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Linux Last in Deja Network OS Poll 150

Posted by Roblimo from the take-it-with-a-big-grain-of-salt dept.
Kwikymart writes "A poll on Deja News of network operating system rates Linux dead last in all catagories. Funny thing is it rates the same number (1.7) in all the catagories (Scalability, Reliability, Administration and Cost). Looks like somebody that doesn't like Linux sure likes to write perl scripts!" That "somebody" also seems to like GNU Hurd a whole bunch; it was the top-rated network OS. ;-)
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Linux Last in Deja Network OS Poll More

Linux Last in Deja Network OS Poll

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  • What's the point in spamming webpolls? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Maybe I'm just getting old, but what's the point in stuffing the web.ballot.box? I don't think anyone takes these
    polls seriously, and most of them seem to be vulnerable to trivial attacks. It's a low-skill hack on a low-value
    asset, so I can't see anybody scoring major reputation points by doing this.

    Actually, if you wander over to Daemon News' article "BSD Rated Number 1 OS" [daemonnews.org], you'll find that the *BSD people took that poll quite seriously (at least when we were winning it ;-). Of course, people tried to point out there what crap it was too, but didn't seem to get anywhere.

  • doh (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is one of the weaker poll systems I've seen. Once you've submitted a mark, you can sit on the "refresh" button and the same mark is entered again, and again, and again... I bet micro$oft use the result in one of their publicity/linux-bashing campaigns.

  • Re:What's the point in spamming webpolls? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Look at Cnet and Corel. Corel spent weeks [likely still are] touting the fact that Corel Linux and Wordperfect for Linux were the #1 and #2 downloads from Cnet. The stock price rallied on the news. Hell I didn't even know you could get Linux stuff from Cnet. But it doesn't take much to get the weak minded to run out and buy based on the hype. If you need proof just look at all the people who lined up to buy Win/98. A defective product to replace a defective product.

  • Linux Possibly Defamed Somewhere (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm reminded of the Suck parody. Merely posting the story seems like a waste of energy. Must be a slow news day, eh?

  • Who the hell cares? (Score:3)

    by zztzed ( 279 ) on Saturday January 01, 2000 @07:33AM (#1424214)

    Okay, so maybe I'm just crabby and bitter(er than usual) because of all the idiots in my neighborhood playing with fireworks till 3:30 in the morning preventing me from sleeping, but honestly, who gives a damn if Linux is last in Deja.com's network OS poll? How is this news? The world's not going to end because of it. The sun will continue to shine, the earth will continue to spin, and LIFE WILL GO ON.

    ...But like I said, maybe I'm just bitter.

  • Actually, it should be:

    if ($post eq 'not funny') { # Do whatever }

    but seeing as that's perl, it can be pretty much anything it wants to be. :)


    bash: ispell: command not found
  • Last. Well, that's it, I'm fdisk'ing all my systems and installing the "unstoppable" Windows NT. I'd install Hurd, but I like my bugs professionally programmed, thank you.

    BTW, the unnamed catagory linux seemed to have scored first in is being consitent. :)

    if (post == 'not funny") {

    &Re-read(@slashdot);
    } # That or I'm just drunk atm!

    David

    bash: ispell: command not found

  • possible /. bug? (Score:3)

    by Elvii ( 428 ) <david1975.comcast@net> on Saturday January 01, 2000 @03:40AM (#1424217) Homepage
    As I type this, the last article (Am I Alone) has a sid of 00/01/01. This article, posted later, seem to have a sid of 99/12/31 ? Though the intro line bit does say 4:10 am, jan 1 2000, hmm....

    Had a few to drink, but double checked these numbers... right as of 5:40 pst... maybe /. needs more y2k checking. :)

    bash: ispell: command not found
  • What is this? Looks like perl to me. http://slashdot.org/code.shtml [slashdot.org]


  • /. automatically inserts spaces in long things with no spaces to stop people screwing up the formatting on purpose; unfortunately this can break URLs. Take out that space and it'll work...
    --
  • Try Dejafilter, available at http://industrialsoftworks.com/dejaf ilter.php3 [industrialsoftworks.com].
    It's a nice Perl script which filters out all the great "features" which Deja likes to put in their pages.
  • Yep, and a Lamborghini is faster than my car, but it's not as reliable, and is a more effective way of killing yourself faster.

