Operating Systems > Linux and UNIX
Worlds Most Ignorant IT person
dbl221:
Found this post on alt.os.linux.mandrake.
Just had to post it for you guys...man is this funny.
quote: Beside working as a Chief Operating Unit in my IT department, I also
work as a consultant for several fortune 500 companies, and I think
I can shed a little light on the climate of the open source community
at the moment. I believe that part of the reason that open source
based startups are failing left and right is not an issue of marketing
as it's commonly believed but more of an issue of the underlying
technology.
I know that that's a strong statement to make, but I have evidence to
back it up! At one of the major corps(5000+ employees) that I consult
for, we wanted to integrate the shareware version of Linux into our
server pool. The allure of not having to pay any restrictive licensing
fees was too great to ignore. I reccomended the installation of
several boxes running the new 2.4.9 kernel, and my hopes were high
that it would perform up to snuff with the Windows 2k boxes which
were(and still are!) doing an AMAZING job at their respective tasks of
serving HTTP requests, DNS, and fileserving.
I consider myself to be very technically inclined having programmed in
VB for the last 8 years doing kernel level programming. I don't
believe in C programming because contrary to popular belief, VB can go
just as low level as C and the newest VB compiler generates code
that's every bit as fast. I took it upon myself to configure the
system from scratch and even used an optimised version of gcc 3.1 to
increase the execution speed of the binaries. I integrated the 3
machines I had configured into the server pool, and I'd have to say
the results were less than impressive... We all know that linux isn't
even close to being ready for the desktop, but I had heard that it was
supposed to perform decently as a "server" based operating system. The
3 machines all went into swap immediately, and it was obvious that
they weren't going to be able to handle the load in this "enterprise"
environment. After running for less than 24 hours, 2 of them had
experienced kernel panics caused by Bind and Apache crashing! Granted,
Apache is a volunteer based project written by weekend hackers in
their spare time while Microsft's IIS has an actual professional full
fledged development team devoted to it. Not to mention the fact that
the Linux kernel itself lacks any support for any type of journaled
filesystem, memory protection, SMP support, etc, but I thought that
since Linux is based on such "old" technology that it would run with
some level of stability. After several days of this type of behaviour,
we decided to reinstall windows 2k on the boxes to make sure it wasn't
a hardware problem that was causing things to go wrong. The machines
instantly shaped up and were seamlessly reintegrated into the server
pool with just one Win2K machine doing more work than all 3 of the
Linux boxes.
Needless to say, I won't be reccomending Linux/FSF to anymore of my
clients. I'm dissappointed that they won't be able to leverege the
free cost of Linux to their advantage, but in this case I suppose the
old adage stands true that, "you get what you pay for." I would have
also liked to have access to the source code of the applications that
we're running on our mission critical systems; however, from the looks
of it, the Microsoft "shared source" program seems to offer all of the
same freedoms as the GPL.
As things stand now, I can understand using Linux in academia to
compile simple "Hello World" style programs and learn C programming,
but I'm afraid that for anything more than a hobby OS, Windows
98/NT/2K are your only choices.
Thank you.
Dr. Ray Peterson
IT Department
--- End quote ---
Now that is good comedy.
Master of Reality:
got this guys e-mail or any information about him at all?
I could call upon an army of Bobs to help eradicate him at any moment if I had a bit of info about him.
Scotty:
These kind of 'professional opinion' posts on various bbs's these days derive most likely from m$ anti-linux campaign.
quote: Beside working as a Chief Operating Unit in my IT department, I also work as a consultant for several fortune 500 companies, and I think
I can shed a little light on the climate of the open source community at the moment
--- End quote ---
Typical backup claim for IT profiency..
quote:
I believe that part of the reason that open source based startups are failing left and right is not an issue of marketing as it's commonly believed but more of an issue of the underlying
technology. I know that that's a strong statement to make, but I have evidence to back it up!
--- End quote ---
Author attacks first with clear indication that open source is defective technology and then softens the effect a bit. Pay attention to this "I have evidence" part next.
quote:
At one of the major corps(5000+ employees) that I consult for, we wanted to integrate the shareware version of Linux into our server pool. The allure of not having to pay any restrictive licensing fees was too great to ignore.
--- End quote ---
1) What corporation he is consulting?
2) What the fuck is shareware linux?? (download version?)
3) Key point is that author refers to 'restrictive licencing' which in this case is quite irrelevant (sounds like m$ talk). I believe this is prelog for conclusion 'You get what you pay' thesis.. but let's go on..
quote:
I reccomended the installation of
several boxes running the new 2.4.9 kernel, and my hopes were high that it would perform up to snuff with the Windows 2k boxes which
were(and still are!) doing an AMAZING job at their respective tasks of serving HTTP requests, DNS, and fileserving.
--- End quote ---
Well.. every decent IT support personel (I know) knows how 'well' IIS works and how painful it's to maintain.
1) It sounds like the author has made his mind about how well linux is going to work since he boasts how well m$ dickware works.
quote:
I consider myself to be very technically inclined having programmed in VB for the last 8 years doing kernel level programming. I don't
believe in C programming because contrary to popular belief, VB can go just as low level as C and the newest VB compiler generates code that's every bit as fast.
--- End quote ---
The text speaks for itself..
quote:
I took it upon myself to configure the system from scratch and even used an optimised version of gcc 3.1 to increase the execution speed of the binaries. I integrated the 3 machines I had configured into the server pool, and I'd have to say the results were less than impressive... We all know that linux isn't even close to being ready for the desktop, but I had heard that it was
supposed to perform decently as a "server" based operating system.
--- End quote ---
What does desktop thing have to do with server system? Why he mentioned it?
