define "enterprise computing" as all computing you do in an enterprise. In that case comparison does make sense. And there are a few things that Linux does really nicely. Services like DNS, FTP, HTTP, even SMB, firewalls, VPNs etc. are there for free. They have a problem or two but so does NT.

Easy administration of NT? Maybe you should read a few Microsoft Knowledge Base articles (http://support.microsoft.com/support/search/c.asp?). The procedures in there are no different to most Linux HOWTO's (except HOWTO's are written with a sense of a humour). As far as "regular" administration goes, for a good administrator GUI vs. "vi" is only a matter of preference. It is about understanding how things work, not about the interface. That's more of a "typical user" dilemma.

Apart from that, good article.

Bojan' ,'sarr' => '0' ,'dord' => '0' ,'rdep' => '0' ) , '1' => array( 'tbsn' => '10980' ,'date' => 'Oct 11, 1999, 02:30:47 ' ,'name' => 'Ken Broadfoot' ,'email' => 'kpb@efn.org' ,'subject' => 'Windows with the Desktop?' ,'comment' => 'The author says that Windows will own the desktop for "Years to come".

Perhaps, however I do think that as Linux becomes more popular and "accepted" amongst the masses then other Desktop OS'es will gain credibility and cut into the Microsoft market share. I specifically mean BEOS, and MacOS.

The iMac is nearly the perfect thin client machine. ( Except Cost ) and BEOS is well on it's way to kicking some serious butt as a workstation.

Imagine your favorite games on a BEOS box.....


And I am not counting Linux out either. Perhaps not as a gaming box but as a corporate thin client, with Star Office etc... The TCO for large companies to do this should also cut MS share.

I bet when it is all said and done, Windows will simply be the OS you run Flight Simulator on.' ,'sarr' => '100000' ,'dord' => '1' ,'rdep' => '0' ) , '2' => array( 'tbsn' => '10980' ,'date' => 'Oct 11, 1999, 03:09:58 ' ,'name' => 'Mel Sindayen' ,'email' => 'msindayen@operamail.com' ,'subject' => 'NT vs Linux' ,'comment' => 'Finally some thing that makes sense ...

I personally believe that all this hype about NT vs Linux - whoever is better should be stopped. Even Linus himself cautioned the Linux community. If you would like to see whoever is better try it at your own. Nobody is gaining points on this, only Microsoft.

I am a Windows user and personally have been using Linux for 5 months now and it's been a combination of success and failure. There are things that we take for granted in Windows that is not quite as easy in Linux. Let us remember that people who develop Windows do it for money whilst Linux, for the love of it. In Linux development there are no timelines, no commercial pressure telling you that these features should be included etc etc.

Linux is gaining ground not because of company paying ads but because there is discontent among Windows users.

Microsoft is a big company with a lot of resources and I believe that it should do its part by PAYING ATTENTION to is product and what people are saying about it. And, NOT do comparison which OS is better. There is quite a number out there and frankly each one is not a cure for all.' ,'sarr' => '200000' ,'dord' => '10' ,'rdep' => '0' ) , '3' => array( 'tbsn' => '10980' ,'date' => 'Oct 11, 1999, 03:15:48 ' ,'name' => 'Matt' ,'email' => 'mcorey@itsnet.com' ,'subject' => 'Say it ain't so!!!' ,'comment' => 'According to all of the NTophytes that I work with, the only reason that anyone would use a "legacy system" like (Insert favorite un*x flavor here) is to be forced. Heaven forbid that the actually like working on it! Most of them haven't figured out that a GUI-builder and a compiler are two different things, even if they are packaged together. ' ,'sarr' => '300000' ,'dord' => '11' ,'rdep' => '0' ) , '4' => array( 'tbsn' => '10980' ,'date' => 'Oct 11, 1999, 03:43:05 ' ,'name' => 'dinotrac' ,'email' => 'dinotrac@compuserve.com' ,'subject' => 'A lot of Unix, but that's not all...' ,'comment' => 'A whole lot of serious enterprise computing still being done on OS/390 boxes. AS/400's still make themselves felt. Mustn't forget the odd VMS box, etc.