    In other words, I'd lose in a race with a Lamborghini, but my repair bill and hospital bills will be lower, and possibly a longer life span. UNIX/Linux/Hurd has reliability to offer; if you value speed over reliability, you can sit around rebooting your NT and Macintosh boxes all day. I prefer an operating system I can leave running a year or so.
  • AMEN TO THAT!!!! It's not a GNU project, and the GNU project doesn't own the trademark.

    Anyways, Linux would probably end up being LESS free then, probably some non-free artwork attached to it (look up icons on www.gnustep.org)...
  • You own an INTERNET???? Good golly, yer a great one. :^)

    "Hay Cletus, I think mah Internet's broke!"
  • For a search of Linux, as an example, see how this clean little hack works [deja.com] compared to this usual dejanews search [deja.com].
  • Ok, we all know web polls are worthless. But Deja is trying to pass itself off now as a source for hardware/software reviews, and the average user is going to look at that poll and say "Gee, Linux must not be that great after all" without even reading the comments, which are mostly positive.

    Unfortunately the way the comments are posted, it's hard to refute some of the FUD that's been inserted in there because there is no opportunity to answer a specific review, because you don't know where your reply would even end up in the sequence.

    Deja needs to take a hard look at their polling system and work out these kinds of issues if they want people to take it seriously. Perhaps even a form of user moderation ala Slashdot is in order here.
  • Windows is the incumbent candidate. Microsoft doesn't need to push as hard because they already have momentum and presence.
  • ...nothing is perfect, certainly not epinions.

    Lots of people like Deja. Some don't. Life goes on.

    I also think the whole interface could use some work. A lot of people also think this. We are aware of it. We are working on it. These things take time. You can't just toss out all of the UI without either a) taking lots of time to rewrite it or b) losing a lot of functionality.

  • Speaking as a Deja.com employee... (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coed ( 8203 ) <planders@gmai l . c om> on Saturday January 01, 2000 @06:36AM (#1424228)
    A few points.

    1. We love Linux. The site is run almost exclusively on Linux and all the techies have a KDE or other Linux desktop to do development work.

    2. We are well aware that it is possible to spam the rating votes. Thank you for revealing this huge, well guarded secret! We might as well fold up and close the site down due to this amazing detective work. {/sarcasm}

    3. We do in fact have robot-vote-scrubbing software, and these votes against Linux will probably be detected as robotic before long and removed from the system. That's just my guess, it's not really my department.

    4. If you're using Deja ratings to decide which MP3 player or toaster to buy, great. That's really what they're designed for. If you're using a simple 4-category self-selected numerical vote to determine which NOS to deploy across your enterprise, you need to have your head examined.

    5. We may not have many 'Deja only' forums to discuss Linux in, but we certainly carry comp.os.linux.*!

  • Last time I looked at one of these, it had all sorts of absurdities such as BeOS being rated above Windows 95 for application availability etc. Okay, it could have been a BeOS fan vote-stuffing but more likely it's just a combination of people not thinking at all carefully, wishful thinking (at least where Be apps are concerned) and total subjectivity of the assessments. It's like trying to describe pain to your doctor - "it's sorta like really sore, about here, feels kinda a dull pain" - your description of exactly the same pain probably isn't going to match anybody else's.

    Plus the fact that with the obscure operating systems, the only people likely to be voting are the BIG fans of those OS's...this will skew results even more.

  • 4. If you're using Deja ratings to decide which MP3 player or toaster to buy, great. That's really what they're designed for. If you're using a simple 4-category self-selected numerical vote to determine which NOS to deploy across your enterprise, you need to have your head examined.

    Then why bother with the poll at all? It can be trivially spammed, and serves no purpose.

  • I think the accuracy of this poll is summed up by the fact that I just gave BSD a rating, and it immediately jumped up to #1.

