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Re: [TCLUG:13660] Tradeoff between Linux vs Solaris (et.al.)



On Wed, Feb 16, 2000 at 01:51:00PM -0600, George Swan wrote:

> I recently asked for and got this opinion about linux from a web service
> for businesses provider.
> 
> >Linux is fine as a "cheap" non mission-critical server OS. It is very
> >efficient compared to NT. In business it's a tradeoff between having
> >enough techno-geeks around to ensure they are running or paying for
> >the Solaris (et. al.) OS.
> 
> I don't have the experience to evaluate the last sentence and could easily
> be led to believe it's true.  I'm curious if anyone would disagree with it
> and why?

Well, George, this man is blowing smoke out his ears.  There are plenty of
examples of mission critical applications running on Linux.  I run most of
my network services on Linux servers -- it will soon be all, after I
configure our Linux servers to be the PDC/BDC/NIS servers. ;-)  Frankly,
there are only a few pieces of software that are "mission critical" to our
business that must run on Windows platforms.  Some of these are multimedia
programs that the manufacturer has only ported to Windows.  Other software
is for shipping, also provided by the service and also only on Windows.
Our resource planning software runs on NT, and to date, it is the worst
piece of software we have yet.  Our Windows machines have crashed, acted
strangely, and simply refused to boot.  I have never had a problem on
Linux that wasn't a result of a direct #$%^@-up on my part.

As I write this letter, I am installing Debian Linux on two more of our
workstations, ones that our customer service department will be using.
One machine is a known headache provider in that it never acts
consistently with the Windows 95 installation (a Digital Venturis P166).

So, is Linux ready for the mission critical world?  Absolutely!  I
wouldn't be staking my job and reputation on it if the story was
different.  Were I to rely on NT to do its job, I would be out of mine.

-- 
Chad Walstrom                         mailto:chewie@wookimus.net 
a.k.a ^chewie, gunnarr               http://wookimus.net/~chewie

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