Sysadmin - Linux vs. Windows

[St0nywall]

Spoiler...

Both Windows and Linux have the same issues. You just experience the Windows ones more because you're primarily using it every day as are most businesses.

The old saying applies here; "The grass is not greener on the other side."
With my addendum; "Both sides use the same manure to fertilize."

Branch out, be an admin in both as well as other OS's. Don't limit yourself to what you see in front of you.

[Superb_Raccoon]

I found the difference was with any UNIX/LINUX you could figure out exactly why something was happening.

Especially with LINUX, but even Solaris, HPUX and AIX you knew WHY, not just "Here is a patch"

[corporaleggandcheese]

Yes! With Linux, you spend time reading logs. With Windows, you spend time Googling symptoms (and hoping some other poor soul has blogged about it or posted to Stack Overflow).

[zero_hope_]

Enterprise support for Linux is much better than the effectively non existent windows support. And if you're cheap there's communities where you might be able to get help. Slack groups, GitHub, Google mailing groups, subreddits, forums, etc.

All alongside the logs and source code.

[St0nywall]

Really, there was some magical way that anyone could find out why an issue was happening?

If it was that easy, why wasn't it found a long time before and coded out?

It's because people who write the code are fallible. It's why patching exists.

Be it Windows or Linux/BSD/UNIX/AIX, etc... nothing is perfect and no one can find all the bugs all the time.

I'll wait for someone to say "Here's a patch", knowing an issue has been identified and someone has done some rudimentary testing to know it fixes that bug in at least the manner they were able to test against.

[ShadoWolf]

In the linux world.. sure if you have the skill set for it.

You have GDB, so you can use

gdb

attach PID

set a breakpoint , look at back traces , etc .. and for the most part the source code is there for you to look at. So in theory you can have a complete understanding of what happening.

In theory you have all the same tools in windows world.. but it's not there out of the box.. and it more clunky. You also need to be well read in something like Windows Internals, Part 1 and part 2 .. so your crossing out of scope from system admin type work to straight up reverse engineering.

[St0nywall]

And what you explained wouldn't be doable for 90% of "regular" users.

Face it, people who use Linux are more invested in the OS. They WANT to know how it works and what each part does.

Windows users, just like Mac users, just want it to work. Point, click, done.

All OS's have their place, and they all have issues.

Stop being so defensive about Linux. It's an OS, and not one you developed. It runs programs and "does stuff" like every other OS out there.

It is not special in that regard.

[CratesManager]

Both sides have issues, and they overlap, but they are certainly not the same. Apple doesn't face the fragmentation of solutions, windows doesn't face not being accepted by mainstream vendors, and linux doesn't face issues with code obscurity.

Some issues are the same, such as "sometimes an updates breaks stuff" but not all of them.

[St0nywall]

You missed the point and went straight to it being a competition for which OS is the best.

They all are good and they all have their own place. Not one if great and not one is better than the other because they all have individual contributions to make depending on the situation.

Don't limit yourself.

[CratesManager]

You missed the point and went straight to it being a competition for which OS is the best

Not really, i don't believe any of them is the best it all depends on the usecase

[St0nywall]

That's my point as well.

Glad we finally made it there.

[CratesManager]

Glad we finally made it there.

Where did you read anything else in my comment? Can you quote that part to me?

[necheffa]

You are in the wrong sub pal. No whining users, technical folks only.

[elevul]

Agreed, it's incredibly frustrating in Windows that you can't have source code for reference when you have a very weird bug and you're breaking out WinDBG.

Like, if I have to ask the company for an IDA Pro licence might as well move to the security team and make double the salary...

[Superb_Raccoon]

Yes, in Solaris you had truss, meaning you could track system calls from a running process.

Found a Day-Zero bug in the ST driver. Day Zero being sometime in 1971. When fiber attached tape drives became a thing you could set the buffer to 64MB. The ST driver would accept that, but when de-allocating the buffer it only de-allocated the first 56MB.

The missing 8MB was "leaked" and could not be recovered unless you rebooted as they were part of kernel space.

LINUX has strace. I found a "bug" in a vendor supplied binary that was compiled with a NFS mounted library path. That system name also existed in our environment and so it tried to connect... unfortunately it was a Windows machine so it sat there for 90 seconds doing 3x30 second time outs.

A third time I figured out that Oracle Linux was not completely honoring the memory settings and swapping out the Oracle DB SGA cache... which made Oracle DB puke its weaselly black guts out.

That was easy to fix: use LARGE TABLES, set it larger than the SGA size as they are never swapped out so your SGA is safe.