    One doofus reloading over and over until Linux comes up, then entering "1" on all categories, can affect a lot of change in the standings. Ignore it.
  • If you read the comments posted by the participants of the poll then the stopy looks different.

    The general opinion is that Linux is the best OS! I guess that somebody from the Evil Empire run a bot that scored Linux down - or we are dealing with a bad case of Y2K bug :-)

  • Huh? (Score:1)

    by Zico ( 14255 )

    NT is absolutely slaughtering Linux in the e-commerce market. Perhaps you haven't noticed, but most people don't want to make their own server to get things done. That's why Microsoft is cleaning up the e-commerce market with all the e-commerce tools available for NT, while Linux is just reinventing the wheel. Obviously, all those customers don't have problems with NT stability -- and that's because they're actually using it instead of getting their information from a Slashdot script kiddie who claims that he gets a BSOD everyday.

    And really now, uptime? This is such a canard. Those of us who keep up with the latest improvements are happy to reboot to use a new kernel. Which do you think is more important to businesses: using a more mature kernel, or masturbating while they type "uptime" over and over?

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • Maybe it's because places like Linux Today and Slashdot obsess over polls and steer people to them, as this article shows. It's a pretty sad and embarrassing inferiority complex if you ask me.

    I don't remember any Windows newsletters/websites/etc. ever telling people to go vote in "Best OS" polls to inflate Windows's numbers. Perhaps they're just happier with their choice and don't need a web poll to help reassure them that they didn't make a bad decision, like Linux, OS/2, and Mac users apparently do.

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • The fact that there are so many readers from Slashdot with an interest in seeing development tools ported to Linux is evidence enough that there is a market. A lot of people who post here seem to think that the general Slashdot reader is a 12 year old with a $5/week allowance. Well, news flash, a lot of us have both personal and professional purchase power.

  • Maybe /. should stop posting links to polls (Score:3)

    by Skinka ( 15767 ) on Saturday January 01, 2000 @07:43AM (#1424236)
    Ok, maybe this poll was way unaccurate (or maybe not), but sending 10000 Linux zealots to "correct" the poll is not going to make it any better. Every time slashdot links to a poll the results get skewed and the poll becomes worthless. Remember when Inprise/Borland did their poll of if their development tools should be ported to Linux? They had to disregard most of the votes that came in after slashdot had linked. And this was not a poll about who is your favorite Pokemon character, but valuable market research.
  • How is it possible that HURD gets rated over everything else. That simply makes no sense.
  • According to Deja.Com pool Microsoft NT Server is the best Network Operating System [deja.com] Linux is the worst. This is in sharp contrast with pool for the Operating System [deja.com], where Linux ranks best and all Microsoft product lags at the tail. I don't think that both pools can be honest. Looks like BSD script kiddie rather than Redmondians.

  • Re:It's only a poll! (Score:3)

    by Oates ( 18921 ) on Saturday January 01, 2000 @04:24AM (#1424239) Homepage
    My wife did that. Once in Nov-Dec 98 and again in Nov-Dec 99.

    Her biggest complaint about Linux in '98 was that it didn't have a lot of the software she considers essential (Eudora, AIM, ICQ) and many features of the software she tried (Tk/TOC for AIM, early GICQ, KMail and Netscape Mail) were missing.

    A year later (and an eMachine bought in March), GICQ is still missing a few features, but it looks and feels a little more like ICQ from Windows. GAIM is a decent replacement for AIM in her opinion, and she's using TkRat for e-mail.

    Her biggest complaint today is that KDE doesn't feel consistent--really, she's complaining because Netscape uses its own Motif-like widgets, GAIM and GICQ use GTK widgets, and TkRat uses Tk widgets.

    Arghhh! Now, she wants an iMac. The reason: everything will look and feel consistent, and she'll be able to use Eudora again, official versions of ICQ and AIM, and she can even get IRC and MUD clients for it. Oh, and she wants the eMachine to turn back into a Windows box so she can use Microsoft Publisher again. Ironically, she doesn't want to use OS 9--she wants Mac OS X with the BSD core.

