Serious investigations into UNIX and Windows

[TM4525 at aol.com]

In a message dated 10/23/04 11:27:27 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
stefan at swebase.com writes:


>I have tried searching for this but i only get reports made by students 
>and private programmers, i trust a programmer more than a large 
>corporation any day but to show a person i know and convince him i need 
>some serious investigations made by large corporations into comparing 
>BSD and Windows systems in various areas. I would love to get some links 
>that some of you have in your bookmarks on this. The person i'm trying 
>to convince is a hardcore MS fan so i need real evidence of why BSD is 
>better than MS products in server environments.

>Some friends of mine have told me that yahoo, msn and microsoft all use 
>FreeBSD but until i can show him that and prove it to him that means 
>nothing.


Better for what? Every product is better at some things and weaker at others.
You can argue that a BMW 325 is "better" than a 540 if you are concerned
about gas prices, and its certainly more cost effective if your only use for 
the
car is to go a short distance to work or the stores.

Also, programmers have different criteria than non-programmers. Big companies
are concerned with the ability to find people to administer their systems. 
There
are more people around that can administer MS systems than unix, and it can 
be done with a lower level of talent. . A car enthusiast might prefer older, 
pre-computer cars because they're easier to tinker with. The same might be 
said for programmers. Programming types whine if they don't have source
code, but source code is useless to people that don't know what to 
do with it (and its dangerous for those who only THINK they do). 

I think any high-level programmer who has used both unix and MS products is 
going to prefer unix for most things server-related, mainly because if it 
doesn't 
work just the way he wants he can likely fix it. On the other hand, there are 
more
products available for MS, more vendors with supported products for certain, 
and if
you're located in Moosebreath Montana and you need 40 guys to run an IT dept
who know unix, good luck (unless you're willing to settle for a bunch of guys 
who 
know what YACC stands for and not much else). I know more than a few people, 
small businessmen mostly, who have been completely screwed because their 
almost
totally incompetent unix tech guy left the company. 

FreeBSD is vastly better in a multitude of ways than an MS server on the same 
hardware, IF you have someone who knows what they're doing AND you can count
on that guy hanging around. If not, you'll end up with a bunch of servers 
running
poorly supported software that will run like the dickens until something 
happens, 
but that you won't be able to update, upgrade or repair. 

Of course there's no reason that you can't slap up a FreeBSD server until 
you're
comfortable with it. I don't know of any law that says you have to decide 
between
one or the other exclusively.