Unix versus Windows NT: the floodgates open
By Maury Wright, Technical Editor -- EDN, January 21, 1999
 In the Dec 3, 1998, issue of EDN, I wrote an editorial about Unix and Windows NT. I admit that I meant to be slightly provocative, but I never expected the deluge of responses that ultimately flooded my e-mail box. The following are some representative responses, with more to follow in future print issues and on this Web site. First, however, I would like to clarify a few of my comments. I regret using the word zealot—I certainly didn’t mean it in a derogatory way, although some of you surely took it that way. I am not a Windows or Microsoft zealot. In fact, I’m not sure one exists. I simply recognize the value of standards from an end-user perspective. As for my Unix experience, I meant to say that most of it came when the command line was the only access to the OS—before the advent of Motif and Open Look. I have more experience with several Digital Equipment OSs that rely on the command line. I even keep a DOS box open on my Win95 notebook because it is easier to accomplish some tasks with the DOS command line. The points I wanted to make are simple: Windows’ greatest benefit is not the GUI but the hardware abstraction that allows access to an unbelievable number of peripherals. And Unix has too many shells. When a software manual can’t specify a command for an installation task because of the different shells, then you need to homogenize the shells. I also apologize for indiscriminately applying my comments to Linux. I tried Linux back in 1997 and found it immature, but your comments make it clear that I should re-evaluate the OS. Moreover, it seems the Linux community has addressed many of the limitations of Unix. Look for more Linux coverage in EDN in the coming months. Still, the Linux supporters’ greatest challenge will be convincing EDA companies to support the OS, although it appears momentum is building. Finally, I would love to continue a discussion of reliability. Some of you report daily NT crashes, yet others have much better success—albeit still not Unix- or Linux-level reliability. I suspect the culprits are poorly written applications that are hobbled by the decidedly difficult Windows programming model. Let me know if you are interested in an ongoing OS discussion with reliability as a key topic. LETTERS from READERS Avant! has released a Linux port of its Polaris Verilog simulator. I expect a flood of EDA vendors to follow. Also, Sun is going to release its UltraSPARC workstation running with Linux. Linux’s time has arrived. —gerry@graycells.com Your article is partly right: Some old Unix systems are nearly as closed as Windows NT. But, Linux has several advantages over Windows NT. Hardware drivers are more stable on Linux than on NT. Linux is cheaper because it requires no client-access licenses. The availability of a Linux source lets you customize the OS, which is available from multiple sources. And, you can burn Linux into EPROM if necessary. Linux’s only disadvantage is that there is no port of Office 97 yet. (But there are other nice office packages that compare with Office 97.) —Dietmar Schnabel I agree with most of what you say. NT’s user interface is easier to use. However, I’m amazed you have never had an NT crash. I have faced NT’s "blue screen of death" too many times. At best, I would have uptimes of two or three days before having to reboot. Like Windows 95, Microsoft built Windows NT to be an easy-to-use OS. However, the company skimped on creating a stable product. Unix, on the other hand, is the opposite. It is uncompromisingly built with stability in mind. Keep your eye on Linux in the next year: The interface will become much easier to use. All the GUI control-panel applets that you like in NT are already in use and being developed further under Linux. You might want to keep a little more current on what is happening in the Linux and Unix communities. The OSs are advancing much faster than you seem aware of. —Scott Carle The question of whether NT or Unix is better is a matter of taste and of what you are used to. I won’t argue with most of your points. NT does gloss over many details in reasonable ways so you don’t have to know everything about your computer to get something to work, but I would argue that NT also makes it more difficult to make some tasks work when the default behavior fails. I have been fighting with my NT box for a year trying to get it to use two CD-ROM drives, and there is simply a layer of the OS that is inaccessible to the administrator. File renaming can also be a challenge under NT. For example, I have a file on my NT box with a space at the end of the file name. In Unix, I could easily fix this problem, but not with NT. I like to think I am a "real-computer" user, and I like being able to do anything on the command line (remote system administration, for example), but I also like a good GUI that can make a task easier, especially one I do infrequently. I wish more Unix programmers would understand that a good GUI can be a good thing and a bad GUI can be worse than no GUI.
