Blazingly fast at...?

Story: Inconvenient truths: PC vs. Mac, Windows vs. Linux, us vs. them, et al.Total Replies: 3
Author Content
hioho

Jun 09, 2007
7:22 AM EDT
That phrase "may need lots of add-ons just to be usable" is a bit of a clue. Without said add-ons, Win2k is pretty close to a doorstop. Picking a set of add-ons which don't clash with one another is a definite art.

And yes, I've watched a network of Win2k machines trashed in about 3.5 minutes by a single user hitting an envirussed website.

OTOH, I have 7-year-old Linux server installations regularly sending me happy status reports from the other side of Australia.

The one Linux fileserver at the above site was the single machine which did *not* propagate the virus (since said virus used NetBIOS insanity to propagate itself, and SaMBa simply responded with a virtual finger in the air). It also had a virus scanner (ClamAV) which detected the nasty, & but for management paranoia about Linux, it would also have filtered said nasty out of the web traffic, courtesy of Squid. Management got a reinstall-27-workstations lesson in the usefulness of reflex paranoia. Rather than learn it, they paid the bill & went right on down suicide alley. AFAICT, if they hit the same website today, their network would be toast again.

Fast? Yes. Blazing? Yes. Desirable? No. Well... maybe if I was drunk and feeling masochistic.
devnet

Jun 09, 2007
12:46 PM EDT
hilarious, thanks for the post hioho :)

Puts things into perspective for people who may not get the chance to run Linux on their networks.
Aladdin_Sane

Jun 09, 2007
2:39 PM EDT
>>hilarious

Actually, I found the anecdote a bit depressing. When I consider all the lost productivity due to MS incompetent-ware it makes me wonder how far advanced we could be without MS holding us back.

I had this experience: About 2002, at Dell, I came in for a regular Saturday shift to find my co-workers outside smoking and talking.

Turned out an IIS worm (Sasser, I think) had brought the entire internal network down, and was replicating so fast, the network had to be shut off for repair.

Dell, of course, runs entirely on computers and their programs. But their choice of software left much to be desired, and has caused IT clampdowns, and ridiculous policies like forcing non-mnemonic passwords.
moopst

Jun 10, 2007
3:42 PM EDT
Aladdin, I had the same experience at Corporate Express due to a printer driver! Several weeks of inexplicable slow response on network drives, didn't bother me as I was programming on Unix. But then one day it got really bad and they had us all go home. Then they doubled down a went with one server for network drives and another for print spooling. Then at some point they found the offending printer driver. It must be real hard to do "find . -mtime -14" on a gui only OS.

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