NT and Linux both have a lot to dislodge.' ,'sarr' => '400000' ,'dord' => '16' ,'rdep' => '0' ) , '5' => array( 'tbsn' => '10980' ,'date' => 'Oct 11, 1999, 07:19:31 ' ,'name' => 'Jim Crilly' ,'email' => 'nm666@NOSPAM.home.com' ,'subject' => 'Re: Alot of Unix, but that's not all...' ,'comment' => 'I have to agree, the company I work for have several *nix boxen but the ones that keep the company alive and do all the heavy work are refrigerator size OpenVMS boxen, I doubt they are being moved out for NT any time soon.' ,'sarr' => '500000' ,'dord' => '12' ,'rdep' => '0' ) , '6' => array( 'tbsn' => '10980' ,'date' => 'Oct 11, 1999, 08:09:28 ' ,'name' => 'S.Mitchell' ,'email' => '' ,'subject' => 'Please don't use "Enterprise Ready" and "Enterprise Server" which are misleading terms.' ,'comment' => 'If you mean by "Enterprise Server" a server costing $50,000 plus where fault tolerant clustering and SMP support for 16 processors or more are necessary, then the answer is you will have to wait about a year for these capabilities on Linux. However this is a niche market. Enterprises also use file and print servers, web servers, firewalls, routers, desktop PCs, and smaller departmental servers. These far outnumber the big Unix servers in both numbers and revenue. Linux provides a reliable and fast platform for these in the enterprise at a low cost, using a common Unix skill base and with the flexibility of being able to use PC or virtually any other type of hardware. It also interoperates very well with Novell, NT, Apple and of course Unix OSes. Linux is a natural for the Enterprise and I would consider this as being more than "Enterprise Ready".

It would be better to use a less misleading term like "16 SMP fault tolerant clustering server" or "$50,000 plus server", than "Enterprise Server" which to the layman who doesn't look at the technical specs. has an implication that it is unsuitable for use in an enterprise.

"Enterprise Server" is a slang term for which there is no precise definition, and which for all we know was probably coined by some Microsoft PR man to give the impression that Linux is a toy OS not suited to business use. Linux users should stop using this term and urge others to also do so.

' ,'sarr' => '600000' ,'dord' => '13' ,'rdep' => '0' ) , '7' => array( 'tbsn' => '10980' ,'date' => 'Oct 11, 1999, 12:45:21 ' ,'name' => 'dizmart' ,'email' => 'dizmart@epa.gov' ,'subject' => 'MS & hardware bargains' ,'comment' => 'Once again I read this ridiculous assertion that MS is somehow
responsible for the drop in hardware prices. Cut-throat COMPETITION
is responsible for the drop in hardware prices; that's something MS
wouldn't know anything about.' ,'sarr' => '700000' ,'dord' => '14' ,'rdep' => '0' ) , '8' => array( 'tbsn' => '10980' ,'date' => 'Oct 11, 1999, 12:56:47 ' ,'name' => 'Byron Miller' ,'email' => 'byron@eanut.org' ,'subject' => 'Enterprise =' ,'comment' => 'For the definition, please refer to

http://work.ucsd.edu:5141/cgi-bin/http_webster?enterprise&method=exact

But for Business, Enterprise is - Global, Reaching, Large, and reliable.
Enterprise for most fortune 500 and alot of smaller companies is a Sun
box running a Customer Relationship Marketing Database with 1.3 terrabytes
of space, 4 gigs of memory, 4 333 mhz ultra sparc proc's with 2 megs of
cache on each.

Enterprise is an HP-UX with a EMC disk array running MRP/Oracle Applications
or SAP software

Enterprise is the software foundation for business reach. Enterprise is
the focal email system, applications system, capabale of handling the
load, backups, availability and providing the uptime.

Enterprise is not just a solution you throw in and say works, enterprise
to an IT persons or MIS groups is a proven solution with 1) A Hardware
Solution. 2) A Software Solution 3) A Maintenance Solution and 4) a Support
Solution.

Most "Enterprise" Environments cover all of the above and still Hire IT people just to make sure there business systems and applications will work.

HP-UX, Solaris, OSF, and AIX are all enterprise solutions, offering an enterprise package. Linux is heading there, and NT is heading there. NT has a big fault of scallability, the scalibity of linux is forward compatibile with other unices since it follows the same principles and allows for quicker integration and development since its a unix platform and not a proprietary system

*I* find it funny how they claim unix is proprietary and use that as there
reasoning for implementing NT.. tell me whats *NOT* proprietary with NT.. even the standards they say they follow have a microsoft proprietaryness to them heh.

