From: dpcole <xerophy...@yahoo.com>
Subject: Why is NT so big?
Date: 1999/02/14
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Why are NT 5.0's system requirements doubled than NT 4.0's - if not
more?  Won't this affect stability and performance, two traits Microsoft
is hyping with the new release?

If you don't know NT 5.0's REALISTIC requirements (don't give me
Mirosoft's "minimum" or "recommended" requirements since both are very
understated!) then don't reply.

I'll give you a hint:  NT 5.0's disk space requirement is 550mb. (or
350mb if upgrading from NT 4, and NT 4 takes between 200 and 250mb.)

Why do I stick to win NT 5.0 and not use the "proper" name?  If
Microsoft wants to start renaming their long-term product lines, fine.
Just name it the product in a way which describes it.  "Windows 2000"
sounds like a glitzy marketing ploy.  NT 5.0 is the 5th release of
Windows NT.  (weird, since the first version of NT was 3.1!)  I prefer
"Mud" as NT's new name.  Size + Delays in product release are rapidly
proving the product's fate.
--
"Idealism is a wonderful thing, all you really need is someone rational
enough to put it to proper use..."

www.geocities.com/~timanov

That's my bloody signature.  Be happy.  :-)

From: "Bill Frisbee" <bfris...@nospam.webengine-db.com>
Subject: Re: Why is NT so big?
Date: 1999/02/16
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dpcole <xerophy...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:36C78C72.BF24D65E@yahoo.com...
>Why are NT 5.0's system requirements doubled than NT 4.0's - if not
>more?  Won't this affect stability and performance, two traits Microsoft
>is hyping with the new release?
>
>If you don't know NT 5.0's REALISTIC requirements (don't give me
>Mirosoft's "minimum" or "recommended" requirements since both are very
>understated!) then don't reply.
>
>I'll give you a hint:  NT 5.0's disk space requirement is 550mb. (or
>350mb if upgrading from NT 4, and NT 4 takes between 200 and 250mb.)
>
>Why do I stick to win NT 5.0 and not use the "proper" name?  If
>Microsoft wants to start renaming their long-term product lines, fine.
>Just name it the product in a way which describes it.  "Windows 2000"
>sounds like a glitzy marketing ploy.  NT 5.0 is the 5th release of
>Windows NT.  (weird, since the first version of NT was 3.1!)  I prefer
>"Mud" as NT's new name.  Size + Delays in product release are rapidly
>proving the product's fate.

Becuase there are a lot more features in Windows2000 than there were in
Windows NT 4.0. A lot of the features in Windows2000 were not included in
WindowsNT but were added in ServicePacks or Option Packs.

Bill F.

From: dpcole <xerophy...@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Why is NT so big?
Date: 1999/02/18
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I see.  How many of these "features" justify the resource increase, let alone
the price?  How many of these "features" will the average user in Win2000
Workstation's target consumerbase will use?  Probably 2 at best.

Why is it that NT 4 requires (for a proper productivity rate) at least 80mb
RAM and still uses virtual RAM often, even when only an AS/400 terminal
emulator and a web browser (non-IE, non-IE browsers are efficient in size)?
OS/2, with 80mb, never seemed to get to virtual memory nearly as often and
seemed to be much more fluid in multitasking.  Maybe OS/2 lacks all them
fancy features in NT 4?  I don't think so.  Can those supposed features be
removed to regain memory, disk space, CPU power, and overall performance?
With Linux, one can.  With NT, you're stuck with what you've got -
effectively cloaking the possibility that NT might be slow because it's
bogged down with crap instead of just being poorly written.  And somewhere
along the line Microsoft's code is poorly written because they can't take out
a web browser they throw in (install nt 4, ie 4, office 97, then try to
uninstall ie 4, ha ha ha ha ha...) and because there are delays piled upon
delays piled on top of more delays -- hardly convincing that Microsoft knows
what they're doing.

Some new NT 5 features Microsoft is offering:
* Win2000 now has DirectX 5.  Let's charge them another $100 for it and make
it 50mb in size because it's an advancement in technology.
* Win2000 now has Internet Explorer 5.0 beta.  let's charge them $200 to make
up for our losses when trying to exterminate netscape and keep it sized at
75mb because of all the features we used our own Visual BASIC compiler.
(yes, Microsoft seems to use Visual BASIC as often as they do Visual C++ (not
even C!) to program their applications and operating systems.)
* A 64-bit journaled file system.  Well, we'll make that inefficient just
like we did with FAT32 and charge another $75 because we spent months
debugging it and couldn't get it right.  Let them pay for our grossly errant
mistakes.  Still not finished, though - but the people won't mind, they're
used to bugs.

