341. Cole Thompson
January 7, 1999
cole.thompson@clorox.com
Having worked extensively with all 3 platforms, I would advise any ISP to migrate to Linux. It's clearly the future, unless you need SMP on 4 or more CPU's, in which case Solaris 2.6 on SPARC hardware is your safest bet at this point.
As a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE #27994) I actually have to say NT would be a poor choice for an ISP in India, since I am assuming money and bandwidth are in shorter supply in India than in the U.S. Linux seems to be extending its lead in performance and stability over other OS's, and starting with RedHat 5.1 and SuSE 5.3, Linux installation and configuration is about as easy as Windows now. And with KDE version 1.0, Linux also has a nicer GUI interface, so about the only advantage NT has is ability to run Win32 office productivity apps (MS Office)--not relevant to an ISP or data center server.

340. Harry G. Clayton
January 7, 1999
hgc@symuli.com
Linux has proven itself to be superior to Windows NT in every way except for the number of available applications from commercial ISVs. For Internet networking, Linux is the clear winner over all other operating systems when viewed from a cost/performance perspective. If I were not using Linux, I would use SCO, Solaris, BSDI, etc. NT has yet to demonstrate that it can properly support Internet services/protocols with the scalability and reliability that is needed. An expert administrator can easily configure Unix machines to pretty much take care of themselves. My network consists of SCO and Linux, with some Win9* machines to run the shrinkwrap apps. The Windows machines perform no network critical tasks, and the Unix machines send me email when they need my intervention (running out of disk space, etc.) I used to have a couple of NT machines, they have had Linux installed instead. I don't have the time or patience to deal with BSODs when better alternatives exist. If the financial types are so fond of Windows, then let them administer their own networks. I don't need the headaches.

339. Prashant Rane
January 7, 1999
prane@hotmail.com
Has anybody seen the latest adds for Microsoft? If you have you will understand what I am going to say. If you want to count cows or ice-cream boxes, use Microsoft. ISP on NT, give me a break here. Walk into any ISP shop here in USA, there is only one thing there SUN, SUN and SUN. I myself had worked as a NT-admin and it was a nightmare. Personally, I haven't seen NT machine up time of more than two weeks. NT-backup never works. Unix, I forgot where the box is located as it is running good all the time. I currently enjoy a completely UNIX based job. Lucky me, no more BLUE SCREENS OF DEATH for me. Security, performance, fault tolerance, salability, PRICE you name it and any UNIX beats NT. Forget Linux, even SCO will beat NT hands down, though they have some XENIX(MS-UNIX) code in it. For an ISP, if they want to sleep at night, they will use UNIX. NT server with 50 user licenses, is costlier than Sun Solaris 7 for same no of users licenses. And it runs on cheap Intel machines too. MS is nothing but a big ultra-active and damn successful marketing agency, selling crap products. Not for long though, their only advantage, their GUI, it will soon be bombed by the Linux desktops. Linux desktop managers and window managers provides ultimate stability and configurability. You can have looks of MAC, SUN/HP/Digital CDE, NextStep, heck even ms-windows, and you can switch between them in microseconds. No REBOOT required. All the popular applications by IBM, ORACLE, SYBASE, INFORMIX are already available on Linux. One can have office/personal productivity tools like word processor, spread sheet, presentation tool, database access tool from multiple vendors like Stardivision, Applixware, Corel. Don't forget the wealth of freeware applications available on Linux. In India, tech. institutes like IITs, Eng. Collages, NSCT produce tons of good engineers who easily and willingly work on UNIX. Leave Microsoft where it belongs, on the shelf of a shop, behind locks. UNIX is the way to go.

338. Bill McCarthy
January 7, 1999
bmccarthy@ids-net.com
Since I'm not residing in India, I feel what I have to say may not be truly applicable to your situation, but I do have an opinion. Since the OS is going to be used for ISP's, and ISP's need to have stable, scalable, robust multi-user OS's that can be easily administered remotely, I really think this is a "no-brainer". NT is just not up to the task. Traditionally, Unix, and Unix-like OS's, are built from the ground up as server and mutli-user operating systems. NT is based on the single-user mind-set. In addition to performance is cost and flexibility. NT is not cost effective. It has a license issue, support issues, and upgrade cost issues. Linux, Free BSD do not. Solaris does, true, but being a stable, multi-user network-based scalable OS, the performance/cost equation is not as high as NT. Also, for an ISP, web servers and scripting are important, as is security. For any Unix or Unix-like OS, the availability of high-quality, free, and Open Source software is a real boon.
Apache
Sendmail
Perl
Python
INN
Saint
Satan
SSH
TCPWrappers - standard on most Linux distributions
and so on are all the tools a small to large ISP needs to set up, configure, and secure a fully functional ISP. Nothing available for NT comes even close. All the above tools are available for free and are highly configurable. In terms of performance, NT uses large amounts of hardware resources inefficiently. This is due to the overhead in the code - a GUI is not necessary on any server. You can use older equipment with Linux and Free BSD that would have a hard time even running NT workstation, let alone Server. Thus, for your email, DNS or news server, you could actually convert 486-class machines into fully functioning Internet servers. I wish you all the best of luck in your projects, and leave you with these recommendations:
small - medium ISP - Linux or Free BSD
large ISP - Solaris
Don't even consider NT. It is technically inferior for multi-user, networked environments.

337. T. Jones
January 7, 1999
big10prdue@geocities.com
I have heard that India has one of the most competent, thriving programmer bases in the world. If this is true, I don't understand how greedy, want-to-rule-the-world companies can even be under consideration. Why get locked into one or two vendors? My recommendation is Linux. A lot of these companies preach how they are so much for the customer, but what it really comes down to is how can we please our stockholders? Well that's a simple question...rake in more MONEY! For these companies with their proprietary software/hardware, it is not about you the customer, it is about money. Linux allows you to add and remove to your software base as YOU see fit. And one can not ignore the enormous advantages that a product developed at a global level instead of several thousand by one company has. Linux all the way.

336. Paddy
January 7, 1999
Paddix@hotmail.com
NT of course... No sane person would use Unix with its latin commands!!!

335. L.N.Subramanian
January 7, 1999
subra@astea.com
Personal choice Unix now, Linux in the future. NT is no patch on Unix in terms of stability especially in high volume situations. But unfortunately marketing and perception wins, so we see more corporations jumping onto NT.

 334. Govind Srinivasan
January 7, 1999
govindrt@mailcity.com
I would rather say that the ISP's choose between Linux and Unix, since Linux is free they could always take the chance of trying it. Definitely Unix is more stable and a safer bet but Linux gives you the option of expanding. And since we are talking about networking here, it definitely means keep Windows NT out of it!!! they still have a long way to go-stability for instance!!

Post  Upload your opinion

Pages  25 24 23 22 21 More>>