' ,'sarr' => '800000' ,'dord' => '15' ,'rdep' => '0' ) , '9' => array( 'tbsn' => '10980' ,'date' => 'Oct 11, 1999, 13:11:34 ' ,'name' => 'Joe' ,'email' => 'name@domain.com' ,'subject' => 'osOpinion articles are continually retarded' ,'comment' => 'I have never seen one article on that website that has any factual or persuasive basis. The author of this article provides nothing but conjecture, and fairly
flimsy conjecture at that.' ,'sarr' => '900000' ,'dord' => '17' ,'rdep' => '0' ) , '10' => array( 'tbsn' => '10980' ,'date' => 'Oct 11, 1999, 13:39:32 ' ,'name' => 'Kevin C. Rea' ,'email' => 'kcrea@lucent.com' ,'subject' => 'I hope you don't give up your day job!' ,'comment' => 'Then why are these "Enterprise Unix" Companies going with Linux!? You obviously have never tried to setup and administer a HP-UX or Solaris machine. Out of all the UNIX companies Silicon Graphics IRIX is the most complete and flexible for the "Enterprise" AND even they are delivering Linux as part of their OS roadmap.' ,'sarr' => '1000000' ,'dord' => '19' ,'rdep' => '0' ) , '11' => array( 'tbsn' => '10980' ,'date' => 'Oct 11, 1999, 17:22:36 ' ,'name' => 'Byron Miller' ,'email' => 'byron@eanut.org' ,'subject' => 'Re: I hope you don't give up your day job!' ,'comment' => 'Well, i do run an enterprise MRP/Oracle Applications server on HP-UX box. And i have setup several Sun E4500's and E6000's with 1 1/2 terrabyte EMC systems running Oracle 8 for marketing and customer relations databases.

http://www.sgi.com/newsroom/press_releases/1999/august/red_hat.html

That's SGI's enterprise solution, and a pretty good example of what linux could do by entering into an enterprise marketplace.. it has the support (both hardware and software) needed, they have a proven system, much like Compaq entering its Alpha architecture with linux into the enterprise market.

Never did i say it "wasn't" there, but i said i still am not convinced it is there in all "practicality" through my YEARS of experience in both the Systems Administration of national Internet providers to the Setup of telco's marketing databeses to the configuration of many intranet systems and the setup of several Oracle Applications Release 10 and Release 11 systems.

Linux has solved every solution NT was in the running for, believe me, linux is being implemented. But there is no LINUX server i would bet my manufacturing, financials, marketing and day to day business transactions on, simply because i need a journaling filesystem with snapshots, i need a good kernel with management features built i need redudant controllers, self healing disk subsystems, caching raid controllers, hot swapable system boards, i need an "enterprise system with scalability, support, and a proven track record". ' ,'sarr' => '1010000' ,'dord' => '18' ,'rdep' => '1' ) , '12' => array( 'tbsn' => '10980' ,'date' => 'Oct 11, 1999, 18:09:12 ' ,'name' => 'S.Mitchell' ,'email' => '' ,'subject' => 'RE: Byron Miller-Enterprise=' ,'comment' => '>For the definition, please refer to

> http://work.ucsd.edu:5141/cgi-bin/http_webster?enterprise&method=exact

> But for Business, Enterprise is - Global, Reaching, Large, and reliable.
> Enterprise for most fortune 500 and alot of smaller companies is a Sun
> box running a Customer Relationship Marketing Database with 1.3 terrabytes
> of space, 4 gigs of memory, 4 333 mhz ultra sparc proc's with 2 megs of
> cache on each.

> Enterprise is an HP-UX with a EMC disk array running MRP/Oracle > Applications
> or SAP software

Looking at your web page link for the definition of "enterprise"
I get the definition

"From WordNet (r) 1.6 (wn)

enterprise n 1: a purposeful or industrious undertaking (especially one that requires effort or boldness); "he had doubts about the whole enterprise" [syn: {endeavor},
{endeavour}] 2: an organization created for business ventures; "a growing enterprise must have a bold leader" 3: readiness to embark on bold new ventures [syn:
{enterprisingness}, {initiative}, {go-ahead}]"

It doesn't mention anything about Fortune 500 companies, 4 gigs of memory,
4 333 mhz ultra sparc proc's with 2 megs of cache on each, or even that
Enterprise is an HP-UX with a EMC disk array running MRP/Oracle
Applications or SAP software.