The author claims that he tweaked up his own linux and says:
quote:
but I had heard that it was supposed to perform decently as a "server" based operating system.
--- End quote ---
Notice the word 'supposed' :D
quote:
The 3 machines all went into swap immediately, and it was obvious that they weren't going to be able to handle the load in this "enterprise"
environment. After running for less than 24 hours, 2 of them had experienced kernel panics caused by Bind and Apache crashing!
--- End quote ---
I find it strange that these 'linux' boxes couldn't handle 'the load' while we all know how widely linux is used in very demanding computing systems.
quote:
Granted, Apache is a volunteer based project written by weekend hackers in their spare time while Microsft's IIS has an actual professional full fledged development team devoted to it. Not to mention the fact that the Linux kernel itself lacks any support for any type of journaled
filesystem, memory protection, SMP support, etc,
--- End quote ---
ROTFLMAO!!!! :D :D
Wow.. Now I know that my linux kernel cannot handle journalizing file systems.. Still it's very strange that I have ext3 in use. :D
quote:
but I thought that since Linux is based on such "old" technology that it would run with
some level of stability. After several days of this type of behaviour, we decided to reinstall windows 2k on the boxes to make sure it wasn't
a hardware problem that was causing things to go wrong. The machines instantly shaped up and were seamlessly reintegrated into the server pool with just one Win2K machine doing more work than all 3 of the Linux boxes.
--- End quote ---
Well.. Suprise Suprise. Our saviour m$ has given us w2k and everything is fine with it.
quote:
Needless to say, I won't be reccomending linux/FSF to anymore of my clients. I'm dissappointed that they won't be able to leverege the free cost of Linux to their advantage, but in this case I suppose the old adage stands true that, "you get what you pay for." I would have
also liked to have access to the source code of the applications that we're running on our mission critical systems; however, from the looks
of it, the Microsoft "shared source" program seems to offer all of the same freedoms as the GPL.
--- End quote ---
Isn't it wonderful that all his clients can benefit from m$ dickware support and surely he'll gets his hands on mickey source code
This dick hasn't seen a single mission critical server or system.
quote:
As things stand now, I can understand using Linux
in academia to compile simple "Hello World" style programs and learn C programming, but I'm afraid that for anything more than a hobby OS, Windows
98/NT/2K are your only choices.
--- End quote ---
Things just get better :D While reading that and his claims.. I'm speechless.. It's indeed a wonder where all these goons come from. They make ludicrious statements they can't backup. There's no way to prevent m$ to collapse and die because most of this anti-linux blabbering are complete and utter lies.
[ June 07, 2002: Message edited by: SingleMalt ]
Heru:
____________________________________________
Not to mention the fact that the Linux kernel itself lacks any support for any type of journaled
filesystem, memory protection, SMP support, etc,
_____________________________________________
I'll just comment on this tidbit of funny text.
1) what then are EXT3, ReiserFS, XFS, and JFS?
2) outright lie! Linux specifically has memory protection. is he really using Linux?
3)hmm.. I guess that super computer that NOAA ordered from IBM with 2400 processors running Linux won't do much good, huh? Right... he installed the single processor kernel, not the SMP kernel.
And the fact he is a VB prgrammer who doesn't believe in C programming says something in and of itself.
And does NTFS even qualify as a 'high performance' journaling file system?
He couldn't get apache to work for christ's sake! You don't have to be a genius to get apache up and running well. I worry about this guy.
53% of all web servers use Apache. It works for them much better than the alternitives. What did this guy do that caused his problems?
[ June 07, 2002: Message edited by: Heru ]
Calum:
the main problem that Microsoft face in getting their marketing division to write these bogus testimonials from supposed IT people (with anonymous names and anonymous companies) is that a marketing professional is unlikely to know anything about the actual technology, meaning that many more technically minded people will be able to see through it instantly.
The main thrust of Microsoft's marketing campaign is aimed towards people who are non-knowledgeable enough to actually believe this stuff out of hand, and who won't even seeing the contradictions within the document itself. Examples: If the author doesn't believe in C then why does he use gcc? If he has only ever used windows, then why did he configure it himself instead of getting a specialist to do it?
Microsoft seems to be assuming that there are a lot of dumb people out there, but are there? people on average are getting more and more computer minded as time goes on. People have begun en masse to know what an operating system is, and have begun to find distinctive reasons why they do not like a program, or windows itself. This was not the case a few years ago to the extent that it is now.
You will also notice that he mentions a huge array of concepts in here that are irrelevant. "desktop" OS, "shareware", "restrictive licensing" and many more subtle ones. If this is truly about the technical issues then why bring these up?
The main reason is to imply in no uncertain terms whether these things are "good" or "bad" to a non clued up user, before they get a chance to read anything else that may cloud their judgement (ie give them an unbiased view and allow them to think for themselves). It is made clear in ever case where something is mentioned or hinted at whether the reader is supposed to agree or disagree with a certain concept, by phrases such as "we all know" and "supposed to be".
SingleMalt's appraisal was completely spot on in my opinion.
Whether this will work or not is anybody's guess. The people this is aimed at are already using windows, and the clear aim is to get them to continue to do so. This crap is not aimed at IT professionals or server administrators, it's aimed at home users and part time IT admins in small firms, who could easily be made to think "well if it's no good for that serious professional guy, then i'm not touching it".
The thing is that this marketing will not fool a technical type, and whether this works or not will hinge firstly on how influential the technical types in this world turn out to be in the workplace and secondly how many people really are technically ignorant enough to fall for this kind of cut and thrust marketing.
A document like this may have the impact of several batteries in a sock, but if the recipient is knowledgeable enough about something useful like judo then the effect is not damaging to anybody but the guy holding the sock. We shall see...
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