Windows vs. Linux Study Author Replies 501
Last week you submitted
questions for Dr. Herb Thompson, author of the latest Microsoft-sponsored
Windows vs. Linux study. Here are his answers. Please feel
free to ask follow-up questions. Dr. Thompson says he'll respond to as
many as he can. He's registered a new Slashdot username, FFE4,
specifically to participate in this discussion. All others claiming to
be him are imposters. So read, post, ask, and enjoy.
1- A
better way of putting it: by einhverfr
It seems that your study attempted to simulate the growth of an internet startup firm on Windows or Linux. One thing I did not see in the study was a good description of assumptions you made. What assumptions were made in both the design of the requirements and the analysis of the data? What limitations can we place on the conclusions as a result of these assumptions?
Dr. Thompson
This is a really important question. I think there are two sections of the study: the assessment methodology and then the experiment we undertook to illustrate how to apply that methodology. I'll answer the assumption question for both parts:
Methodology - For the methodology, we wanted to provide a tool that organizations could use and apply their own assumptions. Maintaining a system is all about context; some environments favor Linux, others Windows. The question is, how do you know what's likely to be the most reliable (which includes manageable, secure and supportable) solution for your environment? We proposed a methodology a recipe - that looks at a solution in its entirety instead of just individual components. Policies like configuration control vary from organization to organization and to get something that's truly meaningful in your environment, the methodology needs to be carried out in your context. Enterprise customers can and should do this when they are about to trust their critical business processes to a platform. That said, the basic assumptions of the methodology are that patches are applied at 1 month intervals and that business needs evolve over time. How those business needs evolve depends on the scenario you're looking at (in our experiment we looked at ecommerce for example). The methodology doesn't cover steady state reliability, meaning the uptime of a system that is completely static. While this is important, our conversations with CIOs, CTOs, CSOs and IT folks lead us to believe that this was a smaller contributor to pain in a dynamic environment. In an appliance for example, though, steady state reliability is king, and I think an important limitation of this methodology is that we don't capture that well, and I think it's amazingly difficult quality to measure in a time-lapse way.
The purpose of the experiment was to illustrate how to apply the methodology and to begin to get some insights into some of the key model differences between two platforms. For the experiment we picked the ecommerce scenario, for no other reason than there has been a clear shift in how ecommerce sites have serviced their customers in recent years moving from static sites to personalized content. Some specific assumptions were:
* The transition from a basic purchasing site to a personalized portal based on order/browsing history takes place over a one year period.
* The period we looked at was July 1st, 2004 to June 30th, 2005 (the most recent full year at the time of the study).
* A configuration control policy exists that mandates OS version but not much else meaning administrators had fairly free rein to meet business requirements.
* All patches marked as critical or important supplied by the vendor are applied.
* We assume the system to be functioning if the original ecommerce application is running and meets some basic acceptance tests (same for both platforms see Appendix 1 of the report) and the new installed components are also running.
* To add new capabilities, we use leading 3rd party components as opposed to building custom code in-house.
* The business migrates operating system versions at the end of the one year period to the latest versions of the platform.
* The administrators that participated in the experiment reflect the average Linux (specifically SuSE) and Windows administrators in skill, capability and knowledge. While this was strived for, it's important to recognize the small sample size in drawing any conclusions from the data.
As far as limitations, the experiment looks at one specific case with a total of six administrators. I'd love to have done it with a hundred admins on each side on a wide range of business requirement scenarios and my hope is that others will do that and publish their results. Our experiment, however, shows that for this particular, clearly documented scenario, experienced Linux Admins had conflicts between meeting business needs and a recommended best practice like not introducing out-of-distribution components. If one is aware of potential conflicts and challenges upfront, I think you can put controls in place to make reasonable tradeoffs. In the linux case, a precise and specific configuration control policy may have prohibited the problematic upgrade of one of the components that the 3rd party solutions required. This would have likely reduced the number of failures but would have put some hefty constraints on 3rd party solutions. To understand the implications for your environment you really need to run through the methodology with the assumptions and restrictions of your organization and I hope that this study either prompts or provokes people to do that.
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2 - Meta-credibility?
by Tackhead
Where I come from (non-management, grunt-level techie), appearing in any of these analysts' journals *costs* an author more credibility than it gains him or her. For example, if $RAG says that $CORP has the best customer support, I immediately assume that $CORP has such horrid customer support that they had to pay someone to make up some research that proves otherwise.
To be sarcastic, I'd ask "who the heck actually takes these studies seriously?", but obviously *somebody* does. Who are these people, and why do these people take these industry analyst firms/journals/reports seriously? Are they right or wrong to do so? This isn't an attack (or endorsement :) of your research -- I'm talking about the credibility gap in industry research, and my observation that it's an industry-wide problem.
The meta-credibility question is this: Given the amount of shoddy pay-for-play research out there, does being published in an analyst journal tend to cost (a researcher, his consulting company, his financial backers) more credibility than it can gains him/her/them? If not, why not -- and more importantly, if so, is there any way to reverse the trend?
Dr. Thompson
This is a really interesting question because it cuts to the heart of what a real research study should provide to the reader. It should provide a baseline and I think research should always be questioned, scrutinized and debated because one can always find reasons for bias. Particularly, if a subject of the study (vendor for example) is behind its funding, whether directly (as in this study) or indirectly (meaning that they are big clients) I think it's critical that the study not provide just a baked cake for readers but the recipe as well. The recipe has to be inherently fair and simple, meaning that it has to map directly to a the quality or pain one is trying to measure without taking into account how the subjects try and provide that service or mitigate that pain. I think slanted opinion pieces, with no backup for those opinions, seriously hurts credibility, at least in my book. If you're presenting facts though and encouraging others to question them then I think that actually helps credibility, even if the search for those facts was paid for.
I agree though that one is tempted to dismiss research a priori though because of funding or some vendor tie. I think a good way to reverse the trend is to open the process up to public scrutiny; that's probably the main reason I came on Slashdot. To use this specific study as an example, some folks disagreed with several points in the experiment from counting patches, to reasons for upgrading key components, to the ecommerce scenario we used. For me, the study's key value is the methodology. Could different applications/scenarios have been chosen: absolutely!
The value I think that this study gives to the practitioner is arming them with a tool to help measure in their own environment. By applying the methodology, the results should take into account things like administrators skillsets, support policies, configuration control policies and the tradeoffs between customizability, maintainability, visibility, security and usability. It's only by looking at this stuff in context can one make a sound judgment; and a true research paper, especially one where funding is in question, needs to fully disclose the method and the funding source. In our case, the methodology has been vetted by industry analysts, IT organizations and several academics. That doesn't mean much, though, if you don't find the methodology meaningful for the questions you want answered. One reason I've come on Slashdot is to get the thoughts, opinions and assessments of the methodology itself from administrators in the trenches. I'm really pleased with the great questions and comments amidst the inevitable flames and I'm looking forward to this being posted so that others can weigh-in with their feedback and I can jump into the threads to get some discussion going.
If the research helps give real insight, and the methodology makes sense, I think there's real value no matter who paid the bill. At the end of the day, you need to decide whether or not you can extract any value from the information presented to you. In the case of this study, my hope is that it will leave you thinking hmmm.... maybe we should actually run through a process like this and check out how this works for ourselves. My more ambitious hope is that you'll implement it and tell me what challenges you faces on Windows, Linux, OSX, BSD, whatever platform you choose to compare. It may not even venture into the perennial Windows versus Linux battle; maybe you're a linux shop trying to decide between multiple distributions for example. Either way, if it's got people thinking about the topic and asking questions, well, that's all any researcher can really hope for.
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3 - Weak setup
by 0xABADC0DA
If I understand the study correctly, the windows side had to do nothing but set up a server to do a few different tasks over time and run windows update. The linux side had to have multiple incompatible versions of their database server running simultaneously on a single system and had to run unsupported versions of software to do it.
Why wasn't the windows side required to run multiple versions of IIS or SQL server simultaneously? In real life if you need to run multiple database versions you use virtualization or multiple systems, especially if one requires untested software. You don't run some hokie unstable branch on the same system as everything else. Why was a linux solution picked that required this level of work? My other related question is, did any of the unix administrators question why there were being asked to do such a thing? For example, did they come back and say they need a license for vmware? If they did not they do not seem like very competent administrators in my opinion.
