EDA: Unix vs. NT 95
Geoff Parker wrote in with a
story about competition between
Unix and Linux vs. NT in the EDA market. An interesting read that puts Linux in good light and
says that expctations for the EDA on NT market are falling short . It
also seems Intel has a 1000-member LUG.
Re:NT (Score:1)
Unix machines on the other hand have much more expected of them. It's not unusual to have Unix servers that have been running continuously for years. There is an old Sun server I use at work that has never crashed in over 5 years.
My company sells products that are deployed on NT servers and we state that they must run only our server applications. We have found that if you pre-configure everything, and run just a small set of applications, NT works fine. You don't have to be a Unix zealot to understand that NT is not as robust of an OS as Unix.
And...? (Score:1)
Re: troll who doesn't know how to read (Score:1)
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 120020 Apr 9 22:33 /usr/sbin/pppd*
There you have it. I am connected as a regular user, with pppd having NO suid permissions. I use PPP as a regular user all the time. You, quite frankly, don't know what you are talking about.
Remember that only NT has a c2 security rating
Only when it is not networked. Big deal. And that particular configuration is NOT what you get out of the box. Try using the C2 configuration tool that comes in the NT4 Resource Kit, and you'll see it's not as simple as "point and click." And you'll see that it's not what you got when you installed, either. And for that matter, it was NT 3.51 that was certified -- NOT NT 4 (no, the certification isn't "upgradeable"; each OS version has to be certified itself).
I would be thoroughly stunned if no Unix was ever C2 certified. I simply don't believe that.
As for the Navy using NT -- I'm beginning to suspect this is a clever troll. Do I really have to remind you of how an NT crash resulted in a ship being towed back to port?
Anonymous Coward? (Score:1)
Conclusion: he's wasting bandwidth.
Re: troll who doesn't know how to read (Score:1)
> pppd. Obvious since
> unix and hence by default not all users should
> be allowed to use pppd. (Well unless
> is 777
That's why you use Unix groups... although most people don't for some stupid reason.
---
can't use self selected reports he says (Score:1)
Lies, Damn Lies, Statistics and Surveys (Score:1)
Secondly, we have no idea who funded it. We know who provided the data to ZD: Giga. That tells me nothing about who funded the survey. If you can provide me with a URL at Giga's site to support your claim that M$ didn't fund it, please do so (I went to their site, and nothing easily presented itself). Absent some actual proof as to who funded it, I think you ought to omit this from your arguments in favor of it (I am certainly not going to claim that M$ funded it because I don't know).
We also don't know what sort of people they asked: Joe Average, or Joe Microsoft Employee, or who? Obviously this has a dramatic impact upon the results.
We also don't know the EXACT question that was asked. Obviously the wording of the question can make a big difference in the results. Example: "When did you stop beating your wife? Today, yesterday, or last week?" (well, what if I wasn't beating her at ANY time at all?). The wording of the question matters.
Frankly, this is irrelevant. I can give you a survey where 90% of the users reboot NT daily (my client's office), where 100% of the users curse NT's existence hourly (my company, where we suffer NT's indignities but not gladly), and where a sizable percentage reinstall NT on a regular basis due to OS failures. My point is this: surveys can be had to say whatever you want.
The bottom line, however, is that these statistics bear zero resemblance to the reality experienced by any NT user I know of who puts the OS through its paces. I have seen *one* NT box stay up for 78 days -- but it was almost never used and even then finally had to be rebooted due to memory leaks. On the other hand, I've seen NT completely *incapable* of shutting down some *user* applications under certain circumstances. I've seen problems in *user* applications that can only be resolved by a reboot (just restarting the app wouldn't itself wouldn't do it). I have a client with an office full of such stories.
I'm not suggesting the people in the survey lied. I'm suggesting that we don't know what they were asked, and we don't know who was asked, and we don't know what these people meant when they answered (BSODs only? They're rare for me too -- but not rebooting to solve OS problems with NT).
Re:I am no troll but you need some corrections her (Score:1)
I have worked on B2 certified Unix systems and those applying for B1 security.
laughing at BSOD's (Score:1)
Journaling filesystem? (Score:1)
Re:haha NT is clearly faster then linux (Score:2)
Re:Where to now for NT? (Score:1)
Report from DAC (Score:3)
2) Penguins *everywhere* -- even among the companies that didn't know that it would draw attention from Linux lovers.
3) In conversations with some of the companies that _don't_ have announced Linux products, it turns out that all it'll take is someone ready to write a purchase order. Typical conversation:
"Do you have a Linux version?"
"No, but it wouldn't be difficult."
"I know that it's not a big deal to port between Unix versions."
