It will come as no surprise that the tests involved, although performed by an independent lab, were sponsored by Microsoft. But that doesn't change their basic validity. The tests were all about performing that most basic of tasks, file serving. And Windows thrashed Linux.

The combatants fighting it out were Windows Server 2003, Red Hat 8.0 and Red Hat Advanced Server 2.1. The arena was serious enterprise, one of the machines used in the test was an 8 processor HP Proliant DL760 Xeon system with 4GB of RAM. The Linux systems were running Samba. The test was performed using ZD NetBench 7.02. And Windows Server 2003 gave the Linux system a right good stuffing, almost performing at twice the speed in many tests.

The results definitely make Windows Server 2003 look good but we're sure that Linux aficionados will find plenty of faults in the 21-page PDF report on VeriTest. The only thing that Linux would win on in the report is price and even that's not certain with Red Hat Advanced Server.

Whether Windows Advanced Server 2003 will be able to keep up the performance gap in other tasks is something that remains to be seen. There's one thing that's for certain, you haven't seen the end of tests like this. Microsoft has Linux in its sights and is going to do everything it can to make the open source upstart look like an also-ran.

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