Let's get real. we all know there's a ton of Linux hype out there. A
day does not go by without another vendor declaring Linux support. But
there's also a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt about Linux. In this
exclusive report, Sm@rt Reseller cuts through the hoopla and reveals where
Linux plays best, and where its use should be avoided. Some of our
findings--based on our internal tests and interviews with key Linux
experts--may surprise you.
Certainly, Linux has momentum. Shipments of the operating system are
expected to increase 25 percent annually through 2003, predicts
International Data Corp. But those numbers can be misleading. Linux has
yet to take root on the desktop and lacks many high-end features that Unix
proponents take for granted.
Still, Linux has some clear strengths. With Samba for file serving and
Apache for Web serving, it has proven to be a robust solution for file,
print and Web servers. It's also an important operating system for network
appliances, whether they are simple file servers or complete Internet
solutions like Rebel.com's Net Winder OfficeServer, where stability and
remote administration are top requirements.
Conventional wisdom says Linux is incredibly stable. Always skeptical,
we decided to put that claim to the test over a 10-month period. In our
test, we ran Caldera Systems OpenLinux, Red Hat Linux, and Windows NT
Server 4.0 with Service Pack 3 on duplicate 100MHz Pentium systems with
64MB of memory. Ever since we first booted up our test systems in January,
network requests have been sent to each server in parallel for standard
Internet, file and print services. The results were quite revealing. Our
NT server crashed an average of once every six weeks. Each failure took
roughly 30 minutes to fix. That's not so bad, until you consider that
neither Linux server ever went down. This test, coupled with our technical
staff's extensive Linux and NT experience, leads us to believe that Linux
truly is more stable than NT on uniprocessor servers.
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