Linux so far no software hare (fwd)

Tue Jan 27 16:41:23 UTC 2004

At 08:20 27/01/2004 -0500, cbbrowne-HInyCGIudOg at public.gmane.org wrote:
> > I just sent this to the Star.  I sent it as an article to the Business
> > section.  I don't really know the best place.  Perhaps their
> > Ombudsman.
>
>[Much elided that I agree with; it is _very_ well written, Hugh!]

Agreed.

> > MS Office itself is unlikely to be more stable on Linux than on MS
> > Windows.
>
>I'll take a _bit_ of issue with this, as there have been known to be
>surprises.
>
>I have seen several reports from people I trust well with the rather
>surprising conclusion that running Windows atop VMWare atop Linux leads
>to an environment noticeably more stable than running Windows
>"natively."

I do both, run Windows natively and on VMware that is, and have not found 
any difference in stability. All modern implementations of Windows, i.e. 
NT, 2000, and XP, have actually been quite stable for me, for some narrow 
meaning of the word "stable". If the ability to continue running without 
blue screening, as the Win9x series is wont to do is a measure, then yes, 
the aforementioned are much more stable. BSODs on NT, 2000, or XP are not 
the norm, as some Linux/Mac OS bigots would like others to believe. What I 
have found, however, is that all three of these operating systems suffer 
from lousy memory management. This may have more to do with the 
applications that I run on them, e.g. Eudora, Internet Explorer, than the 
underlying OS but I find that after a few days, in order to maintain some 
reasonable semblance of performance, I have to do a restart. Otherwise, 
memory usage balloons out to grotesque levels and Windows starts swapping 
heavily. Windows hitting swap is not a pretty sight. More RAM only delays 
the inevitable.

A difference I have noticed with running Windows on VMware vs. running it 
natively on the same hardware is that I/O is considerably slower running on 
VMware, which I suppose is understandable.

>The apparent explanation is that the "simulated PC" that VMWare provides
>has fewer "jagged bits of functionality" coming in from the hardware
>side  that can 'break down.'  In effect, the "virtual machine" that
>their product emulates is better, for the purpose of running Windows,
>than a real one.
>
>That is quite different from what I would be inclined to expect; what I
>would _expect_ is that VMWare, being a "simulator," with all sorts of
>"kludges," would be considerably less reliable than a "real machine."
>
>An implementation of MS Office that uses the boundaries of Unix
>processes and directories and permissions to enclose its behaviour might
>conceivably be more stable than the existing editions that have
>generally been pretty unconstrained in what they can do to one's
>computer system.
>
>Of course, the opposite can be true; witness the reports of the hideous
>implementation of Internet Explorer on Solaris and HP/UX...
>
>But it is good to keep in mind that Microsoft has implemented MS Office
>atop "Unix" in the form of the latest edition for MacOS X.  After doing
>"it" (porting to Unix) once, Microsoft probably has enough experience to
>be able to choose what degree of stability they want unleashed...

My understanding is that Office X, the OS X version of office, was NOT a 
port but a clean slate design. My friends who run it love it and they are 
not big MS fans so clearly, MS can write solid code if they want to. Word 6 
probably caused more defections from the Mac OS to Windows in the mid '90s 
than just about any other single factor, which could have been a deliberate 
strategy if it were not simple incompetence. Word 6 *was* a port, and an 
ugly one at that. It was the biggest piece of junk and crashed early and 
often. I remember the arcane incantations we had to mumble and the ritual 
sacrifices that we had to make just to have System 7.6x stable enough that 
it would "only" freeze couple of times a day. Turn virtual memory off, turn 
virtual memory on. RAM Doubler, Speed Doubler, disable this init, enable 
that one, load inits in a different order. Not too many fonts, not enough 
fonts, not the right fonts... blah!

I found the comment in the Star article about crashes on opening MS Office 
documents to be amusing because the only time that I have ever experienced 
that is with MS Word (XP) opening a file created using the *same* version 
and instance of MS Word. I could get Word to GPF reliably on this one 
particular file but OpenOffice on Linux was happy to open it, modify it, 
and save it back in Word format.

Password protected MS Office documents are a problem even with other 
versions of the same application, much less OpenOffice. We have a client 
that has stopped using OpenOffice and is standardizing on Office XP mainly 
because of this reason. They had lots of Office 97 and Office 2000 
documents and sharing between the two versions did not seem to be a 
problem. Enter OpenOffice, and it could not unlock password protected 
Office documents. So, they "upgraded" to Offfice XP and lo and behold, it 
could not unlock their existing password protected documents either. I 
questioned why they needed to password protect documents anyway since all 
that I have ever read about this practice suggests that it is akin to 
leaving one's house key under the door mat and it seems like there are an 
inordinate number of problems with file corruption with this practice, as 
evidenced by tales of woe and the number of utilities to "recover" MS 
Office files on the Internet. It was their way of protecting sensitive 
documents sent by email from prying eyes instead of using PGP. I've come to 
the conclusion that email encryption is too complicated for the average 
user so it does not get done and people resort to hacks like password 
protecting documents or zip files.

Regards,

Clifford Ilkay
Dinamis Corporation
3266 Yonge Street, Suite 1419
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M4N 3P6

Tel: 416-410-3326 

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