Alan Cox on the Mindcraft survey

Alan Cox on the Mindcraft survey

Linux Today

Apr 14th, 17:18:03

"The Linux thing really does seem to be getting to the competition."

"Linux is apparently almost the same speed as NT for file serving to windows according to Microsoft's comment in the Halloween documents. I guess Microsoft forgot to make their stories match."

"...everyone who has converted to Linux already knows. Linux is fast."

Alan Cox on the Mindcraft survey

www.uk.linux.org

The Linux thing really does seem to be getting to the competition.

Linux is apparently very much slower than NT according to Mindcraft, but hold on aren't Mindcraft the people who provided testimony for Microsoft in the DoJ trial, and what is this in their small print " Mindcraft, Inc. conducted the performance tests described in this report between March 10 and March 13, 1999. Microsoft Corporation sponsored the testing reported herein."

People might also want to look at some of the rebuttals to their previous 'papers' including one from Novell [http://www.novell.com/advantage/nw5/nw5-mindcraftcheck.html].

Linux is apparently almost the same speed as NT for file serving to windows according to Microsoft's comment in the Halloween documents [http://www.tuxedo.org/]. I guess Microsoft forgot to make their stories match.

And what about independent tests from Magazines ? The story there is a bit different, and reflects what everyone who has converted to Linux already knows. Linux is fast [http://www.zdnet.com/sr/stories/issue/0,4537,387506,00.html].

It is tempting to publish a Linux versus NT benchmark on 8Mb 486's. Except of course NT won't install too well on it, and the world has enough fishy pseudo benchmarks already. Why not do your own benchmark ?

Dig out that old 486 that was once the company server and has been handed through the ranks until even the secretary couldn't run Word on it any more, load Linux and you'll suddenly find you have a web server, firewall and mail gateway happy to handle any small/medium business. All for under a tenth of the price of NT Server. No wonder Bill is worried, we don't even have per seat client licensing fees on top.

Ars Technica has a great article [http://www.arstechnica.com/cpu/2q99/benchmarking-1.html] on benchmarking in the current release. Well worth a read.

It's conference time again. Last reminders for the fifth Linux Expo. It has a wide selection of talks on both business and technical Linux , exhibitors and of course paintball. Rumours about that after last years Emacs v Vi paintball it will be Gnome v KDE this year.

Talking of Gnome, the inimitable Miguel de Icaza, head of the Gnome project, will be doing a NetProject presentation and will also be the evenings open talk guest after NetProject itself. If you are going to be anywhere near London that is one for the calendar.