Most peoples definition of "enterprise" is what it actually says in the dictionary ie. "an organization created for business ventures"

Hence to say Linux is not "Enterprise Ready" is interpreted by most people including journalists as meaning that Linux is not ready for business use, which could not be further from the truth.

Microsoft's Fudsters are liberally throwing about the catch phrase "Linux is not Enterprise Ready" in an attempt to cast Linux in this light. There is much more justification to say that NT is not "Enterprise Ready" NT doesn't have proper file journaling nor does it scale well despite having had SMP capabilities for many years. In addition there is plenty of justification to say that NT is not a "Business Ready" server because of it's well known instability, it's incapability of handling loads that Linux and FreeBSD servers routinely handle with ease in actual corporate use, it's vulnerability to viruses, and its numerous and serious security flaws which continue to uncovered.

I suggest we simply say what we mean and not use a vague term which means different things to different people.
' ,'sarr' => '1200000' ,'dord' => '2' ,'rdep' => '0' ) , '13' => array( 'tbsn' => '10980' ,'date' => 'Oct 11, 1999, 18:47:43 ' ,'name' => 'AC' ,'email' => 'ac@slashdot.org' ,'subject' => 'Re: RE: Byron Miller-Enterprise=' ,'comment' => '"Microsoft's Fudsters..."
"There is much more justification to say that NT is not "Enterprise Ready"..."

"NT doesn't have proper file journaling"
WRONG - NT has had file journaling since the first version shipped in 1992

"...nor does it scale well despite having had SMP capabilities for many years"
WRONG - There is a profusion of credible evidence that NT runs very well on 8 processor systems

Ummm, it looks like *you* are the "Fudster" here....' ,'sarr' => '1210000' ,'dord' => '3' ,'rdep' => '1' ) , '14' => array( 'tbsn' => '10980' ,'date' => 'Oct 11, 1999, 19:04:27 ' ,'name' => 'Rob Yampolsky' ,'email' => 'ryampols@cjds.com' ,'subject' => 'Re: what's 'enterprise' mean?' ,'comment' => 'I fully agree with you that enterprise-ready means different things to people with different sets of needs.

In my article, I was just using enterprise to mean anything that could conceivably require a machine with 4 processors,4 gigabytes of memory, etc. Essentially the definition dictated by Microsoft in their choice of benchmark.

Yep, you can run DNS, mail, DHCP, file and print services for a pretty large workgroup using Linux. And that workgroup may like to think of itself as an 'enterprise', but I hardly think it would take such mega-hardware to do the job. Of course, with NT, you never know...

' ,'sarr' => '1400000' ,'dord' => '4' ,'rdep' => '0' ) , '15' => array( 'tbsn' => '10980' ,'date' => 'Oct 11, 1999, 20:02:38 ' ,'name' => 'S.Mitchell' ,'email' => '' ,'subject' => 'AC-Re:Re:RE:Byron Miller-Enterprise=' ,'comment' => 'I am comparing NT with commercial Unixes here since Microsoft has repeatedly claimed NT to be "Enterprise Ready" and trys to claim Linux isn't.

I believe NT's file journaling system is not a full implementation, unless this has changed recently. As far as a comparison with Linux is concerned, Linux is far more reliable and stable than NT. Hence NT needs reliability clustering to give it any semblance of reliability whereas a single Linux server will run reliably and cope with heavy stress without going down.

In terms of SMP multi-processor scalability NT can't match commercial Unix. Comparing it with SMP on Linux, the Microsoft sponsored Mindcraft "benchmarks" showed how close Linux and NT were on SMP performance. Mind you this was with an early SMP kernel with several bugs in it which reduced performance. Also the hardware and application and RAID settings served were chosen specifically to give NT an advantage. If I remember correctly two fast ethernet cards, 256MB RAM serving only 5k static web page content, and unusual RAID settings which would not normally be used in real life for reliability reasons. All of this only yielded a 2 times speed advantage. Another independant test by a German company using the same spec of hardware but using dynamic web content (which is more representative of real life) gave Linux a similar speed advantage. Linux has moved on since then and some of bugs have been fixed. This probably means that Linux has the edge over NT in SMP performance and scalability right now. Further improvements will come when kernel version 2.4 is released at the end of the year. This is probably the explanation for the surge in recent Microsoft FUD attacks: ie. Microsoft in all likelyhood has downloaded and tried out Linux kernel version 2.4 and wants to get in the FUD before it is released.

