On Mon, 16 Jun 2003, Marist EDU wrote: > For better or worse, here are my thoughts on your question: > > I would say a competant administrator of either OS/Software could make them > run efficiently, plus it depends on what you are using them for. There are > 4 things that come to my mind in reference to pure File Servers. Stability, > File Access, Permissions and Price. > > In the following when I reference Linux I mean the Linux/Samba combo. > > WRT Stability: > The M$ OS can't handle long periods of uptime without eventually puking on > itself. The Linux OS is of course much more stable and requires less > reboots (if any). So in this case Linux appears to have the advantage, > however a competant M$ admin would/should schedule atleast a bi-weekly > reboot of the server in off-hours.
For better, for worse, Windows 2003 us currently unproven. I have Windows Sever 2003 Enterprise Edition sitting on my desk waiting for me to find A 500 Mhz CPU and 256 Mbytes of RAM with which to try it. It sounds like a lot of computer to me, but then I don't know what workload the package is supposed to be able to handle. > WRT Price: > Duh, (haha) Do more with less machine Linux is the obvious winner here. Price is a little simplistic. There's more to cost than price: not that I think the extra factors favour Windows, but this package I have in front of me may contain surprises. > > So I guess what I'm saying is it depends on how often you need to change > your file ACL's and how complex they are to begin with and how good your > system admin is. In a simple environment the manpower is comperable (IMHO). > I know I might get some flack about all the security patches required on M$, > but there are tools out there for installing them automatically and during > off-hours (again something a compentant administrator should be aware of). Would you want to apply patches automatically? Maybe you mean something different from what I think you do, but I don't want patches applied at odd times on any computer I manage. I much prefer the idea of testing it, evaluating it, maybe applying it, and most importantly, knowing that it's applied so I know what to blame when things break. -- Cheers John. Join the "Linux Support by Small Businesses" list at http://mail.computerdatasafe.com.au/mailman/listinfo/lssb
