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 Linux Woes

 Author:  Topic:  Posted:
Dec 25, 2001
 Comments:
So, couple months back, I decided I am fed up with coding over FTP and shell account. After all, it's 2001, not 70's.

After deciding for a while, I took what was the best available. Installation CDs of Red Hat 7.1, and a half-discarded 486 from my home LAN, that served as a backup machine. Equipped with user-level experiences with shell accounts, I boldly entered the realm of System Administration.

And the rodeo began...

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The 486 was a sorry piece of machinery. Case from PP-06, an old East-European XT clone, housing an ancient ISA/PCI motherboard. Missing PwrGood signal from the power supply simulated by a resistor and capacitor. No CDROM, no floppy, controller card's floppy chip burned out. Before the machine served as a file backup system, sharing files over Netware Lite, running DOS; with the coming of CD writers she lost most of her reasons to run, so she got reassigned to the duty of the Linux pioneer of my LAN.

Of course, technicians are lazy. (Who isn't.) So, naturally, I supposed that I will do it the way I installed DOS earlier - install it all on different machine, then just move the disk. However, the technology developed a bit from when I done it last time...

I took the disk, backed up all the remaining potentially worthy data on a CD, and plugged it to a Pentium-2 machine. Booted from a RedHat CD, selected what I wanted, formatted disk, ran install. Everything went pretty straightforward. I restarted the machine, it booted up to login. Everything just perfect. I moved the disk back to the 486. Power on, LILO caught up, loaded and uncompressed the kernel, and - froze.

After a while of testing (and reading documentation) it was clear that the kernel is optimized for Pentium. So I uttered a dark curse, and moved the disk back to P2. Installed kernel sources, recompiled kernel and set it for a 486. Story for itself - the very first time I ever compiled a kernel - but at the end it was successful (and could've been much faster if I wouldn't have that damned tendency to tinker with everything). So I reinstalled kernel binaries and modules, and moved the disk back to the 486. LILO caught up, kernel loaded and uncompressed, initialized all the kernel things - gosh I was happy - and... froze.

So I learned about the existence of "init". Which, in Red Hat installation, was Pentium-specific as well. I wasn't too eager to learn how to compile other software at the moment, experiences from arguing with the kernel way too fresh. So I gave up and done what I should've done at the very beginning. Borrowed a CDROM and a floppy drive from another machine, created a boot floppy from the image on the CD, wired the drives to the 486, after a boot-up attempt remembered that the floppy controller is bad, exchanged the controller board for another one from another decommissioned machine, selected what I want to install, reformatted the disk, and then spent something over a hour babysitting the machine and doing other work on another machine. (Note for Red Hat, Inc: You should offer choice of CPU optimizations in the installation software instead of just autodetecting it.)

The installation went straightforward.

More problems followed couple days later when I attempted to install a better network card. However, asking the Net for some keywords about Linux kernel modules and Realtek-based cards (the chip type number on the card is pretty good keyword in such cases) and reading the relevant documentation pointed me the right way. Now the machine has a pair of network cards in her. (I was too cheap to get a switch, so I made her a router.) After solving few rather simple problems (mostly related to understanding netmasks and routing), the machine finally done what I asked her for. In summary, even if I include the kernel module problem (which was caused only by me not knowing about it), it was easier to set up a Linux router than making Windows 98 doing the same. (Until then, I had a W98 machine acting as network router. Ewwww. Involved hacking undocumented registers according to recipes found on obscure websites, and never was really reliable.)

Then the issue of Internet connection came up. I had a Windows 98 SE machine serving as a both dialout and Web proxy. It was a rather weak machine, rather inadequate for such task; despite of being a Pentium 150, Windows were too much on her and when she ran just a few Explorer windows, together with the proxies she choked under the load. In addition, she crashed couple times, requiring me to do lengthy reinstall and painful setting up of everything. So moving the modem to Linux was natural choice.