Dr. Thompson
The Windows Admins and Linux admins were given the exact same set of business requirements which doesn't necessarily translate into the same tasks as they went about fulfilling them. The 3rd party components installed were chosen solely based on their market leadership position and any upgrades of OS were unknown at the time of selection. That said, on the Windows side, it turned out that no upgrades of IIS were needed (except for patches) and SQL Server was upgraded to SP4 as part of patch application. On the Linux side, at a high-level there were two main classes of upgrades: MySQL and GLIBC and they were both prompted by the installed components. After the experiment, the administrators were asked on both sides if this kind of evolution of systems met with their real-world experience. They said yes, with the caveat of if they were asked to install a component that required an upgrade of GLIBC that they would likely upgrade the operating system as long as their configuration control policy allowed it.
You make a great point about installing components on some sort of staging system (which is almost always done) as opposed to live running systems. That still means that the problems that the administrators had equal real IT pain. If something weird had to be done to get the system running but it does run and it's then put into production it's like a fuse that gets set on a bomb. A careful configuration control policy would almost certainly help and thats why I think it's so important to conduct this kind of experiment in your own environment with your own policies.
As far as selection of the Linux administrators go, they all had at least 5 years of enterprise administration experience, and two years of experience on SuSE specifically. With three people there's certainly likely to be a lot of variability and to get some conclusive results, I'd love to get a huge group of administrators across the spectrum in terms of experience. I'd also love to do it across multiple scenarios, beyond the ecommerce study. For this experiment, basically the bottom line is that we Illustrate one clearly documented scenario with six highly qualified admins that we selected based on experience. We cant ensure equal competency levels, but there was nothing in our screening that would lead us to believe there were gaps in knowledge on either side. When it comes down to it though, the really meaningful results are the ones you get when you perform the evaluation in your environment. Hopefully this study provides a starting point for asking the right questions when you do that.
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4- Who determined the metrics
by Infonaut
Did Microsoft come to you with a specific set of metrics, or did you work with them to develop the metrics, or did you determine them completely on your own?
Kudos to you for braving the inevitable flames to answer people's questions here on Slashdot.
Dr. Thompson
Great question! The metrics and the methodology were developed completely on our own and independent of Microsoft. They were created with the help and feedback of enterprise CIOs as well as industry analysts. I think that this relates to a couple of other questions on Slashdot with the gist of if Microsoft is funding the study aren't you incentivized for them to come out ahead. Besides the standard we would never do that and that would put our credibility at risk which is our primary commodity which are both very true, let me explain a little more about how our research engagements work.
Company X (in this case Microsoft) comes to us and says can you help us measure quality Y (in this case Reliability) to get some insight into how product Z stacks up. We say, sure, BUT we have complete creation and control of the methodology, it will be reviewed and vetted by the community (end users and independent analysts) and must strictly follow scientific principles. The response will either be: great, we want to know whats really going on or um, heres some things to focus on and I think you should set it up this way. In the first case we proceed, in the second case we inform that company that we don't do that kind of research. We are also not in the opinion business, so we present a methodology to follow and illustrate how that methodology is applied with the hope that people will take the methodology and apply it in their own environment.
All of our studies are written as if they will be released publicly BUT it is up to the sponsor if the study is publicly released. The vendor knows that they're taking a risk. They pay for the research either way but only have control over whether it is published, not over content. So if their intent is to use it as an outward facing piece, they may end up with something they don't like. Either way, I think it's of high value to them. If there are aspects of the results that favor the sponsor's product, in my experience, it goes to the marketing department and gets released publicly; if it favors the competitors product it goes off to the engineering folks as a tool to understand their product, their competitor's product, and the problem more clearly. Either way, we maintain complete editorial control over the study and there is no financial incentive for us if it becomes a public study or is used as an internal market analysis piece. The methodology has to be as objective as possible to be of any real value in either case.
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5 - ATMs vs. Voting Machines
by digitaldc
How is it that Diebold can make ATM machines that will account for every last penny in a banking system, but they can't make secure electronic voting machines?
Also, does the flame-resistant suit come with its own matching tinfoil hat? (don't answer that one)
Dr. Thompson
This is a question that has passed through my mind more than once. The voting world is very interesting. I don't have experience with the inner workings of Diebolds ATM machines but I can say that the versions of their tabulation software that Ive seen have some major security challenges (see this Washington post documentary for some of the gory details). I'd say I'm concerned about the e-voting systems Ive seen but that would be a serious understatement.
I question whether the economic incentive is there for them to make their voting systems more secure. Take an ATM for example. Imagine the ATM has a flaw and if you do something to it, you can make it give you more money than is actually deducted from your account. Anything involving money gets audited and sometimes audited multiple times and chances are good that the bank is going to figure out that they're loosing money. On the flip side, if there was a flaw in the ATM in the banks favor, someone balancing their checkbook is going to notice a discrepancy. The point is that there's always traceability and there's always someone keeping score. If you think about voting tabulators though we've got this mysterious box that vote data gets fed into and then, in many states, only a fraction of these votes are audited. That means we don't really know what the bank balance is other than what the machine tells us it is. If the system is highly vulnerable and its vulnerability is known by the manufacturer *but* it's going to be expensive to fix it and shore up defenses, there seems to be no huge incentive to fix the problems. I think the only way to get some decent software that counts votes that people can have confidence in is to allow security experts to actually test the systems, highlight potential vulnerabilities, and put some proper checks and balances in place. That would give the general public some visibility into a critical infrastructure system that we usually aren't in the habit of questioning and will hold voting manufacturers directly accountable to voters.
As for the tin foil hat to go with the flame resistant suit; it hasn't been shipped to me yet - apparently the manufacturing company is still filling backorders from SCO :).
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6 - Why are the requirements different?
by altoz
Looking at your research report's appendices, it seems that the requirements for Windows Administrators were somewhat different than the Linux Administrators. For instance, you ask for 4-5 years sys admin experience minimum for Windows, whereas it's 3-4 years sys admin experience minimum for Linux.
Why wasn't it equal for both? And doesn't this sort of slight Windows favoring undermine your credibility?
Dr. Thompson
Short answer: Typo. Long answer: We originally were looking for 4 years of general administration experience for both Linux and Windows which is what is reflected in the desired responses to the General Background questionnaire for Linux. We then raised it to 5 years for both Linux and Windows which is reflected in the General Background of the Windows questionnaire. The difference in the two was just a failure to update the response criteria on that shared section of one of the questionnaires. On page 5 though we've got the actual administrator experience laid out:
Each SuSE Linux administrator had at least 5 years experience administering Linux in an enterprise setting. We also required 2 years minimum experience administering SuSE Linux distributions and at least 1 year administering SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 and half a year administering SLES 9 (released in late 2004). Windows administrators all had at least 5 years experience administering Windows servers in an enterprise environment. These administrators also had at least 2 years experience administering Windows Server 2000 and at least 1 year administration experience with Windows Server 2003.
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7 - Scalability of Results?
by hahiss
You tested six people on two different systems; how is that supposed to yield any substantial insight into the underlying OSes themselves?
[At best, your study seems to show that the GNU/Linux distribution you selected was not particularly good at this task. But why does that show that the ``monolithic" style of Windows is better per se than the ``modular" style of GNU/Linux distributions?]
Dr. Thompson
First, let's look at what we did. We followed a methodology for evaluating reliability with three Windows admins and three Linux admins. This is small sample set and it looked at one scenario: ecommerce. Is this enough to make sweeping claims about the reliability of Linux/Windows? No way. I do however think the results raise some interesting questions about the modularity vs. integration tradeoffs that come with operating systems. I don't think that either the Windows or Linux models are better in a general sense but they *are* different; the question is which is likely to cause less pain and provide more value for your particular business need in your specific environment. Hopefully these are the questions that people will ask after reading this study, and with any luck it will prompt others to carry out their own analysis within their own IT environment, building on what we started here. I think the methodology in this paper has provided a good starting point to help people answer those questions in context.
