Re: You mean it isn't PERFECT? ;-)

["Adam Williams" <awilliam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Nov 28,  9:26am, Chris Chio wrote:
> Subject: You mean it isn't PERFECT?  ;-)
> Hi all!
>
> Would any sysadmins (or anyone, for that matter) care to comment on this
> article?
>
> ***************************************************************
> http://www.abcnews.com/sections/tech/FredMoody/moody981120.html
> ***************************************************************
>
> Are the 'shortcomings' cited as bad as they sound?  Just curious...
>

I'll comment.

"But the discussion of Linux among people you would
 expect to be its champions, such as programmers and
 computer-security experts who disdain Microsoft and
 work to build, maintain and protect sites and systems
 that use Linux, is more nuanced - and less glowing."

Looks to me like he only talked to ONE person, a person who holds views I have
not heard from the many Linux people I have talked to.

"its a moving target that never really gets
out of beta. sure people run production sites on linux. i
know alot of these people. they dont get much sleep and
have grown opaque from the lack of sunlight. i have
admin'd large linux shops. they require huge amounts of
admin overhead, and if you want shit to really work you
are going to spend alot of time manually fixing things.
the number of outstanding security holes and lack of
stable functionality is monumental."

1. Does a rapid series of upgrades make a product beta.  If could also mean
that products get fixed.  Go to the home pages of AIX, SCO, or NT and witness
to hundreds of patches.  This is life in the world of software far to complex
for one human to understand.

2. I have about 100 linux boxes,  I didn't have to fix anything except the NIS
services which was a known bug in the distribution I used,  and there was
documentation how to fix it.

3.  As for "stable functionality" try 18 months uptime.

"But my informant didn't just rant: he probed the
psychology of the Grail-seekers: "because linux makes
it easy ( due to its unix like nature ) to mess under the
hood, people actually feel like they `control' or know
whats up with their boxes...it doesnt come from any
rational thoughts..." "

I DO know what is up with my Linux boxes,  as a result of years of education
and rational thought.  Now why my apps on the NT server keep having "Error
loading DLL",  about that I don't have a clue.  Being able to open to hood is a
big deal.  All my Linux users have single sign-on to Linux, AIX, and NT server
because I was able to open the hood and make connections that I just couldn't
with "closed" software.

After reading this article I almost feel bad that I wasted my time,  it is just
tripe, and bad journalism.

I'll be happy to list Linux's shortcoming that I have encounterd:

1. Sloppy SMP support (to be fixed in the upcoming 2.2)
2. No lockd for NFS, means no file locking on a network volume which is REAL
bad.
3. Poor hardware probing in complicated machines,  such as machines with more
than one network card or many serial ports.  (Note, this may be a PC
architecture problem, as Windows can't do this either).
4. Scattered documentation.  For AIX I can by a 15 volume set of books that
will tell me almost everything I need to know.  For Linux there are a thousand
newbie books,  and beyond that you're horribly on your own.  It took me a month
to find out the Xresource string to change a key binding in Xterm.  This is
getting better but not fast enough.
5. Distribtions don't pay enough attention to shipping a fully functional
desktop,  such as why don't I have a floppy drive access utility on my desktop
right away.  And why do I usually have to edit a text file to add a program to
my GUI desktop.  Note that this depends upon the dristribution and window
manager.
6. Alot of misinformation floating around on Usenet.  People with a machine at
home, or one workstation, giving out advice (with the best of intentions) that
could be VERY BAD for someone running a Linux Server or alot of workstations.
 People from the PC world often don't realize how much existing in an
"Enterprise" changes how things need to work.
7. I have to take my machine down to upgrade it.  My RS/6000 I can apply
patches to and add "some" hardware while 100+ people pound on it.  I want to be
able to upgrade the Linux kernel without rebooting (note that with a high level
of madularization I can almost already do this).  But then when I changed the
WINS server address on my NT box I had to reboot THREE times.
8. Sloppy support for headless (no video) boxes (again this is partly the
result of the PC architecture).
9. No real support for low-end peripherals such as PPA printers (win printers
such as HP1000C) or Win-modems.  This point is arguable as to whether it is
really a flaw.
10. No support (or only really beta) for leading edge hardware such as IrDA,
DVD, USB, I2O, etc...