We were solving PPP dialout earlier in one of our offices, so I had preliminary experiences. The problem thus got reduced to just "borrowing" the configuration files from the office machine, installing them on the local machine, editing the phone numbers and login and password for the ISP, and connecting the modem to the serial port. After solving three blunders (a typo in configfile, too short modem cable, and a misset jumper on the serial port card), I was online from Linux machine. And I am online from that machine from then. Much better than previous solution - Windows Internet connection sharing never worked well for me so I got stuck with WinProxy (later Proxy+).

Firewall install was straightforward as well. I choosed to use a third-party firewall over the default one (I prefer to understand how the damned thing works, instead of relying on pretty graphical interface); downloaded Shorewall, read the documentation, installed, set up the zones and rules, worked. Works from then without a single hiccup.

(I actually had previous experiences with Shorewall. About 2 weeks before, a friend asked me to secure his office network that was on a leased line. We guessed that continuing to rely on Windows, even if NT, will not be the right thing to do; so he took a decommissioned Pentium, a pair of network cards, and gave me them for a weekend. So I learned how to install firewalls. Later we installed FTP server there (proftpd - good performance, less security issues than with the default wu-ftpd, better configurability), and moved there the FTP services from Windows machine. After the holidays, the machine is scheduled to be equipped with bigger disk, and the webserver, now running on NT/IIS, will be moved there as well - at this moment, the friend is rewriting the databases from Active Server Pages to PHP, for both stability and performance gain. The machine had a single crash for all the time of her existence; maybe caused by power surge, maybe by hack attempt (we found traces of unsuccessful attempts in system log), maybe by a problem with smbfs module (smbfs is a filesystem for communicating with Windows network drives; I had one more weird crash on another machine, in circumstances involving smbfs). But after a reboot everything worked just fine. (There was one more problem with that machine, but it was just running out of disk space, caused by a human error, solved in 5 minutes from when I got the call, over remote login.))

Then I got new computer, for playing and testing and development and for fun in general. AMD on 1.2 GHz, lots of memory, lots of disk space. Installation of Linux was straightforward and done in about half-hour. Three crashes in its lifetime, all of them caused by my mistake when I was sticking hands where I wasn't supposed to and not knowing well what I am doing. (The root powers are immense.) The machine now runs caching web proxy (squid) for the family LAN, chained with advertisement-filtering proxy (Internet Enforcer, based on Junkbuster - hey, if you don't like users filtering the ads, consider text ads like Google.com does, or at least don't make them blink and dance and clogging the bandwidth for modem users, but it's different topic), all sorts of various services, plays MP3s and shares them to LAN (from where dad plays them on his computer - it's far more comfortable than handling the CDs and you can make playlist for all the evening so you don't have to leave the chair), and serves as database server and home intranet webserver. (Took some time to get PHP gd library to support GIF format - there are licencing issues of LZW algorithm with Unisys so it was disabled in later versions. Luckily there are "rogue" distributions that offer GIF compatibility - luckily not all the world conforms to American patent law.) There are no problems with the server; it's rock-stable and dependable; her Windows predecessor had issues all the time.

Recently I got ahold of a security scanner (Nessus, for the record). Ran it against a couple of machines of me and friends. On a typical Windows server I typically found serious issues (usually linked to either exposed port 139, and/or to IIS vulnerabilities), on a typical Linux server I found usually only less-serious warnings. (For the owners of NT or W2000 machines, there is another scanner, less comprehensive but easier to use - LANguard. Run it on your LAN. Runs on W9x as well, but doesn't offer some advanced functions, like the password cracking.)

I am administrator of several more machines. Some running Windows, some running Linux. Linux machines are generally cleaner and more administrator-friendly. Configuration is done typically by text files, which are easy to move from machine to machine and easy to back up before playing with them. Almost everything is documented. It's a bitch to read all the documentation, but it pays off. There are GUI helpers for configuring most of things; however I can't comment on them as I don't like them so I don't use them. I am from the old school, prefering to have hands right on what I am doing, without a "friendly" point-click layer (which more often than not done something I hadn't wanted to) between me and the problem.

Now I am neck-deep in documentation and attempting to understand how to set up a domain name server. Why? Because I want to learn it. And because we will probably need it for our new company LAN, and guess who will be asked to set it up.

