Linux, OpenBSD, Windows Server Comparison: Reliability and Web Queries

In the Making GeodSoft.com section of the web site, I've described the more serious problems I've had on the different systems. Though a much larger portion of my site is devoted to open source software than Windows, I examined all queries that suggested platform or product specific problems that brought people to my site.

I found 249 IIS, Index Server and MMC problem related queries compared to 38 related to mounting a floppy on OpenBSD, 9 generic "open source problems", 9 "ksh scp not found" and 6 "reinstalling linux". The simple query "iis.msc" has resulted in 48 requests for my page title "NT Problems, MMC Looses IIS Configuration". When I checked these queries, Google only had 103 pages with that matched and my page came up in the number 3 position. No one is likely to be looking for "iis.msc" unless you have problems with either IIS or Microsoft Management Console and have already done some preliminary checking as this is the file that ties the two together.

Also when I checked, the very generic search "microsoft management console" resulted in 30 requests to my page titled "More Microsoft Management Console Problems" in position 54 of 190,000. Why is anyone digging five pages deep into search engine results and coming to a page that is titled the same as their query plus "Problems"? These searches should all be going to Microsoft's site, but they don't have anything on these issues that I've been able to find.

The fact is people have odd problems with Microsoft products, that Microsoft does not acknowledge, and they search the web desperately for anything that might give them a clue how to solve the problem. I can't say these results suggest a lot of such problems, but there are enough that I know I'm not alone in experiencing them.

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