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Do We Spend More On Linux Or Windows?
jmcneal writes with this chin-stroker: "My colleages and I have been debating this for a while at work: 'Do people spend more money on Linux Distributions or on windows?' The limited sampling we have is that users buy distros almost every six months, at full price, at retail outlets. We have
only one person who has gone out and purchased Windows at a
software outlet, the rest of us only get a new copy when we
purchase a new PC, about every 1.5 to 3 years. Is this behaivior
common? How much have /.ers spent on distro's vs Windows in
the last 2 years?"
I know I've spent more money specifically on GNU/Linux distros than specifically on Windows, buying various boxed sets and books-with-disks, but when an operating system is part of an OEM package, some costs are hard to tweeze out. (Not to mention whether, and how much, Windows users would have to pay for the functionality of the nice free, Free software that comes with typical Linux distros. And that in a workplace, support costs more than the OS's initial purchase price.)
In a boxed distro, you get thousands of programs in addition to the Linux kernel.
Such a complete software package would cost thousands of dollars in Windows-land, if anyone cared to try and compile one in the first place.
There is no comparison.
I agree. I hate it when robbers attack ships on the high seas and steal their cargo. But what does that have to do with the topic under discussion?
Sure, not only do you get the core operating system with Linux, but you et so much more. I just got a recent version of redhat to play around with and it also came with Koffice. How much does Office 2000 cost for windows? ANother $150+? Add that to your total. Then add all the good system tools linux has and I don't just mean scandisk for windows. How much is Norton Utilities? $75? It all adds up. Even if I went to buy Redhat for $40, I would still get all that stuff for just $40. So the real cost is a lot more for windows because if you want all the same suff you get with any linux distro, you have to spen d a lot more!
That's why I always put together my own PC's.. you get it cheaper, you get the parts you want, no arguing with PC manufacturers over what you should get for what price. You just get what you want. You can send in INDIVIDUAL parts, possibly keeping your machine running with a spare video card or some such while your broken one is getting fixed/replaced. You may not get tech support, but a lot of PC manufacturers have lame tech support, and I would assume (or at least HOPE) that anyone with the knowledge to use linux should have the basic knowledge to fix the simple problems that most tech support knows how to fix. Plus, they're generally windows only, so you're SOL. So, WHY buy OEM PC's? That's a question I've been curious about for a long time!
Since I've used Linux since switching away from the Mac, I've never bought Windows. I just recently bought Mandrake 8.0, because I like them and wanted to give them some money. Well, and because my CD burner was gettin' flaky and I couldn't trust it any more...
But I've been Windows-free from the beginning...5 Linux boxes and 2 old Macs at my place. Rock on.
Hmmm let me see...
...
....
1989 DOS 4.0 - Came installed on computer. The dosshell was quite horrible.
1991 DOS 5.0 - I actually bought it to gain a few kilobytes of memory and get rid of that horrible shell.
1993 DOS 6.X, WIN 3.1 - Came with my new computer. My experience with Win 3.1 was quite traumatizing. Was that the future ? Arghhh
1995 DOS 6.22/Win 3.11/OS2 Warp - All of this came installed on my laptop. I found that OS/2 was quite nice. However the only app I actually used was Mahjongg. Win 3.11 was just usable enough to use Quicken and surf with Netscape, so I stuck with it.
1998 Slackware 3.4 - The Revelation ! I replaced my OS/2 partition on my laptop with this copy of Linux downloaded from the internet.
1998 RedHat 5.1 - This time I bought a new computer with no OS installed. I bought RH 51 which was the flavour of the day. I never looked back to Windows again...
1999 Mandrake 6.0 - I downloaded this one to upgrade to Linux 2.2 and glibc 2.1. A nice improvement over RH 51.
2000 Slackware 7.0 and 7.1 - Got sick of rpm. Found a better way. Oh yeah, just weeks after I downloaded and installed Slack 7.0, Slack 7.1 came out...
2000 FreeBSD 4.1.1 - Downloaded (just to play with it)
2001 OpenBSD 2.8 - Downloaded (just for a try)
2001 FreeBSD 4.3 - Downloaded (I think I'm beginning to like it...)
2001 NetBSD 1.5.1 - Download (for a quick try...)
Next in line FreeBSD 4.4
I used to use apt-get update/upgrade, too, but then I tried it with dselect, and saw what I was missing: new packages!!!
You should try running dselect some time. All the new packages that have come out since you last ran it will be listed there at the top. You don't have to run it every day, since the new packages accumulate, but it might be nice to run it every week or so to see what new software you might not have heard of is avaliable.
I steel windows... I buy linux...
Frankly, Linux, but not because I'm required too. I've got a cable connection and a CD Burner so I've burned a bunch of Linux Distros for new people and to sample them, but if I find I like it and want to "support the cause" I'll buy a boxed set. I've purchased Red Hat 6, Mandrak 7, Mandrake 7.2, and Mandrake 8.0 just to support them, this doesn't count all the Linux swag from Thinkgeek, all the Perl and C++ books, or the 6 Linux Books I've purchased.
Of course, I get windows free because I work retail and goto their road shows (wearing my "Got Root" shirt of course)
Oddly enough, I've got my free copies of Office 2K, Office XP, Windows ME, and Windows 2K, but I haven't ever installed any of them, still its nice to know they're there in case my brain's ever attacked by rabid monkeys of doom and I need some software made for (and by) people with IQs somewhere between a rock and fuzzy mayo.
~~Cannis
http://www.telalink.net/~mccann
We spend the most on MacOS.
Mod me down, whatever, you know it's true and you just don't like it.
Well, I paid $50 for a Linux book back in 1996. Since then, I've always had enough bandwidth to just download it.
--
Linux:
Slackware 8, $0 (DLed)
Drivers, $0 (ditto)
VMWare, $79
Windows:
Windows 2000 distro: $0 (Gotten as a Student Developer)
Dreamweaver: $119
PalmOS Desktop: $230 (comes with Palm IIIxe)
Lets see now, $79 verses $349? Even running Windows in VMWare is expensive!!!
--
WolfSkunks for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.keenspace.com";
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Other than at the very beginning of my involvement with Linux, when I downloaded everything onto floppies, I've always purchased a copy of the Linux distros that I use, mainly to support the vendor and also to get cute stickers to put on my computer.
As I recall, I've purchased Slackware 2.3, Slackware 96, Red Hat 4.2, Red Hat 5.1, Red Hat 6.1, Slackware 7.1, and now Slackware 8.0. In most cases, I actually downloaded the distribution first, tried it on a machine, liked it, and bought it.
I suppose the total cost of these must have added up to around $280. When I compare that to buying boxed versions of Windows 95 and Windows 98 for all three machines, it really doesn't look too bad.
I bought the old InfoMagic CD packs awhile back, and they cost maybe $20 or so apiece, and came with several distros (at the time, I used Slackware). I did that maybe 3 times, and since then, I've burned my own Debian CDs from images. Though, I haven't bought any version of Windows since Windows 95 came out.
:)
I have bought several games from Loki tho (SoF, Quake3, EUS, Heavy Gear II), and a few for Windows (Alice, Quake 2, Messiah). I've also bought ApplixWare 4 (and the Applix 5 upgrade), so I guess I'm running about neck and neck, spending-wise. Maybe a bit more on Linux.
_____
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
I have spent $0 on Windows in the last 2 years (I build my own systems, and Windows is not on the list of things to install)
Regarding Linux, I bought a $40-$60 Mandrake Powerpack version 7.0 last year.
Also, I've bought the official 2.8 OpenBSD CD set, and some posters/t-shirts + donation (total came to around $100 - $30 of which was the OS CD)
Of course, I also had the option of downloading and burning ISO's (which I often do), but I wanted the goodies.
The difference is that for your investment of time, you're placing yourself in a position that could make you more money potentially. Typical Windows 98 "Administrator" makes from $35k - $50k. Typical Linux Administrator $55k - $75k (this is from my personal experience). This is directly because of what you have pointed out. It takes longer
Secret windows code
Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
In the M$ world, I'm forced to pay for something (Windows)
In the GNU/Linux world, I'm willing to pay for something.
Secret windows code
Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
$170 one-time expense CD burner
$50/month DSL, plus $2.foo for "make broadband users bully public libraries into installing censorware" tax. Download new distros, apps, etc.
