| Talkback(s) |
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next month
We might see a change the other way after Code Red.
-- http://www.spinics.net/linux/ |
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Jul 31, 2001, 21:17:31 |
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Oh to be a lemming!
Yes. The code red virus struk. The script kiddies are having field days with unprotected unix sockets (provided to Microsoft by BSD). IIS is *NOT* secure, and yet Apache looses market share. People come to me with their computer problems all day long (and I don't even do pc support!). They complain that the home machine is lousy (and they barf on Microsoft possibly to even annoy me). I tell them about open source. Its virtues. Its reliability. It's great! Then comes the hoeing and humming about not wanting to be the only one on the block and they need to run software package X. I politely ask them to either switch or suffer in silence please. The myth of our largest competetor is much more powerful than their competence. But like lemmings, the blind will follow it. |
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Aug 1, 2001, 06:12:03 |
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.Net with Netscape
The article lists a .Net site, http://www.empowered.com>
Try going there with Netscape. This should not be the future of the Internet. |
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Aug 1, 2001, 14:13:13 |
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Here is a good sign.
Even with this huge defection, the apache numbers only dropped 83845 on the top developers and 31448 on the active sites.
This means that apache is growing so fast that it was almost able to erase 300,000.
When I calculated it, the actual percentage drop from last month in number of servers is less than half a percent, funny how much such a small actual drop in numbers affects market share. |
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Aug 1, 2001, 16:50:51 |
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um, minor detail..
Note the *large* changes in the number of polled sites, here. The number of Apache sites registered increased by 11 million; the number of Microsoft sites increased by 3 million. That alone is what causes most of the percentage change - a greatly increased sample size. Presumably the NetZero and etc have something to do with it, but look at the numbers.
The proportions have changed, but Apache still comes out looking good.
This month:
Apache 18466153 63.02 18382308 58.73 -4.29
Microsoft 5973654 20.39 8099757 25.88 5.49
iPlanet 1802041 6.15 1345566 4.30 -1.85
Zeus 810108 2.76 793587 2.54 -0.22
Last month:
Developer June 2001 Percent July 2001 Percent Change
Apache 7346025 62.42 7314577 60.53 -1.89
Microsoft 3076623 26.14 3372341 27.91 1.77
iPlanet 273293 2.32 282517 2.34 0.02
Zeus 182735 1.55 184895 1.53 -0.02
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Aug 1, 2001, 18:54:40 |
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Pointless to be hostile
I agree with earlier comments that it is pointless to be hostile towards IIS and windows 2000 administrators. Thats not going to win over the corporate types who make these decisions.
The fact is that a windows 2000/IIS setup works. Yes, I know earlier versions of IIS sucked - IIS 4 on NT couldnt handle even a moderate load before crashing. However I can only assume IIS 5 on 2000 isnt a bad piece of software - afterall it is powering hotmail. Moreover, everyone says its insecure but my mother could fix that. Microsoft has made it so easy to download patches and security fixes from their site. Microsoft.com will tell you what you need to download, download it, and install it.
It seems to me that the way to battle MS is to bring the ease of use of Linux/Apache up to a level comparable to 2000, and to educate people that to a large extent, it already is.
Take the latest distributions of Linux. With openssl, mod_ssl, php and mysql preinstalled and working on a RedHat 7.1 box the Linux novice can get a fully functional SSL commerce site up without too much trouble. The Red Hat Network goes a long way towards making the download of patches idiot-proof.
I would like to see that ease of use extended for people who know still less about Unix. A fully functional graphical admin tool for apache which knows about all the common apache modules and integrates with the apache documentation would be a long overdue start. A graphical way to install the SSL site certificate would also be nice.
In my view this would help Unix/Apache loose its corporate label of being a 'dark world that only geeks understand'. |
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Aug 2, 2001, 09:40:17 |
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Science vs Pseudo-science
All the talk about ease of administration of Windows (any flavour) is totally flawed. Does it really matter if an inexperienced person can set up a web server in a flash? I have megabytes of drop entries in my firewall logs coming from Windows machines (some of them web servers) wanting to talk on port 137 UDP. Do you think that this machine was set up by an experienced administrator you'd trust your production server with?
I especially like the ease of registry editing in Windows. All the comments I can review next to the keys and values are just pure fun... Be serious, the concepts in Windows are flawed, that's why people that understand prefer to use something that makes more sense.
I can fully understand people that are afraid of Apache. They are the same people that are afraid of Unix. It comes down to the fact that they are afraid of learning new things or just afraid of concepts, as all they want to know is products. Most of them are MCSE's that really like to be called engineers after passing 6 exams, while other people had to pass 40+ exams at a university to get the title of an engineer (as if that was in any way comparable). Whatever. It just shows that they are the followers of pseudo-science that Microsoft is so nice to offer though their technical literature.
