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- carbonetc, on 10/08/2009, -10/+92That a major stock exchange was ever backed by Windows is rather terrifying.
- 3242130193, on 10/07/2009, -5/+77Microsoft LOVED to tout how their software was ready for primetime using LSE as an example. They don't seem to be shouting so loud anymore though... :-(
- enantiodromia, on 10/08/2009, -13/+39Windows is a darn fine OS, for a consumer's machine. There is no way in hell I would let it run a mission critical production app however.
- archiesteel, on 10/08/2009, -7/+27Why would they? It's much more likely they'll stay with Linux or move on to other UNIX or UNIX-like systems, such as Solaris.
- chieflbm, on 10/08/2009, -3/+22/cheer
- MattBD, on 10/08/2009, -0/+18I wouldn't bet on that actually. There's a hell of a lot of features that Linux has that make a lot of sense for businesses. For instance, LTSP would mean it would be easy to manage a universal desktop for all employees. You would just have thin clients on people's desks and they'd download the image from the main server when they booted up. Since this means there's only one central image that needs to be updated it makes administration significantly easier. It's used in Edubuntu to make it easy for schools to set up a thin client system.
Linux isn't perfect but it's a lot better suited to most people's workplaces than people think. The main issue in my employer (a big FTSE-100 insurance company) really is with custom Windows applications. Apart from that they could easily use Linux instead for most things. - Mauritzk, on 10/08/2009, -7/+25The time has come for governments, local municipalities and financial institutions to implement open source solutions if an alternative exist. Here in South Africa our law is actually promulgated to this extend.
- toxicityj, on 10/08/2009, -2/+19I'm roughly 100% sure this switch had absolutely nothing to do with open source.
- Manther, on 10/08/2009, -0/+17You couldn't be more wrong. Linux was designed to be a centrally managed policy driven server system, and if you get someone who knows what they're doing, they'll tell you is a hundred times easier to manage Linux than Windows.
Linux in fact just barely reached the point where it's usable on a daily basis on a home PC. That statement alone tells everyone you have no idea what you are talking about. - LarkStew, on 10/08/2009, -1/+16Excellent... now everyone knows who to blame!
- johndavidjack, on 10/08/2009, -3/+18While I see your point, a few days ago a train signal kept going on and off on an abandoned railroad in the middle of town ***** up everyone's day ...
;-) - gizram84, on 10/08/2009, -0/+14@ohplease
i'm really enjoying your comments. your lack of knowledge is ***** hysterical! haha, keep it up! - MyKillK, on 10/08/2009, -3/+162.7ms BEST CASE transaction time? That's absolutely horrid. That's what a $65 million platform running on super computers will get you??
- saranagati, on 10/08/2009, -0/+12well other than the fact that you can have either the entire linux system loaded from a single network share or go as simple as just loading users home directories from the network share, i totally agree with you. (hopefully the /s was implied)
- rolls20s, on 10/08/2009, -0/+12I share your sentiment that this is good news, but those big corporate players were and are "a bunch of geeks" just as much as the Linux crowd.
I don't want to start a distro flame war (I am a fan of gentoo), but I don't agree with your idea that gentoo is easier to upgrade than all other distros. Upgrading Ubuntu is ridiculously easy.
However, LSE is really talking about this in terms of servers (which is a very smart move) not desktops. - beerhound, on 10/08/2009, -0/+11No this switch had to do with poor performance and reliability from an expensive product and excellent performance and reliability from a less expensive product.
- tgc1, on 10/08/2009, -3/+14One too many Blue Chip Stock Exchanges of Death?
- luchid, on 10/08/2009, -1/+11@ohplease: The reason you use Windows and cannot see an alternative in Linux to achieve a centrally managed infra is because you don't know how.
- rusty0101, on 10/08/2009, -0/+10Article states that it was Windows 2003 Server with .Net
- saranagati, on 10/08/2009, -3/+13actually the fact that it's open sourced does make it special. it means that when bugs are found which crash a system, it's fixed much faster than with closed source systems (windows in particular).
- gordigor, on 10/08/2009, -1/+11What the ***** are you talking about. Wait, I recognize your name. You never did answer if 'endwellsuck' means you're really good at rimming *****.
- archiesteel, on 10/08/2009, -4/+14In other words, you are not an objective participant in this debate.
- mrjit, on 10/08/2009, -1/+10I'm not sure how the LSE switching from Microsoft to Linux has anything to do with Linux on the desktop. This wont make it more popular ON THE DESKTOP, and *nix doesn't need any popularity in the server world. "Compete against the big corporate players' -- I work for a company with 6 worldwide datacenters, less than 5% of our servers are Microsoft related at all -- just like every other datacenter. BSD/Linux, 95%+. There is no competition. This isn't a "linux rules windows rules" comment either, simply a fact.
