Re: [HACKERS] PGXLOG variable worthwhile? - Mailing list pgsql-general

On 17 Sep 2002 at 16:11, Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:

> > What I can't understand is the attitude of some people here. Yes,
> > Microsoft are evil, but the bottom line is, millions of people use
> > Windows. Just look at the number of downloads for pgAdmin (shown at
> > http://www.pgadmin.org/downloads/) - the last stable version has clocked
> > up over 38,000 downloads, the preview I released just a couple of weeks
> > ago, 2230 at the time of writing. I know from talking to some of the
> > users that often people download copies for themselves and their
> > colleagues, so we can probably assume there are actually 40,000+
> > PostgreSQL users that use Windows reguarly enough to want pgAdmin. What
> > happens if you add in the pgAccess/Windows users, Tora, or pgExplorer?
> > How many of these people would want to run PostgreSQL on Windows as
> > well?
> I actually think that the long-term survival of Postgres DEPENDS on our
> Win32 support.  Otherwise, we'll just get massacred by MySQL, MSSQL, Oracle
> and Firebird who do support Win32.

Let's move this to general.

But I disagree. History says that nobody can compete with microsoft on
microsoft platform. Postgres will not be competing with either SQL Server or
access. It would remain as toy database..

As far as people using mysql on windows, I have couple of colleages here who
got things crowling for some heavy load, something like 60GB database with
512MB compq workstations..

Let's leave it. The main point to focus postgres on unix is not only because
unix is proven/known as robust and scalable, but unix is much more standard to
support across multiple OS. The amount with which windows differs from unices
on API level, any serious efforts to make postgresql good enough on windows
whould be a mammoth task.

I haven't tried either port of postgres on windows but I would not bet on any
of them.

> Users of Postgres are our lifeblood.  The more users we have the more

I agree but even as of now, not even 1% users comes on any of postgres lists,
in my estimate.

So if users are not providing their feedback, what's the point in open source?
(Actually all those people do help postgres by publicising it but still
feedback remains an important phase of open source software engineering..)

> developers we get, the more testing we get and the more likely we are to get
> money, corporate support, etc.  Our ODBC driver will also be improved.

I agree for ODBC but that can be done without giving much to postgresql windows
port as well.

I understand windows port of postgresql remains very much important for people
who want to evaluate it. But for some good evaluation, I would rather recommend
them trying postgresql on linux rather than windows.

There are limits as what postgresql can do on windows and probably postgresql
development team can't do much about many of them..

No offense to anybody.. just some opinions..

Bye
 Shridhar

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