Microsoft will have you believe that you can be an administrator without knowing a programming language. They will have you believe you can be one without knowing what happens when someone starts a program. They'll have you believe full security is achieved by installing the right software. Ultimately they will have you believe you don't have to know anything that's hard to be an administrator. All they want you to know, is that they want to flog a hell of lot of their product and you should buy it.
So, the numbers don't make a lot of difference. The reasons for choosing one over the other are profoundly different and they have to do with knowledge, culture, attitude and all other factors that an individual make.
The point here is that if you don't dig deep, you'll know nothing. And if you know nothing you cannot be good at anything. There is just no way. Most Windows administrators are scared stiff of reading manual pages. They prefer to do things by experimenting endlessly through clicking on all that is clickable. Which parameters are they changing at the time, only the programmer of the admin tool knows for sure. But that isn't really important to them, because they are not interested in getting to the bottom of it. They are just interested in wearing a nice suit and tie and being paid a lot of money for their MCSE.
As someone so nicely put it once, here on Linux Today: 'It is the question of culture'.
Bojan |
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Aug 3, 2001, 07:27:06 |
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Wake up call?
This is big news, and not the big news I would hope to see.
While these numbers do not mean pieces of the sky falling in on us, they should serve as potent reminders that we are in a marathon, not a sprint. Lance Armstrong trailed the early stages of this year's Tour de France. He didn't trail at the finish.
Everyone who was silly enough to declare Microsoft dead should take a good look at this. So long as Microsoft is so big and so rich, it is a powerful market force, a dangerous foe and, as history shows, a dangerous partner. These people are not going to go away just because they lose a round here or there.
It also casts a different light on things like mono and .dotGNU. If this .Net stuff is really out there in the world, some reasonable response is needed, whether a workalike or completely different alternative. |
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Jul 31, 2001, 21:22:09 |
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Re: User friendly --- WEBMIN
Hasn't anyone heard of WEBMIN (http://www.webmin.com/webmin/). Webmin provides an excellent browser based interface to many services like Apache, Sendmail, SAMBA, Bind, etc along with basic unix management. It runs on almost all unixes and is available in many spoken languages.
Webmin is Opensource. |
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Aug 11, 2001, 15:20:04 |
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Aug 14, 2001, 21:53:57 |
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long live code red
I wish that big companies would understand the damage they do to all of us by switching to IIS. And I still am dumbstruck by the numbers: about 300,000 active sites extra this month for IIS. What does IIS cost..? $500?
That's about 150 million dollars a month for MS.
Gee, The free software groups could do a lot of good stuff with money like that. |
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Jul 31, 2001, 23:25:59 |
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Interesting that two sites could represent 1/4 of IIS' market
20% last month, 2 sites change, 25% this month. I would greatly enjoy extropolating that to ten IIS sites in use worldwide, but am too honest. (-:
Wonder why those hosting sites so badly want to make work and expenses for themselves? Perhaps some idiot let the important-detail-blind corporate accountants have a turn at holding the wheel?
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Aug 1, 2001, 02:00:21 |
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Re: Interesting that two sites could represent 1/4 of IIS' market
It's called self preservation/job stability. If one were to switch over to IIS from any of several other commercial web severs, the security work,patches, etc are more than enough to guarantee you keeping your job. Some people will just have to learn the hard way. |
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Aug 1, 2001, 11:35:19 |
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Re: Interesting that two sites could represent 1/4 of IIS' market
What better strategy can there be for securing your own job than installing IIS? Having installed IIS, you know that its going to take a fair amount of work to keep secure. Also, it's Microsoft software. Noone ever got sacked for installing the "Industry Standard". Although my opionion is, I admit, a little synical, I do think there is some truth in it. Me? Well my job isn't to run a webserver, so the webservers I have set up I've used Apache.... I don't want to have to manage these sites continually. My job doesn't depend on it! |
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Aug 1, 2001, 13:12:31 |
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User Friendly
Beyond Microsoft having over $500 billion dollars to throw around, I think one part of the whole thing is how user friendly Windows 2000 servers are. I know, I know, the /real/ server admins out there know that a GUI is nothing more then a waste of system resources on a server. But not everyone is a big expert, and not very many people are Unix experts when compaired to those who can manage Windows.
Windows 2000 servers are very simple and easy to manage. You don't have to mess with any config files by hand or enter strange and sometimes cryptic looking commands into a terminal. You just click your way around very straight forward GUI menus, drag and drop and such. Now don't get me wrong I am as much of a Microsoft hater as the next guy for their ugly, anti-compeditive actions, but I think this is a wake up call for use to do something about it.
Sure there are a few GUI programs to let you manage the config files of the server, but most are buggy and incomplete, and no server admin has time to download 50 different programs just to have a half assed GUI to some config files.
