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July 11, 2008 1:10 PM PDT
Microsoft ahead of Apple, Ubuntu in OS update reliability
Canonical's update service for the Ubuntu operating system had more downtime than Apple's or Microsoft's services.
(Credit: Pingdom)A company that measures Internet service reliability has given Microsoft the top score in a test of operating system update services.
Microsoft's Windows Update was available 100 percent of the second quarter of 2008, Pingdom said in a blog posting Friday. Apple's service was down 2 hours and 34 minutes, with 99.9 percent uptime, and Canonical's Ubuntu version of Linux was down 1 day, 5 hours, and 45 minutes, for 98.64 percent uptime.
"Microsoft wins this one hands down," Pingdom said. It noted that Ubuntu's service also is available through mirror sites, however.
The company tested the three services every five minutes.
Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank. 
This is a totally pointless article.
Microsoft wins, Apple loses. Deal with it.
Seriously, get a life.
"("THE WHOLE THING IS DOWN TWO HOURS A MONTH! OMGWTFBBQ!!!11!") is amateur behavior at best."
And yet you still make the comments. You might consider checking the definition of 'double standard' for you've just demonstrated it perfectly.
This is a classic sign that you really need to get a life isntead of trying to feed your ego by the ridicule of others. Not very... 'professional' behavior at all for you, Tim.
I'll leave you be. You need nobody to mock or ridicule you at all- your own comments are by far more daminng to your character and reputation than anything anyone else can say.
A new low for you.
Since you don't know anything about computers you probably don't know that a server(or any other computer) can be up and not respond to pings. So that is an extremely flawed way to measure reliability.
Secondly, with the dozens of mirrors, the downtime is zero, regardless what these amateurs say. There are HTTP servers out there that would get reported as 100% downtime from these mental midgets even though it is up and serving request 100% of the time.
Of course they could have sent a syn packet every so often to the main update servers and all the mirrors but such a simple program would be beyond these idjits. Of course if they did that they would probably send the packet with the wrong port number.
What they did is exactly like monitoring one google server and using that as a metric for the entire Google system. Does that make it clear how idiotic they are or do you need a drawing in crayon for you to understand it?
Of course since you work for the biggest pack of amateurs in the world, what these clowns did must seem cutting edge.
Knock of your peacemaker routine, When you are off your meds you are the biggest flamer this side of Boy George.
A proper test would have been to set up a continuous dummy update routine for each, then probe the update systems... but apparently that seemed like too much work for the 'professionals' at Pingdom.
Does it matter since MS takes its sweet ass time pushing security updates out the door? Getting MS to even admit there is a problem takes a few months, then a few more months for a fix. That is what is important.
OSS fixes come in just days or even hours after it gets reported and is pushed out the door then, not on the second Tuesday of the next month.
Lastly, having the patch does no good unless it can be deployed. For most users on this website, their only concern is their single desktop, so deployment and change management issues are not a concern, but if they were, Apple and Microsoft do all of the work in advance to provide a commercially reasonable effort to make sure that your desktop will function in whole after a patch. Is it always 100%? No. But with OSS, you absolutely cannot assume that a fix for Apache is not going to impact MySQL. You cannot assume that a code fix using Perl for the Linux Kernel is not going to impact other OSS dependent apps.
Apple on the other hand does not even rate the severity of their patches and they are often discovered by outside researchers. Apple then usually responds within 82 days after being embarrassed in public by some lab or researcher.
I would argue that OSS requires more know-how ( I use Slackware) than your average user compared to Windows or Apple. So, I would say that getting the patch to market is important and commercial software tends to do that in a more coordinated manner than OSS, but since OSS users tend to be more knowledgeable, they often are more guarded against any vunerability in the first place. They are less dependent on having someone else do the work for them.
There are a variety of websites that watch and measure this activity and I think you will find that your assessment of Microsoft is somewhat unfair and your assessment of OSS a little generous.
Now if you want to argue about quality, I'm not going there. Companies should admit mistakes and be completely transparent when it impacts users. OSS believes that information is neither good or evil but that is should be shared. The idea is good on paper, I like the idea and it is appealing. But there are people that will take a vunerability that has been exposed prior to a fix being issued and create more havoc than what would have occurred with a little more confidentiality.
The Vendor of proprietary code is obviously not going to be so open or transparent about its own flaws, which, if there is a workaround before the patch, would be irresponsible on the Vendor's part. This (partially) explains why Windows is so drop-easy to penetrate and zombify.
This is really unbelievable, even by CNET's MSFT-cheerleading standards:
To draw a connection between update server availability and "OS update reliability" is more than a stretch, it's a misrepresentation.
For the record I use Vista, and the updating has been shaky at best on my end: In the first 6 months or so, while I still had the default auto-update set to ON, Vista managed to disable my paid/legal copy of MS Word during a nightly update, with no clear recourse on how to fix it (tried all of the MS Office patches, nothing worked).
Vista SP 1 finally brought it back, only by then I had long switched to the free and very handy OpenOffice Writer, really the only MS Office product I use anymore is Powerpoint.
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/alexschleber
Are we visiting the same site? Cause I could have swore 80% of the time, cnet reads like an Apple fanboy blog.
and.. how come this site refuses to "remember me" even though I always check the "remember me" box?
No, it has nothing to do with cookie, it is a bug with FF2 and FF3 at the very least. Even if you accept cookies.
Ubuntu's updates are mirrored so what's the problem there?
