[plug] Linux isn't there yet

[Colin 't Hart/PER/BIG/AU]

Hi all,

I don't know if Matt covered it in the links he quoted but the
big falling down of NT (literally) is that it and its apps (servers)
are multi-threaded to the hilt.

In theory this makes for better performance (less time for
context switch between threads and no need to copy
data between processes).
In practice, if one thread crashes the whole service dies,
so multiple heavyweight tasks are better for stability (the
unix approach). You then try to improve the performance
of context switches etc -- the Linux approach.
The need to copy data between address spaces can
be avoided by the judicious use of shared memory
segments (eg Apache, Oracle).

In summary of these arguments and others, in theory, NT
is fast. In practice, well, NT tends to crash a lot.
In theory, Linux is slower; in practice Linux is more stable, and
the performance aint that bad.

Cheers,

Colin