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Linux running 911

Submitted by charlie.collins on Mon, 11/11/2002 - 16:07
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Interesting story on InternetNews "atNewYork" about where small town emergency systems have been switched from Windows to Linux. Use of Linux in systems such as these is not widespread due to a lack of support (foresight) by software vendors but it does occur. The example small town has a Linux box that has been running for a year and a half because they got "fed up" with Windows95 which had to be rebooted very often. For the record I would NOT use Windows of any kind in ANY critical situation (period, end of story, over an out). However, if other people must use Windows for whatever reasons, they need to be using a server OS and not Win95. I cant believe governments use 95 in any type of important situation much less at the 911 center, crazy. (Windows 2000 or NT is better, props to the server OSes from Microsoft, but still from a TCO, security, scalability, adapatability standpoint, etc, I would use Linux.) Check the linked article for more info.   When Its Life or Death, Some 911 Systems Turn To Linux

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Re: Linux running 911

Submitted by Shmooze (not verified) on Mon, 11/11/2002 - 17:19.
I think you tend to see these type problems blamed on Microsoft not because of Microsoft problems but rather the fact that it is so easy to develop Windows applications (using VB or Delphi). Bad or incompetent programmers can ship a working product that looks good but is so poorly written as to cause system instabilities. Maybe you don't see this as much with Linux because it is generally more involved to develop apps on that platform - it discourages hack programmers. I for one have scores of applications running real-time systems interfacing with all sorts of hardware through low level devices, PLCs and various databases including Oracle stably running under Win95, Windows 2000 and Windows XP. I can offer 24 hour support because I don't get calls. The apps just run...period. I will concede that if my customers required these machines to sit visibly on the web then I would have a valid reason to think about changing platforms, but until then MS works fine. I bet if you were able to dig into the 911 problem you would find the same thing. A shitty program running under Windows versus a well written and supported program running under Linux is not proof of a bad os.

Re: Linux running 911

Submitted by atrox (not verified) on Tue, 11/12/2002 - 14:54.
well, you may indeed be right. more power to you if you have your win apps running 24x7 and it works as you want. i have always been of the mindset that using windows on a non public network is just fine (as long as you have the reliability you need). after all windows is much easier to use than linux, that is still true regardless of the rest. that said, i have had base win95 without any apps crash on me on more than one occasion and i would not personally trust it. i dont have the experience you have, thats just my opinion. my point was just that as much as i hate microsoft its not really fare to shots at them for 24x7 apps crashing on a desktop oriented os. win95 wasnt designed with critical 24x7 stuff in mind. reminds of an old article on the penguin though - [url=http://screaming-penguin.com/main.php?storyid=32]http://screaming-penguin.com/main.php?storyid=32[/url] (article used to have a photo of win98 blue screen ATM).

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