    In summary, her end-user testing said that for Internet power-users, Linux/Mandrake 6.1 isn't up to snuff...yet. But it's a hell of a lot more usable and closer than it was a year ago.

    Me? I'm waiting until her Mac starts crashing and I get to put Yellow Dog on it.

    Chris
  • He doesn't care about the poll. He does care about whether people think the poll matters.
  • In an article [linuxtoday.com] on Linux Today, someone commented [linuxtoday.com] that Linux would win even a poll with just two buttons: "Linux" and "Microsoft". To test this, I setup a poll [clan.net]. The only place I have advertized it is in a Linux Today comment, and (for fairness) a ZDNET NT forum.

    Note: my DNS is currently down. Use my IP address. [24.226.17.33]

  • Sorry, it was an MSN forum [msn.com]. Close enough :)

    One of these days I might do a more detailed analysis on the results page, like where the voters came from, and vote vs. browser/os.. So far, approximately, voters have come from:

    • Linux Today: 52
    • MSN: 23
    • slashdot (today's comment): 70
  • Sure, but it was a Windows NT forum. Besides which I really don't care if it's statistically valid. I just posted it there to give both sides a reasonably equal opportunity. Of course all that has now gone to pot given my posting here..
  • the ratings are usually messed up big time since

    deja sucks balls
  • Shouldn't that be

    while (post == 'not funny") {

  • Someone who does like Linux seems to like Perl scripts, too. Well, it could also be a "human Perl script", consisting of a few thousand Slashdot readers who think it's important to vote there.
  • 4. If you're using Deja ratings to decide which MP3 player or toaster to buy, great. That's really what they're designed for.

    Sorry to say that, but if you're using the Deja ratings to decide anything, you're just plain stupid. Even without someone intentionally pushing the result he wants, there's just no real substance in there. You could as well ask the next person on the street, "Which toaster should I buy?" and base your decision on that.

  • What is deja trying to be?
    I mean, I know it's a way to search usenet
    but looking at it's front page tells you nothing.
    They're trying to pass off as a new portal
    and hide their main asset which no other portal anywhere has.
    I mean, does it look like the search box will do anything useful like search every usenet post?
    No, it looks like it does piss all.

  • > Hey, a non-drunk-sounding post ;-)

    Why thank you :)
    It just annoys me that sites are trying to be jack of all trades, when really they should just be concentrating on the one thing they can do well.
  • Go figure women :)

  • Comment removed (Score:5)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday January 01, 2000 @10:43AM (#1424251)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Just for completeness's sake -- what's the address of the zdnet NT forum where you advertised it?

  • But do you think the fact that a Deja poll has been polluted is considered "News for nerds, stuff that matters"?! If you do think that this is stuff that matters you probably had too much champagne on new years eve ;)

  • The "value" of Deja ratings (Score:3)

    by StenD ( 34260 ) on Saturday January 01, 2000 @03:31AM (#1424254)
    All this "poll" demonstrates is that Deja ratings, just like any other poll where the pollees select themselves, is essentially meaningless, especially when the tally can be trivially stuffed.

    In a different arena, Comics Buyers Guide used to permit anyone to vote for their annual awards using copies of their ballot. This lasted until the year of the Duckslide, when Carl Barks fans openly stuffed the ballot box and won all but one of the categories (Barks didn't have any painted comics published that year). As a result, they now require you to use the original ballot from the CBG. The ballot can still be stuffed, by buying large quantities of the CBG, just like reliable polls can be rigged by careful wording and ordering of questions. Open voting is a nice idea, but it's trivial to abuse, and we really don't need to get worked up over it.
  • I don't think so. Visual J++ was rightfully listed as the worst Java environment on Deja.com. Now it seems they've move J++ from a Java environment to Windows development environments which is more appropriate, at it is second to last there [deja.com]. The Borland/Inprise environments are listed as the best. Even MS C++ is rated very low (I would agree after reading benchmarks in a recent Linux Journal). So, I doubt is MS is flooding Deja.com pools with good comments!
  • All this "poll" demonstrates is that Deja ratings, just like any other poll where the pollees select themselves, is essentially meaningless, especially when the tally can be trivially stuffed.