How long does it take for Microsoft to admit they have a problem, then fix it? That's the real test - how long (in hours) does a user of a particular OS have to wait after a security risk (with a given severity rating) is found before the update is available (on average)? That's a proper test. Technically this figure should be multiplied by the number of vulnerabilities of this class there were in the given period. Then the results might be worth reporting.
One could argue that Microsoft needs a more reliable update server because they have to issue so many updates. I won't comment on the reasons for this, but they are many, and not just the typical Microsoft hater that thinks everything Microsoft sucks. Although quality is an issue very often.
Damn those pesky Ubuntu folk's for offering me an OS that costs me my band width & a disk formatted in I.S.O.
And that arrogant Apple company for making me download massively rewritten updates for a prospective error in the OS.
"Ah - I take it you're referring to the recent 53MB download just so that you can add a half-dozen words to Vista's internal English dictionary?"
Perhaps they added the term 'FUD'- something you are actively spreading now? Heh.
It seems that MSFT, in a blazing show of incompetence, has no mechanism for simply patching a few words into an existing dictionary system, but instead requires you to download the entire thing every time you update it. (and to be honest, 56.3 MB for a dictionary, when you could do the exact same thing on a couple of floppies back in the old days? That's just massive bloat, folks...)
10.5.1 . . . 10.5.2 . . . 10.5.3 . . . 10.5.4 . . .
More: "It's only been a month since Mac OS X 10.5.3 came out, and today we have Mac OS X 10.5.4. As far as I can tell, Apple has never released operating system patches so close together. That's a clear sign that something wasn't quite right with 10.5.3 ? as indeed, there has been with Leopard in general. . . . I've also never seen a Mac OS X update that had so few changes."
. . . or am I being obtuse? You Mactoids just kill me ;-)
This article is total idiocy, nothing new for CNET.
Sad.
And I fell for it too! We're all guilty in this one folks. By commenting, we are rewarding this sort of 'journalism'.
Read the article instead of the title? It might help you understand what the article was about.
I'll agree that the article and title are misleading when you read the blog entry that led to it, but your knee-jerk Microsoft hatred comments didn't help things either. You only added to the problem instead of helping dispel the confusion surrounding it. This is why you have the reputation of a troll here, and one that you really need to work on.
When you have something besides ad-hominem to respond with, please reply. Until then, get back to the kids' table - the adults are talking here. ;)
And then to put up a graph with a BIG old bar for Ubuntu as if the service never worked.
More FUD!
Regardless, this update is pointless. Ubuntu updates are mostly updates for non-crucial components, and few are security related.
Who cares about the update servers?? If not available, try latter .. puff.
I KNOW I am not the only one who is scratching their heads, and going "Huh?"
This "twist" of a report is so obviously sponsored by Microsoft, and yet it still begs the question as to "why on earth did they bother?". Quite frankly, just how DID they measure this? Weren't there a series of delays, and hold ups concerning the prior updates? Just what the heck does this all mean (the pipe is open, therefore it's more reliable ..., not that it matters that no one had any problems on the other pipes [Ubuntu, and Apple]).
I think this report is just going to backfire like a smelly fart.
EDITORIAL REVIEW
Retards... Microsoft software is total crap!!!!
Now in regards to PC configurations, yeah, Windows has a larger variety than, say, OSX to deal with. OTOH, OSX isn't the only alternative game in town. ;)
At one time, Windows NT had a special build for DEC/Alpha. Since DEC sold off to Compaq and Alpha instructions got filtered down to Intel and AMD, there was no longer a need to keep supporting a dead processor. Sure there are still Alpha based systems out there, but do you really think those people running them are going to want to install XP/Vista/OSX on them? Leave Alpha for Open/VMS which is where it shines.
Who cares if MS uptime is 100% or it is dog slow fixing anything and the fixes always break 3 things?
Fanboys are frikken idiotic.
Microsoft update servers run on UNIX/ Linux
A study that neglected the entire update system is credible?
Only if you are a technically illiterate idiotic MS fanboy.
Yes I know that who sentence is redundant.
But, pointing-out obvious PROPAGANDA, and FUD (if, not, outright lies)... does NOT make you a "fanboy" for the other side.
This report/assertion is complete HOGWASH. And, not acknowledging that fact (or why it is, so-clearly, being done)... is simply foolish.
I AM a MS user mate, not happy about it by company bound. And even I know this is rubbish. Maybe it is my university degree, or maybe it is because I am doing marketing nowadays every day and I recognise when I see it.
It think it is great to see that some people are so passionate about something. And I also regret that it seems to be culture nowadays that others tell us what we need. Ubuntu seems to work. I don't have it first hand, but they say so. Others say that MS works. That is fine for them too then. It doens't for me, but if it does for you, great. I guess that is why you bought it. So why not let each other be and not slaundering others? Could be the beginning of world peace... But I guess that doesn't look so good in the YTD. Because realise, if we really did it for efficacy and productivity, then I could still use my 086 PC and the WordPerfect version that fitted on on 5.25.
So who is pulling whoese cart, and how is rubbing hands?
O and for those who didn't realise... Did you really think CNet did not make any money? Or sell ads and editorials for money? That is how the world works. So be smarter and start acting like an adult with a brain...
- by CodyT07 July 11, 2008 7:53 PM PDT
- This really isn't a fair article, I joined just to reply to this as I have been using Ubuntu for a week now.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (80 Comments)Unless you are some huge company like Microsoft, you cannot always have a 100% uptime for a whole year for a server. Microsoft can afford to have hundreds of servers running to update and what not. Ubuntu is not a huge company like microsoft so they are doing the best they can.