Windows vs Linux
Link: Windows vs Linux
Microsoft today launched a report claiming that Windows offered a more stable platform than Linux.
As described by Ina Fried at CNet:
Microsoft commissioned Veritest to create a scenario in which Linux and Windows administrators had to undertake a variety of tasks, such as provisioning servers and replicating data while responding to various failures and outages.
The Windows administrators completed 21 percent more of the proactive tasks, according to the study
However, the findings are controversial because the research was paid for by Microsoft, rather than an impartial third-party.
Also, the report fails to address whether the conditions of outages and failures would affect each operating system equally.
This is important, because anecdotal evidence suggests that Microsoft Windows provides a less stable environment to work with for online development.
Also, Windows machines are more likely to suffer security breaches, not least because of the much larger number of incompletely patched systems.
Also there are are a larger number of exploits against Windows machines, with nearly 250 trojans, viruses and worms already released against Windows this year to mid-March, and none reported for Unix operating systems.
Research by the Yankee Group, released earlier this month, found a faster recovery time for Windows servers after a security breach - at 13 hours recovery as opposed to 17.5 for Linux.
However, the study does not compare actual downtime of Windows and Linux machines in a live environment, which would be a more reliable basis for making comparisons.
Nevertheless, a report by the Register found that although a large number of smaller firms are turning to Linux and open source solutions for their businesses, the better development of Windows applications - not least graphics packages - was seen as a winning feature for Windows desktop machines.
Microsoft also today announced the delay of a planned version of Windows, intended to work with high performance server clusters, and emulate existing high performance computing requirements that Linux already handles. The launch of Windows Server 2003 Compute Cluster Edition is now expected in the second half of this year.