Forget NT.  I found something which has all the buzzwords NT 2000 Workstation
has, which was more solidly programmed, has a more efficient and structured
API than Win32, executes all those buzzwords much more efficiently
(multitasking, pervasive multithreading, cat castrating...), is fully GUI, is
fully object oriented (NT is an o short of NOT), takes up only 50mb disk
space, costs $70, boots in 20 seconds, and much like NT started in 1991 and
was not built on top of legacy code (DOS/Win3.1).  Aside from a java-capable
web browser, I don't see much difference between the two.  What's this
miracle resource-defying OS called?  BeOS.  NT can't even compare.

And to think I even thought OS/2 was superior at one point... and for the
most part I put NT above OS/2!

Bill Frisbee wrote:

>
> Becuase there are a lot more features in Windows2000 than there were in
> Windows NT 4.0. A lot of the features in Windows2000 were not included in
> WindowsNT but were added in ServicePacks or Option Packs.
>
> Bill F.

--
Get a real OS for 1/3rd the price AND size, and 3 times the performance of
Winbloat NT:  BeOS r4.

"Idealism is a wonderful thing, all you really need is someone rational
enough to put it to proper use..."

www.geocities.com/~timanov

That's my bloody signature.  Be happy.  :-)

From: ja207...@primenet.com (Stephen S. Edwards II)
Subject: Re: Why is NT so big?
Date: 1999/02/26
Message-ID: <7b5b5l$7jr$1@nnrp02.primenet.com>#1/1
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In article <36CCF2D7.AB474...@yahoo.com>, xerophy...@yahoo.com spaketh unto 
USElessNET:

>Why is it that NT 4 requires (for a proper productivity rate) at least 80mb

Actually, 64MB is considered to be WindowsNT's "sweet spot", but the more
the better.

>RAM and still uses virtual RAM often, even when only an AS/400 terminal

As I understand it, WindowsNT typically pages out system resources in
order to make as much physical RAM available for applications possible.
I may be mistaken here, so if anyone else wishes to correct me here,
please do.

>emulator and a web browser (non-IE, non-IE browsers are efficient in size)?
>OS/2, with 80mb, never seemed to get to virtual memory nearly as often and
>seemed to be much more fluid in multitasking.  Maybe OS/2 lacks all them
>fancy features in NT 4?  I don't think so.  Can those supposed features be
>removed to regain memory, disk space, CPU power, and overall performance?

You can disable services which you are not using via the control panel.
There are several ways to tune a WindowsNT system to perform admirably.
You should consider getting yourself a good book on the matter.

>delays piled on top of more delays -- hardly convincing that Microsoft knows
>what they're doing.

Are you sure it isn't _you_ who doesn't know what _you're_ doing?

[zealot ranting snipped]

>miracle resource-defying OS called?  BeOS.  NT can't even compare.

Hmmm... I wonder if the Macintosh rabidity is starting to sink into
BeOS users now.  *ponder*

[] Footnote server is currently down...
--
.-----.
|[_] :| Stephen S. Edwards II | http://www.primenet.com/~rakmount
| =  :| Support the shareware authors... register your software!
|     | Please send all flames, trolls, and complaints to /dev/toilet.
|_..._| LUSER: I have a problem.  ADMIN: Keep talking... I'm reloading.

From: Volker Dittmar <ditt...@internet.de>
Subject: Re: Why is NT so big?
Date: 1999/02/27
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"Stephen S. Edwards II" wrote:
> 
> In article <36CCF2D7.AB474...@yahoo.com>, xerophy...@yahoo.com spaketh unto
> USElessNET:
> 
> >Why is it that NT 4 requires (for a proper productivity rate) at least 80mb
> 
> Actually, 64MB is considered to be WindowsNT's "sweet spot", but the more
> the better.
> 
> >RAM and still uses virtual RAM often, even when only an AS/400 terminal
> 
> As I understand it, WindowsNT typically pages out system resources in
> order to make as much physical RAM available for applications possible.
> I may be mistaken here, so if anyone else wishes to correct me here,
> please do.

