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Date:      Wed, 26 May 1999 19:53:14 -0700
From:      Kent Stewart <kstewart@3-cities.com>
To:        "Mark L. Holloway" <mlholloway@yahoo.com>
Cc:        questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Windows NT
Message-ID:  <374CB39A.81A10A0F@3-cities.com>
References:  <19990526235355.10031.rocketmail@web505.yahoomail.com>

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"Mark L. Holloway" wrote:
> 
> I'm not trying to start a flame war..I am just curious. If NT is as
> horrible of an OS as everyone claims then why do web sites like
> Barnes and Noble, Ebay, CDW, and BuyComp (among others) use it?
> 
> I'm not trying to praise NT - just wanting some information
> explaining why people should choose one OS over another.

I think marketing has a lot to do with it.

A staff scientist at the Battelle Memorial Institute made the comment
one day "that every system has it set of codes that it runs better
than the other systems". The problems occur when you try to force a
program onto a system where it doesn't perform. For example, I think
that running a busy web site on a Unix box generating scene's for Star
War 2 is worse than using NT for some things. It depends on the
available horsepower. It doesn't matter until the usage gets above the
magic point of %60 cpu utilization where things start going ca-ca. The
problem is knowing when you are using a program in the wrong
environment. If you don't have a choice and try the other choices, you
are clue less.

I think that development on a FreeBSD system resembles editing with
sed. I remember a product that I think was called Fang on the old
Univac Systems. The manual had a saying "That using it was like doing
watch repair with a sledge hammer". Using MSvc 6.0 to develop a "Hello
World" for DOS is overkill. Visual Studio also won't produce code for
FreeBSD. You use what you have. I thought I had gotten rid of the PWB
and CV environment years ago only to find a Unix challenge in FreeBSD
and gcc and dbg. 

Around 11 years ago we were able to tune a Cray XM/P to the point that
the Cray SE's thought they could double the throughput of any other
site. I'm not sure our system rated a 10 on anything but our mix of
benchmark codes ran well. It was all a matter of tuning system
parameters, which you can do with FreeBSD. You don't have the source
code for NT and so you really don't have comparable capabilities with
NT. One of the important parameters was write behind caching, which is
available on both OS'es. That may not be a good option for an online
transaction system where sizable amounts of money are involved. I have
been playing with "SETIatHome". I am using a Celeron 433 with 64MB of
PC-66 memory running FreeBSD. It is processing 6% of a data set per
hour. NT on a P-II 400 with 128MB of PC-100 memory is only doing 2.4%
per hour. The graphics on NT is really kind of pretty. The Unix
version doesn't generate any graphics. I expected the process, which
involves a large number of FFT's, to be memory bound and the PC-100
memory had a 50% larger bandwidth. I don't think the NT version will
find Intelligent life on another world in my life time. I'm not sure
the FreeBSD system will find life either but it is processing 2.5
times as much data.

Kent

> 
> Regards,
> Mark
> 
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-- 
Kent Stewart
Richland, WA

mailto:kstewart@3-cities.com
http://www.3-cities.com/~kstewart/index.html

SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) @ Home
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/


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