Windows is a better choice than Linux

Microsoft India says that all things considered, Windows is a better choice over Linux

Technical decision-makers are facing tough challenges in today’s economic climate. Budget cuts, staff reductions, outdated IT infrastructures, including obsolete hardware, and operating systems that are five or six years old, are just a few of the issues IT managers must contend with. Most businesses have a heterogeneous technology infrastructure, along with a mix of in-house skills—some Unix, perhaps some mainframe, and Windows. In view of this, choosing new technology today is a tough decision.

This article offers a perspective on Linux as well as on Microsoft’s offerings that help address current business challenges. The article looks at several factors that influence a decision between Linux and Windows, including:

• Comparing philosophies between Microsoft and the Linux community.
• The legacy of Windows NT 4.0.
• The three main benefits of choosing Windows.
• The benefits of migrating from Unix to the Windows and Intel platform.

Comparing Microsoft and Linux philosophies

Microsoft is a vendor of commercially developed software. Microsoft’s philosophy is based on three core tenets:

• To provide a functionally complete, well-integrated operating system that includes the right set of services needed for today’s common IT scenarios.
• Apply rigorous engineering processes and back the operating system with high quality, 24x7 support from one reliable vendor.
• Add to the value of the operating system by developing a strong ecosystem of applications, services, training and other resources, to increase the choices available to customers.

The benefits of this approach for customers include business advantage, safer investment and more value for money.

Linux has evolved in an ‘organic’ way according to the interests of the Linux community of developers, with the end goal of reaching parity with Unix functionality. A more modular approach is used, with popular Linux distributions focusing on providing a kernel (which has no real concept of platform services) and a collection of additional services that are often developed in isolation from each other. Although it may be surprising, many core pieces of functionality expected from a network operating system are absent from Linux. For example, single sign-on, platform-level services such as a common management instrumentation infrastructure and transaction process monitoring are not built into Linux. Some functionality, such as middleware, may be purchased separately. Some may be impossible to obtain.

Windows NT 4.0

Any comparison between Windows and Linux must necessarily examine not only where Windows is today, but also where it has been in the past. Windows NT 4.0 was released six years ago, featuring the standard Windows user interface, which is familiar to more than 500 million users worldwide. At the time, Windows NT set a new standard for ease-of-use and approachability for a server operating system and quickly became popular.

This popularity can be seen as an overwhelming endorsement of the capabilities of Windows, now and in the past. However, with its popularity, Windows NT has been used under a wide variety of challenging conditions, and some administrators began to find limits in the areas of reliability and manageability. These problems produced a larger amount of publicity than corresponding issues with other operating systems, as well as more negative public perceptions.

Interestingly, some administrators experienced very high reliability and were able to manage their systems satisfactorily. A 1999 survey by Giga Information Group found that there was a wide variation in the reliability of Windows NT. The survey found that 12 percent of NT servers crashed once per month, yet 61 percent of servers ran for longer than six months without a crash. The Giga Survey goes on to say: “This number surprised us even more than the low number of systems with frequent problems. The pattern here of a wide variance in results leads us to place credence in other data, which suggests that operational practices are important.”

The Giga study mentioned above makes a simple point—Windows NT 4.0 is not inherently unstable, even though some servers experienced problems on a regular basis. The problem really lay in the way that we communicated with our customers—at that time we did not provide appropriate guidance and tools to enable customers to consistently run Windows NT 4.0 in a secure, reliable way. Because of this, some Windows NT administrators did not understand the need to apply the same rigorous lockdown rules, administrative procedures, and testing prior to rolling out new software and drivers as they typically did with any mission-critical Unix system.

Unfortunately, based on experiences with Windows NT 4.0, some administrators look at Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003 with a sceptical eye, even though both products are technically superior to Windows NT 4.0. We encourage administrators to take another look at Windows to appreciate the major enhancements Microsoft has made, and to encourage a well-informed decision about the next platform.