    Also the poll "results" don't tally well with the comments of the "voters"
  • Actually, I'm not sure if you meant this to be funny...it's usually a good idea to check out newsgroups to find out if there are any problems with something before you buy it, and I usually do use deja to get "word-on-the-street" info.
  • As I'm looking at this site, I see an alarming, well I don't know what it is but--Linux seems to have about the same number of ratings as NT, with all the other NOSes with half or less the amount of votes. Now it's obvious that /.ers have pushed Linux up and pushed NT down. However, I would say that only people who have actually used a particular OS rate it, and that people who have used OSes other than Linux and NT also rate those other OSes. From what I see, it's obvious a bunch of people that love Linux have gotten together to rate it up, and a bunch of people that hate NT have rated it down, however if any of you have used the other OSes on that list there, it would be nice to see them rated as well.

    Chris Hagar
  • That's not the reason the poll becomes meaningless. The poll becomes meaningless because an inordinate amount of Linux users go to the poll. An accurate poll has an even weight from random people, not from a bunch of people who only like Linux.
    I do wish I could project my high (read: low) reasoning but I'm just not too good at outlining my ideas well. Therefore, I believe none of you will understand what in the world I'm saying ;)

    Chris Hagar
  • I agree completely, and if I had any moderator points, I would moderate you up more. I hope the moderators do the same. I think this sort of thing has to change--or at least have good ol' Roblimo say 'this has got to stop' or something.

    Chris Hagar
  • I agree. The problem is, I know people who actually *check* the Deja ratings to see what others think of things. I mean, sure, everyone on /. knows how easy it is to rig these, to write a script to vote again and again for your favorite (John Linnell one of the most beautiful people, anyone?), but your Average Joe or Jane doesn't.

    I guess I shouldn't care about it, I just find it frustrating that something so utterly useless in terms of providing actual information, but which purports to provide useful information for people making choices, should exist. 'Course, I guess, half the things that are supposed to tell you what to buy are rigged anyway....
  • Arghhh! Now, she wants an iMac. The reason: everything will look and feel consistent, and she'll be able to use Eudora again, official versions of ICQ and AIM, and she can even get IRC and MUD clients for it.

    You might want to re-think that :) The Mac is a good machine in it's place, but the ICQ version is WAY WAY WAY lagged behind the mainstream versions, and the IRC clients lack a lot.

    We use ICQ and IRC a lot in our work at girl2 [girl2.com] so the girls can talk to people and the MAC system has real trouble compared to the windows boxen.

    Ken
  • Moreover, the media, should they ever catch wind of this, will surely refer to it as a `hacking incident', as they have before in similar situations. It would be unfortunate to see Freenix and hacking tied together that way.
  • It's obvious that almost everyone who voted in this poll was stoned? Linux more scalable that Irix or Solaris? Give me a break. I used to run Linux until the droves of kiddies took over the playground. Linux 1993-1999 RIP
  • Someone could type a 10,000 letter "word" with no spaces. It wouldn't have anywhere to wrap, so it'd just keep going on to the right, making the whole table extremely wide. Then, to read the other comments, you'd have to keep scrolling horizontally.
    --
  • Hey, a non-drunk-sounding post ;-)

    I have to concur ... I've told people to go to Deja on many occasions and they're befuddled because they don't know what its about by looking at the page at all....
  • I was thanked for my commenting on the "Sony Playstation"!

    Could I have started a "Sony Linuxstation" rumour? :)
  • /. automatically inserts spaces in long things with no spaces to stop people screwing up the formatting on purpose; unfortunately this can break URLs. Take out that space and it'll work...

    i don't get it.. how does letting people put long things without spaces allow users to "screw up formatting"?

    --

  • OS/2 was #1, with BSD as #2, Linux #3
    Then BSD was #1, with Linux as #4
    Then Windows was on op, BSD #2 and Linux as dead last.
    For someone who believes it doesn't matter, you seem to pay a lot of attention.
    _________________________
  • Judge Jackson would disagree with you.