No, common user doesn't need to know all this. I often take the more complicated way because I need to understand the system (for which I am, after all, paid). The common user can either to have a friend who will set up the machine for him (if there is a possibility for remote administration, most of problems are solvable without need of physically attend the machine), or sacrifice the time and learn, and occassionally to swallow the pride and ask for help. Hey - who never done a mistake?

In short:

  • Windows are easy to get working and then they require permanent attention. However, they look user-friendly (until you want something non-standard).
  • Linux is hard to get work well, but once it runs it keeps going and going and going.
  • Hardware support for Linux is still limited but it's slowly getting better. (Windows don't have everything too - I have some rare cards that I don't have drivers for - EPROM burner, ancient disk/memory expansion card, a weird video framerate convertor - at this moment a dead hardware. :( )
  • Migration of configuration from one Linux machine to another is no more difficult than copying a few of text files. (Windows Registry wasn't good idea, Bill.) Same for backup/restore.
  • Don't think about getting Linux running without reading a lot of documentation; calluses on your glutea maxima are on the list of the required hardware. However, you can ask a friend.
  • If you get a weird error message, feed its fragments as phrases to a search engine (I prefer google.com) - usually you will get pointers to webpages where the problem is explained.
    Same applies for finding drivers and problem solutions.
  • Having friends on the phone (or chat, ICQ, or mail) who are experts in given field is beneficial (applies to Linux, Windows, car repairs, cooking, and basically everything).
  • Handle your advisors with proper respect (not this way). Ie, I care about our office accountant; I may be the office's tech wizard, but I have no interest in understanding all those boring numbers she deals with. So she has some number-crunching scripts from me and helps me ie. with taxes for exchange. Alot of people possess special skills; you never know when you will need them.
  • Last but not least: When you are suggesting a solution, keep in mind you will be most likely the one who will have to implement it and keep it running.

Opinions, comments?


amazing (none / 0) (#1)
by nathan on Tue Dec 25th, 2001 at 10:11:00 AM PST
Quite the discussion.

It's clear you're from the former Soviet bloc. Whereabouts? I'm guessing Poland or Bulgaria (assorted grammatical reaons,) but I have honestly no idea.

Nathan
--
Li'l Sis: Yo, that's a real grey area. Even by my lax standards.

Almost exactly... (none / 0) (#2)
by The Mad Scientist on Tue Dec 25th, 2001 at 10:55:40 AM PST
...in the middle of your guesses. Czech Republic, former Czechoslovakia.

What grammatical reasons? What am I doing wrong? Is there any "comparative grammar" resource on the Net, that would help me to learn language-specific distortions of English? :)


I feel silly now (none / 0) (#4)
by nathan on Tue Dec 25th, 2001 at 11:56:11 AM PST
I should have guessed Czech Republic. My best friend is from Prague.

I guessed it was a Slavic nation because you leave an article out once in a while, so that writes off Rumania and Hungray. I knew it wasn't Russia (or and former USSR state) from context. I guessed it wasn't the Czech Republic because you didn't say anything about p�vo ;) Seriously, I should have guessed Czech Republic because of the relatively modern technology you were talking about.

All the best,
Nathan

PS - I think there is a natural Czech predilection toward mad science. Why, last week, we were talking about Capek here.

-N
--
Li'l Sis: Yo, that's a real grey area. Even by my lax standards.

The world is small! :) (none / 0) (#7)
by The Mad Scientist on Tue Dec 25th, 2001 at 02:20:10 PM PST
I should have guessed Czech Republic. My best friend is from Prague.

The world is really small...! I am from Prague myself.

I guessed it was a Slavic nation because you leave an article out once in a while, so that writes off Rumania and Hungary. I knew it wasn't Russia (or and former USSR state) from context. I guessed it wasn't the Czech Republic because you didn't say anything about p�vo ;)

Maybe because I have low alcohol tolerance (alcohol makes me feel bad in smaller doses that would be necessary to make me feel good), and beer isn't appealing for me, taste-wise. (I prefer tea, however atypical it is here.) :)

Seriously, I should have guessed Czech Republic because of the relatively modern technology you were talking about.