Four main reasons for choosing Windows

Business value of Windows: An operating system is more than a piece of software—it is the foundation of any computing platform. A platform includes hardware from the customer’s choice of OEM, an operating system, and what is commonly referred to as middleware. Middleware includes transactional capability, asynchronous communication, security infrastructure, and an enterprise-class directory structure. These components make up the platform that runs applications.

Microsoft’s philosophy is to create a single, integrated platform to support the vast majority of the hardware devices that underlie the operating system and provide the application services components described above.

The graphic below illustrates the Windows platform and a generic Linux platform and non-commercial software (NCS) add-ons.

Click on image for larger view

As the diagram on the left shows, Windows Servers come with a complete set of application services such as message queuing, a Web server, file server, security and directory services. These are tightly integrated to offer a complete platform out-of-the-box. The Linux + NCS add-ons diagram on the right shows the more modular approach taken with Linux—the Linux kernel contains a small subset of functionality, and then other packages are added on to provide directory services, file services, a Web server, etc. There are a few areas where it could be very difficult to obtain equivalent business-ready functionality, such as VPN, RAS, PKI, and smart card support.

The Windows Server is complemented by tools such as Visual Studio.NET, the industry’s leading database (SQL Server), and a set of management products designed to integrate with and extend the core manageability features of the Windows operating system platform and a set of distributed computing services and application frameworks. Any application that is designed to run on the Windows platform will see the results of these platform benefits.

In contrast, the development tools for Linux, while progressing, are a generation behind Visual Studio.NET, which is capable of supporting multiple languages and is built around XML. An open-source, enterprise-ready database server is also lacking. MySQL offers limited functionality compared to SQL Server.

By supporting multiple scenarios, including information worker productivity and server consolidation among others, Windows can dramatically reduce the amount of additional software that must be purchased and the amount of services needed to build and deploy solutions to common business problems. The Microsoft approach to building operating systems is to integrate both ‘horizontally’ within Windows (i.e., between features of Windows) as well as ‘vertically’ to the client operating system, development tools, and other applications that run on Windows.

Linux proponents will say that they have more control and more choice with a small Linux kernel on top of which they can hand-select and deploy only the functionality they need. In theory, this practice sounds attractive. In practice, it is very likely to require additional time and effort that will stretch the resources of already overburdened IT staff.

As illustrated above, one of the major distinctions between Windows and Linux is that Windows is designed to be a comprehensive, integrated, interoperable, and easy-to-use platform. Linux is a basic operating system kernel that ships with a collection of add-ons without the integration, scenario focus, ease-of-use and application services offered by Windows. An important example of a difference between the two operating systems is the .NET Framework that is built into Windows Server 2003, which will revolutionise the way applications are developed and then executed within the operating system to maximise security and improve application reliability.

Total cost of ownership: Although the value of one operating system over another cannot be distilled down to the price of the operating system, cost is always an important factor in any IT decision. Many customers report that their intuition says that Linux will be two to three times cheaper than Windows—it seems obvious that an operating system that is free would also cost less to maintain and operate over the long term.

Or is that really true? Acquisition costs alone do not reflect the true value of one product over another. Factors like hardware, middleware, transaction processing (TP) monitors, application software, IT staffing, training, and downtime are important considerations and cannot be overlooked. Looking just at middleware and TP monitors, the cost to purchase WebSphere and MQSeries from IBM would quickly add up at a respective cost of $40,000 and $10,000 per processor. These are features built into Windows at no additional cost.

Another dimension to consider is that business models built around Linux are focused on non-software sources of revenue, i.e., training, services and support. This is the play that is attractive to IBM: they can sell the hardware, services and support with enough margins to maintain profitability. Red Hat’s move to charge for support illustrates a similar business model. In the end, the summary of acquisition costs, application server software, management add-ons, deployment time, and support costs will approach and in some cases exceed that of any commercial solution.