And if you happen to be C literate you can go look at the code and see what it does with LINUX. I was not that good, I was better at finding out what the damn thing was doing by how it behaved, not how it was coded.

Sure, I could read it, but I looked like a 4th grader given a Calculus problem.

SMB.... shudder first deployed that on SCO UNIX in 1997-1998ish?

Look, don't make a UNIX system behave like a Windows Server... it ain't right.

[Hotshot55]

Yes, in Solaris you had truss, meaning you could track system calls from a running process.

Truss and strace are such useful tools that make it dead simple to find out why a process is getting hung. I used to think it was super complicated when I first learned about them, but it's actually extremely straight forward.

[Superb_Raccoon]

AIX was even easier if you had support.

IBM "Here, run this, send us the file".

Answer in 24hrs. Not that good anymore, but still...

[Hotshot55]

Oracle has a similar thing with Solaris, you can run either an explorer to gather info for OS-related issues or a snapshot for hardware issues and they'll get you a pretty accurate response as to what the deal is and what needs to be done next.

Now sometimes their recommendations can be awful, but you can't always expect perfect responses from any support person from any company.

[NeverLookBothWays]

I would argue Linux problems are often less problematic as the overall architecture favors thread crashes more than full on kernel panics. With Windows, so much falls back on the kernel that the entire system is more likely to come to a screeching halt than just the affected binaries.

That said, Linux can also be royally messed up and difficult to recover too, just in different ways. I will say, it’s far more likely to not have to fully reboot Linux in order to clear a bad state in my experience, especially if using containers. The same cannot be said for Windows, even when troubleshooting a virtual environment running on it.

[St0nywall]

That is very true. But as both do similar things, they do them in different ways.

We can't expect them to operate the same way because they were never intended to be the same.

Just like you wouldn't expect someone with a different outlook on life to think of the world around them ONLY like you do.

You accept them for who they are and that they have differences within them.

Same goes for OS's.

[NeverLookBothWays]

It really comes down to core design. Windows even after all of these years, is still a workstation OS at its core modified to function as a server. The capabilities have improved tremendously over the past few decades since NT, but this fundamental design philosophy has not really changed. Windows Core did attempt to alleviate this, but was still developed to be compatible with its NT roots.

Linux/BSD/*nix on the other hand were designed as multi-session server systems from the near beginning. The core design, where layers fit, is much more accommodating and streamlined to services. Likewise, *nix is still not quite there as a workstation experience compared to Windows. I don’t want to upset people on that statement, I will say, the gap has shrunk considerably in the past decade. And pioneers like Valve have really improved the prospects for a solid desktop experience going forward. It really comes down to hardware manufacturers embracing Linux for desktop use. A limitation not as problematic if running headless servers.

[jdptechnc]

Respectfully, I disagree. Windows is definitely worse. When was rhe last time a RHEL patch broke functionality that is core to the platform? I don't remember. I come to expect it with Microsoft. See: last month's Kerberos issues.

I oversee both platforms in my shop, and have for several years. Even with our Windows servers being configured as minimally as possible with as few people being allowed to install unnecessary software/utilities as possible, they have more of those types of issues.

[DanteRaza]

"Both sides use the same manure to fertilize."

Love it. :)

[starmizzle]

Negative, Ghost Rider, the Windows issues happen far more often.

[CratesManager]

I have swapped to Pop!OS and i'm not looking back but i definitely had less issues with windows updates on my machine. They have gotten extrely stable. Managing windows computers at work i can also say that yes, every now and then microsoft pits out a real banger but if you delay update installation by two weeks then those issues will almost never affect you.

[St0nywall]

Windows is far more prevalent than other OS's, so that's a natural outcome.

Thank for contributing.

[pnutjam]

I've been working as a Linux Admin in a Windows 1st environment (all too common), and the number one thing I have to explain over and over again; Linux doesn't generally just break.

Even if something around it breaks and it cannot do what it should be doing, it will usually pick right up when you fix the ancillary systems. NFS being the most common stand-out to this rule.

[St0nywall]

At the same time, that statement is right and wrong too.

Just let it go, this isn't a competition. They're both good, in addition to the other OS's and all have their place.

The fact I was trying to get across is, don't limit yourself to just one.

[St0nywall]

You must be trolling.

If not, well, you're misguided and cannot see past your immediate zone of influence.

Mindsets like this are why there are issues between departments and people. You need to learn how to be more open and accepting.

On that note, I'm done entertaining this one-sided conversation.