From: Chad Perrin Date: 2007-07-24T16:26:06+09:00 Subject: Re: Ruby Editor On Tue, Jul 24, 2007 at 01:22:35PM +0900, Todd Benson wrote: > On 7/23/07, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote: > > >3. I'm surprised nobody defended Windows Server 2003. Just because it's > >closed source and expensive doesn't mean it's a bad OS in terms of > >reliability, security or performance. Apache, MySQL, PHP, PostgreSQL, > >Ruby, Rails, etc. run just fine on Windows 2003 server > > I'm not sure why -- maybe a change in OS philosophy on my part -- but > I think Windows 2000 server was a Microsoft high watermark for > stability/reliability/useability in my opinion. We had plenty of > those guys sitting around with nary a problem. That's because it *was* the high-water mark for MS Windows servers. Any advances since then that are worth anything have primarily been in support for hardware that has been developed since Win2k support started going the way of the dodo. > > I'm a minimilast, so I run with BSD and vim. BSD is a bit weird in > the OSS world. They put a sturdier cap on the open source zeal > present in most linux distros. > > I think it was the writer Neal Stephenson that attempted to compare > OS's to vehicles. Well, if his Linux is a tank, the former BeOS a > batmobile, Windows a Saturn, then I guess BSD would be like a > locomotive -- sturdy, but you have to follow the track. I think you're overstating the case significantly. FreeBSD, for instance, is not nearly as fast and loose as your average Linux distribution, but it's certainly flexible -- considerably more so than any proprietary OS I've ever seen, including several proprietary Unix brands. . . . and yes, it was Stephenson who made the car dealership analogy, in his excellent (book-length) essay "In the Beginning was the Command Line". His use of the word "yurt" was one of the high points of my week the first time I read that essay, and the hypothetical conversation with a passer-by on his way to the Microsoft station wagon dealership was another of those high points. -- CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ] John Kenneth Galbraith: "If all else fails, immortality can always be assured through spectacular error."