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8 - Convenience vs. security
by Sheetrock
Lately, I've felt that Microsoft is emphasizing greater trust in their control over your system as a means of increasing your security. This is suggested by the difficulty of obtaining individual or bulk security patches from their website as opposed to simply loading Internet Explorer and using their Windows Update service, the encouragement in Service Pack 2 of allowing Automatic Update to run in the background, and the introduction of Genuine Advantage requiring the user to authenticate his system before obtaining critical updates such as DirectX.
In addition, Digital Rights Management or other copy protection schemes are becoming increasingly demanding and insidious, whether by uniquely identifying and reporting on user activity, intentionally restricting functionality, and even introducing new security issues (the most recent flap involves copy protection software on Sony CDs that not only hides content from the user but permits viruses to take advantage of this feature.)
I would like to know how you feel about the shift of control over the personal computer from the person to the software manufacturers -- is it right, and do we gain more than we're losing in privacy and security?
Dr. Thompson
This is an interesting problem because manufacturers have to deal with a wide range of users. If there was real visibility and education for users on the security implications of doing A, B or C then we'd be ok. It's scary though when that line gets crossed. Sony's DRM rootkit is a good example. But if you think about it, we are essentially passively accepting things like this all the time. Every time we install a new piece of software,especially something that reads untrusted data like a browser plugin,we tacitly accept that this software is likely to contain security flaws and can be an entryway into your system; NOW are you sure you want to install it? The visceral immediate reaction is no but then you balance tradeoffs of the features you get versus potential risks. Increasingly, were not even given that choice, and components that are intended to help us (or help the vendor) are installed with out our knowledge. This also brings up the question of visibility; how do we know what security state were really in with a system? Again, there are tradeoffs, some of this installed software may actually increase usability or maintainability but it's abstracting away what's happening on the metal. So far, it seems as though the market has tended towards the usability, maintainability, integration that favors bundling on both the Linux and Windows sides. It's kind of a disturbing trend though.
As another example, think about how much trustaverage programmers put into their compiler these days. Whenever I teach classes on computer security and then go off into x86 op codes or even assembly, it seems to be a totally foreign concept and skillset. We've created a culture of building applications rapidly in super high-level languages which does get the job done, but at the same time seems to have sacrificed knowledge of (or even the desire to know) what's happening on the metal. This places a heavy burden on platform developers, compiler writers and even IDE manufacturers because we are shifting the cloud of security responsibility over to them in big way. Under the right conditions it can be good because the average programmer knows little about security, but we need to make sure that the components we depend on and trust are written with security in mind, analyzed by folks that have a clue, and are tested and verified with security in mind. This means asking vendors the tough questions about their development processes and making sure they've got pretty good answers. Here's what I think is a good start. If that fails, theres always BSD. :).
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9 - Apache versus IIS
by 00_NOP
Simple one: of course I accept that Windows and Linux are a priori equally vulnerable - C programmers make mistakes. The question is which model is most likely to deliver a fix fastest. Given that the one area where Linux is probably in the lead over Microsoft's software is in the realm of the webserver - why are my server logs filled with artifacts of hacked IIS boxes but apache seems to remain pretty safe?
Dr. Thompson
You bring up a couple of interesting points. The first is patch delivery. It's true that on Linux if there's a high profile vulnerability you're likely to be able to find a patch out on the net from somebody in a few hours. Sometimes the fix is simple, a one-liner, and other times it may be more complex. Either way, there could be unintended side effects of the patch which is why there's usually a significant lag between these first responder patches and a blessed patch released from the distribution vendor. Most enterprises I know wait for the distribution patch as a matter of policy, and even then, they go through a fairly rigorous testing and compatibility verification process before the patch gets deployed widely. In the Windows world, one doesn't get the alpha or beta patches, just the blessed finished product. So the question is which solution is likely to provide a patch that fixes the problem and doesn't create any more problems the fastest. That's a tough one to answer. I think theres something to be learned by looking historically and that in general theres a big discrepancy between perception and reality. Here's a (pdf) link to a study we did earlier this year based on 2004 data that I think provides a good starting point for answering that question.
As far as why you've got so many attempts on your Windows/IIS box, I think there are two distinct issues: vulnerability and threat profile. In the past, I would argue that the path of least resistance was through Windows because desktop systems were often left unprotected by the home computer user. Bang-for-the-packet favored creating tools that exploited these problems and some of the attacks actually worked on poorly configured servers as well. Then there's the targeted vs. broad attacks. Theres no question that the high-profile worms and viruses in the last several years have favored Windows as a target. The issue gets even more complicated when you look at targeted attacks. These targeted attacks are much harder to measure, even anecdotally, because either an organization gets compromised and doesn't disclose it (unless they're compelled to by law) or the attack goes undetected because it doesn't leave any of the standard footprints, in which case no pain is felt immediately. That may help to explain it but the truth is that there's a lot of conflicting data out there. I remember reading this on Slashdot last year which claims Apache was more attacked than IIS but I've also read reports to the contrary. The reality is that any target of value is going to get attacked frequently. If there is an indiscriminant mass attack like a worm or virus, that's pretty bad and can be really painful. What's scarier though is the attack that just targets you.
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10 - Do you agree with Windows Local Workflow
by MosesJones
Microsoft and Linux distros have had a policy for some time of including more and more functionality in the base operating system, the latest example is the inclusion of "Local Workflow" in Windows Vista.
As a security expert do you think that bundling more and more increases or decreases the risks, and should both Windows and Linux distros be doing more to create reduced platforms that just act as good operating systems?
Dr. Thompson
Three years ago I bought my mother a combination TV, VCR and DVD player. It was great; she didn't have to worry about cables or the notorious multi-remote control problem. She didn't even really need the VCR because she hardly ever watches Video tapes, but I thought, why not. It worked great for two years, mom watched her DVDs, and on a blue moon a video tape from a family vacation would find its way into the VCR. All was well at the Thompson household. This past year, tragedy struck. The VCR devoured a videotape, completely entangling it in the machine. This not only knocked out the VCR but the television too (it thought it was constantly at the end of a tape and needing to rewind it). So here's the issue: mom probably only needed a TV and a separate DVD player. I probably could have gotten better quality components individually too, and with some ebay-savvy shopping, the group may have been cheaper. For my mom though, the integration and ease of operation of the three were key assets. The flipside of that is that the whole is only as strong as the weakest of its constituent parts, and by the manufacturer throwing some questionable VCR components into the mix, it caused the whole thing to fail. The meta-question: did I make the right choice, going for the kitchen-sink approach versus individual components? I think for mom I made the right call. For me, my willingness to program a universal remote and my love of tweaking the system would have lead me down a different route.
In operating systems, it depends what you're looking for and what the risk vs. reward equation is for you, and I would argue that the answer varies from user to user. The ideal would be something that gave you integration, ease of use, visibility, manageability and the ability to truly customize and minimize functionality and maintenance requirements. No operating system I've ever seen strikes that balance optimally and for every user. As far as bundling functionality with the distribution, I think it's a question of market demand. There's no question though that from a simple mathematical perspective, the less code processing untrusted data the better. That means if I need a system to perform one specific function, and that function was constant over time, then from a security perspective I only want the stuff on that box that does what I need to serve that goal. For example, I don't ever want X Windows on my linux file server. I just want the minimal code base there because as long as the code itself is reliable, I'll only have to mess with the box to apply patches (and much fewer patches if I strip the system down). That's true of my home fileserver. If I have an army of systems to manage though, my decision is going to come down to which platform is reliable and extends me the most tools to manage it efficiently and effectively. That's a question that can only be answered in context. I can tell you what I run at home though. File server: Red Hat EL 4 (no X windows). Laptop: Windows XP SP2. Desktop: Windows Server 2003 with virtual machines of everything under the sun from Win 9x to SuSE, Red Hat and Debian.
~FFE4 (Score:3, Funny)
Kidding!
Re:~FFE4 (Score:3, Interesting)
As in:
WAITKEY: JSR $FFE4 ; Check for a keypress
BEQ WAITKEY ; If no key pressed, a zero is in the accumulator, so loop back
Re:~FFE4 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:~FFE4 (Score:2, Interesting)
Regards,
Steve
Re:~FFE4 (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is not the study, but what the outside parties will do with it. It provides with a set of data that can be used to many different marketing campaings: "Windows is better than Linux", "SuSE sucks, buy RedHat", "XXXX e-commerce solution is cr
Don't forget (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course I realise they try to use situations that are more likely to favor for them as for [insert competitor].
