Or:
Now I have your attention some alternatives to Linux.

Why ????????
Well, A few people seem to have decided after switching from windows that Linux is the worlds best OS but such a thing doesn't exist.

There are lots of Os's out there practically ALL of them better than windows so i thought it educational to point this out.

There are three groups so far as Im concerned but please ad if you like.
First off are the Quick and Dirty Operating system clones of offshoots.

These are the DOS derivatives and such and don't really deserve to be called OS's.

Then theirs the UNIX derivatives. All of these are good OS's and have different strengths and weaknesses. Reasons to use or not are personal preferences/financial. I include not using SCO as a personal preference here :-)

UNIX derivatives include the propretry UNIC'es such as solaris, AIX, IRIX, HP-UX etc but also non-prop x86 capable OS's.

Solaris for instance is available for x86. For free the last time I looked.
but there are other's too.
FreeBSD and BeOS being examples.
BeOS has just been resurrected. Apple used it as a basis for OS/X and Yellow Tab are now selling a x86 revamped version. http://www.yellowtab.com/products/

FreeBSD is also still alive and well. It is known for its amazing TCP/IP stack which is far superior to Linux for millions of simultaneous connections. http://www.openbsd.org/
This makes it the OS of choice for Yahoo and even Hotmail (you don't think M$ eat their own dog-food do you)


Anyway, the point is these other OS's are not all evil, they deserve looking at before you decide Linux is the best just because its the first you tried after windows. Its good to be aware of them even if you go back to linux

Others: VAX VMS ... Ohh those heady days with VT100's ...

i thought OSX was based on *BSD, not BeOS?

Yep I thought it was BSD as well.

yeah it is. Darwin, the underlying core of OS X, is very definitely a BSD derivative and therefore a true *nix OS.

The odd mistake, nothing like it for a quick response ...
(pretends it was deliberate has anyone noticed)

Seriously, some of our younger members should have a look.

And for some serious FUN.
Guess which OS is used for microsoft.com


http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=...a.microsoft.com
I was saving this for later but I'm just impatient

actually, that's used for a100.ms.a.microsoft.com

www.microsoft.com is running Windows Server 2003:
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=...w.microsoft.com

But the first page is just the redirector to the rest.
Its quite interesting to do a seach on .microsoft.com and just go through some of their mirrors and localisation sites.

i.e. .hotmail.com (free BSD)
Oracle, despite backing linux as their development OS still run solaris.

IBM still run AIX....

AND lets not forget

Last I checked x86 isn't free. SPARC is free, but not the x86 version. At the worst though it's only around $20, not bad I run a beta of it under vmware. But I like my sparc version.

Mine was 20 $ postage which seemed reasonable since they fedex'd 3 cd's in a huge box ????

Actually solaris 7 (intel) is what got me into Linux.
I had a new job abnd installed it to learn Solaris quickly but the graphics support was ugggh.... In the end I installed Xfree86 instread of SUNX.

At this point I thought what the heck and installed Liux dual boot....
I had it for a while .... then it kinda phased out ....

Let's not go assuming the oracle and the rest use the same OS for their webserver as their development OS though Gowator!.... Could very well be different!

What makes Linux stand out above other systems is the community. We don't need to resort to FUD to let people know that Linux is better than Windows. Please check your facts before claiming that Hotmail runs FreeBSD.

[blah@myprompt ugh]$ telnet lw10fd.law10.hotmail.msn.com 80
Trying 64.4.14.250...
Connected to www.law10.hotmail.com (64.4.14.250).
Escape character is '^]'.
get cool_junk
HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 20:13:50 GMT

Last I heard, IIS 5 didn't run on BSD.

