Re: Win 2K

[Kevin Colby <kevinc grainsystems com>]

Mark Wilson and Sharon Farr wrote:
> 
> 1. I had thought the Hotmail attempt was relatively recent and had
> assumed (yeah I know, but how DO you find out) that they would
> have used their best technology, ie Windows 2000.

I don't think so.  This was more than a year ago, so it was
likely NT 4.0 that they were using.

> 1. Why can't Linux in it's current form handle the Hotmail job?

It may be able to, but I don't honestly know.  You would need
to do a really good clustering job.  It's pretty intense.

> 2. I am told that Hotmail is run on FreeBSD, why is it so much
> better (for Hotmail)?

This is a common misconception.  FreeBSD is used to run the
web front-end for Hotmail--not the back-end.  Linux could
almost certainly take over that job if required too.
The back-ends are Sun servers running Solaris.  (X10000's was it?)
I'll bet that really burns Bill's britches, but hey...

	- Kevin Colby
	  kevinc grainsystems com