There is another reason for this behaviour: the growing cache bug. This bug
was introduced with the very first release of NT, and it is there up to NT
4.0 SP3 (don't know about SP4, it breaks one of our main application, so we
haven't installed it yet).

The bug goes like this: NT has a dynamically growing file-cache. Unfortunately,
this cache NEVER shrinks. So if you're going to load big files, the cache grows,
until there is too little memory left for your apps. Then NT starts swapping,
which will degrade performance. We noticed this bug when we loaded a big data-
base. After the loading the performance was very, very poor. After a reboot it
was amazingly fast.

This bug is ONE of the reasons why you should reboot NT regularly, esp. after
handling large files.

If you have much more than 300MB, this bug won't bite you, because the file
cache can't grow beyond 300MB (at least, we haven't found out how to do this).

So, in theory, NT can handle very large files. In practice, after loading or
scanning a big file you have to reboot the system. In contrast, Linux will
shrink its cache to a bare minimum if apps need huge amount of memory.

In NT, this is a design bug: the file system cache has such a high priority
that it won't release memory for apps. Maybe there is some tweaking to avoid
that, but we haven't found out. Nor has anyone we know of. It is a very nasty
behaviour, though.

We worked around this bug by using 512MB on our database servers. Its a pity
that a pentium II doesn't support more memory.

Ciao,
Volker Dittmar

From: jer...@netcom.com (Jeremy Allison)
Subject: Re: Why is NT so big?
Date: 1999/02/28
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Volker Dittmar <ditt...@internet.de> writes:

>If you have much more than 300MB, this bug won't bite you, because the file
>cache can't grow beyond 300MB (at least, we haven't found out how to do this).


YES !!!! Thankyou thankyou thankyou. Someone else
has *finally* confirmed this.

Sorry to get all excited, but I was the person who worked
with PC Week on the "Linux - Enterprise ready" article
where we were benchmarking Samba on Linx 2.2 against
NT.

The article can be found at :

http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/stories/news/0,4153,387766,00.html

We wanted to include NT results alongside the Linux results,
but NT performed so poorly we decided not to add the results so
as not to appear unfair.

I analized the NT system and determined that although the 
machine had 2GB of memory (which I had configure Linux to
use mainly for file cache) that the NT file cache was
stuck at 300 MB and wouldn't grow any further.

We tried *everything* to get the NT file cache to grow
beyond 300MB - MS Tech info, calling NT experts at PC 
Week, but no-one could fix the problem. Hence NT became
disk bound and performed *dreadfully*.

This explains the problem. Do you have any official
docs or reasons why NT won't use more than 300MB of 
file cache - or more importantly - any idea how to
get this fixed ?

Regards,

	Jeremy Allison,
	Samba Team.

From: "Steve Shaw" <nospamola_sbsh...@kc-primary.net>
Subject: Re: Why is NT so big?
Date: 1999/02/28
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Jeremy Allison wrote in message ...
>
>Sorry to get all excited, but I was the person who worked
>with PC Week on the "Linux - Enterprise ready" article
>where we were benchmarking Samba on Linx 2.2 against
>NT.
>
>The article can be found at :
>
>http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/stories/news/0,4153,387766,00.html
>
>We wanted to include NT results alongside the Linux results,
>but NT performed so poorly we decided not to add the results so
>as not to appear unfair.


Benchmarks are fair when they are impartial -- when they present honest
results of what happens in the real world.  Good benchmarks can show all
products at their best, but they must also show what prospective customers
can realistically expect from current products.  Impartial benchmarks let
the chips fall where they may.

Otherwise what good are they?

Steve Shaw

From: jer...@netcom.com (Jeremy Allison)
Subject: Re: Why is NT so big?
Date: 1999/03/01
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"Steve Shaw" <nospamola_sbsh...@kc-primary.net> writes:

>Benchmarks are fair when they are impartial -- when they present honest
>results of what happens in the real world.  Good benchmarks can show all
>products at their best, but they must also show what prospective customers
>can realistically expect from current products.  Impartial benchmarks let
>the chips fall where they may.