- enantiodromia, on 10/08/2009, -12/+20i guess that makes you a TradElect fanboy.
- archiesteel, on 10/08/2009, -0/+8"The major contributors and developers develop according to their own needs, resulting in an ivory tower disconnected from the actual users."
That couldn't be further from the truth. The reality is that, as a user, I can *contribute* to making a better product by directly talking to the developers. Developers are also users, and their needs overlap with a lot of the users' needs.
Of course, some developers can be more responsive than others, but it's amazing how quickly some can react. Case in point: the Login window for the latest version of Ubuntu sported a rather ugly computer icon. People on Ubuntu Forums suggested that they use the glowing Ubuntu icon seen during shutdown instead. One of the forum users entered a bug in Launchpad and *voilà* the icon was changed just a couple of days later.
"Furthermore, many of the major contributors make money being consultants or by selling support to institutions, which only encourages that the "product" is half-complete and not user friendly so that they can get incomes by doing such."
That's a serious accusation. Please provide some proof to back it up, or we'll have to assume that you're a Microsoft shill paid to spread FUD on Linux threads. After all, if you can make baseless accusations against other people, they can make baseless accusations against you too... - Runningflame570, on 10/08/2009, -2/+10@darkfus: Then explain why virtually no stock exchange uses Windows on the backend and virtually no HPC is performed on Windows. I'm waiting for a good explanation for that before I cease dismissing your claim as anything but the futile thrashings of a fanboy looking to defend his chosen environment.
- clippclop, on 10/08/2009, -0/+8Gentoo and production servers dont mix. I am a huge gentoo fan, but it is not an enterprise ready system.
you are much better off with RHEL or SuSE or Ubuntu LTS - clippclop, on 10/08/2009, -9/+17Source for the money savings?
How is this article FUD? Without a doubt, A lightweight linux machine runs a ***** load faster than any windows machine does. The savings in query time are worth the switch alone. The savings in query time can probably be heavily attributed to the business software, but the headless linux boxes will make a smaller query time as well. - enantiodromia, on 10/08/2009, -2/+9do your customers notify you when they switch to different software, or do you just assume that once you write something it's used in production forever?
btw, just because one aspect of a production network runs a Windows server that doesn't mean it's a "Windows network".
Hotmail uses Solaris on the most important machines; I know, because I personally maintained them. - archiesteel, on 10/08/2009, -0/+7"The rest use what's proven to work"
i.e. Linux. :-) - rusty0101, on 10/08/2009, -1/+8OK, if the problem is not the underlying platform, then there should be an alternative application that is proven to be faster on the same hardware.
Or is there no market for such a product? - gordigor, on 10/08/2009, -1/+8gmail, google docs just to name a few. Websites certainly are software.
- saranagati, on 10/08/2009, -0/+7well i propose that because the sun is yellow that yellow is the gods favorite color and since god must exist because his favorite color is yellow, within one month you'll be hit by lightening for favoring the color blue instead.
"corporate" linux support comes from a large number of companies that have large teams of people working on linux to support their client base. ibm, novell, red hat, intel among many others all provide support to the linux community so that people will continue to buy their product. like you said though, closed-source software developers need to have recurring business, so what better way to do that than have them buy the software again 2 years later, but this time those bugs will be fixed. - zer0mass, on 10/08/2009, -1/+8Linux is pretty big in the enterprise back end. It might not be in everyones cubical but that is because people are addicted to MS Office for some sick reason.
- wosayit, on 10/08/2009, -2/+9Sorry apologistz but the middleware was developed by Microsoft. If they couldn't make it work right then who can?
- HonoredMule, on 10/08/2009, -2/+9He is, but we'll find out in 18 months if he's right anyway. Having a bias doesn't automatically make you wrong, and Vaughan-Nichols doesn't exactly hide his, so you can't even call him out for manipulative writing.
That leaves nothing but the merit of his observations and the thoroughness/accuracy of his fact-gathering. If you have a more substantial counterargument addressing those, I'm all ears...genuinely. - cyberoidx, on 10/09/2009, -0/+5Just when my Windows 7 Party Pack Arrived.
- steviesteveo, on 10/08/2009, -1/+6I actually don't think it makes him anything but wouldn't that make him a TradElect "hater"?
- scottuss, on 10/09/2009, -3/+8Yeah, and now I know why my bank is always having IT issues. I use a major UK bank, and I was horrified to find that a lot of their critical systems run Windows. My friends bank (another major UK institution) use some custom UNIX. He has less problems. Perhaps a coincidence. But maybe not...
