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Betting your farm on Linux? 135

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-to-think-about dept.
l2b writes "The Standish Group has an interesting article which they talk about the hype surrounding Linux. It goes on to predict division in the Linux ranks. Worth a read, or perhaps entering the I Bet the Farm on Linux Contest. "
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Betting your farm on Linux? More

Betting your farm on Linux?

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  • Old Hat (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This competition is old. The conclusion on
    this (or another ?) forum was that the Standish Group only repackages the experiences of the companies interviewed and then sells them to their client companies, telling them exactly what they want to hear.

    At the moment said companies want to hear that their (mis)investment in NT is safe, so that is what they will get.

    If anybody wants to enter their competition, be sure to ask for a consulting fee and tell them to donate their blanket to charity. Others have said that it would be better not to submit a report so that Linux is only noticed when it has already infiltrated an organisation and not when a PHB reads the report and decides to use Linux at the wrong time and place.

  • Odd (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Odd. I've installed RH5.0 on a laptop and RH5.1 on another laptop and
    on a Compaq 850R. The biggest problem I had was 5.1 on the 2nd
    laptop. Somehow or 'nother, a couple of symbolic links got pointed to
    the wrong thing and I had a bad time getting XFree86 to fire up.

    Other than that, all three systems run like a fine Swiss watch :-).

    The 850R, in particular, is playing Web and anon FTP server for the
    company for which I work. Just runs and runs and runs. The only
    problem I've ever had with any of the three systems is that
    occasionally I lock-up X. I don't recall any of the three systems
    otherwise ever misbehaving. And I beat the tar out of the laptops!

    (shrug) Enterprise-ready? I don't know. But for the limited use to
    which *I* have put Linux so far, I'm quite pleased with its performance
    in all respects.

  • Re:Burlington (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Give the blanky to the ones who deployed NT. They need it.....NOW!!!

  • Re:has a limited place (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hm. Whats your hardware? I have never had any significant problems installing linux, X, etc. on supported hardware. I found ppp (by hand, not with Kppp) to be a little unintuative, but not difficult to set up. I haven't used applix in a long while, but it didn't have problems even when I did (even on an old slackware system).

    I use Linux not because it is not by M$, but because it is better for my needs than windows. It is a better software development environment, more stable for print/ftp/file servers and routing, and Window Maker is a much better looking UI that W95 (IMO).

    Linux is not for everyone (yet). Quite frankly, the people who use linux soley because they want to avoid M$, then complain that it doesn't work the same as windows should go back and use windows. Or perhaps they should consider all the things they have learned about W95, and that it isn't maybe as easy as they think. Then they should consider if they want to spend the time to learn a system that is fundamentally very different that win.

  • Re:The Linux Group (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Methinks the anonymous coward above needs to get a girlfriend, or at least a life. Folks, Linux ISN'T everything. It won't ever BE everything. The second Linux becomes the "Best Server, Best Desktop, Best etc" it'll become the BIGGEST. For every man, there is a target OS. There are 5 billion on this earth , in this current "civilization." Fat chance that one OS will meet their goal.

    The GOOD thing about Linux isn't the kernel. It isn't the license. It's the mentality. That mentality is alive in Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and all the other Open source products out there. It's the mentality of stability. That is important, that stability out ranks functionality.

    And so, maybe Linux isn't a Unix (deriv) that's ready for the big bad world. But as long as stability outranks functionality, it will be.

    The biggest problem I have with Linux is that the roots are being forgotten. If Linux turns into an NT lookalike, Microsoft will demolish it. Linux is a flavor of Unix, nothing more. It shouldn't be made into something it's not.

    Guy Montag

  • has a limited place (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Linux can be used as a print server, or a modem server. Beyond this, too many rough edges.

    I've been playing around with the Caldera 2.2 release. I got it running, sort of. Kppp didn't work, even after the fixes, then it started working, then it quit, permanently. I don't know why.

    Applix can't find a .so file, blahblahblah.

    I wiped the disk, reinstalled, and wound up with a completely new set of bugs, no amount of fiddling will get X to start. Huh?

    Everybody in the Linux community needs just to stop for a bit. You're suffering from M$ disease now. Just stop, make the current features work, document them, and maybe by the end of the year, you can start adding new things again.

    At this point, Linux has the smell of Windoze.
  • On the contrary, they specifically pointed out that these same questions could be asked of NT, and mentioned that many people don't think NT is ready for prime-time either. They also mentioned that "The Standish Group agrees" with that analysis of NT.

    So basically, they don't think either Linux or NT is up to the task.
  • Bandwidth doesn't seem to be the problem - if it were, the site would still load, but really slowly. Lots of times I can't get *any* response at all, not even a ping reply. That sounds more like an OS problem of not being able to handle the load properly.