Another example of NT not being "corporate ready" let alone "enterprise ready" (forgive my use of the expression) is it's lack of disk quotas which is a basic requirement for any server (correct me this has now changed since I don't use or keep track of NT any more once I switched to Linux since I found NT to be basically a bad server OS platform).

In about a year Linux should have 16+ processor SMP scalability and the SGI IRIX file journaling system, which will allow it to approach some of the high end commercial Unixes in these aspects, and in all likelyhood way beyond anything NT (or Windows 2000) can hope to match.
' ,'sarr' => '1500000' ,'dord' => '5' ,'rdep' => '0' ) , '16' => array( 'tbsn' => '10980' ,'date' => 'Oct 11, 1999, 20:47:13 ' ,'name' => 'Larry Greenwald' ,'email' => 'lgreenis@co.san-diego.ca.us' ,'subject' => 'Re: Windows with the Desktop?' ,'comment' => '> I bet when it is all said and done, Windows will simply be the OS you run Flight Simulator on.

Guess what? go to http://www.flightgear.org and you won't even need Windows for your Flight Simulator!

--LG' ,'sarr' => '110000' ,'dord' => '6' ,'rdep' => '1' ) , '17' => array( 'tbsn' => '10980' ,'date' => 'Oct 11, 1999, 22:04:57 ' ,'name' => 'AC' ,'email' => 'ac@slashdot.org' ,'subject' => 'Re: AC-Re:Re:RE:Byron Miller-Enterprise=' ,'comment' => '"NT needs reliability clustering to give it any semblance of reliability whereas a single Linux server will run reliably and cope with heavy stress without going down."
HA clustering is not some sort of crutch that weak operating systems need to work...it is a critical requirement for business-grade operation. Linux's reliability will not protect a system from A) hardware failure or B) application failure. To deal with these conditions, business-critical users need HA clustering...period. Windows NT has been shipping with HA clustering capabilities for nearly two years. The only commercially-backed clustering option for Linux (TurboLinux) won't start shipping until this month.

"In terms of SMP multi-processor scalability NT can't match commercial Unix."
True, but the topic is NT vs. *Linux* in enterprise environments.

"Comparing it with SMP on Linux, the Microsoft sponsored Mindcraft "benchmarks" showed how close Linux and NT were on SMP performance....all of this only yielded a 2 times speed advantage."
Well, 2x is actually a lot when you are talking about business requirements (where people place great value on, say, the ability to ship things twice as fast, or charge half the price of a competitor)

"Another independant test by a German company using the same spec of hardware but using dynamic web content (which is more representative of real life) gave Linux a similar speed advantage."
If I remember correctly, this test relied heavily on use of CGI, which does not run well under NT. Whenever a CGI call is made in NT, the OS makes a new process for the operation. However an ASP uses only a thread under IIS, which is much better use of memory and system resources. The point is that if you work hard enough, as C'T Magazine did, you can find a benchmark instance to favor any system. Running CGI on NT is akin to the detuning that Mindcraft did to Linux during the first test, making the results roughly equivalent in their relevance.

"Linux has moved on since then and some of bugs have been fixed. This probably means that Linux has the edge over NT in SMP performance and scalability right now."
Well, to draw that conclusion without the benefit of any evidence requires a certain leap of faith, I would say.


"Further improvements will come when kernel version 2.4 is released at the end of the year."
Fine, we'll see then, when we can compare Linux with Windows 2000 (i.e. "it's your future against my future")

"In about a year Linux should have 16+ processor SMP scalability"
Your assumption that Linux can grow its SMP scalability from barely 2 CPUs to more than 16 in such a short time shows how little you understand about the development of SMP-scalable operating systems. It takes years and years of hard work by focused teams of hardware and software engineers working together to make good SMP scalability happen...it is not just a matter of patching a few bottlenecks by sprinkling a few clever locks here and there. Every doubling of capacity, i.e. 2->4, 4->8, 8->16 etc. is like capturing a hill on Iwo Jima - it takes a monumental effort. Every system had to go through this, including mainframes, VMS systems, and commercial UNIX systems. NT has been crawling up this path since 1993, and now runs at 50% linearity on 8-way Xeon systems (don't believe me? check www.tpc.org). Linux has just truly begun this process in 2.2, and it will be a very long time before it runs well on systems you describe.

