[TheGeezer]

I don't use Linux anywhere, but as a DBA and CNA I am under the impression that Linux is very stable and is great for hosting databases. Isn't Novell about to go all-SUSE, running Netware NDS, basically, on SUSE-Linux hosts? Is the author a Microsoft mole?

[isthisnickcool]

Way back when we used SCO on Intel we ran into Linus and watched the initial development around his core. It was fun back then to see Linux grow. To watch all the activity on the old IRC. I think this was about 1991.

After a few years Linux became a pretty stable OS. I've never had a kernel panic from a Linux box. We once had one old Slackware system with and external DPT raid array run without a reboot for almost 3 years. And it was under load all the time. The drives were constantly spinning.

FreeBSD is good stuff. We built some of out first firewall/NAT machine using it. FreeBSD is solid. So is the latest Microsoft server stuff for that matter.

Linux "arrived" a long time ago in Internet time. Heck the post office gas been using it for OCR scanning for YEARS.

[tortoise]

I don't use Linux anywhere, but as a DBA and CNA I am under the impression that Linux is very stable and is great for hosting databases.

Yes, that is definitely one of its strong points and it is extremely popular for large-scale enterprise database systems. Linux scales well to very large hardware, has strong support for high-performance and scalable filesystems (XFS,LVM2,etc), and is well-supported by the vendors of the kind of hardware you use for large enterprise databases.

For big Oracle or Postgres installations, Linux will stay up and perform very well for as long as the hardware does. I've never had Linux fail on database servers, and many of the ones I deal with have been operating non-stop for a couple years. Solaris is another good OS choice for a database server, but it has fallen out of favor because Sparc hardware is a performance dog.

[N3WBI3]

Linux ios enterprise capable, we run our very expensive Oracle Databases on it, and our BEA web application platform. Gives me fine uptime and good performance. Its not the best *NIX in the world but when you look at all aspects (performance, price, software availability, portability, and customization) its up there..