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Re: [LUG] The Most Reluctant Proprietary Apologist (was: Windows 8 adoption)

 

On 02/01/13 03:03, Kai Hendry wrote:
> I wouldn't run OSX of course. I'm not a fool. ;) 

Fair enough! I was a big fan of OS X until 10.4 or so, and then Apple
ruined it. All that lovely NeXT heritage flushed away to make it more
shiny, sad. And it's the shittest "official" Unix I have ever used, and
that's really saying something, because I've used all of them. When
Tru64 compares favourably to something, you know they're doing it
wrong... But yeah, seriously, buy a Retina MacBook, it's a lovely bit of
kit and the linux support is already well under way.

> Why use SMB over httpd sharing?

Either I've lost you or you've lost me somehow here... httpd doesn't
come into this anywhere. Microsoft call it CSV (cluster share volumes)
and can explain it themselves:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831579.aspx

There's also the SMB multichannel aspect of it, which they can also
explain for themselves:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/josebda/archive/2012/06/28/the-basics-of-smb-multichannel-a-feature-of-windows-server-2012-and-smb-3-0.aspx

For anyone who's ever had to setup bonded ethernet and redundant
failover shares on *nix boxes, this will be familiar territory, but done
with surprising elegance for MS. As long as your switch is LCAP capable
you can basically click a few buttons in a wizard and all of a sudden
have 10 PowerEdge boxes with 4x1Gb ethernet each supporting a shared,
failover, bonded SMB 3.0 backend which you can then carve up for
whatever usage you need (including as I said earlier, use it for hyper-V
storage). The combined throughput ramp is effectively linear and you can
easily saturate an upstream 40Gb link with that kind of firepower.
Possible under other systems? Hell yes. Easy? Hell *no*. I could
seriously teach my Gran the right series of buttons to click to get this
functional on Server 2012 and that's a big thumbs up for Microsoft.
> I'll be surprised if it can outperform ext4.

Well, fair enough. Ext4 is basically a better filesystem than NTFS for
pretty much all metrics (oh chkdsk, how I hate you) so I'll give you
that. But MS aren't standing still: NTFS is generally speaking better
than Ext3 for example. It's really come a long way, and Server 2012 now
has ReFS, which is a *proper* filesystem at last. Once again, I'll let
them explain it themselves:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/hh848060%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

But this really is an argument that was lost quite a while ago: ZFS is
the final word in filesystems for the time being. Everything else sucks
in comparison. Until BTRFS is ready, Linux is also way behind. 
> Wow, native ISO mounts. :)

Aw, come on, that's cheap :] You seemed to want examples, and a long
standing gripe is that Windows can't natively mount ISOs. Well, it can
now so that's a good thing right? Before the userspace helpers were
implemented on Linux it wasn't a lot of fun manually doing loopback
mounts was it? It was certainly a lot more effort than downloading and
installing one of countless freeware ISO mounters that have always been
around for Windows to achieve exactly the same result but with a pretty
GUI and less pain.

> Well I like to think on this forum we strive for freedom. Of course I
> study and use proprietary software from time to time to see what they
> get upto, though I use of free software base for all my work and data
> (the important stuff).

Surely that freedom includes the freedom to run and use the software you
want to use, right? Even if it's proprietary?

>
> So I don't think there is any point supporting Windows users or this
> "right tool for the job" argument. For me it's about forging and
> making it work on a free software alternative.
>

The "right tool for the right job" isn't an argument, it's a fact:
you're going to look pretty stupid trying to dig a hole with a toothbrush.

I'd love to see you rock up to a principal AD server with an Ubuntu CD
in your hand. Or maybe prod the £200k Power7 AIX cluster with a Fedora
thumbdrive. Good luck with the Free Software mantra anywhere near the
Cisco switches that power ~90% of the internet. I'm guessing you don't
have to deal much with frantic bosses mid-heart-attack because system X
is down, where X is variably*:

the IBM AS400 running an NHS clinic queuing database
the Brocade core router carrying all the ISP's peering traffic
the Dell blade cluster running consolidated AD for the entire local
council infrastructure
the SGI Tezro connected to the MRI scanner

Chief, it's ALWAYS the right tool for the job. Don't make yourself look
thick by advocating baking a cake with a thermobaric bomb, it just
doesn't work. You know what they say: when the only tool you have is a
hammer, everything looks like a nail. Linux is going to be your hammer**
if you're not careful.

Best Regards


* Sadly all these things have happened to me
** I never thought I'd ever post such a serious defence of proprietary
software in my lifetime, especially to a LUG :]

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