"the SGI IRIX file journaling system, which will...in all likelyhood way beyond anything NT (or Windows 2000) can hope to match."
And that would be how?' ,'sarr' => '1510000' ,'dord' => '7' ,'rdep' => '1' ) , '18' => array( 'tbsn' => '10980' ,'date' => 'Oct 11, 1999, 23:37:07 ' ,'name' => 'Bear Giles' ,'email' => 'bgiles@coyotesong.com' ,'subject' => 'NT' ,'comment' => 'The NT "journaling" file system is incomplete, and is arguably worst than nothing since it gives PHBs a false sense of security.

If you doubt this, go to your nearest NT box with a "journaling" file system and yank the power cord out of the wall. (Do not cheat by closing applications and syncing the disk or we'll cut the power to your entire building without warning.) Do this repeatedly over the next week or so, try to do it at least twice an hour 24/7, being sure to occasionally yank the power cord as the system is still rebooting.

If NT has a real JFS, your disk will still be clean. You'll lose unsaved information in applications, of course, but you'll have no corrupted files. But since the NT "J"FS doesn't implement both halves of the transaction model I doubt it would last a day.' ,'sarr' => '1800000' ,'dord' => '8' ,'rdep' => '0' ) , '19' => array( 'tbsn' => '10980' ,'date' => 'Oct 12, 1999, 00:14:19 ' ,'name' => 'Kevin Hudson' ,'email' => 'klhudson@flash.net' ,'subject' => 'Re: AC-Re:Re:RE:Byron Miller-Enterprise=' ,'comment' => '"Linux has just truly begun this process in 2.2, and it will be a very long time before it runs well on systems you describe."

Ordinarily this might be true. But since SGI has donated it's SMP code to the Linux community as well as XFS, it is not unreasonable to believe the Linux kernel will have very mature 16+ SMP support in a very short time. After all, SGI has had years to perfect their SMP Code. Porting code from one Unix varient to another is usually a relatively trivial task. Talking as one who has done it.

Also, one area where Linux has a large, commanindg lead on NT on enterprise readiness is it's 64 bit processor support. Linux has been running on 64 bit processors for the three years that I have been following it. NT has yet to truly run on 64 bit hardware. NT runs on Alpha but it is my understanding that it runs in a 32bit emulation mode that deminishes the expected perfomance gains of a 64 bit platform.

As I recall, NT BSOD'd on boot at its public debut on Merced last month. Linux booted a kernel and ran some utlity apps at the same show. This was of course a simulated Merced, but it still demonstrates Linux's ability to handle a 64 bit architecture.

And this fact, more than anything, is Microsoft's motive behind the "Linux Myths" page. It is also a fact conspicuoulsy (sp?) missing from the "Linux Myths" page. If there is one common denominator on true enterprise servers, it is their 64 bit processors. ie Ultra Sparc, RS6000 and Alpha. 64 bit processors have a far richer SMP support op-code set making SMP easier to achieve on a 64 bit platform than on a 32 bit platform. For example, Linux already easily scales to upto 8 processors on the Alpha platform. Check out Penguin Computing and Microway for ready made ALPHA Linux systems with 4 & 8 processors. These are what I consider enterprise class contenders.


KH' ,'sarr' => '1510000' ,'dord' => '9' ,'rdep' => '1' ) , '20' => array( 'tbsn' => '10980' ,'date' => 'Oct 12, 1999, 00:18:51 ' ,'name' => 'Robert McKnight' ,'email' => 'rmk_8214@hotmail.com' ,'subject' => 'Re: osOpinion articles are continually retarded' ,'comment' => 'What do you expect from a site that runs NT? (Try ftp'ing into it.) ' ,'sarr' => '910000' ,'dord' => '20' ,'rdep' => '1' ) ); ?>