It's relative. You can see all range of machines, from P4s to old 286s. A friend of a friend has a PDP-11 in his basement, I ponder to talk him to put it to work again, just for the hell of it; only if I'd have the time...

All the best, Nathan

Merry Winter Solstice v2.0, codename Christmas! :)

PS - I think there is a natural Czech predilection toward mad science. Why, last week, we were talking about Capek here.

Capek is famous. Ie, the word "robot" is his work. (Comes from "robota", which translates as "work", with emphasize on its tedious and routine aspects. When I see things like Japanese car manufacturing plants, I think the word selection was excellent choice. Some tasks are more suited for machines than humans.)


PDP-11? (none / 0) (#8)
by nathan on Tue Dec 25th, 2001 at 02:37:38 PM PST
Gosh, that's a legendary machine. Wow.

Sorry about the beer thing. I was the beer columnist for my college's newspaper. I always regretted that I hadn't had the chance to review more Czech beers, because they're really something. (The only one I got to was Pilsner Urquelle, which is sold under a different name domestically; it's brewed right in Plzen.)

While I don't doubt that technology of all types is to be found in the Czech Republic, I'm not sure that there's been a thorough penetration of current-generation electrical-engineering knowledge within, for instance, Bulgaria. So, my guess was off.

Tkatchev and I had a little thread on "robota" a little while ago. Didn't amount to much, I'm sorry to say. I very much like Capek, but I haven't had the chance to read as much as I'd like (I am trying to learn the literature of English first, which is hard labour for somebody as simple as me.)

Merry Christmas,
Nathan
--
Li'l Sis: Yo, that's a real grey area. Even by my lax standards.

 
I'm curious... (none / 0) (#3)
by elby on Tue Dec 25th, 2001 at 11:30:56 AM PST
What sort of constant attention does Windows require? I've never noticed it myself.

-lb


Low uptime,... (none / 0) (#5)
by The Mad Scientist on Tue Dec 25th, 2001 at 12:48:45 PM PST
...way too frequent security patches (which occassionally cause problems on their own), weird behaviour like unexplainable slowdowns that get better after rebooting, requiring reboot after installation of next to anything. (I am getting spoiled by having to reboot only for kernel update or power blackout.) General low dependability, and "opaqueness" of the system. Problems with moving of configuration from one machine to another and with backing up the configuration in general. Problems with remote management (no experiences yet with the W2000 console, so maybe it is better there). Questionable security and compatibility history. Questionable licencing practices. Questionable business plans of the vendor. Questionable vendor's attitude about security risks (why the hell has everything to be enabled by default?). Bugs. Hardware requirements. And I could continue... *sigh*


Alright, let's dissect this (none / 0) (#9)
by elby on Wed Dec 26th, 2001 at 06:31:43 AM PST
way too frequent security patches

Sorry, when I installed win2k, I used the web interface to update the machine and haven't had to update it since. Incidentally, isn't this a bit hypocritical, since the big complaint should be if a company does not patch it's security problems at all, instead of patching them quickly and providing a simple interface to update the operating system?

weird behaviour like unexplainable slowdowns that get better after rebooting

never had this problem.

requiring reboot after installation of next to anything

You'll find that although most programs say you need to reboot, it's not actually required. It's simply done to be certain that all files have been updated before you run the program, because some files can't be updated while the operating system is running. Primarily, the fault here lies with third party software vendors, and that they are too lazy to verify that their software does not in fact require a reboot. Better safe than sorry is a good philosophy, as far as I'm concerned.

(I am getting spoiled by having to reboot only for kernel update or power blackout.)

So it's acceptable to recompile and reconfigure your kernel on a weekly basis, but a rare security patch is too much?

General low dependability

Never had this problem, my win2k desktop box has been running without reboot for weeks.

"opaqueness" of the system

What does this have to do with maintenance?

Problems with moving of configuration from one machine to another and with backing up the configuration in general.

What on earth does this have to do with maintenance? Why are you doing this? How does this effect normal users? Could you state what you're talking about a bit more clearly?