I'm serious about the DSL--I could probably live with dialup if I weren't a download junkie--our line was always busy with the 56k. For just the occasional game demo or something, I could probably do without, but I've gotta have my updates!
Exactly, that's why my most recent workstation purchase came as a stack of parts. It was the only way that I could guarantee that I wasn't paying for Windows. There was a price savings, but mostly I hate paying for things that I don't want.
Besides, am I the only one who thinks that comparing how much you paid for Linux to how much you paid for Windows is insane. After all, what useful software do you get with Windows, besides notepad and freecell? When I consider how much it would cost to replace all of the Linux software that I use regularly with a commercial replacement my investment in Linux starts to look pretty intelligent. By the time you pay for an Office Suite, development tools, database (PostgreSQL rocks), application server (Zope), and all of the other nifty tools you are talking about a substantial pile of cash. The fact that I can then put these tools on as many machines as I like and use them for whatever purpose I want only sweetens the deal.
Linux is a sweet deal no matter how you slice it.
Yes, there certainly is a lot of Free Software for Windows. In fact, I don't feel comfortable on a Windows box until it has Cygwin, Emacs, Perl, Python, Bash, and a host of other good software.
Which sort of makes my point. Why pay money for Windows, and spend time and effort downloading all of the Free Software on your list if you could simply get a Linux CD from Cheapbytes and get nearly all of the above software right on the same set of CDs. Better yet, run Debian Linux and update your software to the newest version with a simple 'apt-get update ; apt-get dist-upgrade'. Plus, you get virus protection for free.
Of course, I suppose that it is possible that I simply like the Unix environment, and so my opinion is biased.
I haven't bought a distro since SuSE 6.1 in 1999. Anything newer has been downloaded by myself or someone else in the local Linux users group. Until someone gave me a machine that had Win95 on it a couple months ago, I didn't have a Windows box for couple years [I was going to install linux on it, but decided it could be useful for playing w/ Samba]. So unless buying a game or two from Loki counts, the amount spent on linux and Windows is the same: zero.
I'd rather put the money into hardware.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
I'm sorry, I had to say something.
When you type those commands, you need internet connectivity, which, in turn, would cost money. In some places the internet would cost you nothing, but in places stuck in the ancient world of modems, and high priced ISP's, we get charged over 19c/Mb (most of the time that is when you go over the download limit, avg. on modem is about 300Mb).
But, I will concede that some ISP's out there give a lot of bandwith for very little, but I still believe that if you wanted to measure the cost of Linux, how much you pay for the cd's is only the start.
VK3TST
-- "People aren't stupid. Usually." -- jd
Bruce,
I really miss technocrat.net. I know you suggested kuro5hin, and it's a fine site. But I miss the home-sy mix of a small userbase of dedicated professionals that used to hang out there. S/N was gold on that site.
Cheers,
--Maynard
Yes, or I could use anacron on my 802.11-equipped laptop. But I am not so confident that I want those "unstable" packages installed while I'm sleeping. My workstation is also my main web server.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I'll tell you what I'm doing on my personal system. Every day, I type
and my system is updated to the latest version of Debian. No charge, ever, and the software quality is best-of-class. I have my choice of "stable", the released version, or "testing", or "unstable", with "unstable" being the least tested (and the one I use) and "testing" being leading-edge packages but ones without show-stopping bugs. Over the past 5 years or so, I've really had only one situation where I had to stop and fix my system before I could get work done, because a package was badly broken. If I were running "stable" or "testing", I would have avoided that.Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I have never paid for a GNU/Linux distro. Back when I used Mandrake or Redhat, I got copies of the CD's from friends. Now that I use Debian, I don't even have a Debian CD, I just use the boot floppies. I'm not sure how important it is to support things financially. I contribute to the Free Software community in other ways.
> you should mention to your professor that stealing is stealing
He was talking about copyright violation, not stealing. Making an unauthorized copy of something is not theft.
--
rant
I know it is convenient to have a real boxed set, and I have certainly spent more money on Linux than on windows. I do spend money when the software is worthy. Piracy stinks.
Do people spend more money on Linux Distributions or on windows?
Let us assume that Red Hat has a market share of 50%. Then if the amounts spent on Linux were on the same order of magnitude as the amount of money spent on Windows, then Red Hat would earn about the same order of magnitude as Microsoft.
Red Hat however, earns around 0.1% of what Microsoft makes. Even if Red Hat has a 5% share instead of 50%, that makes "spenditure" on Microsoft about 100 times more popular than spenditure on Linux.
Simple math.
Roger.
(I checked the SEC filings for the gross income numbers $20 billion per year for MSFT, $100M for RHAT).
Actually, Microsoft Office costs at $479 for the standard version or $579 for the professional version.
Back in the days, I worked for an MSDN shop, so I'm on their Windows beta list. I play with the beta and wind up with a complimentary copy when the final ships. I haven't bought a copy of Windows since NT4 came out. OTOH, I've purchased RH5.2, RH6.1, Debian ???, and the latest has been NetBSD 1.5. All told, probably a couple hundred dollars for open source, and squat for MS.
Just junk food for thought...
I agree. I have only bought Slackware. The rest of the distributions I have used have either been downloaded or on CD for near nothing ($1 or the like).
you present the 'BEST' argument to buy anything M$. I want an X-BOX damnit but I don't want to buy it from M$. I guess we'll have to take heart from the fact that M$ will be losing a $100.00 a unit :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
have you factored that the after-sales cost of a Windows installation? Some of my old Windows desktops shall the install CD at least once evry 5 weeks, some of my Debian machines have never seen a CD.
Consider the support of developers cost as well. I buy probably one openbsd CD a year. Not because I need it, but because the developers work saves me time and money and purchase of the CD is a reconised support channel. Also I like their stickers.
I've never directly or indirectly bought Windows (there's never been any problem buying an OS:less PC here); on the other hand, I've never bought a distribution either.
:-) I've also bought games from Loki and some sundry other documentation (GTK+ and Gnome programming manuals, for instance).
That's not to say I've never spent any Linux-related money; O'reilly has gotten guite a lot of my hard-earned money over the years, for example
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Exactly. A better question might be: "how much have you /had/ to pay to get a fully-functional workstation?"
Payment given is not the same as payment required. I tip based on performance, whether it's a street performer or my OS.
"The purpose of argument is to change the nature of truth." -- Bene Gesserit Precept
I bought Redhat 6.0, and work paid for PPC Linux. Other than that, all my linux use (a lot), has been downloaded ISOs. I've burnt tons of Linux CDs for friends and coworkers. I have never bought a boxed version of Windows - It came with my notebook computer, and my work provided a copy for my primary desktop.
I've bouight two boxed Linux distros, Red Hat 5.1 and Mandrake 7.0. Probably $35 for the Red Hat, $50 for Mandrake. Plus, four other distros off of Cheapbytes for around $10 each with shipping. That's a total of $125 for Linux, not counting books and a Tux stuffed animal.
I bought Windows 98 SE for $180. It came with a lousy thin manual and not even a jewel case for the CD. I also paid $50 for Norton Antivirus, which I count as part of the OS because not having an antivirus is not an option on Windows. And, I paid around $100 for an Office 97 cd (Mandrake 7 came with StarOffice).
I find Mandrake 8 to be a much better OS, with a superior install package, and much better internet tools. It installs and finds everything on my system (though I haven't tried the scanner yet). Also, the Linux drivers for my HP Deskjet 952 are much better than HP's Windows drivers that lock my system up when I print.
Linux 1, MS 0, HP 0
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Ok, I just glanced over at my cd rack and have the following os's: FreeBSD 3.1, OpenBSD 2.6, SuSE 5.3, 6.1 and 6.4. OS/2 2.1 beta(s) and the developers kit... and Windows 95 upgrade. All the flavors of Linux/BSD I purchased, either from Best Buy or at a trade show. The 95 upgrade hasn't been touched, and I just keep it around for some odd ball clients with old hardware. Ramble ramble.
;-)
Gotta love that apt-get update, apt-get upgrade!
Did I spend more money on Linux than Microsoft? Yep, sure did... and I'm proud of it! And it wasn't forced down my throat!