    Rob also mentioned that MySQL is not too reliable.
  • Well, I couldn't get to slashdot at all for about 45 minutes this afternoon. Then when I finally did get here, none of the new articles from today showed up on my main page, even after reloading several times. Then around 30 minutes later when I reloaded again, the 6 or so new articles were there. Odd.

    Betting the farm on Linux+mod_perl+mysql?

  • At the moment said companies want to hear that their (mis)investment n NT is safe, so that is what they will get

    Did'nt you read closely? The very end made it clear that they don't hold NT up as any better. In fact NT is only mentioned once, in the paragraph where they say that NT really isn't better.

  • Ick. In my job we are hot swapping some parts, and fail over on others. Hot swap is easier by far, at least if your hardware is designed right, and you are programing from scratch. Failover introduces too many headaches. (This might be our implimentation) With hot swap we get interupts when something is added, and we bring it up to day. With fail over we have to supply them ourselves, and deal with broken network connections. Once we get a connection in hardware it stays (at least to our 500,000 hour MTBF, of course their can be problems) With a network connection you need to handle someone tripping over the cable (comunication is down for a few mintues, and the back machine doesn't know if it needs to fail over or not.

    Of course all problems with failover are solveable. I hate it though, I'd rather impliment a real hot-swap solution with hardware to support it then a failover solution with all the things needed to support it.

  • They are at least honest and consistent (Score:5)

    by bluGill ( 862 ) on Wednesday May 05, 1999 @02:14PM (#1903343)
    Is Linux enterprise-ready? (Yes, we can legitimately ask the same question of Windows NT. Many experienced corporate users say NT is not ready for prime time. The Standish Group agrees.)

    Seems honest to me, linux is not ready for prime time, since it runs best on PCs, which are not designed for high relability, and low downtime. 3 minutes downtime won't take care of a reboot once a year on my machine (My bios takes nearly a minute beofre it even tries to load an OS) Add in that most reboots should be in response to hardware problems and you realise that linux isn't up to the task.

    Try this: add a disk drive to a linux system, while the power is on, and you are running with full load. Can't be done easially, controllers that can do this are rare, getting linux to re-scan the hardware chain is a mess. (I think it is doable, but not nicely) Can SMP linux deal with the failure of a processor? How about hot swapping out that processor for anouther? Maybe we should add more processors next month too. What about more memory? Opps, one network controller broke. when you have as much hardware as a high end server has, even though you use the best, the failures happen all the time. You use RAID (support exists, but isn't well tested or robuse enough) and the ability to hot-swap anything. Now granted only a few systems support this hot swapability, a testiment to how difficult it is. (I should know, a major portion of my day job is makeing hot swap work) Linux may never have this, but mission critical requires it.

    Where does this leave for linux? EVERYTHING! mission critical is important, but if 3 minutes of downtime (while you do the once a year reboot) will cost you 6 million (not an outragious figgure) Don't you think a company can afford to pay 3 million a year to get hardware and software to work. What about the rest. What is the cost of a small department server going down? Can't be much, as we all know that NT is selling many servers. Now offer to replace Nt with a cheaper system that crashes less? Not much of a savings, but it is there, and it saves headaches. Most importantly, this is the largest number of comptuers! Who cares if the computer on my secritaries desk reboots, she needs more coffee anyway. If the comptuer on my desk reboots (like it did today when I accidently pulled the plug) 4 people care (the ones on X terminals off my system). If the fileserver in the backroom reboots the entire company cares. The downtime is measurable. (10 minutes times 500 people is 2 weeks of downtime, or several thousand dollards.)

    Don't forget that except for the Mainframe, most high end comptuers run unix. Linux looks like unix, so it is easy for admins to go between linux and Unix.

    No, Linux is not ready for the enterprize, but don't be fooled, the enterprize doesn't consider NT ready either, and NT has the entire marketing muscle of M$ behind them. Of course NT is getting into the enterprize, but not in anything important.

  • ATMs? I thought ATMs were usually stand-alone 286 based OS/2 machines with connections to big-iron.
  • they are easy to use and look pretty. (don't laugh.. that's what most techies judge OSes on)

    You mean non-techies, right? Please tell me you meant non-techies...

    Daniel

  • Opps.. hehe and I even Previewed my post for stupid mistakes. Yes.. I meant "non-techies". Technical people are much more likely to evaluate prettiness vs. functionality.
    Thus the 1common guy runs windows95.. vs. NT for the more technical in the bunch.. and of course all the real geeks run Linux. (or some-BSD) ;)

  • Re:Linux does have more hype than product. (Score:3)

    by Ex-NT-User ( 1951 ) on Wednesday May 05, 1999 @02:14PM (#1903349) Homepage
    There is one thing to be said for hype about Linux taking the workstation market away from MS in the next year, but at the rate it's going I really think it will at some point in the future .(3-4 years?)