Problems with remote management (no experiences yet with the W2000 console, so maybe it is better there).

So do you have a lot of problems remotely managing your computesr at home?

Questionable security and compatibility history.

So a questionable history effects maintainability today? I don't think so.

Questionable licencing practices.

Again, this effects maintainability now? As long as you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about from the license.

Questionable business plans of the vendor.

Oh, truly? Aside from the fact that this has nothing to do with maintainability, how would you describe Microsoft's business plan? This should be rich.

Questionable vendor's attitude about security risks

Oh, you mean how they provide fixes regularly and easily to end users? Wasn't that a problem earlier, because you hate having to update your computer?

Bugs.

I believe Microsoft has a better history of their software running as intended than most other software companies. And when I get a new software update from Microsoft, I know it's tested, unlike Linux kernel updates.

Hardware requirements.

Again, how does this effect maintainability?

And I could continue... *sigh*

Please don't unless you can come up with examples of how Windows is hard to maintain.

-lb


Scalpel, please! (none / 0) (#10)
by The Mad Scientist on Wed Dec 26th, 2001 at 07:53:30 PM PST
way too frequent security patches
Sorry, when I installed win2k, I used the web interface to update the machine and haven't had to update it since. Incidentally, isn't this a bit hypocritical, since the big complaint should be if a company does not patch it's security problems at all, instead of patching them quickly and providing a simple interface to update the operating system?


a) The patches are late. If they are.
b) The patches are occassionally poorly tested and difficult to install.
c) At least in older machines (don't know much about W2k or XP) you have to physically visit the machine.
d) Microsoft prefers to solve technical problems by the means of PR, downplays warnings, and reacts only when a working exploit is issued. e) The patches can break things.

weird behaviour like unexplainable slowdowns that get better after rebooting
never had this problem.


I seen one of our office machines suddenly refusing to print, which was solved by reboot. I seen machine losing switching of national keyboards, solved by reboot. The slowdowns are likely to be caused by memory leaks of either the OS or some application which then leads to excessive swapping. I seen many more such little annoyances; from when I taught the office staff to first try to reboot and then to call me if the problem persists, the incidence of calls dropped dramatically.
See also the complains of my unknown comrade from the battlefield, a frustrated admin, here

requiring reboot after installation of next to anything
You'll find that although most programs say you need to reboot, it's not actually required. It's simply done to be certain that all files have been updated before you run the program, because some files can't be updated while the operating system is running. Primarily, the fault here lies with third party software vendors, and that they are too lazy to verify that their software does not in fact require a reboot. Better safe than sorry is a good philosophy, as far as I'm concerned.


Partially agree (and doing so myself, and running StartupMonitor which asks me for confirmation if a rogue installer wants to install something to run on startup, and StartupCPL, which lets me fine-tune what should run on startup (on a side note, Mike Lin, the author of these, wrote more utilities - his coding style is sleek, neat, and efficient (check file sizes))). However, I am spoiled by being able to update everything on a running system. I done even kernel recompile/reinstall over ssh (on a machine in the same room - but principially it could've been on a different continent).
And yes, better safe than sorry is definitely good thing. It's why I moved, am moving, and am going to move critical services to non-Microsoft platforms (and using proftpd instead of wu-ftpd, and using qmail instead of sendmail, etc).

(I am getting spoiled by having to reboot only for kernel update or power blackout.)
So it's acceptable to recompile and reconfigure your kernel on a weekly basis, but a rare security patch is too much?


Errrrrr... weekly? Our servers were installed with kernel out of the box, and the last time when I recompiled kernels on my home machines was when I was optimizing them for my CPUs. This was almost 3 months ago. If you enable kernel modules, in most cases you don't have to recompile kernel even when getting new hardware.

Patches aren't big problem with one-to-few computers. But with several dislocated offices it gets a bit annoying and often costs you a whole weekend. We sometimes leave less important things unpatched at all (like almost everyone) and just backup and pray and run Linux (going to switch over to OpenBSD when I'll learn it well enough) firewalls. With over 50 machines all over Europe patches are madness. (If it'd be unixes, I can set up a central update server, make update script, and run it for every machine remotely.)