"No, you don't understand. Our programmers insist on developing under Linux -- the commercial versions are the ports. All we need is an order."
Re:hrm... what the hell is EDA??? (Score:1)
Re:Windows NT: Why are we bothering ? (Score:1)
my 2 colegues have one printer at theire office conected to one of their NT workstations and shared. but this workstation is not able to behave properly when printing so i'm pushed to deploy my experimental i386 linux box as print server there.
so it leaves all NTs as workstations for mostly Word processing, surfing and e-mailing. the day i found acceptable office solution with slovak characters support on linux, all NTs'll go away.
Re:Usually lack of training (Score:1)
I'm not knocking MCSE's here; OS certification tends not to be worth much regardless of the OS. The same problem applies to CNEs, Solaris 2000-level certification, etc. But with PHBs dragging in NT by the boatload, they expect that any random MCSE can make and keep it running.
Having a fancy certificate can never replace solid hands-on experience, whether with NT, NetWare, Unix, etc. (An experienced NT admin can make NT work adequately, or even "well", for relatively low-usage (compared to enterprise installations with tens or hundreds of thousands of users.)
In fact, to be honest, NT is *not* the absolute horror some paint it as. It *can* be, if installed and administered by someone who doesn't really know what they're doing; perhaps NT's single biggest problem is the "anyone can manage it" mentality that Microsoft fosters. NT, like any other OS, lets you shoot yourself in the foot --- this, combined with the "any warm body" mentality, virtually ensures disaster. (That said, its second biggest problem is that it doesn't really scale because Microsoft thinks a "big" installation is 200 users --- so even a good NT admin will have problems with a large installation.)
That's what I meant (Score:1)
That the file formats of the CAD tools are text-based and open isn't directly a Unix thing, but it is very much in the Unix spirit, and somthing that ECAD users in my experience find useful
I wonder what apps you need that Linux doesn't have? Do you write your documentation in Word?
Re:I am no troll but you need some corrections her (Score:1)
>1.)First off my point is that unix is a hell to setup compared to NT
No it's not! "out of the box" many unix installations are far easier. You are comparing the one and only monolithic NT system install to an infinitely variable range of unix installations. My experience on the very same hardware has been 5 times longer on win98 (easier than NT of course!) than linux. Statement so ridiculously wrong, why bother...
>2.)NT 4 has earned c2 certification not too long ago
If you'd bothered reading the comments, you'd havae realized how wrong that statement is...
>3.)The problem with the navy's computer was a divide by 0 error
If you'd bothered reading the articles about this, you would remember that the problem was that an OS is NOT SUPPOSED TO CRASH when an app divides by 0!
>My experiences with pppd are mine...
Thus we see the root of the problem.
>...Also NT will win at the rate its going...
until eventually it's so bloated and bug-ridden it's completely unusable?
>...only NT has the alpha cpu-to-card binding...
Patch is already available. These are irrelevent observations. Linux is evolving far faster than NT.
>No OS has every recovered from might [sic] microsoft.
MS has only predominated because of cheap hardware. As hardware becomes even cheaper, it will become harder to justify spending major portion of a system's cost on the OS.
Conclusion: Pull your head out of the sand!
by all means don't flame or email (Score:1)
Re:hrm... what the hell is EDA??? (Score:1)
It's what we've known all along (In EDA, I Mean) (Score:2)
The readers, the people who have to use the damn software, went on a rampage. Letters poured into the journal, and contained things like, "If my dept. goes NT, I quit." Some people knew their managers would jump on it and were scared of that. Some felt comfortable because their management wasn't that dumb.
Many suggested writing to the EDA companies and urging, "If you're gonna port it, port it to Linux."
It's good, this is a user base, that could care less about MSOffice, et al. and just want to use what they know works.
Of course we all kind of find out what it's like to be a win user with that Linux guy shoving Linux-this, Linux-that down everybody's throats (I admittedly get like that, I laugh at other people's BSODs
Oh well, I'm glad the EDA companies are getting the point.
Re:What bothers me about this post (Score:1)
However, the main thrust of this argument is Unix versus NT and not Linux. Unix is a real beast and had journaling file systems, SMP and all the pointy clicky bits when you where still drawing on your parents walls with a crayon.
Regards
hrm... what the hell is EDA??? (Score:1)
_
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
Re:It's what we've known all along (In EDA, I Mean (Score:1)
to Linux: [cadsoft.de]
http://www.cadsoft.de. They were
stuck with DOS/Win for a decade but decided
recently to support Linux AFAIK.
Their Product is called EAGLE and they
have a "free" Version for half-euro boards.
It's pretty cool.
