On Thu, 05 Oct 2006 11:24:52 +0100
Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 10 Reasons to Switch to Linux
>
> ,----[ Gist: ]
> | 1. It Doesn't Crash
/it doesn't crash as much/
All operating systems crash. Usually dodgy hardware is the cause. BSOD
does not *always* mean a problem with the windows kernel itself
sometimes the code, and driver are correct, but the memory has a dodgy
transistor. Blaming the OS for this is not the right thing to do. 2003
is not as bad as 2000, it's actually usable, when putty is on there,
it's quite reliable. My uptime record is approaching 700 days on a box
that handles a serious amount of mail.
$ uptime
12:06:05 up 84 days, 16:33, 1 user, load average: 0.60, 0.45, 0.36
(the tick counter is 32 bits, it's senseless to make it 64 bits just for
uptime reporting.)
$ stat /proc/kmsg
File: `/proc/kmsg'
Size: 0 Blocks: 0 IO Block: 1024 regular empty file
Device: 2h/2d Inode: 4109 Links: 1
Access: (0400/-r--------) Uid: ( 0/ root) Gid: ( 0/ root)
Access: 2005-03-02 16:16:49.000000000 +0000
Modify: 2005-03-02 16:16:49.000000000 +0000
Change: 2005-03-02 16:16:49.000000000 +0000
$ A=$( stat -c %Y /proc/kmsg );
$ B=$( date +%s );
$ echo $(( ( $B-$A ) / 60 / 60 / 24 ))
581
I could manually reboot this box, a dozen times, and the cluster would
not have shown any signs of problems.
Unfortunately the box will be moving to a London data centre for a
refurbishment here in the coming months, all that lovely uptime...
destroyed.
> | 2. Viruses Are Few and Far Between
Well one of the worms was a worm that fixed a potential problem :)
> | 3. Virtually Hardware-Independent
So true. If the device has flash RAM and a protected memory CPU linux
usually gets ported in a very short space of time.
> | 4. Freedom of Choice
> | 5. Standards
Now this is a very important point. Open standards are very very
important for the success of a protocol, very few closed protocols are
successful. Email/HTTP/TCP are all open protocols that are probably in
use in computing more than anything else. Had they been closed then I
doubt they would have lasted very long at all.
> | 6. Applications, Applications, Applications
... all just a yum/apt-get away :) System builds a faction of the time
they used to be.
> | 7. Interoperability
See 5.
> | 8. It's a Community Relationship, Not a Customer Relationship
> | 9. It's Not How Big Your Processor Is...
Most of the things in Linux can be configured when the system is under
high load since a large portion of the system is text-configurable, if
something is getting stressed it's a simple matter to ssh in, alter the
config and send a reload to the service. That's very different to
getting a rdesktop session open (if less than 2 sessions are already
open) going through the startmenu and drilling into the appropriate
'manager' to change something.
> | 10. Linux Is Configurable
Incredibly configurable, so configurable that it's a joy to tinker with.
Things are so mundane on other platforms.
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