First, I absolutly LOVE windows on my Desktop, and i LOVE Linux on my servers, and i have nothing against windows servers or Linux Desktops, i like Operating systems that get the Job done faster and with least effort, so what suits a job suits me, having never used a mac, i would jump to a mac if they tell me it can help you develop application X faster, why not, but the article here http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/mysql_on_windows.html does not seem to make sense to me. Here is why

In the comparison of number of downloads, it clearly reads that windows has 600K downloads VS linux that has 200K downloads, but are you serious ?

On Linux, MySQL is hardly if ever downloaded from mysql.com , while on Windows it is always downloaded from MySQL.COM and therefore i beg an explanation on why you say this statistic tells anything, Also, most developers are like me, they use the Windows edition for development on there development PCs, and then deploy the actual application on a Linux server.

For example, on a debian system i would simply issue

apt-get install mysql-client mysql-server

this will get MySQL binaries from Debian, not from MySQL, and therefore making the statistic not available to you.

Then the article talks about how insignificant the differences between the Linux and Windows edition is, to tell you the truth, this is not the case at least for me, here are SOME examples

Most of my applications can not make good use of RAID because RAID does not help with disk seek time (And therefore latency), My answer to this is usually separating tables to more than 1 hard disk , and although having databases moved to other hard drives is supported in windows by creating a text file, moving individual tables on windows is not, On linux, i simply create a symbolic link to the MYD file, and one to the MYI file, i can even split a single table to 2 hard drives with the indexes on 1 drive and the actual data on the other.

Clustering anyone ??

For a longer list check out http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/windows-vs-unix.html , this is certainly is inferior to the Linux counterpart for something like a shared hosting environment (See number of open files and connection timeouts etc..)

Now to add more to that, Linux is a free OS, you install and upgrade it for free, and MySQL is also free, if your business uses many many MySQL servers, your savings on Windows Server licenses can be significant.

The bottom line is, when a company like Oracle (Since it has acquired SUN) gets hold of an open source database engine, you can rest assured objectivity will still be there only when it supports the paying product.

Thanks for listening.

Anyway, i am glad lenny is out, i have been waiting for it since last year, and i thought downloading it would be a challenge when the rush comes, The download came in at full speed and the both the text installer and the GUI installer work like a charm.

Did i mention it is not 1 DVD ! the thing is a 5 DVD, But i don’t think it is wise to download them all, Just download the first CD, and when you need a package, let the software get it from the internet for you.

all you need is the first CD or DVD, most packages you will need are there, and whatever is missing the installer can get for you from the internet !

Anyway, i have not yet checked it out fully, when i do, i will update you all.