Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror wrote an article about how his shiny new database server can’t seem to use all of the memory that’s installed on it, and after some digging he figured out the problem was in the operating system– specifically, Windows Server 2008 Standard. I enjoyed reading his rant, which included:
Datacenter Edition
Enterprise Edition
Standard Edition
Foundation
Web
HPC
All that effort, all that poring over complex feature charts and stressing out about pricing plans, and for what? Just to get the one simple, stupid thing I care about– using all the memory in my server.
Perhaps these complaints, then, point to one unsung advantage of open source software: Open source software only comes in one edition: awesome.
Yep. Awesome. Bite me, Microsoft, and all of your sixteen flavors of Vista. My operating system is free and runs circles around yours.