Reliability: Windows is a highly reliable operating system. Linux is also commonly regarded as reliable, and for practical purposes, the differences in reliability between the proven capabilities of Windows and the not so highly tested Linux platform are not significant. However, in a recent Information Week article, Fred Langa had the following comments about Linux reliability:

“Linux (and the whole open source movement in general) got its reputation for solid software and rapid fixes when this software was used mostly by a relatively small group of extremely knowledgeable people. They knew what they were doing, and generally ran their software on stable, proven hardware platforms...

It’s much harder to produce software for an audience of all skill levels running who-knows-what hardware, than for an audience only of experts running a limited subset of good hardware.”

Langa also compared Windows XP and Red Hat Linux 7.2, which were released within a few weeks of each other. Red Hat had issued 2.3 patches per week, while Microsoft had only issued .35 patches per week. In fact, even Red Hat 8.0, the next version of their Linux distribution, has issued 1.6 patches a week. The information cited by Langa shows that:

• Linux distributions are struggling with quality, and
• Windows quality is better than what many people may think.

Security: A recent study based on data provided by Security Focus Bugtraq concluded that security is an industry problem and not the problem of any one vendor alone. Microsoft Windows is not alone as a target for hackers. Still, in the area of security, Microsoft has had some difficult lessons to learn. First, Microsoft realised that somewhere along the way it became focused on adding features, and didn’t pay enough attention to quality. Second, Microsoft disappointed its customers with delays in security vulnerability notices and patch availability. And third, as noted earlier, Microsoft needed to provide more guidance to help customers utilise best practices around Windows for running secure, mission-critical applications.

In response, Microsoft has devoted $200 million to the Secure Windows Initiative, a massive training and code review effort to raise the quality bar and reduce the number of patches in future products. Now, every new developer hired must undergo in-depth security training, and every piece of code submitted for Windows must have a developer lead review it for secure coding practices and personally sign off on it.

In part, because of its history, Windows has been attacked as being less secure than Linux. However, with its growing visibility, open-source software is now a major source of security vulnerabilities. CERT reported that open-source and Linux software accounted for 16 out of 29 security advisories for the first 10 months of 2002. During the same time, Microsoft accounted for 7 out of the 29 security advisories.

A recent report from Aberdeen Group, based on CERT advisories, states that “contrary to popular perceptions, Microsoft does not have the worst track record when it comes to security vulnerabilities. Also contrary to popular wisdom, Unix- and Linux-based systems are just as vulnerable to viruses, Trojan horses, and worms.” The same report notes that CERT did not issue any advisories for Windows 2000 in the first 10 months of 2002, the focus of the report. This evidence demonstrates that Windows security is comparable to Linux.

In addition, Microsoft, as a focused commercial entity, is well prepared to handle security issues that might develop in the future. What becomes important when a breach occurs is to have confidence that customers will be notified and a carefully tested solution for the breach will be available as soon as possible. This point is where the Linux community and Microsoft diverge in their philosophy.

There are two choices of support in the Linux world. One is the ‘community’ model of support. In this case, Linux supporters must be willing to rely on the ability of volunteer developers and vendors to identify, publicise, and resolve security bugs in a timely manner. This can quickly become a major challenge because security issues occur not only in the Linux kernel, but also in the various utilities that are routinely installed, such as WebEx, Samba, etc. It takes time for in-house staff to track down news of the issue and then download, test, and deploy the correct patch, and the costs start to add up.

The other choice is to pay for support from Red Hat or other Linux distribution vendors. The prices for support are approaching, and in some cases exceeding those of commercial software vendors. For example, Red Hat now charges for software update services. In addition, its Advanced Server with ‘Base’ support, at $750 per year, has no guaranteed service level agreement. Customers must spend $2,500 per year to receive support with a guaranteed one-hour response time.

Microsoft firmly believes that a single point of contact for security issues is the only way to guarantee ownership of the problem. This single point of contact is essential to make sure that an appropriate fix has been thoroughly tested, to coordinate with independent software vendors or driver developers if needed, and to ensure timely notification and delivery of the resolution.