    I installed a copy of RedHat 6.0 on one of my development machines at work and demonstrated Gnome and E to a couple of co-workers. One of them is a big NT fanatic.. his first words were "Holy Sh*t!". I thing Linux 2.2.x and Gnome or Kde is really close NOW.. they are easy to use and look pretty. (don't laugh.. that's what most techies judge OSes on)

    I think the only things that need work is clean up under the hood.. or at least some good GUI based tools to make it easy for the Windoze user to configure their system, yet leaving a nice console there for the rest of us.
    And making sure that there is some common ground for app development between distributions. (IE: standard libs, mabey dir. structures.. etc)

    -Ex-Nt-User
  • Timeouts? I haven't had Slashdot time out on me at all in the past six months, on either my Mac or Linux machine. The Solaris boxes in the computer labs here never have trouble with it either. Perhaps it's you who should try something different.
  • The latest news about Burlington was that Dell signed them up for a pile of systems running Red Hat Linux. You can read this at least by going to

    http://www.newsalert.com/bin/story?StoryId=CnWMg WbKbytaXnZC
  • Granting that you may have your own reasons for being anonymous, for all we know, you're some 12-year-old trying to pick an argument. This article [linuxjournal.com] may or may not be true, but we certainly aren't going to tell what is the case from your unsubstantiated assertions. (And calling someone delusional when they challenge said unsubstantiated assertions isn't helping build your credibility.)

    Unless you have something substantive to add, I don't see why anybody should pay further attention to what you say.
  • I'm not well versed in what the standish group has to say on a broad range of topics, but I know they gave a very fair review of Solaris vs. NT (link of main page). They basically concluded that Unix is still much better all around, confirming what many of us already know. I think in this case they simply have narrowed the focus.

    This may be a consequence of many Linux users who are quick to claim that Linux can fulfill every desire and niche for medium to high end computing. There are a lot of arrogant claims, and someone like the Standish Group is bound to call the bluff.
  • I thought the post office was using linux
    to sort the mail.

    I'm gonna take a stab at the idea that the
    US Postal service collects more than 250M a year.
    :)

  • Thank you very much AC!

    The article was pretty good, but they shouldn't have lumped NT in the mission critical category.

    Kinda funny that I ranted about intellectual property and copyright rights, and then I find this at the bottom of the page.

    "Copyright (C) 1999

    This VirtualBeacon(tm) is protected by copyright and is the sole property of The Standish Group International, Incorporated. It is intended solely for the private use of the subscribing company and may not under any circumstances be retransmitted in any form, repackaged in any way or resold through any media.

    PLEASE RESPECT INTELLECTUAL RIGHTS!"

    Or maybe it's not funny at all, just typical. Good thing they reposted it elsewhere.


    Matthew Newhall

    Yes! I'm in heaven!
    This is nice.


  • If you try the link it doesn't work, but the rest of their site works fine. It almost seems like they took it down.

    /*-----rant code block------

    This reminds me of a bit I talked about with my technical speech class. The internet can't ever be a total replacement for the printed word. Sites can take down pages when they feel it is time to rewrite history. I'm not saying that is what happened here, but I would be a little ticked if I used this article as a refrance in some kind of report to somebody important, and they in turn accused me of make up sources.

    It just goes to show how imporant it is that all internet content must be public domain. It's the only way to keep people honest.

    -----end rant code block--------*/

    Anyway, Some people seemed to really get a rise out of this article. I would like to read it. Anybody copy it into their home directory, and care to post it?

    Thanks! ;)


    Matthew Newhall

    Yes! I'm in heaven!
    This is nice.

  • Maybe you didn't read the lot. How's about this FUD:

    Time for a reality check, folks! No broad market acceptance. Stigmatized as freeware. No support. No training or certification. No network management tools. Unproven in large corporations. Other than that, Linux is a fine product.

    I'm not sure what is meant by broad market acceptance, but I certainly don't think Linux is just filling a niche. The "stigma" of freeware has all but disappeared. Contracted support is there; training is available; as is certification for administration on specific distributions. Some network management tools are there - I'm not sure what in particular they might be interested in. Several large corporations are successfully using Linux (not for "mission-critical" stuff, but I don't see that qualification given). This is just the mixture of untruths, exaggerations, and half-truths that we've come to expect from people that don't want to accept Linux.

    The fact that Linux can't yet provide really high availability remains, but that doesn't justify this.


  • How come all of these NT sites get "slashdotted?"

    Slashdot is generating all these pages on one machine.

