Letters to the editor

win2003 v Linux bias

In article http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=9333 you wrote:
 
>IT WILL COME as no surprise that the tests involved, although performed
>by an independent lab, were sponsored by Microsoft. But that doesn't
>change their basic validity. The tests were all about performing that
>most basic of tasks, file serving. And Windows thrashed Linux.
 
Sorry but this does significantly compromise their basic validity.
 
First of all it would appear that Microsoft chose the systems on
which the testing lab carried out the
comparison , and the Red Hat system seems to have been running
a 2 year old Kernel. The latest Linux stable kernel (2.4.19 ?) is
now lacking about a years worth of SMP performance work on the
development series (2.5.x) while the Linux development series is probably
not yet stable enough in its product cycle for a fair comparison.
 
Secondly I would have thought that it is common knowledge that
what Microsoft pays for is by definition not independent. The
testing firm claims to have investigated performance issues
concerning the Samba configuration, but was there any open
invitation to the Samba development community to recommend configuration
options for the setup, or to debug problems with this ? Presumably
Microsoft's leading system developers were involved in the
choice and configuration of the Windows 2003 version.
 
Thirdly the test involved using a network file-sharing protocol which
is of Microsoft's design, which Microsoft has chosen not to publish
full documentation for. The fact that previous versions of Samba have
outperformed previous versions of Windows is testament to the reverse
engineering skills of the Samba developers, but when the choice of
playing field is so clearly sloping in one direction this is hardly
comparing like with like. How about a comparison involving a
Microsoft system chosen and setup by Linux NFS developers serving
NFS clients in competition with Linux ?
 
Sincerely,
Richard Kay
rich@copsewood.net

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