No if just once a bunch of other studies leaked we could get a real view over what MS is doing with their researches all the time...
King of The Desktop perhaps (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't believe it? Look at what the most widely used Web server is. Look at what the most widely used DB is. look at the most popular scripting languages. And now keep in mind that they all come installed by default on almost all Linux distros.
They can keep putting money into trying to convince people that Microsoft Clusterfuck Edition can replace Linux clusters. That's cool. Just another money pit for them and a great way to divert resources into a nowhere scheme. And sure they have loads of funds but they still have to answer to shareholders and they are not pleased that the stock has stagnated for so long and they won't be pleased when didvidends stop getting payed and products not being sold or delivered on time do to them focusing on a product that will go nowhere.
The entire open source world and all companies supporting open source (IBM, Google, Sun, Amazon, etc.) are all starting a bait and switch where Microsoft throws mony into duplicating anything that it thinks may be a threat. This is turn causes them to waste funds and resources on red herrings when the actual threat is something else entirely.
These past 5 years have seen Linux and open source go from obscurity to mainstream in the business market. The next five years will see it go from obscurity to mainstream in the consumer market.
Re:And the ones they do show are usually flawed. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:And the ones they do show are usually flawed. (Score:3, Funny)
Sense of Humor (Score:4, Funny)
See his comment on the Flameproof suit/Tinfoil hat question.
MySQL (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's my question: Why didn't they just rebuild the source RPM and install the resulting binaries? This way the binary would be built with the same glibc as everything else on the system. I've done that on many system with no adverse effects. They didn't have to rebuild in on the server, just any machine running the same distro would do fine.
Why didn't they upgrade the OS? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not allow the sysadmins to upgrade from SLES 8 to SLES 9 instead of REQUIRING them to backport the glibc patches from 9 to 8?
Re:Why didn't they upgrade the OS? (Score:5, Interesting)
He answered this -- the configuration control system that was in place did not allow for the upgrading of the OS.
This is not unusual -- if you know everything works with OS Y version X, then you simply do not upgrade just because X+1 comes out without doing massive testing.
He also said that after the test was done the Linux admins said that the test followed their real world experience pretty well, except that they would've upgraded the OS instead of backporting glibc. The configuration control didn't allow for that -- which is almost certainly a problem with the configuration control. If your admins say "well, we can upgrade to X+1 and certify that everything works in Z days, or we can try to backport the changes which will take W days with the understanding that it may all blow up anyway" then most businesses will go with the first route -- even if Z is bigger than W because that "blow up anyway" bit should scare the crap out of any CTO that's worth employing.
Yes, they should've allowed for the upgrading. The configuration control was overly stringent and caused undue breakage. There are certainly parallels in the Windows world where installing a patch breaks other systems. And there you're down one option -- you can either deal with the broken software, you can go back to a vulnerable/unpatched state, but you cannot port the patch backwards in most cases. Not that I recommend the latter option in almost any case -- fixing the broken apps is likely to cause far less pain.
That's the problem, they did. (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, it was part of the requirments.
But they did NOT let them upgrade when any normal person would have. They REQUIRED them to stay on SLES 8 and backport patches from SLES 9
Any intelligent person would have skipped the backport process, done the upgrade when it became necessary and bypassed all the "problems" that were "found" in this "study".
Re:Why didn't they upgrade the OS? (Score:4, Interesting)
This study covers an area where Microsoft has invested substantial effort in making a specific set of migration pathways. Microsoft's design method has always been to streamline certain task pathways, and (by design and/or side effect) make work outside those pathways much more difficult. For example, trying to get data out of Exchange and into any database other than SQL server requires a very complex set of programming with CDO and other objects. The effort to get data out of a mail-storage system on Linux would pale in comparison, regardless of the RDBMS used. Another example in the migration area is legacy OSes. If a Microsoft operating system reaches its end of life, not only are there no further patches or upgrades issued by the vendor, but it cannot be patched by anyone outside of Microsoft. So how about a test of modifying an application on an NT4 server versus RedHat 6?
The findings of this study do seem legitimate, and its credibility is certainly enhanced by the author's willingness to open its methodology to scrutiny. And unsurprisingly, Microsoft asked for a study in an area where they already thought their product was better. I'd call it one state of a large ensemble.
Re:MySQL (Score:2, Insightful)
I know that the database I work with on a daily basis have a minimum requirement for glibc versions and when we release a new version, that requirement normally have bumped the release of the mninimum required glibc version, hence a glibc upgrade may be necessary.
Re:MySQL (Score:5, Informative)
I find that EXCEEDINGLY hard to believe considering that the req was:
"In the Linux case, the component required an upgrade of the MySQL database component from version 3.23 to version 4.1"
and MySQL 4.1 works fine when compiled against GLIBC 2.2 which is what SLES 8 ships with. Truth be told, the study admins choose to hunt down precompiled RPMs for MySQL 4.1 rather than download the sources and do a simple configure/make install. If they REALLY wanted RPMs, they could even have grabbed the SRPM from SuSE, ran it through alien,subbed in the new tgz, and rebuild a fresh RPM. Thus, my long standing position that there is no such thing as a "good" admin who hasn't also done some development work.
Re:MySQL (Score:4, Informative)
Stop the BS please.
They upgraded from MySQL 3 to MySQL 4, and no MySQL requires any specific version of GLIBC.
Look at the report, they just reacted like no Linux admin would : they recompiled (and replaced instead of adding a new version of !!!) glibc instead of recompiling MySQL.
I know that the database I work with on a daily basis have a minimum requirement for glibc versions and when we release a new version, that requirement normally have bumped the release of the mninimum required glibc version, hence a glibc upgrade may be necessary.
Stop saying such stupid things please.
Saying this, you just show that you are not an experienced Linux admin.
The minimum glibc version you would require would be 2.x, which is available in any distro since years.
Even 2.3.x are available since years.
No database requires a new glibc version, as I doubt they need the latest TLS things.
The only problem is with closed source databases, and if you have problems, that means you use a version unsupported by your platform.
Re:MySQL (Score:3, Interesting)
He did comment that thre admins provided feedback saying that they would have considered a distribution upgrade over the glibc upgrade if they were allowed to. That would seem to me to be a more likely path for a business to have taken. Still, for the constraints posed, this was a fairly valid test (and remember that the constraints were posed on both sides).
Re:MySQL (Score:5, Informative)
In fact, that's one of my overriding complaints about Linux software. There's this sort of loose assumption that backward compatibility isn't required because you can just download the source for something new. But, when you work in an environment where you have 10 applications, each with its own realease cycle, you have to adopt a platform from hardware all the way up to OS and tools for those applications to target. You can't just upgrade at the drop of a hat without chaning the deadlines for half a dozen of your projects.
So when you discover that project A's new widget will require a security update to the software it depends on, and that will require a new version of libc, you're totally screwed. It's nice to live in the "it's my machine, and I'll upgrade when I like," world, but if you're going to compare OSes for the enterprise, you're talking about a very different ball of wax.
Re:MySQL (Score:5, Informative)
Re:MySQL (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is not what is written in the report. In either case, sth is very wrong, because that only means your 3rd party WAS NOT supported by the platform, and yet, it has most market share on Linux ?
So Suse, that was chosen, was not the platform with the most market share, not enough to be supported by this 3rd party. And yes, that would apply to Suse 8, as the 3rd party had most market share before your study, during which SLES 9 became available.
Again, let me say that we chose components based on market share without knowing that these issues would crop up
How come ? Every 3rd party tells you which platform they support !!!
A Linux admin that does not know that is not even an admin.
Most of this kind of stuff just ain't documented in the install/release notes
Of course it is. It says SLES 8 supported or it doesn't, and then you ask.
This is nonsense otherwise, and nonsense happened in this study.