    I'm sure Robb is working on scaling the site up, but it's really not a result of the underlying operating system this time.


  • I've made tens of thousands of dollars while going to school full-time, as a consultant, setting up companies with Linux.

    I suppose I'm a value added reseller, but I've always managed to undercut my competition, and all of my clients are happy.

    I've managed to make money with OSS, by selling them a packaged solution to fit their needs.

    I'm happy. They're happy.


  • Linux isn't strong on the desktop right now. It's strong with the servers.

    Give it a few years.

  • It makes no sense putting down one piece of free software for another in a public forum like this when we're trying to make free software as a whole viable in the current market.

    I'd like to not be forced to work with Microsoft products when I get out of school, and I'm sure a lot of other people would too.

    You don't know anything about the problems that happen with the site or the amount of load the site sees. Blankly saying that FreeBSD would do better when there is really no evidence either way just makes me start to hate some of the FreeBSD folks.

    You're all focusing on the wrong thing if you're attacking Linux and the GPL. Linux and the GPL is helping _all_ of free software at this point, even the *BSD's.

    Bleh, end rant.

    Feel free to moderate this post down or something if you don't like it, but I had to get it off my chest. I hate this infighting.
  • I guess their system must have crashed and had no backups or something, because I DID read this article on their website and was in the middle of writing a reply when I reloaded and found it had disappeared.

    I'd hate to think that someone in the Standish Group either realized that yes, people would read this and respond, or that it wasn't cool to post an unprofessional, sarcastic set of "rulse" for a bogus contest on the page of an otherwise-respectable site.
  • > but would I use Linux for anything other than fun? Today, no. Tomorrow, maybe.

    Hold on a minute before you jump on the "I'm not a Linux fanatic" bandwagon!

    I agree with your, "no one-size-fits-all tools" statement, but I think you underestimate the power Linux has RIGHT NOW. There are a LOT of places where it fits in now - look at the latest Web survey. Linux isn't going to eat Microsoft's lunch this year, but it's gaining fast, both in market share and features.

    You're right - don't sell Linux for something it ain't (yet), but then don't undersell it either.

  • I hear alot of talk on this thread about clustered systems (IBM SP2)... Linux Hot swaps -- hell yes! Use a beowulf cluster! Whole machine can come and go!

    If I remeber corectly IBM sp2 frames (which have been mentioned a few times here) don't allow per machine hot swaps (Processor/Mem/Hd/Controllers) but JUST LIKE A BEOWULF CLUSTER allow whole machines to come in and out. It was just a few days ago I read an article about relacing an SP2 frame with a beowulf cluster. To me 256 PIIs at maybe say even an outragiosly high failure rate of 5% would still be a fast reliable high uptime cluster. AND it would still not cost alot.

  • I remember seing this as well. It was is Ireland and believe it or not it was Windoze, not NT
    Scarry
  • They say No Guvmint Agencies as one of the criteria. I agree. Nothing governmental is mission critical; in fact, we'd run better if their computers were down all the time :-) :-) :-)

    --

  • Didn't anybody read the article yesterday about the oil company, processing data worth 600M$ on Beowoulf Linux cluster.

    One of the engineers even posted to the thread.

    Now, boy, give that man a blanket !!

  • Lots of good points about Linux and what it currently cannot do. At least the source is available. As the needs of those who really know linux and those who are using Linux change, so will its capabilities.

    -B
  • Linux can offer corporations many things, that don't fall under the "Mission Critical" category. Anybody who knows Linux knows that it doesn't have the infrastructure to do MC. I.E. Nobody will guarantee to send a tech to your site 24/7 within an hour or so if your Linux system goes down. There's no 99.9% uptime guarantees, etc.

    What Linux is good for is development, non-MC web servers, email servers, file & print servers, dial up servers, and many other things.

    I think the Standish group is trying to scare people away from Linux here.
  • Funny, IIRC LinuxJournal or similar had an article about it some months ago
  • yeah, but i doubt that the backend is running NT...

  • I remembered the same story, and found this link [m-tech.ab.ca] from Google.

    Seems pretty detailed and straightforward. Includes a link to the people who implemented the systems mentioned, but that link's dead.


    ----------
    mphall@cstone.nospam.net

  • As far as I can tell, they are not stating or even implying that NT is ready for the task - just that Linux may not be. As others have stated, there's plenty of big iron out there running ATMs, ticket office stuff, etc.

    Whether Linux is ready for mission-critical use is, IMO, unimportant[1]. It has a good home in servers and desktop use so even if it cannot handle mission crit. stuff, it will always be needed.

    [1] I'm not saying it can't, y'unnerstan'. Just that it is not necessary.