General low dependability
Never had this problem, my win2k desktop box has been running without reboot for weeks.


Probably strongly depends on what software you run on it. Our NT server needed to restart time to time before we moved most of services (except the tape backup) to Linux machine; I don't know how often as the staff was doing that even before I came aboard, and they don't report routine incidents of this kind.
I am not alone with such problems. Check ie. the article "Black Hats prefer Linux".
I have a friend that can crash any version of Windows from the keyboard. He done Microsoft alot of bad press on various trade shows. His speciality is to ask the salesdroid about the stability, then let him preach, then crash the product they are displaying with a few keystrokes. You shouldn't be able to crash an operating system from user-level access.

"opaqueness" of the system
What does this have to do with maintenance?


Something goes wrong.
Figure what.

Something changed in the depth of the Registry and now a [function] doesn't work as before.
Figure what happened.

For unknown reason, the system crashes in [conditions].
Figure why.

Problems with moving of configuration from one machine to another and with backing up the configuration in general.
What on earth does this have to do with maintenance? Why are you doing this? How does this effect normal users? Could you state what you're talking about a bit more clearly?


How many machines you have to care about?
It happened to me couple times that I was tinkering with something on a Windows box, messed up, and then spent a lot of time with figuring out how to restore the original configuration. Compare this with backup/restore of a configuration file. (Billy!!! What was wrong on c:\windows\*.ini files???)
Imagine you want to set up default configuration to something other than the One Microsoft Way is. (Ie, to make Windows to display file extensions even for known files, and even for .lnk files.) You have 50 machines.

Problems with remote management (no experiences yet with the W2000 console, so maybe it is better there).
So do you have a lot of problems remotely managing your computers at home?


Yes. My company has several offices, some of them in different countries. Most of them are small, just 3-4 people, without their own IT person. Also, I am way too lazy to commute daily for a hour there and a hour back to the office I "officially" belong to. Our webserver is in a colocation facility that is also a hour away. I don't have a car (I don't need it) and commuting via public transport is annoying (if there is - rare - larger-scale crash, it is usually worth of taking a taxi).
Managing the unix servers is a breeze. I just log in via ssh, and operate them like I'd be there. The only - small - difference between managing my local and remote machines is in speed of response; local machines are a bit more lively as they are over 100Mb LAN instead of over 33k6 modem.
I have limited ability to manage the Windows machines as well (a mix of Win95, Win98, NT4, and NT5 (alias W2000)). Blessed be VNC (opensource, backed by AT&T), tunneled over ssh. This, together with phone, solves cca 98% of problems - but GUI over slow line isn't the most comfortable thing to play with.

Questionable security and compatibility history.
So a questionable history effects maintainability today? I don't think so.


It greatly affects how I trust the vendor's claims that "next version will be better".
...Just wait when you will decide you want to skip an upgrade, and start getting files unreadable with your current (and otherwise fully satisfying) software. (See also "Computer Users Fight Bloatware.)

Questionable licencing practices.
Again, this effects maintainability now? As long as you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about from the license.


I am luckily not in charge of licence tracking. I used my position of IT manager to state that licences belong to accounting department, as they are more related to money than to the technology itself. But it is annoying anyway as one has to think about it; just grabbing a CD and setting up new server is far far easier.
Now wait until they will change from selling to renting. Bye bye, the freedom to decide to skip upgrade. Farewell, the freedom to stick with legacy software where it doesn't matter. And if they will legally mandate you to keep external access to your network so they can remotely disable your software in case of disputes (as proposed in UCITA),or if they will find a way how to make some parts of EULAs legally binding (see below the example with Media Player licence), you will have the choice of either being irresponsible but law-abiding, or to firewall the external access and be a criminal.
I personally like laws much less than my networks. If there is a law mandating me to keep open access for whomever to my networks (mandatory updates, mandator backdoors), files, or data transmissions (mandatory limits to encryption key lengths), I call up my right to civil disobedience. I don't think that a criminal record for refusing to sell out my employer or my client would make me unemployable.