I guess the point I'm making is that I support Linux by purchasing the boxed sets. I don't have a problem with it, and I'd rather give them money than Microsoft. My current os is Debian, and the only one I've ever actually did a install over the internet with. (very cool!) I'll just send them some donations for brews or something.
Opps, missed the 2 Caldara cd's... they were free, and I never installed them after watching my buddy install it, and trying to patch the damn thing for security fixes. I still have ESIX and Solaris sitting around here somewhere also. (tossed Xenix years back)
Life was hell, then I discovered Linux...
In 1998 I bought a Debian cd set for $2.
I downloaded the then beta of "apt".
$> apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade
I've had a current GNU/Linux install ever since and I've not purchased a Linux cd since 1998.
-=-=-=-=- osjedi uses Debian GNU/Linux. -=-=-=-=-
Every now and then the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood, sweat, and tears of system administrators.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
The last OS I purchased from Microsoft was a DOS 6.22 upgrade. Over the last two years I purchased SuSE Linux 6.1 Professional for $69.00 and then SuSE Linux 7.1 Personal for $39.00. Before I started useing SuSE I have several distros that came in the back of books I've purchased to learn GNU/Linux. Years before GNU/Linux I spent $100.00 for Coherant from the Mark Willams Company. For general unix stuff I still use their wonderfull manual.
zenray
[snip] Windows isn't free. The PC manufacturer paid something for it and passed that cost, plus a markup, onto you. Granted, it's far less than what you'd pay in a store, but there is a real cost associated with it. [/snip]
The only copy of Win I've paid for in the last 2 years was because it was forced down my throat. I wanted the HP Pavilion that held it up, so I got Win with it.. no choice. It was on the machine for about an hour while I wrote down the info I needed to give to RH 6.2, which I bought retail at the same time. I've also bought RH 7.1, Debian, 3 other fringe distros and downloaded Freesco in the last 2 years, all for less than $20.
I wonder what my per-hour cost is for Linux and Win? About $30 per hour for Win98 and probably less than 1 cent per hour for Linux.
My metamoderation cancels your moderation
Well. When I look around my house and see how many different linux distros, from suse to redhat to mandrake I have around, I guess *I* spend more on linux than I have on windows 9x or others. The only windows operating systems I have around here either came with machines I purchased, or are left over from machines that died.
ELITISM: It's always lonely at the top. Uninvited company is rarely welcome.
$$ spent on Debian from first install to the last apt-get upgrade: $0
# of systems it is run on that I control: 2. Homebuilt PC that acts as a server for my home LAN. Work Dell PC.
# of versions of Windows bought over the same timeframe: 4. Windows 95, Windows 98SE, Windows NT, Windows 2000.
Heck if I know how much the cost was on those but clearly it is going to be far more than the $0 I've spent on Debian thus far.
As for maintenance let me just relate this fact from where I work. Recently we had a little friction between SA and some programmers over the Java implementation that was to be used. One was free, one was not. SAs were worried about vendor support and who they could contact when things went bad. Myself and several other programmers were just floored by this reasoning. Simple reason, every piece of software that we have problems with and are constantly fighting to keep working are vendor backed. EVERY PIECE. No lie. Every piece of software that works and we rarely have to worry about having problems with is open source.
We use a closed-source web report generator. It hasn't been able to handle our log volume since day one in spite of reassurances from the vendor to get right on it. I dropped off the project 10 MONTHS ago and we still have problems near the end of the month where the processor cannot do its work in under a day.
We have a closed-source web based web-page building application. The vendor support on it is abysmal. We have to fight tooth and nail to get any updates out of them.
We use closed-source software for our ecommerce solution. Tooth and nail, endless calls and bickering and delays.
Our time to get things fixed in our open source solutions are far shorted because we can do it ourselves. Of course the chances of that happening are far lower because generally the open source stuff already does what we need and does it quite well.
Even with that track record of vendor "support" SA wanted to go with the closed version. Incredible!
-- Grey d'Miyu, not just another pretty color.
I'm part-time admin over 20 Linux boxes. We replace them every 3-4 years (a few at a time). Even if we stick with one boxed set every six months (and between us part-timers, that's about the right average, even though we've stuck with Redhat 6.2), that's $150/year we spend on Linux.
Almost all our machines are from Dell. Hard to know what the Microsoft tax is, but if you assume $50/box, we're spending $250-300/year on Windoze. If you throw in the other boxes our group buys to keep updated 'doze machines on everybody's desk, it's probably double that. Double it again for Office on new machines. (AFAIK, only one person uses a feature of Office 97, everybody else could just as well use Office 95. Except to read the e-mail memos with O2000 Word and Excel attachments.) And now that some sucker in a suit signed the company up for a MS site license, we have to worry about license audits; we're spending over $4000 this year alone, just in our group, to make sure we can find all the certificates.
$5000 vs $150? Looks like Linux is a bargain!
Though you can't exactly say it's suprising that most people don't spend any money on Windows.. especially here on Slashdot.
I paid about 40 bucks for Red Hat 5.something which included a book but that was more than two years ago.
I paid my ISP 4 bucks to burn me a copy of Debian 2.1 (they don't do this anymore, which sucks because it was so useful), and then I bought Debian 2.2 from Linux System Labs for about 10 dollars including shipping. The book for my Red Hat class came with Red Hat but I'm not sure if that was part of the price of the book.
The last version of Windows I used at home was 3.11, and I sure didn't pay for that. I suppose my tuition is paying for all the NT licences at school, but I can't quantify that.
I bought Redhat 3.03 through 6.2 and then I got sick of it. I forget why I am pissed at them, but I tossed everything except my original 3.03 manual. I bought it even when I could have downloaded it because I wanted them to be financially successful. I buy OBSD because Theo is so ... well ...you know. And they support OpenSSH which I use.
FreeBSD rules. I buy the retail CD of each release, even though I've likely already downloaded an ISO long before I make the purchase.
Microsoft can drop dead. My time is worth $100/hour to others - by this measure they owe me something like 800 copies of NT workstation for time wasted doctoring their unstable crap. I own the NT 4.0 workstation license I use now but that is purely accidental - I'd never willingly pay for beta software and that is all M$ ever ships.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
My own experience:
In 1996 I paid $50 for a Red Hat Linux set.
I've tried 5 distros since then, eventually settling on Debian, and not paying for any of them (unless you count submitting bugreports and (more often) patches, which, although its the best gift one can give and all, is technically charity anyway).
I've never paid for a Microsoft OS.
My workplace's experience:
My boss pays a yearly subscription for MSDN. He's never paid a cent for Linux, though his network is completely dependent on it.
For administration, about 5 times as much is paid (in terms of employee time spent) yearly to configure and maintain Windows machines than is paid to configure and maintain linux machines. (I feel this is a fair comparison, as we have one windows 2000 server and one linux server/router)
Hope this helps =)
--
Paranoid
Paranoid
Bwaahahahahaa.
I have never officaly purchased windows, however I have recieved Windows 95 and 98 with some of my PC's which amounts to the same thing. I have purchased Linux off the shelf (specifically RH 6.2 for their higher support - for business use - this does not really count as my employer picked up the tab on that.)
I have purchased numerous CD's from cheapbytes, but now I have a cable modem I download my distros.
However, were you to ask how much money have I spent in the last little while on software?
I have spent $50.00 on Deus Ex for Windows (Because I did not know that there was a Linux version in the works - DAMN!)
However, I have also purchased:
Corel Word Perfect 8 for Linux
Quake 3 Arena for Linux
Soldier of Fortune for Linux
Decent 3 for Linux
Heretic II for Linux
Unreal Tournament (No Linux specific version, but it works under Linux if you download the installer.)
So I have spent more money on software companies that support Linux than those who support Windows.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
I remember what a prof said to me in college (economics, not comp sci or business, BTW). Paraphrased: "I don't think it's morally wrong to 'borrow' software while you are a student. But the day after you graduate and get a job, you should either delete it, or send someone a check."
Is it morally wrong to borrow medicine if you are deathly ill and not going on health care until next month? Is it morally wrong to borrow medicine if you have maxed out your credit card? How about borrowing food to feed a starving child? How about borrowing food to feed yourself before next week's paycheck? How about borrowing software when you are a poor student? What about when you are rich student?
