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Rebooting is for Windows

zdnet.co.uk

11–20 of 44 posts

Re: Rebooting is for Windows

#11
post #10

While Windows has (and probably always will be) an OS that requires reboots for certain patches, it seems a bit biased of the article to ignore much of the work that's been done in recent (>= Server 2003) versions of the OS to minimize this, while highlighting improvements such as KSlice in Linux.

Can you move, rename or replace an open file with current Windows? That's possibly one of the reasons why it's so hard to apply patches without rebooting a Windows box. And an endless annoyance when using a Windows desktop.

Re: Rebooting is for Windows

#12
post #5

One of the comment refers to netcraft for example of long Linux uptimes. According to http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html Windows have better or just as good uptime as Linux servers. (maybe I am missing something) The last time I used a MS web-server was ~10 years ago. I have almost exclusively used debian/ubuntu servers most of the time. Apart from the Linux fanboyism, what advantages does MSFT have as…

Exchange; that is quite a huge one for businesses where I am. Many people are just so used to outlook for email that when it comes for them to put in some kind of email management architecture they will always go exchange.

Re: Rebooting is for Windows

#13
post #11
post #10

While Windows has (and probably always will be) an OS that requires reboots for certain patches, it seems a bit biased of the article to ignore much of the work that's been done in recent (>= Server 2003) versions of the OS to minimize this, while highlighting improvements such as KSlice in Linux.

Can you move, rename or replace an open file with current Windows? That's possibly one of the reasons why it's so hard to apply patches without rebooting a Windows box. And an endless annoyance when using a Windows desktop.

Can you remove a logfile on linux/unix while something is using it? Of course you can but the open file will stay around in limbo. It wont free up space, the program that holds it open will write to the deleted file, etc. Most linux programs will let you send it a nohup and it will close and reopen the logfile, that's something I haven't a clue about on windows.

I still pipe logs to a separate process that checks if the logfile is deleted and reopens/creates the logfile, its just easier.

Re: Rebooting is for Windows

#14
post #5

One of the comment refers to netcraft for example of long Linux uptimes. According to http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html Windows have better or just as good uptime as Linux servers. (maybe I am missing something) The last time I used a MS web-server was ~10 years ago. I have almost exclusively used debian/ubuntu servers most of the time. Apart from the Linux fanboyism, what advantages does MSFT have as…

what advantages does MSFT have as a server OS?

I would say support for enterprise apps. A lot of enterprise software vendors still target their development for Windows, and don't support Linux well or fail to test with Linux.

Re: Rebooting is for Windows

#15
post #12
post #5

One of the comment refers to netcraft for example of long Linux uptimes. According to http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html Windows have better or just as good uptime as Linux servers. (maybe I am missing something) The last time I used a MS web-server was ~10 years ago. I have almost exclusively used debian/ubuntu servers most of the time. Apart from the Linux fanboyism, what advantages does MSFT have as…

Exchange; that is quite a huge one for businesses where I am. Many people are just so used to outlook for email that when it comes for them to put in some kind of email management architecture they will always go exchange.

Actually I was thinking more in terms of web-server or any application server that is not tied to the OS. I am guessing you can't host Exchange server on Linux even if you wanted to. So that advantage would't really be an advantage. Its more like you don't have any option but to use Windows server.

Re: Rebooting is for Windows

#16
post #12
post #5

One of the comment refers to netcraft for example of long Linux uptimes. According to http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html Windows have better or just as good uptime as Linux servers. (maybe I am missing something) The last time I used a MS web-server was ~10 years ago. I have almost exclusively used debian/ubuntu servers most of the time. Apart from the Linux fanboyism, what advantages does MSFT have as…

Exchange; that is quite a huge one for businesses where I am. Many people are just so used to outlook for email that when it comes for them to put in some kind of email management architecture they will always go exchange.

There are some non-Windows Exchange alternatives that would be transparent to Outlook users, but it's probably an uphill battle selling them to management.

Re: Rebooting is for Windows

#18
post #4

Eventually your hardware will fail. If you can't even safely reboot your machines under controlled circumstances, you've already lost the uptime battle.

Eventually parachutes need to be used. Now, they should work and save you, but why risk it if you don't have to?

Re: Rebooting is for Windows

#19
post #17

I agree with the people who are disparaging Windows Server OSes as still being desktop class. Coming from a VMS/VAX background, I feel much the same towards Linux.

The biggest thing about Windows (and what I think makes it an unavoidably desktop-class environment) is that there's no kernel-level support for alternate filesystems.

The various Unix-likes have a variety of filesystems with a lot of innovation going on. Windows basically just has NTFS, which while ok for the desktop is only going to serve well for some types of servers.

Re: Rebooting is for Windows

#20
post #19
post #17

I agree with the people who are disparaging Windows Server OSes as still being desktop class. Coming from a VMS/VAX background, I feel much the same towards Linux.

The biggest thing about Windows (and what I think makes it an unavoidably desktop-class environment) is that there's no kernel-level support for alternate filesystems. The various Unix-likes have a variety of filesystems with a lot of innovation going on. Windows basically just has NTFS, which while ok for the desktop is only going to serve well for some types of servers.

Yes, hopefully somebody will work on this some day.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/ifskit/default.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/IFSKit/ifskit_about.m... http://www.fs-driver.org/ http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/DevTools/WDK/WDKpkg.mspx http://www.acc.umu.se/~bosse/ http://www.osr.com/seminars.html

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