Re:MySQL (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's be honest here. You should have known that those issues might crop up. Binary incompatability is a well known problem with closed-source software, and not just on Linux. It's one of the major advantages of open-source software over closed-source. Having the source means I can rebuild the software for my system to avoid exactly this issue. Or more commonly, my distro can rebuild the software and provide me with an easy to use and fully compatable binary package.
Any project which goes out and chooses what software to use exclusively based on "market share" deserves any problems they run into. That should be the conclusion of your study. When I go looking for applications to use, compatability is primary consideration. Having a maintained version included in my distro of choice (Debian for me) is a huge plus. If I do have to use closed-source, putting it into it's own isolated OS will probably end up a requirement as well since that's the easiest and most direct way of avoiding binary compatability issues.
To compare Windows and Linux by forcing one of the biggest weaknesses of closed-source software onto the open-source solution is quite disingenous I think. It may be that the closed-source software is well and truely required and has no open-source competetor. But you never actually name the software, so no one can come along and say "hey, why not use GNU Mailman to handle the mailing" for example. Both mailing lists and search have many many open source options. Data mining has perhaps not so many, but in all liklihood that application can run on an indepenent server and connect to MySQL over the network. That would eliminate all the GBLIC problems.
Really, not to sound snide, but the strongest conclusion I can make from this study is that I should not hire you to design my IT infrastructure. I can't say if it was ignorace or malice, but it sounds like you pretty much set the Linux side up for failure.
Re:MySQL (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course he did. That was the whole point of this study. When would a Windows system do better than a Linux system with respect to upgrading components while putting constraints on what they can do. In my opinion, this study has no merit execept that is exhibits what NOT to do when requirements for an application are not met.
Here is what convinced me that this study is totally bogus.
From his assumption:
* The business migrates operating system versions at the end of the one year period to the lates
Re:MySQL (Score:3, Insightful)
Flatly, this wouldn't have been done this way... (Score:5, Interesting)
Another faintly disturbing thing in this paper is that it's assumed that it's Linux at fault, when in reality, it was the ancillary components' requirements and someone trying to bull their way through the "problem". There's several problems with this, but I can number a few key ones for you:
1) glibc's interface, the ABI, doesn't change all that much over time. Typically, it's linked
to at runtime through a sonamed link to the actual
2) Yes, you CAN get away with minor revision updates of glibc without problems, but typically, you need to vet all your compiled code for regression testing purposes. It really, really is like replacing kernel.dll on Windows. If it isn't provided as an update, you've got a lot of regression work ahead of you to ensure that fixes done to the library don't break other code (Typically not a problem, but you never can tell when someone mis-used something...)- this is NOT something that your rank-and-file sysadmin has any real business doing. It's NOT their job.
3) Either the component stepped on a bug, or they're using some new feature of the glibc layer. In either case, you can't bull your way into using it on something that doesn't have the needed support level. What your admins did was analogous to trying to make this work on NT4, only to find out that you need the
The study's flawed- that plain, that simple. You can defend it all you'd like, but it's got bad problems that everyone, myself included, have been pointing out and you've avoided answering several of the key points we've been making.
Re:MySQL (Score:3, Insightful)
Why am I supposed to take this seriously again?
Re:MySQL (Score:3, Insightful)
I appreciate your answering questions on the report, it takes some courage to face a hostile community.
Anyhow to the question, perhaps I should go back and read more, but what I would like to see are more specific details on the third party applications you were using, the issues they created, and how they were resolved.
I'm curious because it appears that some initial rules and choices that were made for the study were a recipe for disaster. Its like telling two teams they will be in a ra
Re:MySQL (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:MySQL (Score:4, Insightful)
Why were the SLES admins not allow to say basically that this 3rd party component is sufficiently incapable of working with their systems as is. Then, either go to the company that makes the 3rd party component, or "we'll take our business elsewhere."
Was this something you would have possibly allowed them to do? Because if you were to run into this same sort of problem with Windows, one would have only the choice to upgrade the OS, or pick another product.
Namely, if this same situation were to occur on Windows (they're using say, Windows 2003, and the SP1 comes out, and the 3rd party component won't work unless one has SP1) there would be no choice but to either upgrade to the newer version of Windows, pick another component supplier, or badger the component supplier for a compatible version.
I don't think it fair to say that the Linux people had a hassle because they were able to take the option of getting it working on the older version. If anything this shows a greater flexibility of Linux at the cost of hassle, than Windows. And to force Linux to use this flexibility at the cost of easy of administration could be said to be entirely contrary to the entire purpose of the study.
Upgrading glibc is akin to... (Score:5, Interesting)
And I'll be honest, I find it fishy to say the least that he seemed to need that specific version of glibc; pretty much all vendors that are in the FOSS world try to track deprecated interfaces, avoid making calls to "broken" apis on the machines in question, etc. Even with a security flaw present, unless the glibc actually is the root cause, they will go out of their way to code around problems in most cases instead of mandating a glibc update for customers- it's that big a deal. Better yet, it seems that the official version updates from SuSE DID address all of this, including dealing with a fix to glibc that changed the revision number. If it's on SuSE's update sets, it's been pretty much vetted unless you change something fundamental, like glibc, at which time, all bets are off- it'd be the same way with Windows if you figured out how to accomplish a swap out of kernel.dll, or similar. Currently, for all distributions in main use except for Slackware, a system of handling all dependency relationships and obtaining all the official updates, etc. online. This is a KNOWN feature of all those distributions, whether you're talking Yast, urpmi, apt-get, yum, up-2-date, etc. Given that this is the case, not a single admin that actually knows what he's doing would have ever done what you describe in the draft 13 version of the paper on page 31, where you list things like admins doing by-hand updates of glibc, etc. That's "where Angels fear to tread" territory and would only be attempted by people that either roll custom distributions for embedded use or similar (Myself, for example...)- which would not be your typical sysadmin and they'd not be doing something like that with a production or pre-production server because they know better. And this is just one of numerous flaws with the whole study. I'll try to get to more later.
While I won't label you as a shill for Microsoft (partly because you're brave enough to face the gauntlet on this site...), I will question your ability to frame in adequate tests that actually test something- because you failed to do anything useful here except give Microsoft precisely what they were looking for. The work you did as presented to the whole world is hopelessly flawed in a manner not unlike what Mindcraft did for Microsoft a while back. I'd not consider your firm a reliable source of input or information at this point- while I was going to use one of your other papers that was provided online for a reference item in one of the white papers I am working on for my company, I must now largely discard this and find other sources for the information as everything you've produced is suspect because of the egregious flaws in the paper we're discussing.
Re:Upgrading glibc is akin to... (Score:3, Informative)
Basically, and this is coming from somebody who has a lot of experience of dealing with binary software on Linux:
Re:MySQL (Score:3, Funny)
Well (Score:5, Insightful)
When I brought it to your attention that doing so is fallacious, I was modded down into oblivion.
Inevitably the same people will post again, with the same fallacious arguments, claiming that this guy is a shill for MS.
I'll be interested to hear the excuses that are made this time, and I can guarantee that several people will attack this man personally for no reason other than the results of his study.
So how about, instead of relying on old prejudices, we instad attempt to actually examine the research and gauge it on it's own merits.
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder if we would get the same results if we repeated the experiment, and not have it funded by Microsoft.
Re:Well (Score:2, Interesting)
Then tell us where he failed (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm waiting... come on... all talk now? yeah...
-everphilski-
Re:Then tell us where he failed (Score:3, Interesting)
To sum up
- Despite what is said, the Linux admins just do not look like experienced Linux or Suse admins
- I still don't know what is this search package (the one which required new MySQL and glibc)
- I have to question why the search package chosen was not supported by the distro, as sure enough, no sane Linux admin would have chosen it
The big question is still there : how come they ended up updating glibc ?
Glibc for god's sake !!
Sth is still very fishy here. We'r
Re:Then tell us where he failed (Score:4, Insightful)
Hell, no sys admin - Windows or Linux - should have upgraded anything as significant as the compiler or libraries without backing up the system first so he could back out the changes if something broke!
The statement that "the RPM was broken so they couldn't undo their changes" right there tells you something was wrong with these guys!
At the very least, they were probably pissed that they had to use a 3rd party proprietary system that used binary RPMs only!