Yes, morality and ethics are fuzzy, but you should mention to your professor that stealing is stealing, not borrowing. Sometimes it is justifiable, of course. Just don't kid yourself about what you are doing.
PS, one of the reasons that I love free, open-source software is because the author gives the public the right to make their own decisions about such things. But intellectual property laws protect the author, and say that he or she alone has the choice to grant away that control and propriety as they see fit. In other words, the laws should protect the author, and isn't it great when the author turns out to be a good person?
The real cost of any operating system doesn't lie in the box and on the price tag. It is in how long it takes to configure and setup and then how long it takes to maintain. Of course this is offset by the benefits it provides for example Linux can mean hoirs of headaches but it can also mean extremely high flexibility in the software available. Then there is Windows which is fairly easy to install for the average user and easy to maintain. Although it's flexibility is extremely low.
The way the debian "installer" works is similar to what you want. You can abort after the base install and you have a small working system of around 20 megs. From here you can go the "debian" way and use taskselect or just download and compile.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
On the other hand, when I first tried Linux about 3 years ago, I bought the Red Hat box set because I wanted the documentation, wanted to support a company that I believe in, and because I didn't have the bandwidth to download a distribution. I wasn't aware of places like CheapBytes at the time. Since then I've purchased numerous CD's online through companies such as these who sell for a couple bucks each. Nowadays I have DSL and a CD burner so I download or write every bit of software I use.
Celebrate the finer things in life
I don't know about the job market in your area but from where I'm at this isn't actually true. One can get an MCSE cheap, but you get what you pay for, a B-school dropout who heard that "There's money in them computer thingies". A competant MCSE and a competant Unix admin are going to cost around the same.
If you want to mentor a young'in there are probably more people around who are familiar with a /bin/sh prompt than you think. Try asking around, maybe at your local LUG.
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
I have a subscription to Slackware, so I buy each release. I've had it for so long now I forget what it costs -- it just arrives.
The last two pieces of MS software I bought were DOS 5.0 and W4WG 3.11 which was how long ago now? And as for paying for the OS on a pre-load... well the last computer I bought as a complete unit came with DOS 2.1 on it. Since then I've hand-built everything else myself.
I don't believe that. The last boxed set I bought was RedHat 6.2 back in 1999. I bought StarOffice and WordPerfect since then, that's it. The rest has been downloaded from the net. Of course I only buy boxed sets for major upgrades, minor releases I upgrade piecemeal as needed.
When figuring Windows, you also need to consider functionality. Windows is cheap at under $200. Add in mail and news software and a browser that aren't security breaches waiting to bite you, a version control system, development tools, a database system, SSH client, a compression and archiving tool, a word processor and so on, and the Windows system starts to cost a lot more than the equivalent Linux system.
Cheapbytes will sell you Linux install CDs for
about $3-4 + shipping.
That's how I usually get copies of the latest RedHat, and so I've payed about $10 in the last 2 years for Linux, for personal use.
For work use, I've caused to be bought several boxed sets, for probably $200 in the last 2 years. That's my way of supporting my distribution creator.
PeterM
I have bought genuine issues of Windows from 3.0 to '98 SE2, although I confess that I have upgraded my current machine base with every issue.
I have also paid for all my Office software ('95 and 2000, skipped '97). So that's a fairly large truckload of money in Microsofts direction, especially if you add the fact I also bought the '95 and '98 Plus packs and a number of MS games.
Against that, my first Linux (RH 4.1 came on the front of a magazine (a big thanks to UK Personal Computer World). I bought RH 6.1, but subsequent upgrades to 7.1 have been CheapBytes style copies.
I will probably buy another real version (RH 8.0?) if enough changes have occurred that makes a new set of manuals worthwhile. If so I'll purchase them directly from RH to maximise contribution to my preferred Linux supplier.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
You (meaning, the average user) may only be buying Windows off-the-shelf infrequently, but you're buying it every time you buy a new computer that you don't assemble yourself.
We aren't like most people. Most of us assemble our own machines from pieces. The vast, vast majority of people have no idea they can do this, so they go out and buy PCs, and surprise-surprise, Windows is factored into the cost of that PC.
Besides.. some of us have broadband. Takes me about 4 hours to download an ISO of any new Linux distrib. For free. And, as i'm sure many other people will point out to you, you can take even the most ancient Linux boxes around and upgrade them incrementally without having to tear the whole thing down every time. I have problem with your assertion--it just doesn't hold water.
Bowie J. Poag
Project Manager, System 26 GUI Component Stockpile
Bowie J. Poag
I've purchased boxed copies of every version of SuSE since 6.4. Not because I'm not "smart enough to actually learn how to use it," but because I believe in supporting companies that I appreciate. People that are smart enough to use Linux, but not smart enough to understand basic economics (or don't give a rip about the company that makes their distro of choice) are the ones that don't buy boxed sets. Its in my best interests to keep SuSE around, so why not cough up the money?
Winders 95 came with my first PC (1995), and that was the last time I paid the M$ tax. Ever since I got broadband (3 years ago) I haven't bought a Linux CD.
Before that I shelled out $10 for a Redhat install manual with free Redhat 5.1 CDs (LSL.com) and once I got free Debian Slink CDs from LSL (plus $9 for shipping).
But I have bought a lot more Linux shwag (thinkgeek and the lot, tshirts, hats and stickers) than windows (none).
How about using ACT, Outlook, etc? I have to do my everyday work in Windows, otherwise I'm not doing my job. Not everyone who uses computers is a programmer. BTW, nice handle.
Of course, when I say I no longer use Windows, I mean I will never upgrade again. Since I mention my use of Windows 95, 98, and 2000 after saying "I no longer use Windows," I thought I should clarify...
Since I no longer use Windows, I spend more on Linux by definition. I don't think this is the question. I think the question is how much would you have had to spend on Windows to get the equivalent functionality to that you are getting from Linux?
.iso files and curned CDs of Linux and purchased cheap CDs from CheapBytes/LinuxCentral/LinuxMall repeatedly. I also recently sprang for my first fully commerical version (SuSe 7.2 "Professional") because I like SuSE 2nd best (behind Debian), but SuSE does great hardware detection -- useful when installing on other people's hardware.
I have both download
I have six machines and a laptop at home, all running Linux (okay, one FreeBSD machine in the name being ecumenical).
Two of those machines dual-boot: one to Windows95. One to Windows98. On my laptop I have VMWare (come on, Plex86!) and I have Windows2000 Workstation running under it (because I'm consultant and sometimes you work for people who force you into that sort of thing).
Now, if I had to run IIS, 2000, SQLServer on my home network instead of Apache/Linux/PostgreSQL, I would have paid and be paying a lot more.
Maybe I upgrade my Linux more often than I would Windows, but that's BECAUSE Windows costs a lot, not because Linux is more expensive!
All of this is anecdotal and doesn't prove a thing about TCO. But my point is, who cares about a lower TCO if you hate the product? Liver has a lower TCO than Filet Mignon, but that doesn't mean I want liver every night!
It certainly does depend.
Judging by how trivial you found Apache, Perl, MySQL & PHP setup I can presume that you are hardly a typical computer user.
I use Slackware and FreeBSD. I have a subscription to both at $24.95 each shipment. FreeBSD ships a new release approximately every six months. Slackware goes anywhere from 6 months to one year (the last one took almost a year).
So I am paying about $75 per year for two operating systems with complete userland utilities, applications and extras. A bargain if you ask me. And I can still get them cheaper or for free, I just chose to support their development with cash.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I've only downloaded linux CD sets, I've never paid a dime for it. Additionally, people who are truly zealous about Windows (they do exist), are willing to pay for beta CD's and every new boxed copy that comes out, and I have seen them go to great expense to do so. There are people who pay for Linux cd sets, I'm not really sure WHY people do this, but some do and they're free to do so. I update linux regularly too. apt-get update...
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> Windows, on the other hand, has a fixed cost, but (for me at least) requires much less time to get to an operational state.
The big difference for me is, once I install and configure Linux it stays installed and configured. With Windows there's an eternal annoyance of fixing spontaneous reconfigurations and mysterious breakages.