  • Clarification: ATM transaction processing is handled by the big boys. The actual ATM itself may be as you described.
  • Isn't it a little sad that a company that's apparently (*) complaining about non-enterprise-ready Linux can't field an enterprise-ready web server?

    D

    (*) Apparently; I can't get through to the site at all, but I'm figuring the comments I'm reading are probably an accurate indication of the article's contents.
    ----
  • ``...Applix can't find a .so file, blahblahblah. I wiped the disk, reinstalled, and wound up with a completely new set of bugs, no amount of fiddling will get X to start. Huh?''

    That's what I said when I read your post: Huh?

    If it doesn't work the same way twice I have to assume that you didn't install it the same way twice. Redo your installation and document your selections.

    If a file can't be found then perhaps you didn't select it for installation. I had problems like this on both Linux setups as well as Win9X setups. Since switching to RPM-based setups, though, it's happened far, far less. Ever go through the ``custom'' installation of Win9x only to find that something you needed and thought you'd selected didn't get installed? And when you go back to install it afterward you are likely to remove other software while you install the part you originally missed. Wonderful procedure. (Maybe Microcruft should license RPM?)

  • ``Are there any professionals (other than Unix system programmers) working with Linux? Can Linux be used as a desktop OS for anything besides coding?''

    Gee... I use it my desk for network monitoring, word processing and spreadsheet (Applix), and other office-related functions. The only thing I use the Win9x-based laptop on my desk for is to communicate with those people who have only Windows-based e-mail packages and for MS-Project (and once I find a *nix-based package that'll be one less reason to use Windows).

    Does the fact that I'm a sysadmin who sometimes does some systems programming discount this use of Linux on the desktop?

  • ``What Linux is good for is development, non-MC web servers, email servers, file & print servers, dial up servers, and many other things.''

    One's definition of ``mission critical'' is important. Mostly (at least at places where I've worked, if a downed system causes money to be lost, it's mission critical.

    If e-mail isn't mission critical, someone please tell the people in the finance and administrative areas where I used to work. We probably had more complaints about problems with the e-mail being down (This was Groupwise and, then later, Netscape) than any other system. E-mail isn't just used for memoes from the boss or mundane corporate communications. When people can't get something done (oh, just un-important stuff like budget-related work or people trying to collaborate on presentations to the board of directors) and the e-mail server is down, you have the CIO calling and wanting updates every 10 minutes while the server is being revived.

    Most of those ``non-mission critical'' functions that you listed are truly non-mission critical if the time and lost productivity of the people who depend on those systems are unimportant.

    I worked with a guy who didn't see anything wrong with taking down a ``test'' system whenever he damned well felt like it. Until, that is, the bill came from the consultants who were sitting around unable to code and test. When an hour's unscheduled downtime costs several thousand dollars you find out how critical that seemingly unimportant little box in the corner of the data center really is.

  • We are a trading company using Linux for very mission critical applications (millions of dollars at risk every day). When our competitors' NT systems go down (in one case for 3 days!!!) we crush them. We may not be a huge company, but we are making millions thanks in no small part to a very solid, reliable, fast, and scalable platform -- Linux.

    Hopefully our competitors will continue to listen to self-proclaimed "expert think tanks" like this one .

  • Yes, but the ironic thing about the "I bet the farm on Linux" contest is that a foolhardy few have bet the farm on Windows NT. They might not be too happy about it, but it's been tried.


    --
  • I consider myself a techie, a coder, and I used to be a real geek. And YES, look is very important to me.

    Unfortunately, marketing has made a pretty good job of teaching people that The Look resides entirely between 700 and 500 nanometers. This is bad.

    To me, look isn't having many colors, many flashy icons, many twisty-based configuration trees. Look is in simplicity, elegance, previsibility, too. This is why I feel good using Unix, even when it is shell-based.

  • The ironic thing is, that post lost me Moderator Access. Let that be a warning to you, kiddies!

    *mutter*

  • But the post office isn't OLTP.

    The main point the editorial was making is that there's a fairly large market segment that Linux doesn't (and can't, at the moment) address: on-line transaction processing where a consumer is waiting for that transaction to complete.

    The post office application isn't like that. If the system shuts down for fifteen minutes, you won't notice they difference; they just fix it and start again. On the other hand, if your bank machine shuts down for a half hour when you're trying to get money out for a cab to the aeroport to catch a flight that leaves in forty minutes, you're going to be pretty darn upset (and rightfully so). People don't generally even use Unix in these sorts of applications.

    cjs

  • Linux does have more hype than product. (Score:5)

    by cjs ( 12969 ) <cjs@cynic.net> on Wednesday May 05, 1999 @01:49PM (#1903385) Homepage

    Well, this seems a reasonable enough editorial to me. They're right: Linux isn't ready to do the sort of things that Tandem Himalaya, IBM Sysplex and DEC VMS cluster systems can do. I don't think that this is a big deal; nobody wants to pay for a Sysplex system to be a departmental file server, either. Each type of system has its role, and I don't see Linux as going any further than Sun currently does with their systems.