They are located in Germany (as I am), but
their hp is english.
greetings,
Jurij
Re:hrm... what the hell is EDA??? (Score:1)
Re:haha NT is clearly faster then linux (Score:2)
at face value. Your second mistake is
believing that this benchmark applies to
the box running NT at your office cause
I'll wager yours isn't a Quad-Xeon with
4 Enet controllers.
Go look at the c't magaizine review to get
a clearer picture! Turns out there is a
corner case with 4 Enet controllers that
Linux has to improve on. This is a fairly
rare setup, most machines are going to have
1 NIC - maybe 2....where there is a different
result to the benchmark!
Next - in the EDA market that this article
is talking about (which is where I live all
day as a user) NT leaves alot to be desired
as a platform. Some of this is just "it isn't
what I'm used too" while other parts have to
do with a lack of a good scripting environment.
Oddly - the scripting can be corrected by putting
the MKS tool kit and perl on your machine...still
EDA users are usually unix jocks - and we like
having all the unix tools like awk and sed to
deal with the differences between EDA tools.
There are some EDA related benchmarks
published by ISD magazine (www.isd.com) that
might be of interest to folks if you want
to see how NT really faired!
This is the sort of market Linux should do well in (Score:1)
If we were losing this market to NT we really would have lost.
Since fp performance is important to these users I guess Linux on the AMD Athlon/K7 and the Alpha should be ideal.
Re:Windows NT: Why are we bothering ? (Score:1)
Samba has reached a point where it can almost totally
replace NT, Our NT servers, now only act as one thing..
Print Server.
Hardly an advertisment for NT. How come your print servers
are still on NT anyway? You can run a machine on which
NT wouldn't even boot as a print server with Samba/Linux.
Re:haha NT is clearly faster then linux (Score:1)
You have plenty of "skills", using tough words like "Pr0n", you sound like a script kiddie who supports Windows and still uses the term M$.
> Peace out to M$. You make my dreams come true.
Those must be some small dreams if "M$" can make them come true.
Re:Windows NT: Why are we bothering ? (Score:1)
the day i found acceptable office solution with slovak
characters support on linux, all NTs'll go away.
The Koffice website would be a useful place to look.
There is also the ability to add requests to the wishlist.
EDA & SLDL links (Score:1)
Here [eda.org]'s a good place to browse for related EDA material.
System Level Design Language [inmet.com] is supposed to help bridge many of the gaps and differences between "everything".
NT (Score:1)
The most common lie I see on this site is that NT is unstable. Here are some FACTS:
How Often Users Reboot (including force reboots due to crashes)
Every 6 Months or More
61%
Every 3 to 6 Months
18%
Every 1 to 3 Months
11%
Monthly
6%
Weekly
3%
Daily
Less than 1%
Those are FACTS... scream all you want, it won't change anything.
You can see the rest of the facts here:
http://www.zdnet.com/pccomp/stories/all/0,6605,
Oh... this study was NOT FUNDED by MS. So don't bother screaming that common reply.
Re:Why can't we get along?! =] (Score:1)
The primary design feture of all MS softwar is
incompatibility. So if one product is MS ALL
products must be MS. What choise is that?
Are you stupid, ignorant, or a MS FUD Sucker.
Very well put (Score:1)
Suid for pppd (Score:1)
Giga survey on NT uptime (Score:2)
What we can tell is that those numbers are unlikely to reflect a representative sample of real NT sites, since most users would have experienced downtime at intervals of less than six months due to the service packs and security holes on NT that require attention with clockwork regularity.
I wouldn't take anything that those consulting firms publish very seriously, unless it comes with a lot of detail about how the experiment/survey was designed and unless that design actually survives scrutiny.
Some of us have been on the Net longer than that (Score:1)
Of course, I was a child prodigy
Will in Seattle
Re: internet is old (Score:1)
And since I, my father, and my grandfather (ok, further back than that) have all served in the military and not tried to avoid combat, I think I know whereof I speak.
Will in Seattle
which OS would you use for a destroyer?
Re:haha NT is clearly faster then linux (Score:1)
Electronic Design Automation (Score:1)
In a nutshell, as digital designs enter the GHz range, you have to design them more as analog/RF circuits, taking into consideration the 3D structure and layout of physical wires and devices. A lot of convergence of tools (CAD meets EDA meets Thermal/EMI analysis), use of VRML [vrml.org] for physical design data exchange, that sort of thing.
Where to now for NT? (Score:1)
Despite all this, 2/3 of all the jobs I see go something like this "NT, IIS, IE, VB, COM" etc. I'm a bit confused about how well/badly NT is doing. My best guess is that a lot of people still see an all-MS solution as a safe way to go. I reckon they're going to get burned in a couple of years when everybody accepts that open standards based on UNIX are the right thing and nobody wants to maintain all that asp crap.