Useless anecdote: Yesterday I ran by a place of business to pick something up. They were expecting me, so I was only in the room for a couple of minutes. What did I hear while I was there? A secretary complained that something wasn't working right on her computer, and someone standing behind her said, "He reinstalled your software yesterday."
The ordinary cost of running Windows makes the hassle of virus repairs look cheap.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Which was less expensive: Windows with ALL the equivalent programs included on a Linux distribution, or the Linux distribution?
We've purchased three Linux distributions in about four years, not counting the free ones that came with various books, etc.
Coincidentally, we've purchased three versions of Windows in about five years.
Linux was less expensive overall and a far greater value for the money.
I don't know about you, but I haven't bought a PC from a manufacturer in about 10 years. I've never bought a copy of Windows from a store, either. In this case, Windows is 'free' as in beer.
However, I bought RH5.1, and have purchased a few copies of other distros from linuxmall.com (the $1.99 cheapies).
But what you really have to look at is Cost of Ownership, not Cost of Software. I've reloaded my linux boxen precisely ONCE - when I upgraded from 5.1 to 6.1. I have to reload Windows at least once a month if I want to keep my system running well. How much does the downtime cost me? Not much considering it's a home system, but what if it wasn't?
Sure, perhaps I *have* paid more in $$ for my favorite distribution of Linux. But I've paid more in time and labor for my 'free' versions of Windows. Which is more important to YOU?
der dee der.
Microsoft that is. A few copies of Win98 here and there don't really show up, particularly when it's the /. population were talking about. What they're interested in is the corporate desktop, OEM deals and servers.
Kick 'em in the servers, that's what I say.
My 2c: I've bought a couple of FreeBSD distributions, and got the original Win95 upgrade when it came out. Hey, I was young, I was experimenting, I didn't inhale.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
the important thing is that it doesn't have to.
I spend a lot more on Linux than Windows, even if you count the Microsoft tax payed with each new PC I bought in the past (I build them now).
The important distinction, however, is that I spend the money becuase I want to, not because I have to. Even if I download a distro, I eventually buy the boxed set when I happen by a computer store because I want to support the Linux distro companies, but unlike with Windows, nobody is compelling me to do so.
im a sysadmin by trade, i have a burner at work and more bandwidth than your choice of european contries piped into the site, so nope i dont HAVE to pay, but i do have a slackware subscription 'cuz some folks do deserve the money, otherwise we'd never get new quality distros
use Signature::Witty;
Let's see, in the last 7 or 8 years (since I started using Linux), I've spent aproximately the following $ on Linux:
$15 - CDs from CheapBytes
$15 - CDRs for distros that I've burned
$30 - stuffed Tuxes from ThinkGeek
In the same time, I've spent the following on Windows:
$0 - oh, that's right, I don't use Windows on machines I control.
And every computer I've bought since my very first 8088 has been in pieces & sans OS, so no MS-Tax there.
So that's $60 on Linux and $0 on Windows. So clearly Linux is infinitely more expensive than Windows.
Hmmm...Since Linux costs so much more, perhaps I should consider switching...
--
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Let's see...
$50 or so for Lose 3.11 upgrade version (I have no legitimate, installable, WinBloze license)
$50 about for MSVC++ 5.1 (educational edition from college bookstore)
I think that's all I've ever spent on M$
Linux?
$20 Slackware '96 Toolkit around March 1997 (best $20 I ever spent!!!)
$ 0 Four free CDs from lsl.com, I think it was
$30 SuSE 6.1, but that's on the brother's machine
$30 or so last fall at COMDEX' Linux pavillion - (grabbed what I could for free, paid for several others)
I've done about 4 Deb Slink installs over the phone, now they've all been updated to Potato. Yes, each took about 36 hours. Yes, I have a second line, and a firewall that's rather persistent about keeping its connection up.
That's $100 for M$, $80 on Linux (& BSD)
Unless you want to count the two or three hundred dollars I've spent on O'Reilly's books....
Which has been a better value? Don't ask.
I'll agree with the general sentiment that yer first install prolly oughta be from a CD, with a book (though the little pamphlet I got with the Slackware tookit got me through it). (It's possible to install at least Debian completely over the phone, you have to either have another machine to nfs from, or make about a dozen floppies, the rest can be done via ftp..) But don't pay too much for that.
Actually, the next time I go to COMDEX I'll probably just _give_ some $20 bills to the guys who're representing the stuff I use. They _do_ need to eat.
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
You could just as easily choose to download the very same distros(in most cases) that you're purchasing. Sure it may take more time and energy but the fact that you're in control of what you do and do not buy pretty much answers your own question for you.
I think a few people mis-understand my motivation for the question.
I understand that you are paying for windows when you buy a PC from [Dell|Gateway|IBM|Compaq|etc], but that price is really low. I remember seeing a number (back from the windows rebate debate days) in the teens of dollars ( 20). There is a similar "discount" for the bundled pile of mostly crap that always seems to accompany a new PC. (about 150$ for works or off brand office suites)
I dont have a high speed connection at home, so $30-$50 for distro is a no-brainer, and not being a college student anymore, the money isn't that big a deal.
So for the last 6 years or so, I got winders 3.11 for whatever price it cost me in the bundle, and
Redhat 2.(7?), InfoMagic Linux, SuSE, Redhat 6*. Not counting other software (applix etc)
or burn a CD borrowed from a friend.
I remember buying slasckware a long time ago.
PS:This post is meant to be in the obvious category.
Look here son, grab a seat and lemme tell ya 'bout it.
See here, there aint a damn thang wrong with eatin beaver from time to time. Hand me one of them toothpicks huh. You might get a little hair caught in yer teeth from time to time, but that's life son.
Now I want you to grow up to be a man. And be a man that I can be proud of. So I don't want you actin like such a big pussy when somethin dies. Skunk comes an moves in under the house, you take the bastard and kill it or it comes back. You need to keep warm in the winter so you kill a tree and burn it for heat. These things are natural son.
Imagine if it wernt that way 'tall. You want a bite of a nice juicy steak. Son, you don't kill that fucker first your gonna get your ass trampled with the first cut with your steak knife. I mean hell, rare's one thing but come on.
You want a bit of salad with that steak, you're gonna have to kill the lettuce. I know plants are alive too and they never hurt nobody, but ifin you're gonna eat, they gotta die.
So grow up son. Don't be such a pussy. One day you'll be married too and come to realize that fur might be murder but it's the best part of the beaver.
Now git on outta here and git us some grub.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
Legally, this has always been an issue, hasn't it?
--
JADBP
Exactly. Most of the Linux-related money I spent went to O'Reilly, and some to Addison-Wesley (they've got to thank W. Richard Stevens for that). All in all, I've spent more on Linux than on Windows, as I've bought one Linux distro in my life, but not one Windows. (Not even OEM versions; the last computer I didn't build from parts came with DOS).
Assumptions: dl'ed distros cost $1.
Work: I've spent about $100 on Linux software. Probably about $10000+ on M$ stuff (sorry, until Gnumed is ready for use, I'm stuck.) On a per box basis, it really gets ugly. About $150+ per M$ box. Even figuring for having bought two actual distros (and dl'ing tons more, and buying many through CheapBytes) I've spent perhaps $25 per Linux box. On software.
At home, between wife and I, we've spent around $300 on M$ software (full retail on Dos 6.22, Win '95, and Win '98. Gotta play them games. No bundles. I build my PeeCee's). I've spent maybe (at the far outside) $15 on distros. Most of the Linux I've used at home have been from those work CD's. On a per computer basis: $7.50 for Linux. $150 for M$.
Books: Many hundreds Linux specific (maybe $300). About $200 on M$ stuff (mostly for NT networking stuff. Turns out it was easier for me to put the tricky stuff on Linux boxes rather than pay for CAL's on the M$ boxes). And about another $300 for program specific things (Apache, NFS, Samba, etc.)
So, there is a bit more actually spent on the M$ stuff. But here is the interesting bit: Even if I had paid around $1000 each for the distros for work, I would still save money. How? CAL's. I don't need to work through and pay for weird licensing things to run services on a Linux box like on NT boxes. I can let 1 or 1000 people hit Apache on Linux. Not so for IIS.
