Re: FN-FORUM: Stable OS? Was: How not to listen [OT]

date posted 24th July 2004 14:30

At 14:19 on Saturday, 24 Jul 2004, Dom Latter wrote:


> Fr'instance somebody mentioned recently that IIS is now so
> embedded in Windows 2K3 (?) that you no longer "install" it.
> Something like that. Contrast that to Apache - I have systems
> with both 1.3 and 2.0 installed and I can switch between them
> in a matter of seconds. And then Apache itself has modules
> that simply load or don't load, as you dictate.
>
> But all you people with stable Win2K systems - I'm happy for you.
> Really.

;o)

I run Apache 2.0 on Windows XP - which, once I tweaked and decluttered,
has been extremely stable, far more so that win2k and definitely better
than win98 ;o)

it only ever goes wrong when I do something stupid. OTOH the father in
law's newer (but not tweaked) WinXP machine is always going wrong. I
think it's got as much to do with how much effort you put into maintaining
the hardware and software as it is the particular OS.

I've had Linux machines crash the moment I finished installing, I've got a
FreeBsd Box that sometimes refuses to boot - is it hardware - is it
software? hard to tell atm.

IMHO it's really about time invested, popularity and statistical
probability theory.

Imagine every PC shipping with a "stable" Linux install, how long would it
be before users like my Father in law (doing very well for a 70 year old
TBH) complained that Linux was crap?