    _________________________
  • http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/12/31/234221 &mode=thread

    The URL(I) linking to this story is using a very interesting date.
    I wonder if this will effect how the stories are archived at a latter date?
    Will a story search in Feb turn up a tons of stories on New years eve, and nothing in Jan and Feb?
    Just curious.
    _________________________

  • Roblimo was right when he posted the story with the following header:

    from the take-it-with-a-big-grain-of-salt dept.

    There ya go.
    _________________________

  • If you had been tracking that poll for the last weeks.

    OS/2 was #1, with BSD as #2, Linux #3
    Then BSD was #1, with Linux as #4
    Then Windows was on top, BSD #2 and Linux as dead last.

    Anyone who things that poll says ANYTHING useful, is delusional.
  • I wouldn't use Deja for recommendations on buying anything. They don't have a good system for ratings/recommendations.

    If you're looking for recommendations on lots of stuff like books, movies, computers or travel destinations, etc... go with Epinions.com

    If you sign up for Epinions.com, please use me a referral: redking

    Thanks.

  • Is it just me, or does there seem to be a lack of Linux interest on Deja in general. If you go to Home >> Computing&Tech >> Software >> Operating Systems >> Discussions [deja.com] there seems to be a zillion MS windows forums but hardly any Linux ones!

    I don't use deja, so mabye I'm just doing something wrong...

  • Maybe I'm just getting old, but what's the point in stuffing the web.ballot.box? I don't think anyone takes these polls seriously, and most of them seem to be vulnerable to trivial attacks. It's a low-skill hack on a low-value asset, so I can't see anybody scoring major reputation points by doing this.

    Ach, maybe it's just that I've been at work for 13 hours now and the only Y2K-related problem I've seen is that some kind soul turned off our NT domain controllers "just in case." Preventing all your users from logging on is one way to make sure they don't dork up the system...

    Neutron

  • And Inprise/Borland thought they were getting valid data before slashdot linked? Wow. Anyone who believes that self-selecting polls ever give valid results needs help.
  • I think one of the problems with such polls is that NT users will compare to Windows 9x, while UNIX users will compare to other UNIXes. What they should be asking is number/length of downtime the last year etc.
  • Why a -1 score? It's supposed to be funny.
  • If you set up an iMac properly, and stay away from USB CD-R drives, there's no reason it should crash at all under Mac OS 8.6 I know that OS 9 is out, but I'm still waiting for all the bug fixes to be released before I make the plunge. The iMac gets a lot of flack for being a cute machine, but it actually is pretty snappy and easy to use, once you get used to the oddly-shaped mouse, and the MacOS can be pretty damn stable, too. Unfortunately, most people don't know how to set it up properly, so they end up with extensions and control panels they don't need (QuickDraw 3D comes to mind, as does QuickTime VR) clogging up the works. Even worse, they'll install Norton Utilities, which puts in CrashGuard, the most unstable and unusable piece of software ever created. I remember when CrashGuard would crash the system (ironic, isn't it?) whenever Netscape 3's JIT Java compiler kicked in. This just gives people a bad view of Macs when they're actually really good systems.

    Oh, by the way, I don't know if there should be a follow-up or not, but someone's been spamming the Deja polls - Linux now has over 10000 votes, and has moved up to 3.3 in all categories. Also, MS Windows NT Server has even more votes, with 2.4 in each category. BSD only had about 5000. This poll seems to be getting more and more pointless as the day goes on.

  • So what if Linux doesn't perform quite as well as NT? What Linux gives is stability and uptime, which are more important for e-commerce companies. It also allows anyone to make their own server, something NT will never allow.
  • This appears to be working.

    As of 11:40 AM EST, Linux is ahead of Windows NT Server, 3.1 to 3.0. Linux has a total of 9250 votes, while NT has a total of 7483 votes. The deja.com servers are slowing to a crawl, with something like 100 votes/minute being posted to the poll. I wonder if the deja.com staff might notice the system load, and get rid of these stupid polls. Oh well, I can hope...