Anyway, there's another point. And given that my data is no more useful than anyone else's, I'll even forego the +1.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Probably a flame and/or a troll, but I almost have to agree. Like I said, I used 5.1, 5.2, was just about ready to pay for 6.2, then they came out with 7.0. Problem is that with that brain-dead compiler, I couldn't use 7.x RPMs on 6.2. So piss on 'em.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
>>If it's a company you believe in, there's nothing wrong with buying the product that keeps them afloat.
That's how I wound up buying two distros (RH 5.1 and 5.2) Now that I've switched (Progeny) I may send them some money someday (ie, when I have some)
I remember what a prof said to me in college (economics, not comp sci or business, BTW). Paraphrased: "I don't think it's morally wrong to 'borrow' software while you are a student. But the day after you graduate and get a job, you should either delete it, or send someone a check." Buying a GPL distro is not too different. I have the legal right to get as many copies of FooLinux (I don't think that's a real distro, but I could be wrong:) for free/download/cheapbytes, but if you find one, and like it (and in the case of Progeny and others, use their servers for updates) then you should pay for it. Eventually. When you can.
Of course, I would like a 'set your own price' version. Works like this: I dl'ed Mandrake (as an example. I'm working on something right now that will work MUCH better with rpm's, and haven't tried Mandrake in many moons) but didn't pay for it. Say I like it. So to give something back, I want to send them some money. But I can't afford the $80 packaged set. Heck, I don't even really want it. So I go to their webpage, and click in $15 (example only) and my credit card number.
I'm sure this scheme would require some odd accounting (at least in the US) in order to get the IRS weasels satisfied, but it's a situation that I would like. Kinda like 'non-micro micro-payments'. Or something.
Anybody have something like that running?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I'd have to agree. I learned the most about linux when I botched an install and wiped my NT partition. So, I had a perfectly functioning Linux machine, no Windows, and I said "Fuck it" and used Linux for about 2 months. Eventually, though, I needed to do some urgent stuff on Windows (uh, Everquest), and I found dual booting to be a pain in the ass, so I bought Win2K. I've been happy with Win2K mostly, but I just installed a linux only setup on my laptop to keep in "practice."
If you want to learn UNIX/Linux/BSD, you need to force yourself to learn how to do everything *in* that environment. By rebooting into Windows every time you want something done "quickly," you'll never learn how to do it "quickly" in Linux.
:)
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
The distro part's easy:
# /root/upgrade
apt-get update
apt-get -y -u dist-upgrade &&
apt-get clean
exit 0
--
Vote Socialist or quit whining!
Help us build a better map!
There really isn't much of a need to buy a linux distro 'off-the-shelf' for most people who use it (maybe the first time). All documentation is online, and you can download the software as well. Why spend $30-$50 on something I can download in a few hours over the cablemodem?
Because you want the creator of your distribution to remain in business and continue releasing quality software. If you don't support them some how they will go out of business.
jason
good call man! I havent purchased a linux distro for years as well. I think it was debian 2.0 last time or something. "hamm" if i remember correctly.
;-)
with fast bandwidth, purchasing CDs is generally pointless, espeically if you're keeping up on sid
Is the slack CD just another of those fancy 'I wanna install Linux' installs or can I do whatever I want?
Slack allows you to do whatever you want.
When selecting packages (in expert mode) the text goes something like "Packages marked with an asterisk are required for your system to run. however, it IS your system..."
If you know what you're doing, you can even install slack without the installer - the packages are split into categories (base, games, X, KDE, Gnome, network, development, etc...) you can just tar -xvzf the files onto a new partition or subdir (if, for example, you're creating a root NFS for diskless terminals)
This is the main reason that Slack is my distro of choice..
Info has a high lovelace index.
I really don't want to have to load up emacs just to look at a man page.
dave
So you're saying that installing so much rubbish that you need to reinstall the OS once a month is *not* acting like a luser?
dave
In the past year, I've spent $40 on SuSE (I love you, baby!!) and $5 on Windows ME. Being a student gives me the Microsoft crack-prices for their software. Office 2000 Premium (retail, lots of hundreds of $$$): $20. I'll be picking up Windows 2000 when I get my butt around to going to the bookstore. And Office for Mac OS X. Oh yes indeed.
The reason I switched to Linux wasn't because the OS was free but because I wanted to start a hobby developemnt project, and wasn't about to pay what Microsoft charges for development tools. With Linux not only is the OS free but also the C++ compiler, debugger, editor, etc etc. Not only that, but for serious development work IMO a Unix command line environment beats the crap out of some Win-Bollocks IDE.
So, anyway, perhaps a more interesting question is how much have you spent on your development environment.
As far as Linux itself, I bought RedHat 5.2 retail, and Mandrake 7.2 and 8.0 (crap) from cheapbytes. I'm considering buying SuSE (retail).
I gotta give a shot out to Cheap-bytes. I get a new distro about every 6 months but I only pay about $8 bucks a pop including shipping. It's great. Keep up the good work Cheap-bytes!
"The world only exists in your eyes. You can make it as big or as small as you want." - F Scott Fitzgerald
I've purchased Mandrake (7.0 and 8.0, I think I got 7.1 in a magazine), RedHat, Caldera, SuSE, Slackware, and the three BSDs (FreeBSD w/book a couple of times).
I've never, ever, bought anything from Micro$haft. Since I haven't bought a complete PC since Windows was released (I've just upgraded piece by piece since the 8088/DOS days), I don't think I've even paid the new PC M$ tax.
Over my entire computing life:
Money spent on Windows: $0 (The only prefab computer I ever bought came with MS-DOS, I have never paid the MS Tax)
Money spent on Linux, including CD-Rs: $19
So in my case, yes, it is true, I spend more money on linux.
-- iCEBaLM
... over the past 5/6 years, clearly, because i never spent one cent directly on my NetBSDs, while i did have to buy Winduhs and AmigaOS.
Surely you jest. It comes with damn near everything you buy, like it or not, even used systems (all my PC's are industrial surplus). Linux, for those of us with modems, is worth buying, and I have, Red Hat 5.0 and SuSE 6.1. I plan to buy SuSE 7.2 for a new system this summer. Just a data point.
I buy the less expensive Red Hat boxed set each time because it is convenient and I like the docs describing what has changed. That works out to about $100 a year. But then those CDs get used to install Linux on six of my machines (between home and work), plus other people use the CDs too. If you figure up the cost per machine, it's pretty cheap.
Most people who run Linux (I assert, can't prove but someone can probably cite some numbers quicker than I have time to spend right now) also run Windows. There are some people who never do (a minority), some people who may use Windows for work (Outlook, or custom in-house applications that only run on Windows), others who can't drop the gaming habit with Windows games.
So for all those people who use both, it's a reasonable question -- how much does each cost, and in what form is it paid?
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
This question is straight out of Bizarro World.
With a Windows release, you get Windows. That's it. It might be enough to get your mother on the internet, but not much more. (Unless your systems come bundled with Office, in which case you're spending closer to $500/system than $100.)
With a Linux distro, you get the OS, editors, compilers, databases, web servers, mail servers, etc., in that base price.
If you're the average business user and only need Office and a single application (e.g., an accounting package), your software costs might be as little as $500/system. Still far more than the cost of CD bought in a store and shared among the systems. The only reason people don't squeal, loudly, at this price is that it's largely made to look like part of the cost of the hardware.
But if you're a developer, the cost of your tools (compilers, database engines, source control programs, libraries, etc.) can easily hit tens of thousands of dollars.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
IMHO this is actually a defect of debian. There is no reason why a released and relatively bug free version of apache, postgres etc could not be integrated into the stable distribution. The debian philosophy seems to be that once it's "stable" no package can ever change. As brice stated debian forces you into unstable because stable is so old as to be useless. For me I don't see why newer packages could not be integrated.
Not to press any buttons but as much as I love debian I am seriously thinking about FreeBSD for those exact reasons.
War is necrophilia.
Since i've started playing with linux (1992 or so) i've brought a number of distributions over the years, usually when a new kernel came out, etc. Within the last 5 or so years, as my home connectivity and work connectivity have gotten better, have i started to download. Last 3 distributions i've gotten were downloaded. Oddly enough, even though i'm not a hardcore linux user, i don't feel a loss like i do when buying MS's product even once. Not sure why that is.
