[TriLUG] Linux vs Windows comparison criteria?

[Kevin Flanagan]

 From a business side, it used to be that execs would say that they 
wanted a "throat to choke", IE: someone to sue if the app fell apart.  I 
have heard that more and more are realizing that suing Microsoft is akin 
to banging your head against the wall of a cave, not only does it hurt, 
but you can't be heard screaming.


Although it's not the specifics that you are looking for, I would talk 
about the control that you have with Linux distributions, you have the a 
great deal of access to switches, knobs, etc.  The development cycle for 
drivers, implementation of protocols etc is generally shorter on Linux.


Interoperability shouldn't be an issue, so long as you use stock network 
  and Database interfaces.


Good luck,


	Kevin

Michael Durbin wrote:
> I work at a shop in Chapel Hill (Blue Analytics) where most of the 
> development to date has been on Windows (client-side and server-side). 
> We write options trading software for a private trading firm and I 
> wonder if anyone can shed some light on an important question before us.
> 
> We are preparing to write some components with much more stringent 
> latency/throughput requirements than what we've done so far and are 
> seriously considering writing these in Linux. We have plenty of 
> anecdotal evidence to warrant this, but little in the way of specific 
> arguments for one OS over the other. Would anyone care to shed light on 
> specific OS attributes we should consider before making this switch? Or 
> any other consideration for that matter?
> 
> We're aware of apparent differences in TCP stack performance (e.g., 
> http://www.pam2005.org/PDF/34310332.pdf) although we wonder if a TCP 
> offload engine might compensate. We also know of the significant 
> difference in kernel size between Windows and Linux, and can imagine 
> generally how that might affect us. Another factor is our legacy code in 
> Windows; any new component, regardless of OS, must interoperate with 
> services running on Windows.
> 
> Any thoughts or pointers will be most appreciated.
> 
> Mike Durbin
> Blue Analytics, Ltd.
> 919-923-0546
> 
> 
> 
>