And claiming Windows is as stable as anything is crazy. Actually, it's about as stable as a stag party attendee after 10 pints of cider. Yeah, that's a good comparison actually. - dutchguilder2, on 10/08/2009, -7/+12Then you should never trust train signals in North America, or use the electrical grid in the UK, or travel within 50 miles of a sour gas well in Canada, or purchase $1B/year of stock photography because all these systems rely on Windows running .Net code I've personally written.
- dutchguilder2, on 10/08/2009, -1/+6@enantiodromia:
> do your customers notify you when they switch
One UK client brought in a new architect who moved everything from VB/COM+ to Java/J2EE, resulting in 10x worse performance and millions$ burned before he was punted. Conservely MS tried to move Hotmail from Solaris to Windows and also failed. It rarely makes sense (ever?) to port a working bespoke system to different platform, and when a system doesn't work the platform is rarely the source of problems (likely its the analyst/architect/developer).
> a Windows server doesn't mean it's a "Windows network".
Windows networks (and MS Office, and MS Exchange) are prevalent at large corporations around the world. The largest I've seen was 200,000+ Active Directory users at General Electric. Given the correct permissions (which were tightly controlled) I could access any server/desktop/resource in my home office from satellite offices anywhere throughout the world, all centrally managed from a help desk in India. Yes, that's the way its supposed to work, but its still pretty slick to see it in action. That said, most corporate networks are a heterogeneous mix of Windows, *nix, mainframes, Novell, SCADA devices, etc. - 3242130193, on 10/09/2009, -1/+6More like he doesn't have a clue actually.... Ah, to live without being a corporate puppet.
- johndavidjack, on 10/08/2009, -1/+6Unless you are talking about a desktop machine with tons of extra software that you install yourself through RPMs (or build from source), I don't see the issues upgrading RHEL/CentOS at all. In the past, yes, it has sucked at times, but it's pretty quick and painless now.
The only issue I can think of is that RH/Cent don't upgrade the kernel very often (just tons of patches), and they are still stuck with older glibc libraries and such. - zer0mass, on 10/08/2009, -0/+5The app was partly developed by Microsoft.
http://www.onwindows.com/Articles/LSE-TradElect-sy ... - rusty0101, on 10/08/2009, -0/+4Are you suggesting that people using Windows don't know what they are doing and can't handle themselves?
I get paid to work primarily in a Windows environment. I use Linux almost exclusively at home. I don't pretend to be a serious server admin for either, and could care less if someone has never seen a blue screen in 15 years of using Windows. Good for them.
From the read of the arguments above, many are suggesting that the problem is a .Net application running on Windows 2003 Server. OK, if the problem is not the underlying platform, then there should be an alternative application that is proven to be faster on the same hardware. I don't know if there is, but that would be an immediate boost in performance. If there is not, it suggests that there is not a developer community interested in writing to that market, which seems unlikely, of that the actual flaw is not within the software, but within some part of the underlying platform.
It is entirely possible that the result of the migration will not be a significant improvement in performance. My own experience with Linux suggests that at times it is prone to slow response as well. It depends on the system load among other things. However if the LSE is running a traffic load and server hardware configuration comparable to the NYSE or other large platforms, that are running on Linux, then the suspicion would be that they will see an improvement.
But that's an opinion. - RagManX, on 10/08/2009, -0/+4I used Gentoo in a production environment once. The servers we were using had to be stripped to as little installed as we could possibly get by having, and I wasn't in a position to do a Linux from Scratch install. Gentoo met our needs quite well. But outside that specific case where we needed really, really, really barebones systems but had to support some esoteric hardware, I can't think where I would suggest Gentoo very high on my list of recommended distros for servers in a production environment.
I still run Gentoo at home, as well as on a couple of Virtual Box VMs within my Windows systems. I love it for personal use, but I always point to easier distros when people talk about running Linux. - codyp, on 10/08/2009, -0/+4No thats not what I am saying. I am saying most people who use windows have had it shoved upon them. They learn what they must to get by, and when something goes wrong they are clueless, It doesn't matter what OS or even if its an actual computer. I am not saying all windows users are idiots (with computers), or all linux users are smart (with computers). I am saying with the current economics of software, most users are not in a position to use linux, because windows was placed in front of them. Most people who migrate to linux, know what they are doing somewhat.. hence have less problems.
- dijkstra22, on 10/08/2009, -0/+43.1
- mb309, on 10/09/2009, -1/+5Damn. No more diverting fractions of Initech's pennies into another bank account for me.
- scottuss, on 10/09/2009, -1/+5Yeah, but the underlying platform was just as bad as the software
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