Re:Then tell us where he failed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Then tell us where he failed (Score:5, Insightful)
Excellent summary in one paragraph.
Now, some people will say, "Well, this is what happens in a real corporate environment - you have to do what management wants you to do. And the issue is how well can you do it in one OS or the other?"
But this is just begging the question. Worse, it's justifying piss-poor IT management decisions in the name of "reality", just biasing in favor of Windows and against OSS on the face of it. But you could easily find just as many bad decisions that result in Windows being screwed up than Linux. The point is that overall IT management policies and procedures have more to do with this study than either OS do. Which makes the study worthless as a comparison.
The study also does nothing to examine how Linux and OSS in general have great flexibility in meeting business application needs compared to proprietary solutions. In fact, the study, by requiring closed source binary RPMS for an application, demonstrates the opposite.
Re:Then tell us where he failed (Score:4, Insightful)
But these are legitimate problems we HAVE to deal with. These aren't issues really in the Microsoft world; but they are in the Linux world. This study brings it to light.
The study simply isn't nearly comprehensive enough to come to any valid conclusion.
And the author admits that too. But without more cash he can't do much more.
-everphilski-
Re:Then tell us where he failed (Score:3, Interesting)
> Microsoft world; but they are in the Linux world. This study brings it to light.
Oh really. Most of the problems came from an artificial and highly contrived requirement that an unspecified 3rd party binary only package be run on Suse 8 instead of Suse 9, which it was designed for. So are you saying that any Windows software will run on any version of Windows? Well then I guess that pretty much wraps it up f
Re:Well (Score:3, Insightful)
It's traditional to fund 10 independant studies and publish the ones that came down on your side.
Here's a free clue. (Score:2)
He doesn't have to be lying. The fact that Microsoft funded the "study" means that you MUST look at the assumptions and process.
In the "study" in question, the Linux sysadmins were, for some reason, backporting patches from SLES 9 to SLES 8 due to the requirements of this "study".
So, no lies required, but because of the criteria chosen, Linux is far more difficult to maintain than ever in my experience.
I got what I paid for then (Score:4, Insightful)
No it doesn't. Examining the study in EXACTLY THE SAME WAY as every other study will reveal its flaws. Nothing else is necessary.
The fact that you think the funder matters means you MUST look up "circumstantial ad hominem", because you used one and don't even know it.
I have no skin in this, but I've always wondered why people like you try so hard to stay ignorant. You're wrong about this, and you're using a common fallacy to suport your opinion.
Instead of insisting you are right, just learn something. It's easier than defending an erroneous position.
Re:Here's a free clue. (Score:4, Insightful)
The most unrealistic part of this study when it comes to deviance from "real world applications" is that, upon finding this problem, the study's authors didn't adequately simulate the series of e-mail messages, telephone conferences and face-to-face meetings between at least three departments, that would happen as people tried to find a solution everyone would bless. The solution the admins actually came up with, backporting from a more recent release to the officially-sanctioned one, is not at all unusual.
Sure, there are companies out there that don't have enforced IT policies, but I haven't been to or worked with one bigger than a few hundred people that didn't have one. And once you have an IT department, they tend to try and clamp down on sysadmins doing their own thing, because consistency in management becomes more important to them than individual efficiency. (This isn't entirely bureaucratic nonsense, either, since if your unapproved software becomes important to the company and then breaks in a way you can't fix, it becomes their problem.) The study described here may not be perfect, but forcing the admins to work under arbitrary restrictions isn't a flaw.
Are You From Around Here? (Score:2)
Oh hush. Why go against everything Slashdot stands for?
Admit it! You're working for Microsoft!
Now that I've accused you, I await a +5 Insightful mod, and the inevitable pats on the back.
Re:Well (Score:3, Insightful)
If you can't see why it is, consider this analogy from sports: if an athlete gets doped prior to an important event, they'll get disqualified. That is common sense, too, and arguments like "he would've won even if he hadn't taken anything" or "the substance he took didn't actually do anything" would be laughed at. It's obviou
Re:Well (Score:3, Insightful)
You bring up a great point. Let me tell you why this happens. Slashdot, for the most part, is the IT community, and, for the most part, composed of highly intelligent people who actually do read studies and question things.
Here's an anecdote to show what's really going on: Imagine some scientist writes up a study, an
I don't think this guy avoided any questions... (Score:4, Informative)
Ahh... No. (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a lot of fancy ducking and dodging, none of which changes the facts that:
You made an interesting observation (Score:5, Interesting)
You obviously see the value of public scrutiny in what you do. So do we, we're obviously paying attention to your studies, and are pleased to see the "inner workings." It certainly helps lend credibility to your points. But it also begs the question: why doesn't Microsoft extend that same logic to operating systems or applications?
Meta-credibility? (Score:4, Insightful)
anti-$ rag says that grassroots anti-$ os/app/whatever is "the best" and you will have an immediate knee-jerk reaction from the community defending it to the death and proudly installing it on thier boxes just to say they did, even if it takes several dozen man-hours to get it to do anything even marginally useful.
Dogma is probably even more dangerous and counterproductive than putting blind trust in some $corps marketing stooges, as hard as that is to comprehend.
Sorry, just watched six guys on laptops code and tweak for two hours failing to get the newest, hippest OS du jour to even recognize basic hardware.
Re:Meta-credibility? (Score:3, Interesting)
No need for apologies. Apple users were watching Windows users perform the same frustration-filled dance for nearly two decades.
It took the XP release for Microsoft to get right what Apple did in the 1980's.
I think that Linux has made some marvelous achievements with a fraction of the financial resouces of Apple and Microsoft. To compare Linux to Microsoft and d
Re:Meta-credibility? (Score:3, Interesting)
Good point, if the economics were comparable. It would be interesting, for instance, to calculate how much money would have been spent by local farmers if they had hired a cont
what I really wanted to see answered: (Score:5, Interesting)
http://interviews.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=16
Mod parent up Up UP! (Score:2)
Re:what I really wanted to see answered: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:what I really wanted to see answered: (Score:5, Interesting)
1) 3 individual linux administrators were put to a test. Each one had 5 years of experience.
2) Each one of them decided to upgrade glibc:
2a) one decided to do it from scratch, "from GNU site" [I assume that meant compiling it]
2b) second went to upgrade using packages for a new version of suse, and only that
2c) third did something similar to the second one.
Now, call me crazy, but somehow points #1 and 2a/b/c do not match up. Nobody with that much experience should ever consider the solutions taken by those three people. Especially 2a - nobody in their right mind would ever consider that. It's just way too risky. That's why I'm wondering - were they asked to go that route? Where they given instructions to go beyond of what the vendor supports?
Considering that it is mentioned that a new version of suse was available, why nobody decided to upgrade the entire distribution?
You may be right, the ability to perfom #2a is something that wouldn't be possible in the windows world, thus eliminating the possible problems it may cause. However, something still doesn't add up. Those admins should have never attempted those routes.
other than that, interesting paper.
Integrated VCR DVD story is insightful (Score:2)
Surround sound, Satellite, DVD, VHS, cable, PS2 all plugged in. For many peoples house I just give up trying to watch TV or even change channels/volume.
Re:Integrated VCR DVD story is insightful (Score:2)
platform choices (Score:2)
I'd like to dare the author to replicate this experiment using Debian stable as linux side server OS.
5 - ATMs vs. Voting Machines (Score:3, Informative)
DECEMBER 03, 2003 [computerworld.com] And that was just the first news story google turned up for atm+diebold+flaws
There is a lot of crap that goes on in the banking industry which is not reported. Mostly because there are no laws requiring it to be reported.
A very telling remark (Score:5, Insightful)
Maintaining a system is all about context; some environments favor Linux, others Windows.
I've built many many systems for many people; servers, desktops, multimedia backends, you name it. I personally use linux/unix, but the OS installed upon each of the machines I build is by no means limited by my personal preference. Dr. Thompson makes a wonderful point here. In computing as in life, different situations merit different approaches.
I really wish all of the microsoft-, bsd-, and linux-zealots would realize this. To each, his own.
Satisfied with the responses (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Satisfied with the responses (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually... (Score:5, Insightful)
The study's heavily stilted to favor Microsoft and Windows- either through ignorance or malice. It'd be your call on how it got there, but it DID get there all the same.
