Microsoft Ahead of Apple, Ubuntu In OS Update Reliability

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The news that Microsoft is ahead of Apple and Ubuntu in operating system update reliability ought to start a fight between those faithful to the different OS camps.

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.
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I'd file this as a waste of time and a useless measurement. What good is a 100% uptime when any of the updates borks your system? LOL
 
I seriously doubt that ALL Ubuntu mirrors were down at the same time. One, sure, but that's not a big deal. I don't know anyone using any OS that checks for updates more than once a day as a matter of routine.

My Ubuntu desktop, if it's on, automatically checks for updates every day. If the update fails, I get an email about the failure and can check manually. There's never been a case where I failed to get an update within 24 hours.
 
This is a nearly useless yardstick to compare OSes by, and I lean towards Microsoft.
 
I agree.. So what if the Ubuntu service was unavailable one day? It's not like the system is going to blow up just because you delay a small update for a few hours... The only time I'm ever worried that my system is going to blow up is when I install a major update or service pack for Windows :D
 
In the article but conveniently left out of the description:
"Microsoft wins this one hands down," Pingdom said. It noted that Ubuntu's service also is available through mirror sites, however.
 
As others have said, I don't think a little bit of downtime matters, especially since Ubuntu has mirrors.

Also, I have never had a Microsoft update mess up my system since the release of XP and now Vista. I think those problems are very exaggerated.
 
The one thing that you guys have missed so far is the SCALE at which Windows/Microsoft Update works. We're talking hundreds of millions of clients. Everyone time some bashes Microsoft they always forget that they are dealing with a far larger universe on the desktop than anyone else.

I guarantee that no one else right now could handle that kind of load for the simple fact that they don't right now.
 
heatlesssun said:
If you tell me the name of the OS that doesn't need patching, I'll pay $1000 for a license if it can run Crysis!:D
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I know of one OS that doesn't need patching, but sad to say It won't run crysis, But then I guess It's not a crysis at the moment. :p ;)
 
lol this thread it ridiculous. the uptime percentage of the update servers is a completely useless metric, especially when all of the tested os's had 98%+ uptimes. :rolleyes:

in other news, the ubuntu devs eat captain crunch for breakfast more often than the apple or microsoft devs, so ubuntu is the most kid-friendly os.
 
HOCP4ME said:
As others have said, I don't think a little bit of downtime matters, especially since Ubuntu has mirrors.

Also, I have never had a Microsoft update mess up my system since the release of XP and now Vista. I think those problems are very exaggerated.
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My first attempt at installing Vista's SP1 Rendered my system useless. I had to reformat losing my 240GB of information.
 
ßeta;1032739114 said:
My first attempt at installing Vista's SP1 Rendered my system useless. I had to reformat losing my 240GB of information.
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So it's Microsoft's fault you lost 240gb worth of data? Anyone with half a brain should know to back up their hard drive before attempting a major update.
 
ßeta;1032739114 said:
My first attempt at installing Vista's SP1 Rendered my system useless. I had to reformat losing my 240GB of information.
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Sorry for you loss. You do understand that you should

1) Make backups of data
2) Keep data on a separate drive from the OS
 
heatlesssun said:
Sorry for you loss. You do understand that you should

1) Make backups of data
2) Keep data on a separate drive from the OS
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Saving up for another hard drive right now:D
Now i keep my important stuff on a 60GB external that was taken from a broken laptop.:cool:
 
Azhar said:
So it's Microsoft's fault you lost 240gb worth of data? Anyone with half a brain should know to back up their hard drive before attempting a major update.
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Seeing as they took it off auto update the day after I guess they noticed when this was happening to quite a few people.
 
Apparently I need 100% uptime to keep this bloated fat pig of a mouse manager working properly.
 
Seeing as they took it off auto update the day after I guess they noticed when this was happening to quite a few people
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never trust on major updates going smoothly, even on other systems it happens, that's why you should backup important data :), in honesty, if there was a problem with your OS, it should have just fuxored the OS, a simple reinstall about 99% of the time fixes things, but your experience of formatting the whole drive seems to indicate something is really wrong not with just the Microsoft, but with your drive in the first place :)

anyway, it just makes sense M$ would have a reliable update system compared to others, they started in the OS business with one of the most unreliable and easily broken systems(viruses, exploits,stuff), that resulted in why they strived and prioritize on improving their systems, especially on how fast they could update windows if a problem is found, apple & other platforms, had little problems with this in the past, since the audience was too small for exploiters to have any interest in them, thus - the notion "most secure & reliable OS systems" nomenclature was born" , M$'s global dominance in the OS field was their biggest success & also their biggest challenge at the same time, the more you are known, the more stupid users there are using your software, the more idiotic people still who try to break it up.

