--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, "k_smith_000"
<k_smith_000@y...> wrote:

>
> Hello,
> According to Firebird Survey 2005 more than 60% percent of deployed FB
> servers were running on Windows. I'm just curious why so many
> developers chosen Windows, while there is free and open source linux
> (which is recommended for DB servers by Oracle and IBM).
>

It is only free if you do not have to buy a dedicated machine to host
the database and you do not have to employ or train someone to use
whatever breed of linux you fancy. For a "windows shop", it can be
quite expensive to switch totally to Linux, but it is definately a
plus to have the option of linux.

Actually, given that Windows is on 90%+ of business desktops, 40% non
windows (of which most will be linux) is not too bad at all.

Compare the installation process between the two.

> Personally I'm using Firebird with Linux, but unfortunately I don't
> have any experience with these database on Linux. The only thing I
> know is that while SuperServer runs smoothly on Windows, it's
> recommended to use Classis architecture on Linux.
>

Linux has relatively lightweight processes, so the classic model works
quite well. With Windows, there was no classic model until 1.5, and it
has only very recently lost the official "experimental" tag.

Superserver has some pluses like a shared cache, but it does not take
use of multi processor systems, and in fact can be hampered by them.

> Have you carried out any Firebird performance test on linux and windows?

On windows yes, but not comparing it to linux. I don't imagine the
benchmarks themselves will be a whole lot different, providing the
swap and sorting space is on a different volume, both can be
configured to high performance.

> I'm especially interested in test carried on big databases (~4GB) on
> multiprocessor machines.
>

In your case, you want to run Classic Server. You at least have the
option to use both, whatever is most convenient for your specific
customer.

Adam