--- I was far from home, and the spell of the Eastern sea was upon me. -Lovecraft-
Almost no time lost. I'm running Win 98, and it crashes MAYBE two or three times per week. And I don't shut it down at night either.
I rarely lose any work, since the crashes usually occur when I'm playing an "obscure game". On the other hand, I never use Office and I'm not running a server, so my experience may be atypical.
The point is that Windows does what I need it to do, and so does Linux when I use it. But if they can both do the same thing (web browsing, for example), I'll pick Windows.
-Chris
I've spent a grand total of $0 on Linux (if you don't count CD's to burn). However, I'm not very skilled with Linux, so it takes me a long time to get everything installed and configured correctly.
Windows, on the other hand, has a fixed cost, but (for me at least) requires much less time to get to an operational state.
Like everything else in life, there's no easy answer. If you've got plenty of free time, Linux is "cheaper". But if you're like me and a lot of your time is spent on other things (homework, drinking, Counterstrike, etc.), then your time is too valuable to spend figuring out options in a config file.
-Chris
(and yes, I am running Windows and Linux on two separate computers. but I use Windows most of the time.)
I've bought a few boxed distro's but not for awhile.
.iso's--it's far better, if you ask me, since you can get the instant gratification(if you have enough bandwidth.)
I've been downloading
I did buy Suse a couple of times--so $80 in the last couple of years vs. $0 for windows.
So linux by a nose for me, I guess...
I have never bought a distro. Always d/loaded, even when it was a version of slackware with 2.0.36 kernel, and I had a 28.8 modem. Pain, but... at first it was a matter of principle. Then I kinda felt bad because I used linux a lot, it was a good product, and I felt like contributing. I contributed tiny pieces of source code and bugfixes, but never monetarily.
- --------
On the other hand, since we use RedHat at my company, we bought a couple of their distros (couple versions of redhat that is). And I am thinking about getting support from them too. I don't need it all that much, but if nothing else, I think they deserve to be paid for the job well done.
Still the best stuff flows steadily down my DSL connection, do doubt of that.
Windows? I bought one. From a friend who worked at M$oft. Cheap. I got a couple more with the systems that were going to garbage and just happened to settle down in my basement. I don't really use it on my *personal* computer anyway - not worth the headache. Gotta wish more game developers will jump on the linux bandwagon though... That's the only think I truly miss...
----------------------------------------
Jobs? Which jobs?
I'm a FreeBSD nut. When a new release comes out, they always make an ISO image of the first CD (the only one that most people use) in the set available for download. If my target machine has a fast connection to the net, I just install by FTP. If not, I download and burn the ISO image and install from it.
A week or two later, the CD set arrives in the mail. I've got a subscription set up where they automatically bill me and send me a CD set when a new release comes out. This serves to get money donated to people who help FreeBSD.
In my opinion, I spend $0 on my Unix.
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
Later my retarded brain became so sophisticated that I bought the boxed distros for the accompanying documentation to see which distro cares more about their customer's fullblown retarded brains.
Which distribution cares the most... now, let's see...
--
I now use Mandrake, bought the full 7.2 release, and am about to pay for the 8.0 release (already installed, but I want to support their excellant work.)
I've spent about the same on WinXX operating systems, but you have to consider that I have 3 completely legal Linux boxen, and only one multi-boot WinXX box so I don't get anywhere near the utility/functionality. If you add in things like MSVC, MS Office, etc, I'd estimate I've spent over 10 times as much on WinCrap as on Linux.
If it weren't for paying customers that need WinXX support, I'd only have my old Win98 install from M$, and that's just my Wintendo game partition.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Please explain what these interoperability problems are. I would like to hear more about them.
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
This may be redundant with many other people, but I will add my "vote".
I have spent $0 on Windows in the past N years, since I have not bought any copies of Windows. I have spent $0 on Linux in the past N years because I download distros and burn them to CD. (I suppose this counts as spending some fraction of a dollar on Linux for each black CD, but whatever.)
I have a fast DSL connection, and I don't need manuals. When I was in school, I downloaded distros. I've graduated, and now I can afford to buy boxed distros, so I do.
If we want this gift culture thing to work, we have to participate. I buy the distros that I use for the same reason I give money to buskers: they're both making my life more pleasant and I'd like them to be able to continue to do so.
RIAA, however, will not get any money from me. I prefer to download my music. I'd pay for it if RIAA would give me a good reason to.
Numbnut. Installing Linux off a DVD is just like installing off CDs, except you don't have to change the CD.
Sorry to ruin the suprise for you.
but I've bought 3 times as many games for linux than I've bought for windows.
"If you love someone, set them free. If they come home, set them on fire." - George Carlin
I buy OpenBSD twice a year. $30 + shipping every six months...
It adds up. Just from a quick count of my FreeBSD CDROM collection, I can account for at least $400 worth. Plus the $100 I just sent as a donation.
I spent maybe $80 on Win95 a few years ago, and don't plan on spending any more...
A dingo ate my sig...
Price comparisons between Windows and Linux are something of an apples-to-oranges comparison. I'll compare it both ways to contrast.
... HAH!).
/all/ of the systems, and they must be /usable/ systems.
/nothing else/. Total cost to be up-and-running with a purchased unit is about $40, or $80 if you splurge and get paper docs (which, nowadays, aren't even available with Windows). I splurge, so for my development system I would pay SEVENTEEN TIMES as much. (There's some benefit to VC++ versus what you get with RH, to be sure, but not seventeen times as much benefit no matter how you measure it).
... not including upgrades, and not including server functionality ... to get our desktop and laptops doing what we need. And I'm years out of date with VC++ (possible only because I do most development in Java nowadays).
/legally/ reduce that price to $20.
... so long as you're comparing fully useful systems. If all you're doing is comparing the base operating system then Windows comes out pretty much even, although I tend to upgrade only about a third as often.
I've bought most of the Red Hat releases since 5.1 -- 5.2, 6.0, 6.1, 7.0, 7.1. I tended to buy the premium boxes (at $70-90), but a couple of times I got the basic package (about $40). All told it comes to about $360, maybe as much as $380.
As a developer I bought MSDN for a few years and got my Windows releases from that. I needed MSDN for my work anyway so it was a pretty good deal. That was $500/year and, since I bought the machine clean of any OS, I didn't pay for the OS twice. That's like $1,500 not including the compilers. I stopped doing that when the MSDN price jumped to $800 (my bill arrived the same week Microsoft was telling the court that they weren't a price gouging monopoly
Since then I've bought Win98 full retail ($190) to upgrade a desktop PC and Win98 and NT were bundled with my laptops (not sure the real cost, but probably on the order of $50 and $150 respectively). I've not upgraded to WinME or Win2K purely because they offer little to no benefit over what I currently run.
So over the course of the last 5 years that I've been using Linux I've paid Microsoft $390 for my operating systems, ignoring for a minute the developer stuff. I've paid pretty much the same for either OS, although I've kept much more current with Linux than Windows. It's not looking so bad for Microsoft.
But there are two problems with that comparison. First, those aren't complete systems -- they're just the OS -- and I'm running fewer Windows systems than Linux systems. To see how much it really cost we have to look at
In terms of installations, I'm running just three Windows-capable systems (one of them dual-boot to Linux). I'm running six Linux systems (again counting the dual-boot). Average price per box is, therefore, about half that of Windows before we even start looking at what it costs to make Windows actually useful.
Now, when I install a Linux system it's pretty much complete. I have gone out and bought Wordperfect ($50, but not used now that Abiword is up to the job) and MTV ($20). $70 on add-on software to do everything I need to do. So far I've only had to buy a single version of these things.
With Windows, however, I bought Office 95 ($200 with a big education discount), Office 98 ($300 with a PC), and virus software ($70) just to get basic functionality. So tack on $570 to the Windows figure, and keep in mind that I was pirating an Office installation for awhile. And, again, I didn't fork out the money for Office 2000 so I'm running a release behind.
Even running without full legal licenses we're now seeing Windows cost more than twice as much per box, with only one system ever being upgraded, as Linux did for six boxes and six upgrades. Effective cost per box if you never upgrade is something like $420 for a WinME installation and $520 for a Win2K installation because Office and antivirus software is so necessary. And that's minimum!