If you ask me, if Apple was on M$'s shoes, or any other platform having a wider audience, they too would experience what troubles M$. :p
 
heatlesssun said:
The one thing that you guys have missed so far is the SCALE at which Windows/Microsoft Update works. We're talking hundreds of millions of clients. Everyone time some bashes Microsoft they always forget that they are dealing with a far larger universe on the desktop than anyone else.

I guarantee that no one else right now could handle that kind of load for the simple fact that they don't right now.
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This comes to mind often when people bash some random Windows Update not working correctly with some random system. The number of clients Microsoft serves in a single day through it's update site is likely larger than Ubuntu does in months, and likely the same for Apple in comparison to Microsoft as well. While I can give the Ubuntu guys a break as I've never had an issue with their updates and there are nearly always a alternative mirror... it's Apple I frown on. The company that updates strict platforms of controller hardware and has any issues is beyond me. The simple fact is the difficultly of maintaining Windows is so massively greater than OSX or Ubuntu its sometimes laughable to even compare them.
 
I've lost count of the number of times Microsoft Update has timed out on me while checking for updates. Always seems to be on patch Tuesday. Funny that. xD
 
it's definitely his connection. WindowsUpdate uses BIT technology. Chances of timing out on all their servers are pretty slim to none.
 
Could be. A bit strange that it only happens on patch Tuesday and only on the Microsoft Update site though. :)
 
I use Ubuntu on my laptop - to me, this is a useless benchmark. Ubuntu looks better and runs 90% as well as Windows does, while not nearly as compatible game-wise, I can handle dual booting for games when i have a perfectly functional free OS for everything else.
 
ßeta;1032739114 said:
My first attempt at installing Vista's SP1 Rendered my system useless. I had to reformat losing my 240GB of information.
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That was someone's fault, and it was NOT Microsoft's. If you lose data to a borked OS install, the problem lies with you. A hard disk can ALWAYS be thrown in a USB enclosure, hooked up to another computer, and have the data off it recovered. Even if you were a moron and formatted the disk, it's still mindlessly simple to run a data recovery program. Losing data was no one's fault but your own.

The fact that you are using the WORST HARDWARE PLATFORM in the industry (nForce) probably didn't help either.
 
I'm surprised that in 2 pages no one has mentioned this yet, but there is also the issue of money. The availability results line up in order of who has the most cash. It costs money to keep those servers up, so is anyone really surprised that the company with the most cash has the best servers (by "servers" there I don't mean the individual servers, but rather the overall network)? I mean, seriously people, is this really news?
 
Speaking of cash, is Microsoft still using Akamai? Microsoft and Apple have been listed as customers in the past, but I don't know if they use Akamai only for streaming media, web content, or if either ever used third party caches for updates.

It would be ironic if the reliablity of Windows Update came from Akamai's Linux servers at a ISP near you.
 
zzatz said:
Speaking of cash, is Microsoft still using Akamai? Microsoft and Apple have been listed as customers in the past, but I don't know if they use Akamai only for streaming media, web content, or if either ever used third party caches for updates.

It would be ironic if the reliablity of Windows Update came from Akamai's Linux servers at a ISP near you.
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Updating through BIT technology makes the servers non-platform dependent. Microsoft could use whatever they like. Their using an *NIX operating system is old news though. IIRC, Hotmail uses FreeBSD.
 
Azhar said:
IIRC, Hotmail uses FreeBSD.
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Not anymore. From the server headers at www.hotmail.com:

Code: 
Microsoft-IIS/6.0

Hotmail used FreeBSD before it was bought out by Microsoft. They didn't change it for a while, but then they decided to eat their own dogfood and use IIS. It has since gotten much better (or fewer people are using Hotmail), but at first performance went down and they were derided for it if memory serves me right.
 
MS to everyone else: "Hey, look guys, we finally did something right for a change!"

You gotta make noise about doing your job competently to help mask the other times you botched it.
 
And yet it still looks like nobody has done more right things in their career than microsoft has, or else they wouldn't be in the number 1 spot.
 
w1retap said:
And yet it still looks like nobody has done more right things in their career than microsoft has, or else they wouldn't be in the number 1 spot.
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Or it could be a case of being in the right place at the right time and using that opportunity to become deeply entrenched in the PC market. Had it not been for IBM and them picking DOS because it was there and relatively cheap the PC as we know it could radically different.
 
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