Yes, yes I know that. It wasn't my decision not to publish the
NT numbers. As you can imagine I wouldn't have objected at *all*
to the NT numbers we got :-). However, at the time we weren't
sure that the NT installation wasn't faulty in some way. The
300MB file cache limit just didn't seem to make sense, and
there was no other machine with that much memory we could
do a comparison with.

Remember, I do know Linux and Samba *very well* (as you
can imagine) and it's been at least a few years since I
did serious performance tuning work on NT (that was
back in the 3.5/3.51 timeframe) so I couldn't be sure
that I wasn't missing something with NT 4.x.

Hopefully a future comparison (with more time available) will
allow enough analysis to be done that it is obvious that
this really *is* an NT problem, not user error. Once that's
established then the benchmarks can fall as they may... 

Regards,

	Jeremy Allison,
	Samba Team.

From: john_umbe...@my-dejanews.com
Subject: Re: Why is NT so big?
Date: 1999/03/01
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This is the most amazing post I have seen in this newsgroup in the last 3
years.	How can anyone take PCWeek's benchmarks seriously anymore (that's if
you ever did in the first place)?  You have basically admitted that you,
after exhausting all of your technical resources, could not get NT to preform
as well as Linux - *so you simply did not publish the results for NT*
!!!!!!!!

This is totally amazing that you would admit this, and - quite frankly - I
believe could be the basis of a libel lawsuits down the road.  How many other
"benchmarks" have been doctored as to not make NT look bad?  How many other
benchmarks have been flat out cancelled because NT was not preforming as well
as "planned"?  I am very interested as to how much Microsoft pays PCWeek for
this type of slant. . .




>
> >If you have much more than 300MB, this bug won't bite you, because the file
> >cache can't grow beyond 300MB (at least, we haven't found out how to do
this).
>
> YES !!!! Thankyou thankyou thankyou. Someone else
> has *finally* confirmed this.
>
> Sorry to get all excited, but I was the person who worked
> with PC Week on the "Linux - Enterprise ready" article
> where we were benchmarking Samba on Linx 2.2 against
> NT.
>
> The article can be found at :
>
> http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/stories/news/0,4153,387766,00.html
>
> We wanted to include NT results alongside the Linux results,
> but NT performed so poorly we decided not to add the results so
> as not to appear unfair.
>

[snip]

-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/       Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own    

From: jer...@netcom.com (Jeremy Allison)
Subject: Re: Why is NT so big?
Date: 1999/03/02
Message-ID: <jeremyF7yHyH.5yL@netcom.com>#1/1
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<36D75F0A.886E74C2@internet.de> <jeremyF7vtCE.38z@netcom.com> 
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john_umbe...@my-dejanews.com writes:

>This is the most amazing post I have seen in this newsgroup in the last 3
>years.	How can anyone take PCWeek's benchmarks seriously anymore (that's if
>you ever did in the first place)?  You have basically admitted that you,
>after exhausting all of your technical resources, could not get NT to preform
>as well as Linux - *so you simply did not publish the results for NT*
>!!!!!!!!

Please read what I said. I didn't say that *I* didn't publish
the results. I don't own a bloody magazine. I simply worked
on the Samba side of the benchmark (as I helped write Samba)
and helped on the NT side of the benchmark to get try and get
decent performance.

>This is totally amazing that you would admit this, and - quite frankly - I
>believe could be the basis of a libel lawsuits down the road.  How many other
>"benchmarks" have been doctored as to not make NT look bad?  How many other
>benchmarks have been flat out cancelled because NT was not preforming as well
>as "planned"?  I am very interested as to how much Microsoft pays PCWeek for
>this type of slant. . .

Please calm down and re-read the post. I would have *loved*
to publish "NT is crap" style results as I'm developing a
competing product for heavens sake. Why *anything* in my
post makes you think I have anything to do with PC Week other
than helping out with a benchmark on my product escapes me !
I hope you will notice that my email is *NOT* a PC Week email
address.

I spent several hours tuning the Linux system to get the
results we got. I am trying to do the same for NT. If, when
the chips are down, the NT system doesn't perform, then
I'm sure that this will be reported. If Samba wasn't performing
well then I would hope the people trying to do the benchmark
would call for help to try and track down the problem. I am
simply doing the same for NT. If we cannot fix the problem
and get NT to use the 2Gb of physical memory for file cache
then we will have learned about a limitation in NT.

Hope this explains things for you,

Jeremy Allison,
Samba Team.