Why can't we get along?! =] (Score:2)
Re:Troll? (Score:1)
First, it was a stupid troll, obviously by an idiot.
Second,
Re:This is the sort of market Linux should do well (Score:1)
In my experience most UN*X workstation users in CAD don't know jack shit about unix - they know their CAD program, and that's it. I spent like 30 minutes over the phone the other day to help a Pro/REFLEX user install Netscape 4.6 on an Indy - a matter of gunzip, untar, and
The EDA guys I suppose are way more technical.
/El Niño
Re:chmod wont work. It doesnt matter what permisio (Score:1)
Re:NT (Score:1)
Why would the people in the survey lie? What would it serve them?
Why would you lie? Perhaps to continue the Linux hype as long as possible before it dies.
Re:chmod wont work. It doesnt matter what permisio (Score:1)
when you disabled networking on the NT machine? If
so, what the hell is the point of a C2 rating?
BTW, the modem -is- a device, so you need the
privileges to OPEN the device before you can
do jack shit with it.
Unix may have more holes in it than NT but it also
has the userbase behind it to quickly fix them. You
probably love installing the bi-annual NT service
pack that corrects holes discovered the day after
the last service pack was released, don't you?
Re:haha NT is clearly faster then linux (Score:1)
BTW, that's obviously bullshit, 345 billion hits every other hour. On a p100. You couldn't even forge those logfiles, or even have enough bandwidth for that.
Usually lack of training (Score:1)
Windows NT: Why are we bothering ? (Score:2)
As a file server NT severly struggles, at work we (unfortuently) run a 100 person NT network.. and the fileserver would crumble under any sort of network trafic. Crashing 5 times a day, walking intot he server room like a zombie to hit the infamous 'reset' button isnt suitable alternative.
Solution: Samba.
Samba has reached a point where it can almost totally replace NT, Our NT servers, now only act as one thing.. Print Server. All file server functions are handled under Samba, Running Debian(potato). Even more so. the move over from NT to Linux/Samba was almost flawless. All file server accesses are Authenticated with the NT server.
Result. Currently our file server running Linux/Samba doesnt crash. NT Still crashes at least once or twice a day.
Now if i wanted to actually spend a tad of effort, lets see.. i'll move DNS/DHCP over to the Linux Machine, Set up Masquarading, Setup Samba to ack as a PDC, Then finally Do lpr/printer stuff. And finally i will try to figure out why we have a P2-400 PDC, and and Dual p2-300's BDC sitting there collecting dust, as a p100 takes over the job.
But sure.. lets see what else nt tries to do which my Linux machine does better
a) IIS, sure its faster then Apache. no-one is arguing that, at least they shouldnt be. but Who doesnt have a web page without cgi/perl/postgres/php3/python... WAIT
b) Mirroring works under Linux and NT. It was the main issue when moving the file server over.
c) graphical clicky thingies for the typing impaired: For you folk yes you still can use M$ programs to modify the settings on Samba shared files.
Any M$ Fan here want to let me know how/why Linux with Samba + 10 hours of work, could totally Replace NT ?
-- Chris Andrews
Re:Where to now for NT? (Score:1)
/El Niño
Re:Electronic Design Automation (Score:1)
Re:Troll? (Score:1)
Slashdot is not a Linux site for Linux geeks, it just happens to be that Linux geeks like Slashdot.
I questioned the legitimacy of the moderation too, until I read the post and saw how dumb it was. NTFS supports jounalism... :-) NTFS supports encryption?
It sounds like he took the wrong answers from a multiple choice question. The last person I met who said "NTFS supports encryption" was an MCP in NT 3.1, and said that encryption was a basic feature of NTFS which you did not have to even turn on.
Microsoft OTOH doesn't make this claim anywhere. It is as though people are reading "File permissions", "Security" and "NTFS" in the same sentence and immediately equating it to encryption.
(And for the next MCP who argues that encryption is a feature of NTFS, it is common knowledge in the real world that a DOS diskette with a NTFS utility, or a Linux boot disk with NTFS support will quite nicely read your NTFS drive.)
EDA for Linux (Score:2)
-- Jochen
It's obvious; (Score:1)
And I think it's kind of silly to ask Linux people to "get along" with NT people, when Microsoft has recently formed an internal anti-Linux team, a "hitsquad" which is supposed to undermine Linux's recent advances in the marketplace.
If anything, it's the people in Redmond who are trying to squelch the freedom to choose your OS; they're the ones who need to play nicely..