A well known company recently presented data which suggested that only 20% of unplanned outages were down to hardware problems, 80% was down to operator error, O/S problems and running software. And I might add that this was a software house, and not a proprietry UNIX vendor. It's certainly my experience that most f*** ups could be avoided by not logging on. It's also my experience that it's the network which has the most problems, followed by moving parts (disks and tapes). Therefore dual attaching to the network, and RAID would be vital if you wanted to minimise outages. And make sure the users only have the rights for what they need to, including yourself. Sitting as root all day will inevitably lead to a slip at some point! At 21:48 16/02/00 +0800, you wrote:

I am a hardware oriented person, that's my cup of tea.

The philosophy I hope to success is: If the hardware is bad, no matter how good the software or OS is, its just going to fail.

But, how many system (software) implementor on this planet really know hardware? by reading this list, we may be able to conclude that some of the problems are caused by some 'not so compatible' hardware mainly due to design or QA control of the manufacturer.

I believe Linux can be used for serious work if you have the proper hardware. Cheapo or unmatching hardware simply not going to hold this promise. Agree?

A real person should solve the problem instead of avoiding it, if not, someone else will. Agree??

Dennis/SG

"Paul W. Abrahams" writes:

...

There's a belief among a lot of old Unix hands that commercially developed systems are more reliable and perform better than Linux.

One thing is that Linux is delivered on cheap hardware, which is not designed to be as solid as those machines for which there is better bus and memory CRC checking, and such other things. This hardware being meant to be more dependable, people also believe stronger in their systems.

The Linux machines I used are very dependable, or so they seem. I'm lucky, and most of us are. However, I have some friends who had intermittent memory problems, or other difficulties, which are seemingly hard to diagnose precisely. We just speak of "cosmic rays", then :-). A bit irritating for them, but bearable nevertheless.

Real people do not take such risks as running important programs on Intel machines. Unless they also run Windows-NT on them, of course :-) :-(.

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Yes, the word 'proper' really need to be defined. To some extent, you're more lucky than me. I just got a Hitachi notebook, nice little cute thing, PII-400 with 128mb, BUT! it came without standard I/O port instead all the external connectivity are through USB, even the external FDD. It works wonderfully under windozZ, but when come to Linux, it can't recongnise the USB (port) printer, and the biggest problem, the ext. USB FDD. :( It has NoGo for Linux at the moment as the only way is to connect it to network. I tried SuSE 6.2 and Mandrake 7b but can't go anywhere. At the end, Bill won this round for now. I fully agreed with you on the 'many' distro and heading everywhere directions. I try some of them (when I have the time, in fact, I am very busy most of the time) but only serious with SuSE, it serve me well so far, although there are still lots of problems waiting to be solved. In the 'free' world, everyone got their right to head anywhere, so I guess it's okay for more distro to pop up, just that if the major applications are focus on the main steam (SuSE included of course), it should be fine. Agree? 63,000 bugs in W2K? how many in NT?? If you are going to hear the music anyway, why pay for it? isn't Linux a better choice after all???? take the saved money and get yourself some better hardware :) Dennis/SG

On Wed, 16 Feb 2000, Dennis wrote:

...

The philosophy I hope to success is: If the hardware is bad, no matter how good the software or OS is, its just going to fail.

Very true.....

...

I believe Linux can be used for serious work if you have the proper hardware. Cheapo or unmatching hardware simply not going to hold this promise. Agree?

I think a definition of "proper" may be needed. Example, I recently bought a new (actually old one broke and it was cheaper for the store to replace it than fix it) Compaq Presario laptop. It has several new features (USB, better video and sound). For me to use these features will take a lot of work and effort and then they still will not match what the laptop was designed for.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for Linux, and I love the OS. It is very powerful in it's current state. However I am concerned about the number of new and different distributions popping up. I see every company making changes to support "their" distribution and not working towards a common goal of having a strong OS that everyone can easily use. Lets see, if RedHat, Corel, SuSE, Debian, and Slackware would use the same config files and the same directory structure and work towards adding vendors drivers to X and help with Kernel development to support the USB ports and start adding drivers to support vendors Hardware I think we would be much further allong than where we are today.

...

The Linux machines I used are very dependable, or so they seem. I'm lucky, and most of us are. However, I have some friends who had intermittent memory problems, or other difficulties, which are seemingly hard to diagnose precisely. We just speak of "cosmic rays", then :-). A bit irritating for them, but bearable nevertheless.

My problem is that I am one of those that uses newer hardware and I find that I have a lot of problems configuring to use the newer hardware. This sometimes gets to the point of being stuck with Windoze.

...

Real people do not take such risks as running important programs on

Intel

...

machines. Unless they also run Windows-NT on them, of course :-) :-(.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Of course sometimes running NT is a risk itself.

Chris

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