In the past hotmail. did run on FreeBSD! M$ might have changed it now, but they were running in on Fbsd. :wink:

must have been prior to 2001
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=...www.hotmail.com

and law10 has been using it since 2000
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=...w10.hotmail.com

This is from 2001

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/23348.html

This was from 99

http://www.geocrawler.com/archives/3/151/1...99/8/0/2593151/


See, no FUD

Yes, when Microsoft purchased HoTMaiL (running on BSD/Apache 1.2.1) in 1998, it unsuccessfully tried to port the application from BSD to Windows NT 4 Server/IIS 4 (If I remember correctly, NT 4 shipped with IIS 3 in the first quarter of 1998). Starting September of 2000, Hotmail was hosted on Windows 2000 Server/IIS 5 instead of BSD/Apache 1.3.6. Note that in those two years, MS only needed one Apache upgrade

well, as you can see www.hotmail.com (that server) has used windows since April 2001 and law10 has been on it since 2000

as for other servers in the hotmail system, well, you'd have to pick them out one by one and check their stats.

As this suggest from the register link I posted.

Come on. The owner of this thread invited people to probe the Hotmail server to see that Hotmail is hosted on BSD. Hotmail is not hosted on BSD, and quoting a million articles from 1999 isn't going to change that. Don't get me wrong, I use Linux exclusively. FUD, even against Microsoft, is still FUD.

What would you say if MS claimed that Windows Server 2003 is better than Linux because of bugs in Redhat 5.0?

I was simply saying they DID in the PAST, not KNOW!

or now, for that matter....


;-) :-P

http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=...w10.hotmail.com
gives me:



Quick edits:
Checked tymes link which goes to 10.64.14.250 NOT 10.64.14.23

It appears M$ are the ones hiding behind FUD and building smoke and mirrors on this but like I said that isn't the prupose of this thread!!

static:
Oracle 9i is 'marketed' as a web development platform. In actual fact they are planning to migrate and the speech given by Larry Ellison actually gave a programme. I guess the paid forthe machines already so they are just phasing them out.
The whole of 9i is marketed towards their Web solution with jsp and its nice (but heavy).



Actually the aim of the thread was to let people know there are other real OS's apart from Linux. I don't personally run any of them right now but that doesn't mean (as I sometimes get the impression) that it's only win$ and Linux out there.

As is pointed out the front side pages have been converted to make it appear the infrastructure runs on IIS but that is like sticking a caddy badge on your Mazda 323.

just because it's a different server doesn't mean it doesn't count ;-). Yes, they are using FreeBSD somewhere, but my point was simply that they aren't using it everywhere...

We like to pick on MS a lot but the fact remains that they are an IT corporation just like others, and they are going to us what works. If that's FreeBSD, so be it! :-P And maybe they aren't hiding behind smoke and mirrors, maybe they just know that FreeBSD is good for the internal high-demand systems. Please point out sometime where they said "we only use our own products to run our networks", then we can talk about smoke and mirrors ;-)

Do you really think that M$ would admit to still using any type of Unix in house for a production enviroment. Yes they "rented" part of SCO's code which I believe was to work on there Unix for Win tools (could be wrong) but they would never admit to using anything but Windows Servers in house for production systems.

That would be like RH saying there workers in N.C. use Windows for there desktops. I doubt it! Or Linus using Windows with Linux inside vmware to do development work on his kernel.

All-in-all M$ has a bad product and I for one don't need it. :wink:

Who said anything about them admitting it? I just said show me somewhere that they said they don't use it at all anymore. If you can't show me that, then you have no proof that they are doing any sort of smoke and mirror deal. You can't be doing a smoke and mirror trick unless you are telling people something different than what is really occuring.

Your examples are bad. We're talking about servers, not desktops. They don't corrolate. MS knows what does the job, and they use it. Besides, they've said before, they don't mind BSD or the BSD license.

And we weren't talking about MS products, we were talking about MS using FreeBSD.....so :-P keep with the topic, boy!

Like I said early on, they were running it, that's how I got started in this silly thread. Then I said I DOUBT they still are. That's it.

I really don't CARE if they are or if they aren't. My only reason for jumping in here was to PROVE that they did at one time use it for SEVERAl years as the article from a M$ spokensmen pointed out.