Manageability: As business computing infrastructures expand, managing increasingly complex sets of resources often proves challenging. The Windows Server family makes it easier to deploy, configure, and use advanced networking capabilities by providing centralised, customisable management services.

The most significant cost of IT operations is staffing, and leveraging better management is the fastest way to reduce total cost of ownership and give administrators time to focus on value. The Windows family provides integrated management services that reduces the costs associated with many typical administrative tasks. For example, administrators need to be able to manage a large numbers of servers, often from remote locations.

The Windows platform is an integrated set of capabilities and products, while any comparable Linux platform is made up of many different components. The more components that make up an environment, the greater the management overhead is for that environment. In addition, separate components invite a much greater possibility of conflicts between these components and result in additional management tasks. This is not to say that Linux is not manageable—it certainly is.

In fact, Linux is not unlike Unix in this area, because a fairly high level of skill and technical understanding is needed to do things like write and test scripts, find and alter necessary .conf files, locate, download, compile and install LDAP directory software to help manage resources, etc. The Microsoft proposition around managing IT infrastructure is to build in management services for routine administration tasks, and allow an administrator to focus on more important management challenges.

Windows presents an integrated management interface. Windows administrators can use one tool, the Microsoft Management Console, to monitor and manage their entire environment. In mixed environments involving Unix and other operating systems, MMC works as a ‘snap-in’ to popular management suites such as IBM’s Tivoli and Computer Associates’ Unicenter. And as described earlier, administrators used to scripting and a command line interface can use those methods in Windows Server 2003.

In contrast, Linux does not include integrated management tools but instead requires third-party software, multiple management interfaces, or, most probably, both. Linux also doesn’t provide any tools to help manage a client desktop environment, while Windows 2000 Server includes capabilities such as IntelliMirror technology (allows a users’ settings, preferences and files to follow them to any computer on the network) and the ability to tightly control applications installed on desktops.

A recent IDC study highlights the cost impact of management. The study showed that the single largest component in the TCO for a system is the staffing needed for that system. Lower management effort means lower staffing cost and a lower TCO—a result that is verified in the IDC study.

IDC reports that Windows 2000 costs less to manage than Linux because Windows 2000 is a mature product, with enough time for its user to learn best practices for management. Although Linux may eventually reach this level of manageability, Microsoft is continuing to reduce the management burden for Windows systems and will maintain a significant advantage in this crucial area for years to come.

Research and development

During the recent economic downturn, when many companies were cutting back on research and development budgets, Microsoft invested more than $5 billion in R&D in 2002. For 2003, the budget increased even further to $5.2 billion. This research allows Microsoft to actively explore the future of computing and to smoothly integrate the results of these efforts into its products.

Future direction

Microsoft has a long record of advances in its operating system. Windows continues to be engineered for the long-term. Part of this engineering process is the ongoing effort of Microsoft to synchronise that engineering with anticipated customer requirements. To reach this goal, Microsoft has been extremely open about the anticipated direction of its operating systems and will continue to do so in the future.

Information about a vendor’s technology roadmap is very important to technical decision-makers who must plan for their company’s future computing needs. Joint development and early adopter programmes, as well as Microsoft’s public technology roadmaps offered at key industry events allow managers and software and hardware vendors to anticipate the advances that will be coming to the Windows environment. IT managers need not spend precious resources creating solutions that will be ready and waiting by the time they are needed. Rather, they can keep announced future capabilities in mind as they design, build, and upgrade their systems. Similar benefits apply to vendors building on the Microsoft Windows platform.

Because Linux has no clearly defined central planning organisation that sets the direction of the operating system kernel, it is more difficult to know the capabilities that will be available in the near and long term. Of course, vendors of individual Linux distributions are free to enhance the kernel to meet their needs. However, there is no guarantee that the enhancements will be accepted into the main Linux code tree, leading to possible ‘forking’ and application compatibility problems. In addition, the Linux vendors have not committed anywhere near the resources of Microsoft to ensure consistent and timely delivery of future improvements.