    But too, while the hype is annoying, I don't see it doing any real long term damage to Linux. Linux is just the IT industry buzzword du jour, as `client server' and `data warehousing' once were. Eventually people will figure out that it's not the silver bullet that's going to cause a miracle in the industry, and things will settle down. Linux will have reasonable success and lots of people will be happily using it.

    cjs

  • Dear John Letter: (Score:5)

    by Blue Lang ( 13117 ) on Wednesday May 05, 1999 @02:21PM (#1903386) Homepage
    Hi John,

    I hope that the backlash from the more forward of my Linux-loving brethren
    doesn't just put you into auto-delete-my-mail-mode.. A lot of people see
    what they want to see, and read what they want to read, no matter what is
    meant..

    In any case, I agree with your article, but one part of it is a little
    sticky for me, and it's something that I've just plain heard too much of
    lately.

    Linux is not ready for the enterprise. Correct. Now, explain to me again,
    who is saying that Linux _is_ ready for the enterprise? Linus? Alan Cox?

    No. For the most part, it's members of the various trade presses, people
    who don't understand the rigors of high-transaction computing. It's easy
    to tell where someone's coming from; if they mention NT, they don't really
    MEAN enterprise computing.

    On the other hand, when most people talk about Linux, they're referring to
    i386 Linux. From what I understand, other ports do a much better job of
    scaling. But, still, I don't think any of the people who actually design
    and implement the kernel are fooling themselves. Saying in a press article
    that Linux isn't ready for the enterprise is little more than preaching to
    the choir. :)

    Regards,

    --
    Blue Lang
    AIX Systems Administrator
    IBM Global Services Division
  • Hot swapping of everything is planned for 2.3.

  • Well, when it's daytime in the U.S. there's a great deal more net traffic than at any other point of the day, so you'll probably get some slowdown due to that. It's very noticeable to me. I can't say that I notice much speed difference at this site whether I'm using Netscape on RH Linux or IE on Win2K or Win98 (at least for pages I haven't seen) and I haven't used Lynx for perusing Slashdot in ages.

    Not to jump on the bashing bandwagon, since I'm sure that Rob's aware of the frustrations out there, but...I personally hardly ever get timeouts when browsing here, but a large percentage of the time I'm sitting here looking at the ad banner for an agonizingly long time before the rest of the page loads. In fact, this is the only web site for which I turn off image loading, simply because it's too frustrating otherwise. (Well, I sometimes do with DejaNews, too -- hey, isn't that run on Linux as well? Hmmmm... ;-) ).

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • Funny, When I check to see what the OS is, I get:

    Server: Apache/1.3.1 (Unix) FrontPage/3.0.4.2

  • Nope, at least not here in Sweden... in fact, just the other day I wanted to take out money and couldn't because Dr. Norton had popped up and was waiting for someone to reboot. Luckily the grocery store where I buy my food accepts my bank card!
    ---
  • Another link that doesn't work

    Something must be wrong with your browser, because I have no trouble with that link at all.

  • What do you expect? They bet the farm on NT.

  • Is This Mission-Critical Enough? (Score:5)

    by Doc Technical ( 16405 ) on Wednesday May 05, 1999 @08:11PM (#1903393)
    In November 1998, A large east coast U.S. Power Company installed a new generation of Distribution Management System (DMS) at the first of three Regional Operations Centers. The other ROCs are being implemented within the next few weeks.

    The DMS provides near real-time data to the Operations Centers, showing the current state of the utility's electrical distribution system. Operators can view constantly-updated schematics of the electrical system on linux-based workstations or on a twenty-four foot wide, eight-foot tall projection wall. The entire system was developed using the Linux operating system. Linux computers acting as Front-End Processors (FEP) collect data on the current states of electrical devices such as transformers and circuit breakers. This data is stored in an in-memory data base that is distributed to all DMS servers and workstations. Each computer has a current snapshot of the state of the distribution system.

    Real-time data is averaged and archived onto linux-based database/web servers to allow access to historical data throughout the company.

    A suite of X Window-based applications lets the operators monitor and control the power system. Linux was selected as the operating system for the DMS because it had proven itself stable in other applications developed by the development group. Most of these applications require high availability, as they monitor systems 24 hours a day. Linux has proven itself through use in the field, with some computers boasting continuous uptimes of two years.