The examples weren't all that bad, I was simply IMPLYING that why would M$ tell there client's yes we use *nix for some of our internal production enviroments, but hey check out our 2k3 server product. Don't worry why were not useing it. That in a nutshell is why I brought up RH, how could they sell there product to corporations if they are using someone else's. The example might have been a little off, but I figured you were a smart enough kid to pick up on it. :wink:

I got your silly little boy right here

Cool down ... it wasn't the intention of this thread ... just a little aside.
IMHO and it's just IMHO.... M$ are fronting their servers in windows but the evidence seems to be the infrastructure is still FreeBSD and Linux. Depending whether its M$.com or Hoar Mail.

FreeBSD is still Opensource and Free! wasn't the quote 'a cancer on society'. or something similar.

M$ did admit to using non Win servers a long time ago when hotmail went down. They seem to use M$ servers them exclusively for Encarta and Expedia if that balances things up. Ultimately they should put their money where their mouths are.

"Buy our server, we'll send our experts to coinvince your general managment and acounting people and fabricate some security holes in your present infrastructure. We won't actually lie, we just say Hey M$ server protects against x,y,z and linux/freebsd/solaris doesn't. We'll just forget to mention this hole only exists BECAUSE its windows so they wouldn't need to plug the hole anyway....". Just look at Exchange Server ... a complete bag of crock and possibly the biggest source of SPAM lists available anywhere. So M$ says buy the new one which protects against these virus's and forgets to mention the virus's only ever affected M$Exchange.

This is how M$ sells its servers but it can't convert its own internet to run on them. Sun are a different matter, they support linux becuase they believe its the right choice for their customers. If they have an outstanding support contract with SUN so what.... they aren't selling linux, just endorsing it and using it internally becuase its cheaper.

WHY DID I DO THIS THREAD ..
Well, it wasn't to knock M$, or linux - even with the title .. hehe.
The idea was to educate a few people that Linux is great but not the only OS apart from windows.

Linux is unique in its development splits; something DOlsen pointed out in another thread but I don't think is a bad thing. FreeBSD is more tightly controlled but is no-where near as popular as Linux.
It lookks like if Linux were controlled as well as FreeBSD it would be unstoppable but I don't believe it. I think it would stifle it.
Some parts of FreeBSD are superior to linux, noticably the TCP/IP stack YET Linux is more popular. Debian is farly tightly controlled and a very stable linux but it isn't the most popular. Its illogical and only touched on by Raymonds papers on OpenSource but that is what makes linux ....well linux.

All I was hoping from this thread was get some comments like Hey BeOS is also great but not free and Mac's work really well.

blah, blah, blah blah, blah.

just don't accuse MS of doing some sort of smoke and mirrors jobby when they aren't, that's all I'm saying. Not that I like MS, but we don't need to pick on them for using what works. If you were trying to sell a product, would you openly admit that this other product was better than yours for a certain task? I certainly hope not, 'cuz you'd be out of business really fast!

I picked up on the example, but since it was a tad off, I thought I'd point it out.

Gowator: the cancer quote was about the GPL, all BSDs are under the BSD license, which MS doesn't mind. I have yet to see any proof that they are running Linux anywhere (not that I have any doubt in my mind that they do run it somewhere). And sorry that we hijacked your thread.

I'm cool, I was kidding and I believe tyme was too.

unless i'm say i'm not kidding, i'm usually kidding.

accept when i'm not kidding, and when i'm not kidding, you'll know. it doesn't happen often ;-)

Ok, so back to the thread ...
Anyone out there using any OS's apart from Linux and windows...???
What do you like/dislike relative to Win$ and Linux..??

Anyone check out the links ??
Reason I brought this up is I got a copy of FreeBSD last week.
Dying to give it a go but I divested of everything but production machines a couple of weeks ago ..It struck me that its been a long time since i played with anything else and I wondered for instance if the new BeOS is really as good as it looks ... if expensive!

The only other OS's I use are Solaris Sparc, play around time-to-time with Solaris x86, FreeBSD & OpenBSD.

None of those listed above I feel have the Multimedia & GAMES that I can use in Linux. I'm just used to Linux and it has everything I want so that is why I use it the most. Plus it's FREE, (only talking against M$ here).

