[ale] Web Server

[Geoffrey Myers]

bmyers wrote:

> I am planning a content server.  ICan you direct me to a source
> of information on the comparative merits of Linux vs NT?
>
> I would like to use Linux but we seem to be short on Unix/Linux
> support personnel here in Louisville,Ky.  Any info on Louisville
> sources would help too.

I can give you some very good specifics.  I work from home for AT&T and
support a web server running on NT 4.0 (not my choice or
recommendation).  I do all my development work in the Linux environment
and port it over to the NT box.  NT is a memory and processor hog.  A
lot of overhead goes into the NT Windows interface.  When running a web
server on a Linux box, you don't have to have X running all the time,
but it's foot print is much smaller then what NT is on the same
machine.  We will probably be porting our NT server to some flavor of
UNIX, although I don't think it will be Linux.  It would be my
preference, but as large as AT&T is, there is an organization that
defines architecture standards, and unfortunately, Linux hasn't made the
list (yet).

Beside the fact that Linux, in my opinion, out performs NT, there's also
the issue of available tools.  Everytime I want to do something new or
different on the NT web server, I've got to go out and buy some new
software package or write my own.   With Linux, it's all there.  A good
example is sending email via a web page.  Under Linux, I just pipe the
output to mail, elm.  Ever tried piping something to exchange?   I ended
up writing some perl code that does the email at the socket level.  More
work.

I would go with Linux hands down over NT for a web server.  There was
some benchmarking done a while back on web servers, someone posted it to
the list.  The comparison, as I recall, wasn't fair, but Linux performed
well.  Anyone on the list still have that data?

If you happen to go the NT route (good luck if you do), you might look
into UWIN.  It's a full set of Unix tools for NT/win95, similar to the
MKS toolkit, but it's free.  It's supported by David Korn at
AT&T Research, the guy that created the ksh.

>
>
> Thanks
> much



--
Until later: Geoffrey           geof at abraxis.com