    Linux provided extremely easy remote administration of machines, which was particularly important as the DMS operates on machines spread across a wide geographic area. The ability to run a debugger on an X Window-based application that may be running on a machine a hundred miles away, but display its output on a local machine is a huge benefit to quickly pin-point and resolve problems.

    The DMS uses Alpha-based machines for servers, and Intel-based machines for workstations.

  • Maybe the confusion with NT being enterprise ready has something to do with certain companies marketing NT servers as enterprise servers. And other companies marketing NT tools as enterprise tools.

    When the name is being used with such reckless abandonment it is only natural that the press pick it up. I do not think anyone seriously expects NT to be used in mission critical (another word used carelessly) situations, make that in important situations. When reliability is needed everyone looks elsewhere.

    Having conceded the misuse of the word, I feel GNU/Linux is more 'enterprise' ready than NT.
  • Hey, there, mr. humanoid with that big bushy beard, funny pointy hat, huge teeth and long claws, you must be a TROLL! Or perhaps you have some evidence to the contrary?
  • Well, since you responded to my (feeble) attempt at humor seriously, I'll reply seriously. Three links have been posted in this thread. You claim they are all dead, but I only had problems with one. The other two links point to essentially the same article by John Taves, who claims to have used Linux to implemented an OCR solution for the USPS. I first read this about a year ago, and I'm sure many others are familiar with the article.

    Now, to take your post point-by-point...
    How about some evidence that USPS uses Linux in the first place? There's nothing even worth basing a rumor on here
    Look at the August 1998 issue of Linux Journal (it's one of those links you said was broken). While publication does not equal proof, I think it is evidence that the USPS is using Linux. Your counter evidence would be...?

    Oh no, that's right. Let's just perpetuate false rumors. That's much better.
    Several have pointed to John Taves' article and said essentially "You say the USPS doesn't use Linux; ok, so what's up with this guy?" Telling someone what you read about and then showing them what you read about is not rumor-mongering. And again, what proof do you have that Mr. Taves is lying, since that's what you seem to be implying?

    Sure. The USPS uses all Linux boxes.... Whatever.
    Nobody said that either. "Using Linux for some OCR" is not "Using all Linux boxes".

    The article indicates hundreds of these machines in use by the USPS. It's entirely possible the USPS is using Linux and doesn't know it. After all, do you really think they know what OS or software is used on all their embedded systems? Merely the say-so of an employee of the USPS won't cut it in my book. It'd have to be someone who could say authoritatively "All our OCR systems, nationwide, use ABC software and XYZ OS". If you can do that, think of the fun you could have with the staff of Linux Journal by exposing a fraud.
  • You're an AC; it'd be pretty hard to track you. Although, I could identify you if I saw you in a crowd, as trolls tend to stand out.

    P.S. I work at Sprint, the proxy server would indicate that, and you'd be a moron to accept as true anything I said about Sprint's internal systems based solely on my say-so.
  • My friend has a nice photo (he took) of an airport flight arrival kiosk that has blue screened. :-)
  • But to say that Rob could afford mission critical hardware and setups is kinda ridiculous. I wonder how the guy pays for his bandwith bills.

    Try running a site on NT with IIS and SQL Server on the same server, along with IIS serving out dynamic content to more than 700,000 hits/day (I believe that's what the last count was). I've never seen a single NT box do that. To even get little more than half that, I need to setup two NT
    IIS servers behind a load balancing switch and a seperate machine running the RDBMS.

    Now, if he wanted to (or could afford to), Rob could sit his mod_per processes and Mysql on a seperate box. It woulld solve ALOT of his problems.
  • I'm currently working as a consultant to a national retailer who will be rolling out POS systems built on Red Hat 5.2 at hundreds of locations around the U.S. this summer.

    The biggest obstacle I've seen has nothing to do with the readiness of Linux "for the enterprise" but the learning curve involved in transitioning a non-Unix staff. People who feel that Linux is "not ready" for this or that have generally been, from what I've seen, people who don't know Unix and just don't know how to use Linux effectively.

    Most people who know Unix (and by that I don't mean so-called sysadmins who can only use HP-UX's SAM or AIX's SMIT GUI tools) see the strengths of Linux and *BSD very quickly. People who don't know Unix are deluding themselves into thinking they're using computers when in reality computers are using them!
  • From what I can gather [computerworld.com], Burlington Coat Factory is retaining its DOS POS application. Jay Jacobs, on the other hand, is going Linux at POS. [techweb.com]


    This is especially interesting for me, as we are designing a new POS system at my employer right now, and the OSes being considered are NT Embedded and CE 3.0. All because our Pentium-equivalent, 48Mb RAM registers won't handle NT5.0! At least Linux exists!


