[Second in a series on the recent Linux vs. Windows NT
benchmark testing. – LT ed.]
“The controversy that surrounded the first Mindcraft test was
the catalyst for conducting a second series of benchmark tests in
June 1999. Under the administrative eye of PC Week Labs and with
the full cooperation of Microsoft and Red Hat, Mindcraft conducted
a second benchmark.”
“PC Week Labs not only found that NT remains substantially
faster but also isolated the Linux operating system’s shortcomings
and gained insight into where future development of the open source
operating system should be headed. …test found that IIS 4.0’s
performance was 126 percent better than Apache’s, as opposed to the
400 percent difference Mindcraft originally found.”
“Although all involved parties agreed that this series of tests
was conducted fairly and impartially, the losing Linux camp still
took issue with several factors. According to Doug Ledford, manager
of IHV technical relations with Red Hat and one of the on-site
participants in the revised Mindcraft study, ‘The tests did not
accurately represent how and what our customers are using Red Hat
for.’ He believes that Linux performs better in the ‘real world’
than the results of these tests indicate. Ledford insists that
ServerBench, instead of WebBench, would have gauged performance in
a more authentic, CPU-intensive environment.”
“Using the passionate and motivated resources of the Linux
community, the Linux kernel will be modified to correct the IP
stack problem in a matter of weeks. Therefore, what was an issue in
this round of tests will not be an issue in the next.”