“In the rarefied air of medium sized network operating systems,
it is generally believed that Linux out performs Microsoft’s
Windows NT (soon to be called Windows 2000) when run on low cost
PCs. In fact, since Linux is free and a 10-User license for NT
costs about $1,100, Microsoft finds itself under a great deal of
pressure when it competes head to head with Linux. It came as a
shock to the computing community when a so-called ‘whitepaper’
appeared on a website run by a company called ‘Mindcraft’ with the
bold headline: ‘Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 is 2.5 times faster
than Linux as a File Server and 3.7 times faster as a Web Server’.
Yikes! How could this be?”
“This 18 page ‘Certified Performance’ report is packed with
figures, graphs, and glowing comments on the superior performance
of NT over Linux. In fact, to an untrained eye, it would appear
that anyone choosing Linux over NT would need a serious checkup
from the neck up. The fish starts to smell, however, on page 14
(rather deep into this official looking document) when this
statement appears: ‘Mindcraft, Inc. conducted the performance tests
described in this report between March 10 and March 13, 1999.
Microsoft Corporation sponsored the testing reported herein.’
Basically, this would be equivalent of Phillip Morris stating that
cigarettes pose no health risk from tests conducted in a hospital
run by the Tobacco Institute.”