Questionable business plans of the vendor.
Oh, truly? Aside from the fact that this has nothing to do with maintainability, how would you describe Microsoft's business plan? This should be rich.


Microsoft's Get Rich Quick schemes. Dot-Net. "Microsoft tax" (and its versions). Plans to rent software instead of selling it - thus ensuring cash flow for them (and perpetual expenses for us). Forcing to upgrade (see lower, item Hardware Costs, also above). Related fallout as enforcing access into networks (see above, UCITA and WMP EULA). Means used to leverage their power: closed standards (search for letter from Jim Dennis), holy war on Java, perverting character set encodings, few real innovations, discriminating against non-MS browsers by MSN, dirty tricks (especially note their behavior towards Samba). Or here. Questionable lobbying tactics. Privacy issues. What is the problem with Microsoft? Now their attempts to get to media and entertainment industry... Should I continue?

Questionable vendor's attitude about security risks
Oh, you mean how they provide fixes regularly and easily to end users? Wasn't that a problem earlier, because you hate having to update your computer?


They provide fixes late. They have to fix what wouldn't ever be a problem if they wouldn't've botched the system architecture. (Mixing data and executable code isn't the wisest thing to do, Bill - macroviruses, hint? Running scripts and executables from untrusted sources by default isn't the wisest thing to do as well, Bill - OBD (Outlook-Born Diseases), hint?) Forced upgrades (see the licence agreement for Windows Media Player 8 - contains provision that Microsoft has the right to upgrade/modify its components without user's permission - if this isn't a security hole, what is? Can they be forced to cooperate with a three-letter agency, or bribed, to sneak a trojan into your machine in one of such updates? How you will audit the code then? Are their systems hackproof?). Attempts to suppress full disclosure of security holes (will Bill establish death squads?) Should I continue?
(Suing the software vendors could maybe help.)

Bugs.
I believe Microsoft has a better history of their software running as intended than most other software companies. And when I get a new software update from Microsoft, I know it's tested, unlike Linux kernel updates.


What about Novell? Not exactly starry (so it is occassionally called NoWell), but its Netware was pretty decent. I bet there would be much more, but Microsoft behaves like a black hole and swallows every potential competition.
What about delaying the bug warnings? What about the history of gaping security holes (Nimda and Code Red being just small examples)? Suppressing security informations?
If you think that by forbidding talking about bugs these will present less threat, or even disappear, you are seriously wrong. My somehow shady past gave me a lot of experiences. One of them is that there is black market with every commodity - including sensitive informations. By removing full disclosure, removing security-related informations from the public, you create warm feeling of security while greatly impairing the real security. You also take away a powerful tool to force the vendors to handle security issues by means of code, instead of by means of Public Relations department. The bigger the corporation, the bigger stick you need for it.

Hardware requirements.
Again, how does this effect maintainability?


See ie. here.
When upgrading software you have to upgrade hardware as well. Which dramatically affects cost. There are rumours that Microsoft has some sort of agreements with Intel. And, after all, if I want to just write a letter, why I should need a computer with power that would couple years back make Pentagon drool? I remember a text editor with support of graphics and various fonts and font sizes, PrintFox, that ran on a Commodore 64 - about 1 MHz CPU clock, and 64 kB RAM. Don't tell me the current hw requirements aren't result of shoddy inefficient coding.

A lot of concerns I outlined is also described here: What's So Bad About Microsoft, here, and especially here: What is the problem with Microsoft. Read it. It's cold and sobering.

Sorry the response took so long, but you had a lot of questions. Also, this is by far not complete. There are missing links to blunders like updated Frontpage detecting missing Frontpage extensions on the server, and automatically offering list of different hosting services running NT servers, problems with Windows access to non-MS-friendly ISPs, the "DR-DOS affair" years back, and many many many more...

