In a message dated: Wed, 05 Jul 2000 21:37:26 PDT
"Karl J. Runge" said:
>> Support:
>> --------
>...
>> Linux has the most comprehensive documentation of any operating system
>> available, commercial or free. The documentation is available on-line, and
>> with each Linux distribution.
>
>So you are including the web-lookup aspect when you say Linux has most
>comprehensive documentation? Just curious, would you make the same
>statement for the docs that ship with the OSes, comparing Linux against
>the (latest versions of!) non-Linux OSes?
>
>Often (not always) the Linux docs are a bit shabby since documentation
>tends to not be the most exciting part of OSS. I can't really say which
>is better overall (shipped-with docs for Linux or for non-Linux) since
>the features are far from 1-to-1, but Linux docs certainly can be
>dissappointing at times...
I never said the documentation was good, of professional quality, or is the
best; just that it's the most comprehesive, meaning that if you need to do
something with Linux, there's a good chance that documentation exists on
exactly how to set your system up to do exactly what you want.
For example, if you wanted to use a Sun or and Alpha running their respective
proprietary OSes as a firewall, documentation may exist, but it sure doesn't
come with the standard docs, it does with Linux, it's on the installation CD.
Call Sun or Compaq and tell them you want to use your 2 year old desktop
system with a second ethernet card as a router/firewall and you'll most likely
get "Sorry, that's not a supported configuration."
Sun, Compaq, HP, SGI, IBM, none of them to my knowledge have a document
written on how to do packet-radio networking, Linux does. LDAP documentation
for commercial OSes by those companies? Most likely non-existant, but go grab
the LDAP-HOWTO from the Linux documentation site, it'll probably work for your
flavor of Unix too :)
>> Scalability
>> -----------
>>
>...
>
>> As far as multi-cpu scalability, Linux currently supports upto 16 CPUs in a
>> single system. MS claims that they support upto 32, but since they only run
>> on Intel hardware, and there currently is no Intel-based system with more
>> than 8 CPUs in it, this is clearly marketing hype.
>>
>> There are currently Linux systems running on 16-CPU Alpha systems. This is
>> reality, not marketing.
>
>Linux works well on these SMP boxes for userland apps, but when it
>comes to measuring "multi-cpu scalability" the benchmark seems to be
>multi-threading kernel activities (e.g. I/O) and not userland
>activities (e.g. rendering that just needs CPU). Your remark seems to
>be a bit sweeping here; I don't believe Linux scales well (in the
>kernel I/O sense) on >4 CPU boxes, right?
I don't really know much about SMP in general. My point was that this can be
done with Linux, and can not with NT/2K. Whether or not it works well, I have
no idea. But that brings up another point, Beowulf clusters. NT's got nothing
in this area AFAIK, and last I heard there was a 128-node Beowulf out there
somewhere, with talk of someone doing a 256-node cluster.
So, Linux clearly scales much better than NT no matter how you slice it.
E-mail? Talk to maddog about DEC's migration to Exchange and how many days it
took to get e-mail from the person in the cube next to you. I think Linux and
senmail scale a whole lot better than NT on hardware a whole lot less
expensive and it's a lot easier to maintain, both from an effort point of view
*and* a cost point of view.
--
Seeya,
Paul
----
"I always explain our company via interpretive dance.
I meet lots of interesting people that way."
Niall Kavanagh, 10 April, 2000
If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right!
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