You made the point that you don’t need a half-dozen shells. You’re right. You need only one shell. On NT, you have only one shell, and it is so useless that you have to use the GUI to do most of the tasks you should be able to do in the shell. On Unix systems, most people use only one shell, too, but they have a choice of which features they want. Your strongest argument in favor of NT is that end users of Unix systems without system administrators need a better understanding of Unix than any end user should expect to need. If you just want to use a particular application on your machine, if you don’t know Unix and don’t have a knowledgeable person available to install it, you are better off with NT. Perhaps you’ve never had an NT system crash. But have you ever had to reboot your machine after installing an application? This problem is just as much of an interruption in service as a crash, and it does not happen under Unix. One final reason that I like Linux: I do not want to live in a world in which all software is proprietary and license systems introduce unnecessarily onerous administration tasks. I want to live in a world in which the most commonly used software is free so anyone can use and improve it. I know we are not there yet. In particular, some of the most annoying and expensive copy-protection technology protects EDA tools. Using Linux and other free software and occasionally making a small suggestion or correction to some piece of free software are my ways of working toward making the computer world a place I will enjoy more in the future. —Mark Gray Please try just one thing: Pick a file, perhaps a dynamic link library, in the Windows System32 directory and tell me where it came from, what application installed it, what other application needs it, and whether it is safe to remove it. Now try the same on a Linux box with the Redhat Package Manager or on an HP-UX box with the depot manager. It’s the difference between a nightmare that might force you to scan your whole hard drive for executables (or other dynamic link libraries) that might be using the one dynamic link library in question and a simple task, probably on the command line, on a well-constructed system. Sure, there are a lot of situations in which NT is superior—today. But NT is unreliable. Microsoft’s one major achievement is its ability to make this mess actually work for 95% of its customers. —Ulrich Döhner Why, on my dual-boot system, could I change my modem under Linux in 10 sec, but I had to fight NT for 45 minutes to accept the change? NT and Win95/98 are not easier. They give the illusion of being easier with so-called "wizards" (which are wrong half the time) and pretty graphics. These features are supposed to make these Windows OSs easier for novice users, yet, in my experience, novice users still fear these features, and they call experienced people to help them. These OSs aren’t easier for experienced users either, because of NT’s "I know better than you" attitude and the tendency of Microsoft programs to hide important details. Wizards often choose the wrong settings, and the system sometimes won’t accept the correct settings you give it. When I changed my video card to a Matrox, I had Linux going in the amount of time it took to install an Xserver with the new driver. Even though Matrox ships with Windows drivers, the OS still complained of incorrect video settings and kept throwing me into 640X480X16 colors (even after following the manufacturer’s install instructions). Also, my laptop with a Xircom Credit Card 10/100 PCMCIA Ethernet/modem card worked out of the box with Linux. After nearly a week, it still doesn’t work with NT. NT easier? Give me a break! —Tony Smolar Please tell me what your experience is with both Unix and Windows systems. Then tell me which was around first and which of the two broke the standards that you rightly think are so necessary to maintain consistent and "well-established conventions." Then explain how NT has connected to the Internet since the 60s, how NT quickly adapts to Internet standards, and how it had a GUI in the early 80s. Then show me an NT desktop box that has not crashed or needed to be rebooted in more than, say, three years, and yet still remained up to date in terms of software upgrades. Then show me how it’s possible to prevent people from running simple scripts to compromise an NT box and tell me about the performance benchmarks you must have looked at before writing your article. Then tell me about the ability for NT administrators to remotely administer their boxes or for many thousands of people to log onto a 386 running NT. Two final notes: First, I haven’t used an MS box in more than two years (since I saw what one can do with Unix and how similar a system it is to my old Amiga). Second, I know of a 333-MHz Pentium II system that gets outperformed by my 90-MHz 6x86 in system response, graphics, and computational performance, simply because it runs NT while the 6x86 box runs Linux. With Linux, I get the bonus of better applications, more standardized services, better window managers, better shells, and simpler updating and configuration procedures. —Pete Ryland |
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 Maury Wright, Technical EditorYou can reach Technical Editor Maury Wright at 1-619-748-6785, fax 1-619-679-1861, or maury-wright@home.com. |
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