Re:Satisfied with the responses (Score:3, Insightful)
THIS is a real world concern that has been expressed many times.
And that's a valid response (Score:2)
And that's a completely valid response. If your choice of software allows your admins to do less work, perform less upgrades/migrations/etc. over a given timeframe... that's a good thing.
-everphilski-
microsoft patches (Score:5, Insightful)
yeah, right!
i won't even mention IE's security holes for the last 8 or so years (active x,
but boldly stating how much due diligence is exacted upon the microsoft patches before final release is ridiculous in face of them frequently backfiring and leaving old or new vulnerabilities in their wake:
http://www.hideaway.net/home/public_html/article.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/09/08/HNhacke
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1753511,00.a
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2120864/doubts-
jethr0
Let me get this straight... (Score:5, Insightful)
- which chose an ancient linux distribution
- which tried to use bleeding-edge software on an old OS software platform
- which didn't know that glibc updates can break things
- which apparently didn't upgrade the system first if that's what they had in mind
- which took more than an afternoon to set up a linux system
- which were stymied by basic systems administration
- which appeared to be unaware of the tools available such as webmin
Wow. That's why I hire kids fresh out of highschool. They're so much more advanced than "experienced professionals" available to this guy.
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:5, Informative)
- which chose an ancient linux distribution
Answer: SLES 8 was the most recent at the beginning of the study time period - July 1, 2004
- which tried to use bleeding-edge software on an old OS software platform
Answer: All the components used were available in the time-correct period of the study. For example, if they installed a component in the simulated September 2004 time period then that version was available in September 2004.
- which didn't know that glibc updates can break things
Answer: They did know that GLIBC could break things and tries to minimize the breakages (see study)
- which apparently didn't upgrade the system first if that's what they had in mind
Answer: Good point! The only configuration control issue was that the enterprise wouldn't upgrade the OS version until July 1, 2005. This is mainly based on our experience with companies that don't move to the latest OS version until it has had time to "bake" in the community. At that time, SLES 9 was hot off the compiler.
- which took more than an afternoon to set up a linux system
- which were stymied by basic systems administration
Answer: Not sure there's anything to respond to here...
- which appeared to be unaware of the tools available such as webmin
Answer: Hmmm...not really sure how using webmin would have helped in this situation. They were free to use any tools they wanted though.
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:4, Insightful)
> July 1, 2004
True. But a second point would be to mention that SUSE is not a server distribution. Meaning that its packages, etc. are not set up for gentle updates. Which you found out. RedHat, Debian, Libranet would have been better choices.
I have over 20 Linux servers, I didn't run into these issues. Coincidentally I've just had my first ever issue with updating GlibC (because I went from 32 to 64 bits when I did).
I usually do a kernel upgrade when glibc is upgraded, and reboot the system. That gives me a fresh environment.
>Answer: All the components used were available in the time-correct period of the
>study. For example, if they installed a component in the simulated September 2004
>time period then that version was available in September 2004.
Interesting. Was this possible with Windows?
> Answer: They did know that GLIBC could break things and tries to minimize the
> breakages (see study)
I read the study. To me, they looked like bumbling newbies.
> At that time, SLES 9 was hot off the compiler.
*nix systems almost always upgrade incrementally. It's highly doubtful that SLES 9 would be more buggy than SLES 8. The case could be made for the opposite, and you can be sure that most of SLES 9 was venerable packages going through minor point revisions. This is just the *nix way.
> Answer: Not sure there's anything to respond to here...
Ah but there is. I recently resurrected an Ultra 10 SPARC box (see above GlibC issue), which is just about as non-standard as it gets for a Linux install. I was able to install it in one afternoon, which included building a custom kernel with only the components I wanted, and updating over 600 packages to their most current versions from our Debian APT-proxy (which wasn't populated with SPARC packages, sadly). I also installed a Jabber server, Apache2 with PHP/PEAR, MySQL 5.x, DJBDNS, Courier-IMAP and compiled a few packages which aren't usually in Debian, and had it operating. I also mirrored the boot drives. All in one afternoon.
And several "experienced" Linux admins had trouble making MySQL work on SUSE?
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:4, Interesting)
To play devil's advocate for a moment, how do we know you're past just "experienced" and on deep into the Wizard or Guru realm of administration or programming? (I know, I know, but he's going to flip that one out all the same... I'd be legitimately tarred with that brush in his response... >:-))
Realistically, though, you're right- I have issues with all of this. They picked distros that would most likely have issues with things. They picked rules that required a lot of patching on the Linux side, but only had the normal set of updates on the Windows side- a lot of patching that simply wasn't needed and didn't have an analog in the Windows world. They picked a stilted set of conditions that honestly would have mandated a distribution version update- in any shop for any OS you could name in the real world.
I have trouble buying into this- and it's to the point that I'm being forced to re-work my own stuff for my startup because I was referring to other papers by them; I can't trust the data here as far as I could pick the Doctor up and throw him, so everything from this consultancy firm is now suspect.
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure it took several attempts to find the right mix, but hot damn they got it in the end.
IS this really necessary? (Score:3, Interesting)
8 - Convenience vs. security (Score:2)
Except I'd expect higher quality programming out of a company designing security software.
Like your average anti-virus vendor for example. I find it a little rediculous that virus writers eventually just started targeting buffer overflows, etc. in anti-virus software.
I think what we're seeing is the overa
Not so clear for me (Score:2)
My understanding is the sponsor will publish only favorable study. Do they have to choose before or after? Let's order a few studies and publish only the "good" ones.
ATM's vs Voting Machines (Score:2, Interesting)
How is it that Diebold can make ATM machines that will account for every last penny in a banking system, but they can't make secure electronic voting machines?
The reason is that Diebold is not required by any law or regulation to do so. The banking industry and financial networks demand and regulate the security and journalling of transactions. If you don't follow the rules, they don't let you run transactions.
The "voting industry," on the other hand, has yet to regulate or stringently demand minumum st
Why stay on SLES 8? (Score:3, Insightful)
If we look at the history of SuSE then we see Novell's big involvement was in the 9.0 world. Right from the get-go we can see that forcing the administrators to remain on SLES 8 is creating problems that would be considered a show stopper in a regular environment. Especially if you're talking about buying components with their required environments. The fact that you even have the option of applying SLES 9.0 patches to an 8.0 environment is something that you can't do in the Windows world.
What were the "third-party components" installed on the systems? The following dodge "The specific 3rd party vendors are not disclosed
because the focus of the study is the methodology and not a specific component." is complete bull if you're crowing about the repeatability of your experiment. How can the experiment be repeated if we don't know the items? (It would be interesting to know if those components didn't support SLES 8 at the time of their installation.)
Also, why this requirement for the components: "Support on both Windows and Linux" when your environments are obviously not equivalent (IIS/ASP versus LAMP instead of J2EE)?
I see the problem now... (Score:5, Insightful)
That pretty much sums up the entire study. This isn't really a test of Windows versus Linux, but a test of "modular" operating systems versus "monolithic" operating systems. And, unfortunately, the study didn't even do a good job of testing that.
Linux happens to include several distributions, some more "monolithic" than "modular". Unsuprisingly, the "monolithic" versions are usually those used by "enterprises", such as RedHat and SuSE. The "modular" operating systems, such as Debian, are almost universally ignored by businesses, though you will find IT personnel swear by them. There are Linux distributions that adhere to the Unix philosophy, and there are those that try to emulate Windows and Apple in the name of "ease of use". Hell, even some of SCO's products are more "modular" than commercial Linux distributions.
By requiring "enterprise" sysadmins and a Linux distro that is geared towards "enterprises", the study preselected a Linux competitor with which Windows can easily compete: admins (probably used to using Windows) using Linux distros that attempt to emulate Microsoft's "monolithic" operating system. By virtue of the fact that Microsoft has been building "monolithic" operating systems for at least a decade longer than any of these Linux companies even existed, that the vast majority of Linux components are designed to be used instead in a "modular" fashion, and that most "enterprises" wouldn't know proper system administration from their own asses, anyone can see that this test is designed to fail.