I don't think that it would be to hard for Apache to step up and make a nice GUI for the config. The ones I have seen have been very buggy and incomplete. One that would take full advantage of all the features offered by the server. I am sick of the ignorant elitists who think that everyone has time to learn all the Unix commands, config sytax, etc... not to mention wanting too.
Well that is my two cents, please just ignore all the spelling/grammar errors I probably made. |
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Aug 1, 2001, 07:06:34 |
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Re: User Friendly
> Beyond Microsoft having over $500 billion dollars to throw around, I think one part of the whole thing is how user friendly Windows 2000 servers are
I have to agree with you on this point. The single biggest reason that IIS gets as many users as it gets is simply because it's much easier to configure and maintain than Apache. Today's administrators like to point and click their way around their servers. Security, reliabilty, stability, etc. are all a not-so-close second place to being able to brainlessly change configuration settings.
We can bitch all we want about wasted resources, but the undertrained admins vastly outnumber the trained ones. And undertrained admins will -always- prefer easy of use over efficient allocation of resources. Frankly, trained admins would prefer ease of use over efficient allocation of resources more often than not. |
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Aug 1, 2001, 13:17:18 |
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Re: User Friendly
True, most people will gravitate toward the easy solution -
that is rely on others to write gui's rather than get to know
the server inside and out. IMHO no one should run a web server who
isnt fully competent to do so. If you look at the down time caused
by commercial software thats on an upgrade/more "features"/keep you
on the money cycle bandwagon, and put that time into getting to know
Apache, you;d probably save a lot of time in the long run.
Unfortunately the reality is that people are looking to do things
in a quick way, leaving the thinking to others (who may
have only money interests at heart, as is to be expected. It takes
a lot of food to feed a 1,000,000 pound gorilla).
So a good GUI for Apache configuration may be a good idea,
but it'd have to be REAL good, so that security is not
compromised. It would have to have good documentation built into
it. I'll stick to hand configuration and reading the docs.
> Beyond Microsoft having over $500 billion dollars to throw around, I think one part of the whole thing is how user friendly Windows 2000 servers are. I know, I know, the /real/ server admins out there know that a GUI is nothing more then a waste of system resources on a server. But not everyone is a big expert, and not very many people are Unix experts when compaired to those who can manage Windows.
Windows 2000 servers are very simple and easy to manage. You don't have to mess with any config files by hand or enter strange and sometimes cryptic looking commands into a terminal. You just click your way around very straight forward GUI menus, drag and drop and such. Now don't get me wrong I am as much of a Microsoft hater as the next guy for their ugly, anti-compeditive actions, but I think this is a wake up call for use to do something about it.
Sure there are a few GUI programs to let you manage the config files of the server, but most are buggy and incomplete, and no server admin has time to download 50 different programs just to have a half assed GUI to some config files.
I don't think that it would be to hard for Apache to step up and make a nice GUI for the config. The ones I have seen have been very buggy and incomplete. One that would take full advantage of all the features offered by the server. I am sick of the ignorant elitists who think that everyone has time to learn all the Unix commands, config sytax, etc... not to mention wanting too.
Well that is my two cents, please just ignore all the spelling/grammar errors I probably made. |
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Aug 1, 2001, 15:02:23 |
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Re: User Friendly
you seem to think that if something can be managed using some GUI thing
no qualification on the part of the admin is needed anymore...
that seems to be popular opinion among those who use proprietary software
michael |
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Aug 1, 2001, 17:49:04 |
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Re: User Friendly
I have a couple servers with IIS and a few running Apache. I admit that MS has an easy to use interface. However, this is only on the surface. It seems like there is always an important radio button that needs to be checked for a feature to work. Furthermore, the only people who know where this radio button is are the "elitist ;) MCSE's." For this reason I am a fan of configuration files, 'most' everything is right there. |
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Aug 4, 2001, 04:57:20 |
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why switch to IIS?
It's rumoured that MS will go to extraordinary lengths to win over a high visibility site. I've heard that MS will subsidise any additional h/w that is needed; will throw away the s/w price book and will fly in as many support engineers as is necessary to get a successful conversion.
Of course, as with any pact with the devil, the true cost only becomes apparent a few years down the line.
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Aug 1, 2001, 07:46:35 |
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What about SSL sites?
This piece refers to the all internet sites, not sites that use SSL. I saw a Netcraft survey from a while back that blurbed IIS has a good majority of the sites using SSL. I did not see the actual SSL report however(it costs money to look at their SSL survey) but I would think that is a much more important metric to look at than the zillion mom and pop web sites.
And as a note to Tino, IIS is free with Nt. |
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Aug 1, 2001, 11:48:02 |
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Re: What about SSL sites?
> And as a note to Tino, IIS is free with Nt.
As a note to William, the lowest listed price for Window 2000 non-upgrade is 319 US$, and the price for Windows 2000 server is 1199 US$... Wow, THAT is so free! |
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Aug 1, 2001, 15:38:07 |
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