__/ [ nessuno@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ] on Wednesday 12 July 2006 14:23 \__
> This is a very interesting article. I sent the link to Ed Montogomery,
> the Toronto school teacher whose Linux lab was trashed.
Good move. I hope you sent him both links although the latter links to the
former.
After all this media commotion, I think he is likely to get his lab back.
Some people wrote to the authorities, too. If I recall correctly, I got not
just one but *two* articles about this to the front page of Digg. I also
noticed the comment left by Ed back in 2004 (thank you, Bailo, for pointing
at it), wherein he speaks of years of uptime. "looking forward to many more
years for painless computer classes", he summarised (not an exact quote).
By the way, I sent the E-mail to Steven, per your suggestion (also sent you
an E-mail as a blind carbon copy). FWIW, here it is (quite sloppy to be
honest)...
Dear Steven,
Please allow me to introduce myself. I am a long-time Linux advocate and
the person behind many of PJ's news items in Groklaw. I also syndicate
and read your site regularly, frequently submitting pointers to
Digg.com, which earn you traffic from the front page.
I came across your write-up on Jim's (a friend/colleague?) article in
eWEEK < http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1983364,00.asp >. I must
admit that I was slightly disappointed to find no skepticism in your
analysis/post-mortem. Let me begin by presenting an article that was
published as recently as this afternoon:
Sybase And IBM Set Transaction Processing Record For Linux
,----[ Snippets ]
| Sybase, provider of enterprise infrastructure and mobile software,
and IBM
| announced that IBM System p5 520 and Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise
| (ASE) for Linux set a new transaction processing performance record for
| 2-core systems by delivering 81,439 transactions per minute (tpmC) on the
| leading TPC-C benchmark...
|
| [...]
|
| This new record beats the previous 2-core HP/Itanium2 and Oracle 10g
| performance record for Linux by 58 percent. It also beats the previous
| 2-core HP/Opteron and Microsoft SQL Server performance record and is less
| expensive by 23 percent.
`----
http://in.sys-con.com/read/246319.htm
Please let me append a few arguments that were raised in the Linux
advocacy newsgroup -- these which address the article and your write-up
directly. I will quote just relevant fragments to save you time. In
reference to Jim's article:
===
>> Why would you want to marry free with something proprietary, requiring
>> licences, high exit costs, and so on?
>>
>> I appreciate that these articles are focussed on the technical aspects
>> of things, but you can't ignore costs.
>
> They also neglect stability, which affect TCO, unlike performance in
> isolation (as skeptic as I may be about it as a whole[1]). Might as well,
> squeeze in some IIS and call that a WIMP. If you ask me, the article is
> attempting to be cocky to both sides, avoiding any flames and lost
> readership.
>
I think that these articles probably need to 'grow up' a little.
Probably the writers need to, in order to make that happen.
>
>
> [1] Which distribution used? What specifications (it's a black art of
mis/fit
> to system requirements)? X enabled/running? Conclusion: not enough
> information. Most benchmarks are inconclusive, biased and subjected to one
> point in time (specification 'demography').
===
===
>> it would be an interesting read if I could get a copy of the apache and
>> mysql configs for Linux, as it is, all we have are bits of the data,
>> without the meat.
>
> They specifically noted that for LAMP and Windows .Net stack that both
> configurations were default. No special tweaking for either platform.
> They also justified their position in testing this way.
>
Yes, I read that, however, There's a big difference between the default
Apache install from a tarball of the source, and the CentOS rpm, no
mention of which method was used for install/config. There are several
simple settings in Apache that make a huge difference in performance in
many situations (whether the logfiles have ips, or they do on the fly
reverse dns for one, keepalive for another.) Those settings vary between
different "default" settings.
I can't comment on the .net stuff, don't do MS if I can avoid it, but
I'd like to see the apache and mysql config, and the php if possible.
There's a lot of room for tweaking there.
====
In relation to your article:
===
> "I think the tests were perfectly fair. "
>
> http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS6492047053.html
Ahh yes, the magician's look over here when there's something happening over
there.
First, the test. We are NOT testing the same things across all servers. This
is more a test of CMS systems. Without first measuring a common performance
baseline, these tests mean less than nothing, they actually misrepresent
what they are supposed to measure.
- From the article:
"One could argue that we were testing the subject apps?the portals?and not
the stacks themselves. Of course, one could also argue that tests using a
custom-built subject application would be less a test of the stacks than a
test of the porting skills of the programmers."
This is absolutely bogus! It shows Jim Rapoza of eweek does not have the
prerequisite knowledge about performance testing to make any such test or
claims. Worse yet, were I cynical, and I am, I would say that this is a
shill article planted to create FUD.
Here's the deal people: web server performance is a red herring. Seriously,
it isn't a big deal.
If you have a single server sitting in a basement with a T1 line you're not
getting any hits anyway, you could practically type the responses yourself.
If you have any sort of site, you have a load balancer and [N] web server
boxes dealing with HTTP requests. The web server boxes don't cost much,
maybe about $2000 MAX! Maybe about a couple hundred dollars a year in power
and depreciated connection hardware. They are like toasters, all the same
and easily replaceable. Linux and PHP are more stable than .NET on Windows,
that is a HUGE difference. Which vehicle would you choose for a general
work? A pickup truck that does 80MPH~90MPH or a paper mache' rocket sled
that does 240MPH?
===
Could you perhaps shed some light on this, perhaps in a follow-up article?
|
|
