| Older hardware, Windows, and Linux |
Jan. 09, 2006
Microsoft's most recent anti-Linux FUD efforts are perhaps its most pathetic ever.
In a recent eWEEK story by ace operating system reporter Peter Galli, Microsoft Challenges Linux's Legacy Claims, Bill Hilf, director of Microsoft's Linux and open-source lab, claimed that the lab's tests of Windows and Linux on legacy hardware found that when both were installed and run out-of-the-box, it "put to rest the myth that Linux can run on anything."
Hilf's point is that, of course, you can strip Linux down to run on an older system, but that the users who are most likely to run 1990s vintage equipment are the ones who are least likely to be able to set up Linux properly on antique hardware.
To prove his point, Hilf took full-scale server and desktop distributions like RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux), SUSE Linux 9.3, Linspire 4.5, and Xandros 3, along with Microsoft's own Windows XP and Server 2003, and tried to run them on older hardware.
To no one's surprise, he found that none of these will run on 1997-vintage hardware with a 233 MHz Pentium, 32 MBs of RAM, and a 2 gigabyte hard drive.
What Hilf didn't mention was that according to Microsoft's own tests, Slackware 10.1 and Knoppix 3.7 do run on this hardware.
I might add that other modern Linux distributions, which are designed to run on low-end systems, work just fine on such PCs. I've personally run Damned Small Linux, MEPISLite, and Puppy Linux "out of the box" on a Compaq 350 MHz Pentium II with 32 MBs of RAM without a hitch.
You see, Hilf doesn't mention that besides Linux distributions like Fedora that are designed to get the most from today's hardware, there are plenty of distributions that are designed to get the most from yesterday's hardware.
He also doesn't mention that, according to Microsoft's own study, the operating system, which is the undisputed bottom of the barrel at running on older hardware, is none other than Windows Server 2003.
Microsoft also doesn't point out that when it comes to servers, you can run a basic file/print Linux/Samba server, Web Linux/Apache server, or Linux/DNS (Domain Name Server) server on any system that's not covered by rust. I've run all of the above on 25 MHz (not GHz, but MHz) 486DX systems with 16 MBs of RAM.
If you want a minimal business server system, there are lots of distributions, like YES Linux and SME Server, that provide a complete set of basic server applications and can run on systems with as little as 128 MBs of RAM.
What's really ironic about this Microsoft study is that the boys from Redmond don't seem to really want you to use older hardware. After all, they no longer support their software for older hardware like NT, Windows 98, ME, or Windows 2000.
Indeed, Microsoft is trying hard to kill those off by no longer issuing even essential security fixes like the one for the WMF (Windows Media Format) hole. If you're still running Windows 98, Windows ME, or pre-SP4 versions of Windows 2000, you're out of luck if you want Microsoft's help in defending against the dozens of WMF threats out there.
So why are they doing this?
They know darn well that people are still using five-year-old computers, and they want to convince them that they can run modern Windows software on them.
That's nonsense. You may be able to run XP on an older system if all you mean by "run" is boot, but you won't be able to get any work done. For example, I dragged out one of my aforementioned 350 MHz Compaqs and I did get XP to run on it. Of course, I couldn't run Office XP on it. Well, maybe I could, but after five minutes of waiting for Word to show up, I gave up on it.
But, on that same system, MEPISLite 3.3.2 not only ran fine, but I was also able to use KOffice 1.4.2 quite successfully on it.
Here's the bottom line: no matter what Microsoft may claim, if you want to get the most from an older system, there's a Linux distribution out there for you. Suggesting that Windows XP or Server 2003 is a reasonable alternative is simply a bad joke.
--Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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