    I'll keep fighting. I had a great opportunity this morning when someone was warning of the dangers of M$ switching tracks on us and leaving us with unsupported technology. I pointed out that if we had the source code to the OS that that couldn't happen. Linux again? they groaned. Oh well, at least they know what I'm talking about, even if they don't agree.
  • Sorry. I entered www.standish.com as the URL. That's not right. The actual site is www.standishgroup.com, which Netcraft could not determine.

    Open mouth, insert foot.
  • I goofed and used the wrong URL (www.standish.com). I can't get a response on www.standishgroup.com.

    To self: Bad slashdot user! No more posting for you! Go back to work!
  • This may seem weird, but it seems like the more time I spend writing MS COM stuff using Visual C++, the more refreshing it is to me when I can take a break and use vi and a command-line compiler to work on something.

    I'm not an old curmudgeon or anything. I just get a kick out of using the *ahem* "mature" tools. I guess it's reassures me to know that I can still get stuff done without a GUI IDE, tooltips, and all that.

    Maybe if I spent most of my time using vi and running gcc and gdb, I'd feel the opposite way.
  • I can't speak for the person above, but I've found that even the most technical people will chose an operating system only for looks. That is why we use NT Server at work. Not because it is better, but because my boss likes the way it looks. Others in my office refuse to use Linux becuase they would have to use command lines to edit text files instead of using a "cool tool" like MMC or IIS Web based management. They are very techincal people and have been programmers for a while, but the refuse to switch over because they like the use and configurablity Windows. They've gotten attached to the window's way and refuse to really change. And now that all the systems are NT, they don't really want to learn something new. They hate Command Line interfaces and think they should be removed and replaced with all graphic tools. They've even "connected" with the quirks of IE enhanced File Manager and don't want to learn something new. Gnome or KDE has no interest for them, becuase its NOT Windows.
  • >

    Yup... I interviewed with a place once that runs a lot of the state lotteries. Mission Critical?!? They got *fined* $1000 per *minute* of downtime, since while they were down all the Lotto machines in the entire state were down (and thats actually probably a helluva lot *more* than $1000/min in lost revenue!!).

    Mission Critical... 3 machines, one watching the other and if #1 fails #2 takes over within *seconds*, and then powers up #3 (which is normally off). If the power fails, they go to battery bacukp, and after 10 minutes on battery backup the diesel generator outside powers up to run the systems.

    Mission Critical... anyone want to fly in the space shuttle if they switch over the 5 on-board computers to Linux?? Not me. I'd feel safer with custom VxWorks (unix derived RTOS) software that was *simulated* and *validated* to work consistently every time, and to handle hardware failures in a graceful and controlled fashion.
    (I'd be scared of NT for this also, definitely not a M$ fan).

    Linux may work fine for a *lot* of applications, especially as a desktop OS or for a deparmental server... but don't act like it will solve all the worlds problems. Like any OS, it has its plusses and its minuses...
  • Would Burlington fall into this category? I seem to recall they deployed Linux for their cash register systems. I consider that reasonably mission critical.
  • ... to see, if an NT survey would stand the same criteria. It is very easy to conclude that Linux is unsuitable, if the task described is very narrow.
    Linux serves many revenuing services, especially in the Internet business, so I don't know if I will accept the terms.
    OTOH if we get some big story the light, it would be fun by magnitude.


    --
  • quite a few banks use NT for their cash machines

    http://home.studit.com/com00120/sparbanken1.jpg
  • There's also a system called Highway, which is a POS system for gas stations (heavy on the serial i/o) made by/for Schlumberger that runs Red Hat.

    Unfortunately, I was the one to come up with the 'procedure' to prepare the sites currently using this system for installation of a WinDos based POS system. I almost cried again today when I had to demonstrate the procedure (mostly involving unmentionable fdisk operations) on a perfectly running system.

    I'm still tempted to come up with an alternate procedure of running this new POS software under DOSEMU. I'm afraid the intensive serial i/o would be too much for it, but I'm convinced there'd be a big jump in uptime if it worked at all. Then again, I'd have to be the one to come up with a procedure for conversion suitable for the average gas pump tech/store clerk.

  • http://www.standishgroup.com/beac62a.html

  • Re:Linux does have more hype than product. (Score:3)

    by atdot ( 44919 ) on Wednesday May 05, 1999 @01:57PM (#1903413)
    Linux does have a home. It will always have a home, and this home is growing. BSD(net-open-free-bsdi-whatever) also. Solaris, even NT. But trying to use any of the above for something they're not ready for is just as silly at thinking Linux will take over Micro$oft in the workstation or server market. The hype surrounding Linux is fun, Linux is fun, but would I use Linux for anything other than fun? Today, no. Tomorrow, maybe. Think about it.

    --@.

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