Windows Server vs. Linux

[tomh38]

This isn't my usual anti-Windows ranting (some of you might say trolling ...); I'd like to know what people have to say this time  .  Microsoft continues to compare  Windows Server to Linux ... and of course they claim Linux comes up short.  A blogger named David M Williams gives his view of things, but I'd like to know what Vector Linux forum members think.  I know that VL isn't a server distro, but I'm pretty sure many of you have worked with Linux and/or Windows servers.  So, what do you think of Windows vs. Linux as server operating systems?

Tom

[nightflier]

I do maintain one machine with Windows 2003 SBS. It does fairly light duty. Only reason why we have to have the server version is a licensing issue; we need more than 10 concurrent client connections (otherwise, W2K or WXP could do the job). Some of my experiences:

The motherboard died. Was unable to re-use installation key on new hardware and had to buy new copy of software.

The license requires it to run as a domain controller even if we don't need it, wasting CPU cycles and greatly increasing boot times.

It keeps running out of memory (4GB + swap). This may caused by the database application it runs, not sure. I had to set it up to automatically reboot every morning before office hours.

There is also an old Pentium 3 box on the network. When they upgraded from W98 to WXP it was discarded as obsolete. I installed LAMPP and Samba and put it to work. No problems there.

[BlueMage]

This isn't my usual anti-Windows ranting (some of you might say trolling ...);

Oh come on mate, I've never called it "trolling" - merely an irrational dislike

They were abysmal and the headlines and stories had such a remarkable divide that you could park the Grand Canyon within it and still have room for the cast of The Biggest Loser.

That's mean - I like this guy

I also particularly like the comment likening the installing of drivers to "having no life" - classic.  Oh well, I suppose I have no life.  But hells, if this is no life, man am I going to be exhausted when I get one.

As for the comparison between the two, I can't say I've ever really operated in a Linux server environment, and we're only just getting a Windows server at work (2003 because the boss is cheap) which I'll likely be doing the day-to-day running of.  Of course, I had to specify the server, even though I've had zero experience with them :/

[bigpaws]

I have run both Windows and Linux servers.

There is no right answer for everyone. The right answer is to use what
will fulfill the requirements in the most efficient answer. Windows servers
can be run with good results. Active Directory can be a beast, but then LDAP
is by no means a walk in the park.

So is one OS better than the other my response is no. My experiences are that 
any OS can be secure and operate with very good uptimes.

Bigpaws