What OS is Micro$oft running?

October 17, 2001 9:09 PM

What OS is Micro$oft running? A poll of what OS' run in Microsoft's netblock, and their rank by uptime. Besides the fact that Hotmail was on FreeBSD for awhile [before M$ took them over], this was surprising.
posted by plemeljr (18 comments total)

Wow...i cannot wait untill i am out of my dorm room so i will have room to set up the old computer and run Linux...i have an HP laptop w/ ME, and there're driver problems when installing new OS's to the point same MAJOR hardware won't be found. stupid non-generic hardware.
posted by jmd82 at 10:23 PM on October 17, 2001

What's so surprising that they primarily run their own products? It's a heck of a lot easier to get a Windows system not to crash if you know how to set it up properly and you're not multitasking.

My guess is the reason netgames and those other 8 or 10 non-M$ ones aren't on Windows is that whatever those pages are serving is probably served up better on a non-windows system. windows.com is on windows...

oh, and jmd82 - if you don't want driver problems, you should have bought a Mac :)
posted by phoenix enflamed at 10:38 PM on October 17, 2001

Hey, you spelled Microsoft with a dollar sign in it! Get it? Because they have a lot of money! Get it? That's fucking awesome.
posted by anildash at 11:19 PM on October 17, 2001

thanx, phoenix =)
posted by jmd82 at 11:30 PM on October 17, 2001

(sorry to double post, BUT) do i sense some resentment of some sort on your part, anildash?
posted by jmd82 at 11:31 PM on October 17, 2001

Err, hotmail was always Microsoft, they chose to use BSD for obvious reasons. I'd hate to see some corporate policy dictate everything migrate to MS only products when they aren't the best tools for the job. In fact I think hotmail still is mostly BSD.
posted by skallas at 12:32 AM on October 18, 2001

So...::cough::...weary...can't muster...sarcastic....reply.

Oh wait, that was sarcasm.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 1:04 AM on October 18, 2001

My mistake, hotmail wasn't owned by MS until 1995.
posted by skallas at 1:08 AM on October 18, 2001

M$ is also the BASIC syntax for a generic character string named M. BASIC was intimately tied to the origins of Microsoft. Thus, SET M$="Microsoft".

It's a typical geek (jargon file) kind of thing, you see. It was merely a convenient coincidence that it also played into the money aspect.

(I'm sure that Anil knows this. I'm just being a tool.)

phoenix: the clear implication is that even Microsoft can't keep their own systems running longer than Linux machines, on average.
posted by dhartung at 1:28 AM on October 18, 2001

Hmmm... so let me see: the server (server pool probably) for windows.com has 75% less average uptime than the server for www5.ut.ngworldstats.com? And this is bad for Microsoft how exactly?
posted by costas at 1:33 AM on October 18, 2001

Is it not surprising that none of those servers are running NT, or am I missing something?
posted by twistedonion at 1:42 AM on October 18, 2001

Windows 2000 is far more stable than Windows NT ever was. Nobody should be running NT for anymore (MeFi is hosted on Win2K). Microsoft must have already migrated all of the NT servers to Win2K.

The fact that the top of the chart is dominated by *nix machines goes to show how much catching up M$ has to do before their OS is really appropriate for mission-critical servers.
posted by Loudmax at 2:50 AM on October 18, 2001

Excuse me for being a bit ignorant (mac user who has very little interest in Microsoft), but is NT not their Server Platform - Is it now redundant, or do they still develop it?
posted by twistedonion at 3:42 AM on October 18, 2001

Thought I was reading /. for a minute there.
posted by tippiedog at 3:46 AM on October 18, 2001

twistedonion: windows 2000 is essentially NT version 5, they just changed the name

its a desktop os too, a very stable one (by their standards)
posted by sawks at 4:29 AM on October 18, 2001

Thanks sawks
posted by twistedonion at 6:13 AM on October 18, 2001

Still, they run more Linux boxes than I thought they would by now. I've heard that Win2K is a big stability improvement, I figured they'd have quickly migrated to that by now. Not to be too OT, but what's the deal with all their Apache servers beeing 1.3.9? I'm not very quick to upgrade and I'm running 1.3.12 (development & production) and 1.3.20 (development only).

I notice they're not running PHP [evil grin]. Their loss on that one.
posted by wheat at 8:28 AM on October 18, 2001

Ford buys some chevys and hondas and subarus, and goes through them with a fine toothed comb.

Same thing here, in some respects.
posted by yesster at 11:42 AM on October 18, 2001