Ok, I use Win2k at work and Linux (mdk) at home, and my fiancee also uses linux at home.

I also use Unix at work, all serious stuff is done on that, HP-UX on HP-PaRisc machines.

BTW this serious stuff is (being) ported to linux as we post....

I like win2k much much better than nt which I had until 1.5 months ago.

The greatest improvements are the icons that you can put on the taskbar to quickly start your apps. I have all necessary stuff there, rarely have to do start-programs etc. So I have my icon for:
Lotus Notes (if you can avoid this bugger, do so)
Mozilla firebird
Opera (luckily I had admin rights for a day so I could install it)
Exceed (which I need to step into the Unix world)
VNC (which I need to connect to the lab pc to control my measurements and run the stuff I develop on my local pc on labwindowsCVI)

I start explorer by hitting winkey+e, so don't need a shortcut icon for that.

Other than that Win2k brought me precious little; the gui is very much the same, the start menu opens nicer with blending but who cares???
Windowmanagement is crap, still can't set it up to behave like I want...

So WinNT/2k finish last.

Next: Unix.
The power to me. Yes we have some 32GB Ram servers, and sometimes I launch jobs that actually need more than 2 or 3GB of those. Rarely, since that kind of job will just take a long time anyway, it's better to keep things smaller.
Windowmanagement is much better, using cde. Copy and paste with the mouse, lmb select, mmb paste. Oh yeah! I actually sometimes copy the lab results files to unix, then put the data in the right order etc then put things back onto the windows world into a .doc or so...

Korn shell is not too bad, they set things up so you can navigate nicely with the mouse, meaning if you do a ls, then select a subdir by double clicking (left mb), hitting rmb to paste it with three dots in front:
... [file/dirname]
if it was a dir, the shell will do a cd into that dir (and ls to show the contents), if it is any recognised file format, like a text file, it will get opened in the right browser, nedit for text, gv for .ps and acrobat reader for .pdf to name a few. Selecting empty space and rmb sends you up one level.
The thing I hate about ksh is that it doesn't have tab completion, it has esc-completion, but only completes if there is only one possibility.
Meaning: in a dir with file1forthemoney and file2fortheshow
typing
cp f[esc]
doesn't get you anywhere. You have to do
cp file1[esc-esc]
(note: you actually have to hit esc twice. Just as dumb as doubleclicking icons...) to get
cp file1forthemoney

You can do
cp [esc followed by =]
which will propose whatever options you have, but this means you have to use both your left and right hand (esc and the =-sign are too far away...). And you still have to type.

And on top of that, there is no completion for commands.

There is the nice windowbehaviour that you can middle click a window to background etc.

Jobmanagement is cool too, running jobs on all kinds of servers with load balancing etc.

Then there is linux.
Here's a great winner, best windowmanager (kde, I can adapt it to my exact wishes), and I am root/have the root password.
No secrets, no forbidden things. I can do all I want.... ;-)

Anyway, linux is just more popular than *bsd or other systems, and I don't believe in non-FLOSS software anymore, for standard applications.

Sure, for niche products, high end stuff
- databases (high end only)
- chip design stuff (some programs have a 100.000 USD license fee, anually..)
and then some.

But for all regular stuff:
Operating Systems
web
mail
multimedia: cd, mp3/ogg, dvd, etc
office

I don't think there will/should be a large proprietary market much longer.

To get back to my point: linux has more momentum than *bsd, so in that sense it is better.

Is there more in the world than linux?
Sure.
Do I care?
Not really. Nice to hear about, not nice enough to try, at this moment anyway...

One more thing: changing distro/OS would also mean not working or even stopping my website,... and I set that up for friends that I converted... so I have some (albeit small) obligation there...

Djeezz, I should get back to work really...

Hey thanks guys :wink:

On a seperate note I think you can set the filec envvar in HP-UX. This then does command completion ...

One important aspect is you mention you like Linux cos you have the root password...
You might like UNIX more if you did. I did once ....alas no more...
However I agree on the NON FLOSS market for web-browsing/GP machines.