I'll end with few quotes:

At some point, some palooka is going to tell you that you should use MS products because they're an "industry standard." This is roughly equivalent to teenagers telling each other to smoke or do drugs because "everybody's doing it."
- JOHN "The Gneech" ROBEY

Every time you turn on your new car, you're turning on 20 microprocessors. Every time you use an ATM, you're using a computer. Every time I use a settop box or game machine, I'm using a computer. The only computer you don't know how to work is your Microsoft computer, right?
- SCOTT McNEALY, CEO, Sun Microsystems

The problem (and the genius) regarding Microsoft's products is bloat. Microsoft's penchant for producing overweight code is not an accident. It's the business model for the company. ... While [bloatware has] made Bill Gates the world's richest guy, it's made life miserable for people who have to use these computers and expect them to run without crashing or dying.
- JOHN DVORAK, PC Magazine

I feel as if I am fighting Microsoft for the right to use my own computer efficiently.
- STEWART ALSOP, Fortune Magazine

The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate technology, led them into it in the first place.
- DOUGLAS ADAMS, Author, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

You're either a friend or a foe, and you're an enemy now.
- STEVE BALLMER, executive vice president, Microsoft, to Pacific Bell CEO David Dorman after Pacific Bell chose Netscape's Web software over Microsoft's.

There won't be anything we won't say to people to try and convince them that our way is the way to go.
- BILL GATES

We are a great software company.... That's the only image anyone should have of us.
- BILL GATES


really good points (none / 0) (#13)
by NAWL on Thu Dec 27th, 2001 at 01:56:19 AM PST
Mad Scientist, you make a lot of excellent points. One problem that I had always run into was the need to purchase additional software and hardware in order to do what Microsoft said Windows was supposed to do.

Microsoft, in my opinion, did not get where it is today buy selling great software. It's all due to marketing. Truthfully, MS could sell shit on a stick and people would buy it. MS continues to hype .NET which will it set to release in 2 years Yet the exact same thing will be made available from Novell in February (target date). Novell's offering sill not require costly software and hardware upgrades nor will it be platform specific as Microsoft's .NET is specific to Windows.

I also enjoyed the point you made about MS stability and security and it claiming future products will be better. This in my opinion does not make me confident. Bill and Company however, continue to refer to their products as the most stable and secure on the market. Mountains of evidence prove otherwise. In my diary entry "Microsoft: A Threat to Itself" there is a poll which asks the question Should MS overhaul Windows. I believe it is about time.

I would also like to mention to elby that making a comparison between a server running NT and a desktop running W2K really doesn't make much sense. While similar the are designed for different purposes and server is generally accessed by far more clients.

I also pose this question to you elby. If you are so confident in Microsoft's offering, why does the adequacy.org webserver run Apache/1.3.20 (Unix) mod_perl/1.26 on FreeBSD rather than Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000 for example?




Hey, if you consider the fifth grade your senior year, what else can you be besides a pompous jackass?

You twit (none / 0) (#14)
by osm on Thu Dec 27th, 2001 at 05:02:56 AM PST
I also pose this question to you elby. If you are so confident in Microsoft's offering, why does the adequacy.org webserver run Apache/1.3.20 (Unix) mod_perl/1.26 on FreeBSD rather than Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000 for example?

Hacking into our server, eh? You will pay the price buddy. Yes indeed. YOU WILL PAY THE PRICE.


do the world a favor... (none / 0) (#15)
by NAWL on Thu Dec 27th, 2001 at 09:22:33 PM PST
...and pull your lip over your head and swallow. What "hacking" was involve? I'm sorry, I didn't know that visiting the well trusted site Netcraft.com was hacking. I knoew this would happen. Someone writes an intelligent diary entry about Linux and you or elenchos wonder in on your idiotic witch hunts.

The simple fact about your post and argument regarding token ring show you have little to no knowledge about computing and networking. Thus for I don't believe you are in any position to define what constitutes hacking/cracking.

Pathetic




Hey, if you consider the fifth grade your senior year, what else can you be besides a pompous jackass?

 
i agree with lb on this (5.00 / 1) (#6)
by loginadequacy on Tue Dec 25th, 2001 at 12:53:24 PM PST
hey, i agree with lb on this. Running Windows does not require attentions other than a big fat check book and a flexible finger to reboot the machine a few times a day. That's all.


 

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