50 places Linux is running that you might not expect

[Dude111]

I would expect it @ the DOD to be honest.... (Running what they run)

 

[asterism]

More and more business software today is browser-based on Apache.

Oh...USMB.

Apache is very very old. Off course, it gets updated, but nevertheless its base structure was written for systems which can't be compared to today's systems.
Nginx is the way to go.
nginx - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And off course, compile it all yourself and don't rely on system's package manager so you have latest versions.

One of the issues is that Nigix support for third party web application servers is nil. It doesn't replace other webservers, it acts as a proxy for requests. That's not all that particularly good with sites (like USMB) that are mostly driven with active content.

A tuned IIS or Apache webserver being used for static content alone could easily be used instead of a completely separate piece of software. It's really too bad that they haven't gotten around to integrating event hand off based on the request. That leaves out any optimization currently available using Oracle.

 

[asterism]

Some interesting places:

DoD
US Navy Submarines
FAA
NYSE
ChinaBank
Wikipedia
Puegot
Amazon
Cuba

50 Places Linux is Running That You Might Not Expect

Expect? Of course I expected it. Most of the interwebs runs on either UNIX or LINUX.

And I use to work at one the places you listed.

I was surprised how many governments use Linux. I wonder how much more the DoD budget would be if they were running Windows.

None. DoD has an enterprise license for Windows servers (they have many of them) and IIS is included in each and every one of them. In most instances they actually spend more money running *NIX servers (software is a minor factor in cost at that level). Of course I agree with them doing so because the security and customization is better.

 

[Sallow]

Some interesting places:

DoD
US Navy Submarines
FAA
NYSE
ChinaBank
Wikipedia
Puegot
Amazon
Cuba

50 Places Linux is Running That You Might Not Expect

Expect? Of course I expected it. Most of the interwebs runs on either UNIX or LINUX.

And I use to work at one the places you listed.

I was surprised how many governments use Linux. I wonder how much more the DoD budget would be if they were running Windows.

I have a friend that works for the DoD on "Weather Modeling" (We sorta think he's a spook but that's a different story) and while comparing notes..I found out they were running HPUX. That might of changed..because last time we spoke was a couple of years ago. But I suspect they would use RHEL (Redhat) because it comes with support. Although stuff like SUSE is free..if you run into problems..you are on your own.

 

[Sallow]

Expect? Of course I expected it. Most of the interwebs runs on either UNIX or LINUX.

And I use to work at one the places you listed.

I was surprised how many governments use Linux. I wonder how much more the DoD budget would be if they were running Windows.

None. DoD has an enterprise license for Windows servers (they have many of them) and IIS is included in each and every one of them. In most instances they actually spend more money running *NIX servers (software is a minor factor in cost at that level). Of course I agree with them doing so because the security and customization is better.

As posted above..my friend's section was using HPUX. I am surprised that Windows is used. At the NYSE there we did testing with Windows servers (NT) which were horrible.

Very unreliable.

 

[asterism]

The list would be impossible to write down.
The vast majority of the internet is operating on Linux...you would have to be an idiot to operate a website using Windows.
More and more business software today is browser-based on Apache.

Oh...USMB.

Why would one have to be an idiot to operate a website using Windows?

For many it's a cost/benefit decision. I have a site that has about 700,000 lines of code, some of it originally written 10 years ago. The cost to convert that to a new platform is staggering and provides no current benefit at best. At worst, it's a huge potential risk and an inconvenience for everyone. A feature being used right now by everyone might not work the same way if we change. Speed is a function of server architecture, security is a function of always having to be vigilant (there are plenty of insecure *NIX servers), and integration of the database is worked out pretty well in Windows. MySQL won't work for my business, I've tried it. It's too slow. Out of the box it's about a third as fast as an out of the box MSSQL server with my 16GB database. Rudimentary tuning get's it about half as fast as MSSQL out of the box.

The case can be made that I should update my company skillset so that we can tune MySQL as well as we can tune MSSQL. Then we might approach the same level of performance, but why bother? What is the benefit in the end? What we have now works.

The Windows licensing fees (for the different server OS licenses as well as MSSQL) are minuscule compared to our other IT costs. Bandwidth is by far the most significant cost and that's not affected by OS choice. There is no way around paying for the amount of data my customers need at their fingertips, and it's a LOT.

I've investigated this continuously for about 15 years now and I've still found no compelling reason to change based on "better." Better is too subjective. It's usually best for business to focus on functionality and cost/benefit.

So am I an idiot?

Banks still use COBOL and mainframes to do most of the heavy lifting. Why change something that works?

On edit:

The features we have that are core were first implemented 10 years ago and we picked Windows 2000 because we needed decent speed, tight web-to-database integration, and rapid application development. This just wasn't possible on any other platform for the same price.

 

[asterism]

I was surprised how many governments use Linux. I wonder how much more the DoD budget would be if they were running Windows.

None. DoD has an enterprise license for Windows servers (they have many of them) and IIS is included in each and every one of them. In most instances they actually spend more money running *NIX servers (software is a minor factor in cost at that level). Of course I agree with them doing so because the security and customization is better.

As posted above..my friend's section was using HPUX. I am surprised that Windows is used. At the NYSE there we did testing with Windows servers (NT) which were horrible.

Very unreliable.

I bet it's using an old codebase and 15 years ago HPUX blew the socks off of any variant except maybe pure Sun Unix. As for your NYSE anecdotal, I'd have to hear more specifics. NT 4 servers did have huge memory leak issues and they were a bear (I was a CIO of a mutual fund) but properly configured they were much better than any *NIX variants available at the time.

I remember when Advent came out with their "Data Warehouse" solution and they didn't even bother to run a basic analysis on indexes for their MSSQL 6.5 database. I was tasked to "make it work" so I optimized their database and it smoked. But I noticed their implementation of stored procedures was a but amateurish so modified our version to work with the best I could find. Last I checked (3 years ago), the trusty IBM DB/2 database I substituted still works better.

So perhaps the issue is that they didn't have the expertise to optimize their NT4 implementation.

I am by no means a fan of Microsoft and I never have been. But that doesn't mean it can't be made to work well. For small to moderate sized databases Linux options have finally arrived and are superior relative to cost and time. However that's a fairly recent development.

 

[ekrem]

One of the issues is that Nigix support for third party web application servers is nil. It doesn't replace other webservers, it acts as a proxy for requests. That's not all that particularly good with sites (like USMB) that are mostly driven with active content.

A tuned IIS or Apache webserver being used for static content alone could easily be used instead of a completely separate piece of software. It's really too bad that they haven't gotten around to integrating event hand off based on the request. That leaves out any optimization currently available using Oracle.

Nginx can run any PHP-Software like Apache does, be it Vbulletin, Wordpress, Drupal or anything else written in PHP. You just have to configure your Virtual-Host/s correctly in combination with your PHP configuration. But off course, you can run Nginx as a front-proxy to Apache. But it doesn't make much sense running 2 "server"-software side-by-side. For logged-out users you'd use Memory (Varnish or Memcached) to deliver your cached files (saved-copy of your dynamic site) instead of an extra server-software which delivers the static copy of your pages from hdd.

The reward for the effort is a much faster server with less memory-consumption than either Apache prefork or worker mode.