I've spent the last one and a half years doing this exact same study. Guess what I found? You can't treat "monolithic" operating systems, RedHat, Fedora, SuSE, Windows, as though they were "modular". Though doing so is easier with Linux, it's not recommended, and distro makers such as RedHat explicitly warn against doing so. Any IT guy learns this lesson about six months into his career. You either find a truly "modular" OS, such as Debian, or a good Unix, or you very carefully buy products made only by Microsoft or by companies joined at the hip with Microsoft. That is, if you choose modularity, you choose Unix. If you choose out-of-the-box integration, you choose Apple or try to navigate the Microsoft "ecosystem", and you pay monopoly rents for doing so. The people who choose RedHat and SuSE, and expect it to be Windows at this stage, are kidding themselves.
The real headline should be: "Linux admins tasked with using Linux in the same retarded-ass way as Windows, fail." Which should be no suprise.
But the important thing to take out of this is that it is neither technical necessity nor user requirements that make operating systems less "modular", and thus less flexible, less powerful, and ultimately less valuable. It is the commercial requirements of the operating system manufacturers themselves. It is the fact that the OS is commercial that makes it difficult to upgrade, impossible to integrate, and expensive to maintain. The evolution of commercial Linux distributions towards the "monolithic" model of Microsoft, and the concomitant decline in their quality, has proved this beyond a shadow of a doubt. At most, this study only serves to highlight what any competent Linux admin already knew.
Most Valuable Professional? (Score:2, Interesting)
Jumping to conclusions? (Score:3, Insightful)
Followup question (Score:3, Insightful)
"All of our studies are written as if they will be released publicly BUT it is up to the sponsor if the study is publicly released. The vendor knows that they're taking a risk. They pay for the research either way but only have control over whether it is published, not over content. So if their intent is to use it as an outward facing piece, they may end up with something they don't like. Either way, I think it's of high value to them. If there are aspects of the results that favor the sponsor's product, in my experience, it goes to the marketing department and gets released publicly; if it favors the competitors product it goes off to the engineering folks as a tool to understand their product, their competitor's product, and the problem more clearly. Either way, we maintain complete editorial control over the study and there is no financial incentive for us if it becomes a public study or is used as an internal market analysis piece. The methodology has to be as objective as possible to be of any real value in either case."
But isn't this part of the problem with vendor-funded studies? (Maybe it's THE problem)
This WOULD be fine if it were just science for the advance of knowledge, but in the case of studies of *products* somebody somewhere is looking to use the information to make a product purchasing decision, or to promote a new product. In other words, someone is looking to either save money or make money using the results of the study. But those two goals conflict. For the purchaser, they would like to know both the pros and the cons of all studies involving that product. For the seller, they want to know both the pros and cons of their product, but only want their consumers to know the pros, and minimize the cons as much as possible. Both of these positions make complete sense... except for the group conducting the study. You have two different types of customers that you are trying to satisfy with these studies, but only one group is paying you to do the study - the seller. Hence, the results ARE skewed in favor of the organization purchasing the study, because they maintain control over whether the study gets released to the purchasers of that seller's products or not.
In this case, Microsoft has a win-win proposition, whereas for the rest of us, the purchasers, it's a win-lose proposition. Only if the study is positive for Microsoft will we be given more information necessary to help us save money. But if it's a study that puts Microsoft in a bad light, we lose because we don't get to see such information to make a purchasing decision, and may therefore make an incorrect decision.
I'm still skeptical that these "industry supported" studies are fully worthwhile to us, the purchasers.
Cargo cult science? (Score:5, Insightful)
We say, sure, BUT we have complete creation and control of the methodology, it will be reviewed and vetted by the community (end users and independent analysts) and must strictly follow scientific principles... All of our studies are written as if they will be released publicly BUT it is up to the sponsor if the study is publicly released.
While I understand the reasoning, I don't think this should be represented as following scientific principles. In one of his most famous speeches, Cargo Cult Science [brocku.ca], Richard Feynman specifically called out this type of research as being problematic:
IMHO the open source community is just as bad on average, if not worse. You better believe they have an agenda and they often aren't held under the same level of scrutiny as corporations, who have to face up to investors, competitors, governments, and "lottery ticket" lawsuits (especially Microsoft these days). The solution? We need fewer one-sided publishing of studies. We also need more studies overall, as they naturally conflict and are situationally dependent, but together would paint a better picture of the state of the world.
Of course finding funding for unbiased studies that will be published regardless of outcome is probably hard to come by.
Re:Cargo cult science? (Score:4, Interesting)
Selective publication (Score:3, Interesting)
In this the researcher may not actually be methodologically at fault at all. How did you protect your study from this kind of externally induced bias?
Can we talk to the Admins? What about the CLT? (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you see this as a credible challenge to your study?
Can we talk with these supposed "admins" to gain insight into why they behaved so incompetently?
And given that you don't have enough admins to be in adherence to the central limit theorem, how do you feel your study applies in a general way to anything at all?
Data Points (Score:3, Interesting)
I did however notice two interesting bits that cause me to put a lot less importance on the results
With three people there's certainly likely to be a lot of variability and to get some conclusive results, I'd love to get a huge group of administrators across the spectrum in terms of experience. I'd also love to do it across multiple scenarios, beyond the ecommerce study.
And a little later
it is up to the sponsor if the study is publicly released
Simply fund a lot of small legitimate studies with a high variance, publish only the results that fit your case. In a way it's like one big badly done study where someone throws out all the data points that don't fit their hypothesis, for all we know he, or another researcher, might have done a dozen other studies which came out in favour of Linux and were subsequently ignored. The research itself is all completely legitimate but Microsoft creates a false overall conclusion through selective publication, perhaps companies who fund the studies should be held to the same eithical standard as those who do the research?
Re:Riiiiiight (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Riiiiiight (Score:2)
Because he's not a stark raving lunatic? [theadvocates.org]
Re:Riiiiiight (Score:2)
He's an ardent libertarian, I'll give him that. But like most libertarians, he doesn't understand that it takes all of us to make a society. If it were up to him, we'd all still be living in home-made shacks in the woods, because there wouldn't be enough of a society functioning to have paved roads upon which to deliver us construction materials. Or if there were, they'd
Re:Riiiiiight (Score:2)
Re:Very detailed (Score:2)
Just Kidding. I was actually going to ask the same thing, and you beat me there, so now I vent.
I love
Re:Very detailed (Score:4, Informative)
Note: I've attempted to be fair to the original questions and responses, but my opinion may have affected how I've summarized things. If so, I apologize.
1) What were the assumptions?
2) does publishing studies like this help or hurt credibility?
3) Why did you force the Linux side to do so much more work?
4) Did you pick the metrics, or did Microsoft?
5) Why does Diebold make good ATMs but lousy voting machines?
Did your flame resistant suit include a matching tinfoil hat?
6) Why did you require 4-5 years experience for Windows but only 3-4 for Linux?
7) You only tested three administrators on one Linux distro. How does that really mean anything about the situation in general?
8) Is it good that vendors seem to be taking more control over what happens on my machine?
9) Which model has better security, especially fewer attacks and faster patches?
10) Is it good that OS vendors keep bundling more and more into the OS, or would it be better to just keep it a basic OS?
--
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
You are half right... (Score:2)
And the distinct difference between drug testing and computers are humans. Computers do the same thing every time. Its their nature. Each human has a unique response to drugs. For example, I'm o
Re:sellout in style (Score:2)
His Linux admins had at least 5 years of enterprise Linux administration with at least 2 years administering SUSE.
Instead of saying "the admins were idiots" why don't you trying saying "the study was right"? You seem to be blindly rejecting anything that doesn't fit your world view.
Re:Your conclusions fly in the face of my experien (Score:3, Insightful)
Dr. Herb Thompson talks a good story but it isn't supported by my first hand experiences - Why is that?
Maybe your first hand experience wasn't in a reasonably controlled environment. Maybe your bias will only allow you to see things one way.
Sorry Herb but your study is nothing more than a carefully crafted FUD attack on a superior product.
"Linux is better because I think so" is hardly a refutation. Why don't you point out the flaws in the study?
Re:Your conclusions fly in the face of my experien (Score:3, Interesting)