    Can we stop now? I'm trying to actually *use* the DejaNews search... ;-)
  • Security second to none?

    Excuse me for a minute while I take you literally - you system is not the most secure in the world.

    Your comments about proper configuration seem innocent enough, however. Keep up the good work.

  • Do I get that right?
    That poll's been made by using some simple method=get commands? Is that how people who know a lot about software, programming and operating-systems do make up their mind? Go to deja and do some clicki-clicki-stuff?
    I don't give a %$!# about that poll! I'm using whatever I think I know is best. Come on, how many of us do other polls than those on /.? ;-)
  • Linux is a jobs program for old UNIX sysadmins and wannabes. Check-out Solaris.
  • Hey people, wake up!

    If you want to measure how good an OS is, dont use polls! The stats show that linux is most voted for, so I can only draw one conclusion about it.
    Every linux-user I know says that it's the best OS they've ever used, especially the ones wyo use it as a server. So, if all people who voted for linux really used it, linux should be on top. This sure looks like voting-pollution to me!

    If you really want to measure how good an OS is than test it (okay, not a mindcraft-you-give-the-results-we-give-the-test kind of test, but a fair one). This kind of subjective polls shouldn't get as much media attention as they get now.
  • I haven't got the faintest idea :)
    I just posted it because I thought it would be fun, and I saw the moderation points rising and rising. I almost fell of my chair laughing when I saw the 'informative' :))

  • How to spoof the poll (Score:4)

    by Wizard of OS ( 111213 ) on Saturday January 01, 2000 @03:54AM (#1424289)
    Okay, take a *nix box and type:

    lynx -accept_all_cookies -source "http://www.deja.com/rate/user_rate.xp?CR1=5&CR2=5 &CR3=5&CR4=5&CID=11997&P DID=5281"

    You only have to put this in a while (1==1) loop (and remove the ~/.lynxcookies file) and withing 10 minutes linux wil be on 4.9, 4.9,4.9, 4.9 with 100.000 votes :-))

  • This just shows how biased Slashdot is towards Linux. Linux trails other operating systems in a poll that about three people will read and nobody will take seriously, and Slashdot jumps all over it as some type of anti-Linux conspiracy. This is the dumbest thing on Slashdot since that posting about Microsoft hiring Linux admins, and people thinking that Microsoft was trying to make their own Linux distribution. Wake up people. Linux isn't all that great, and Microsoft (or anything that isn't Linux) isn't all that evil. Now get the hell off my internet.
  • I followed the link to that pseudopoll but found that the numbers in your news item and the numbers posted were way different. OS/2warp was last, Linux was at 7th place and windoze nt at 11th... keep clicking:)

  • Firstly - linux is not last anymore ;) - probably due to the slashdot effect, lots of people hyped up the linux scores.

    Apart from that, the rating system used by deja is not really fair.
    Using people to rate different os-es results in people rating their os of choice high, and the other ones lower.
    This results, in turn, in people over-rating and under-rating their own and other operating systems because they can see the results already.
    A better system would be 'what is your system of choice' and give a couple of os-es to pick from (the slashdot way).
  • Well, try 3 months, no reboot.
  • Finally, someone who knows what they are talking about. It's all in how you configure your hardware and the OS. I'm not certified, but I've spent a lot of time working with NT and 3x/9x, and I'm proud to say that my boxes can stay up for months at a time, no reboots or lagging, and the security is second to none.
  • no such thing a GNU/Linux though.
  • I disagree. Deja is *the* site to go for the-word-on-the-street info about retail products.

    I always deja before I buy.
  • ...Dejanews used to be a useful USENET search engine?

    It's so clogged with feature creep (like these inane polls) now that you have to go through 2 queries just to do a simple "All newsgroups, all messages" search on a single argument. I understand the desire to avoid stagnation and add value to a site, but this is ridiculous.

    I've switched to Remarq for my newsgroup searching. They seem to understand the value of simplicity.

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