Heterogeneous interoperability

An important consideration when choosing an operating system is its ability to interoperate well with a variety of other in-house systems. In recognition of mixed environments in customer firms, Microsoft has made a significant commitment to supporting interoperability across platforms.

Windows and Unix co-existence

Many organisations have a legacy of proprietary Unix systems. Even if a company decides to use Intel-based platforms going forward, it will still have to support the Unix environment and integrate it with an Intel-based operating system, at least for the short term. People are often surprised when they learn about Microsoft’s investments to allow Windows and Unix servers to run side by side. To more fully understand how Unix and Windows can interoperate, a brief review of Unix history is helpful.

Unix and POSIX: Unix started out as a product of AT&T, which then licensed the source code and trade name to various vendors. These vendors (usually hardware vendors) then created proprietary versions of Unix that ran only on one set of hardware. Proprietary versions of Unix did present some advantages, such as stability, as hardware vendors could customise their versions of Unix to build on the proprietary advantages of their hardware stack. However, these advantages were available only to users on that hardware platform.

As additional versions of Unix became available, application portability problems inevitably arose. In an attempt to keep all Unix flavours similar, a set of standards referred to as ‘POSIX’ was developed. POSIX defines what makes a system a Unix system. The POSIX.1 specification covers core operating system services. From the application’s perspective, POSIX.1 compliance ensures that a standard set of interfaces is available to it. If an application is written for a POSIX-compliant system, the application can more easily be migrated to other POSIX-compliant systems. HP/UX from Hewlett-Packard, Solaris from Sun, and AIX are all POSIX-compatible.

Services for Unix: Services for Unix (SFU) is a Microsoft product, running on Windows servers, which provides cross-platform services to help integrate Windows into an existing Unix environment. It contains a POSIX-compliant subsystem to enable many Unix applications to run on Windows. Tools make it easy to manage Unix and Windows user accounts together, using familiar Unix commands. Support for the Network File System (NFS) protocol allows file sharing between Unix and Windows systems.

Linux and POSIX: One of the main factors weighing in favour of Linux is its heritage as a clean room implementation of Unix commands, libraries, and tools. As many organisations are migrating from or interoperating with a Unix environment, the similarities between Linux and Unix seem to be a significant advantage for Linux.

However, many decision-makers don’t realise that Linux is not POSIX-compliant, which means that Unix and Linux are similar but not the same from an application’s perspective. Although it may be easy for a Unix professional to go to Linux and a Linux professional to go to Unix, applications will require work to transition from a Unix environment to a Linux environment. The real issue, however, is that Linux does not support the standard that was created to unify the various flavours of Unix and ease application portability. In contrast, Microsoft has made the investments to ensure that Windows does support this important standard.

Conclusion

Linux, through the virtues of running on commodity hardware and being a derivative of Unix, is being actively considered by many organisations. But there are a number of reasons why Windows is the better choice for a mission-critical operating system platform. First, many of the problems commonly associated with Windows are the legacy of earlier versions of the operating system. Windows 2000 is far more reliable and manageable than prior versions, and the security issues that seemed to plague Windows NT 4.0 have been addressed and corrected.

The Windows platform has some inherent advantages over Linux, due to the backing of Microsoft and its resources. Microsoft is capable of providing support and direction that isn’t available for any Linux distribution, as well as investing billions of dollars in research and development for future enhancements.

Another important difference between Windows and Linux is the length of time that each has been in use in business environments. As previously mentioned, Windows has been an integral part of the enterprise computing environment for more than 10 years. During this time, Microsoft has worked with its customers to identify and address many issues in the Windows environment and the overall enterprise environment. Some of these issues have been very public, as discussed earlier. But Microsoft has gone through this process with its customers and has dramatically improved the Windows environment.

These types of improvements are the result of a long history of co-operation and hard work. There is no shortcut for this type of effort—it can take place only over time with a large base of users.

Although there are many valid reasons for looking at Linux as an operating system for commodity servers, the best choice remains Windows.

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