Now, again as a developer, I need compilers. Last time I bought VC++ (5.0 I believe) it cost me $300. So, for a usable developer system, I paid $1,100 for MSDN+Office+VC++. I haven't looked at VC++ prices lately, but last I knew MSDN was $800, so today's prices are $1,400 or more -- and $800 of that comes due again next year.
Compare that to the Linux developer's system. I paid for Red Hat and
Now, I also run Linux as a server. It runs e-mail and web services (and other things, but those are critical). Were I to do the same on Windows I'd have to buy Win2K Server (what's that, $800 minimum?) to get IIS, plus somebody's mail software (never even tried to cost that out). So for my server box we're looking at a grand or more (a LOT more if I were so stupid as to run Exchange). I opted out of that approach entirely.
So for my wife's box we've got about $350 in Microsoft software (excluding the $70 we spend on ant-virus). For my development box we've got $1,100 in Microsoft software (again no anti-virus). For my laptop we've got $50 in Microsoft software (running Win98 w/o Office or anti-virus since I only use it to play DVDs). That's $1,500 in Microsoft software
Compare that the $80 I just spent on RH 7.1. I don't need WordPerfect anymore, but I like MTV, so that gives me a total system cost of $110, and that covers three laptops and three servers. And, if I wanted, I could
Given that I have not yet spent as much money on Red Hat software, over five years, as I paid for a single year of MSDN I would have to say that yea, Microsoft software is more expensive
The numbers I've paid to Microsoft start to get really scary when I add them all up. Conversely, the numbers I've paid Red Hat were so low that it's hard to see how they will ever make much money.
jim frost
jim frost
jimf@frostbytes.com
In my opinion, what is payed for a distro is only a small portion of the total cost of ownership. If you pay $39,999 for a CPU license of commerce server, and $50 for a box of redhat from compusa, its easy to look first and say, ok, one is costing me less. Lets suppose, though, that you have to hire a full time admin. For the MS server, you get an MCSE and pay him $50,000 per year. To find a good Unix / Linux admin you might have to pay $75,000 per year. Figure out what you spend in 2 years, and thats a little more revealing. (There are fewer qualified admins who know there way around a shell prompt than there are people with MCSE's, thats why the one's salary is higher.)
Unfortunately, this is where most people stop reading, and decide that for their money, they will get MS, pay more now but have less TCO down the road. Anyone who works with the stuff enough knows that you get what you pay for. If you want to get the less skilled MCSE's, its your business.
I still do not get what the point of the original question is. I get Windows from my University, burn my distros. Otherwise, I would pay $2000 for the windows MSDN license or nothing for a linux distro. Hmm, let me think...
Troll Like a Champion Today
I bought mandrake because I had assigned a weekend to upgrade my linux router, and found out at the last moment that win2k was incompatible with my roomates CD-R so I couldn't burn the ISO I had downloaded. Since I have a Real Job these days I figured I'd support the movement and shell out for retail (and I was impatient as well).
OTOH, I'd bet most people (in the US, anyway) are within an hours drive of a Linux Users Group meeting, and could get someone to cut them a CDR for the cost of a blank.
On the gripping hand, if your like me, and think that the companies that put out the distros are performing a service to the community, you might consider the price of a shrink-wrapped distro money well spent.
--
I have no fin
no wing no stinger
no claw no camouflage
I have no more to say...
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for slashdot.sig (129323052 bytes).
Well, I refuse to pay for Windows, so I guess that means that officially I don't use it, but I seem to use it anyway.
As per Linux, I think I have paid 20 bucks in the last 2 years for distros.
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microsoft, it's what's for dinner
bq--3b7y4vyll6xi5x2rnrj7q.com
it's a sig, wtf?
I make a point to buy as many CDs as I can justify to support 'the project', and I'm sure that's the same story with a lot of other people.
I feel more guilt using an FTP version of my OS, that I don't own the CD for than I do using a "friend of a friend of a friends" copy of Win2k.
I've paid for windows 95 in the past and DOS even further back. I've spent a lot more on Linux distros. But I've downloaded gigabytes of stuff for "free". The trick is - if I'm not paying for that software, who is feeding the developers? Would I be a developer if I could afford my mortgage/kids/wife without my "day" job? Would my contribution help make our software better/stronger/faster/easier/...? (maybe not) My point is... if more money was spent, more developers could afford to work on that free software. The software I download is not as good as it could be if more people paid for it. I'm not critising developers, mind ... just pointing out that the talent pool would be bigger if the money pool was bigger too.
Support your favorite distro - financially if possible, but I'm sure there are other creative ways too. Even clear, well checked bug reports must help.
my 2c
here here. Well said.
Dive Gear
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
I've probably spent over $1000 on various FreeBSD and Linux distro CD's and other various things like shirts, hats, towels (huh?), stuffed animals and such. All to help pay the bills for the great folk that are writing this stuff. I sure as hell can't write it, so I figure I'll throw a few bucks around to help. I'm pretty sure that the people hacking this stuff i.really/i appreciate it. How 'bout more of you join me?
Dive Gear
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
If you ask a bunch of Linux users if THEY spend more on Linux or Windows, I would be VERY suprised if they spent more on Windows.
If you are a Mac user, how much will you spend on Windows? Most likely $0.00 unless you have bought it by accident & could not return it or bought virtual PC for your Mac.
Does anyone think the case would be different for Linux users?
The arguement that a distro is free but it costs you $$$ to get all of the O'Reilly books falls flat. To actually figure out most advanced Windows features (comparable to those that high level administrators using the books would use), you would still need to get materials. I know of no one (Linux, Windows or Mac users) that feel Windows "help" is actually helpful. I know I can learn lots from the man pages but I have rarely been able to find anything resembling helpful in Windows help.
A better question would actually be several questions:
This is by no means all of the possible questions, just a few to get everyone thinking.
I know many people will say "Hey, I never bought windows" but they will have gotten 95/98/NT4/2000 and are currently running XP on their systems. Does it mean Windows is free? No, it just means they don't have a legal copy of it.
Hope this helps.
The only computer software I've ever bought have been maybe 2 or 3 games. That's about it. Never paid for windows 2000, never paid or linux. Why should I pay when I can get it for free? Yeah I know a programmer's gotta eat, but I haven't seen any starving programmers lately.
I've bought a couple RedHat releases, 5.0 and 6.2, but they were just because I was a newbie when it came to Linux. It was nice to have a booklet on hand, even if all the documentation was available online. After having used Linux for a while, I'm unlikely to buy another boxed set of it, with high speed Internet connections keeping me up to date.
I think the more important thought on this are the associated costs. It might be simpler to set up Windows out of the box, but the application base is pretty commercial. For example, I have a CD burner in my Windows box, and I wanted to burn an ISO to CD. I fired up the software that came with my drive, and lo and behold, after about ten minutes of futzing with it, I found myself unable to burn the image. Under RedHat, I would have been up and running pretty quickly, with stuff that comes bundled with 7.1. A search turned up a bunch of shareware and commercial apps for Windows -- very little for free. (Ironically, the ISO was for Windows XP, and this little quirk was making me long for Linux.)
I've spent ~$200 for Win95, ~$100 for Win98, and around $250 for Win2K. For Linux? Probably somewhere around $60 total. Then figure in all the software I buy for Windows, that have freeware alternatives under Linux. If I were an accountant, I'd be scratching my head over this. "Why does it make sense to spend more money on something less stable?"
we can buy full distributions of Linux (SuSE, usually) and pass the costs ($79... whoopee) on to our clients. Most of the installations are servers (and most of *those* are Samba and email servers) and each and every one of them saves the client a minimum of $800. Even the NAT servers save money because we usually install those on older boxen often using floppy-disk distros. No upgrades to win98, etc to gain "connection sharing".
The difference in costs over win98 and Linux are nothing compared to the difference between win2k/NT and Linux; and the client gets vasty superior operability for his(her) money.
How much money have we saved using Linux. I'd hate to have to calculate it but it must be in the tens of thousands!!
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
I know Windows best feature is it's supposed ease of use, but I have bought several $50+ books. Some of the more esoteric marketing gimmicks, excuse me, features, are poorly implemented and poorly documented. Books are really the only way around that.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
This is a good topic for a slashdot poll: how much money as a consumer have you spent on Linux distributions? 0, 1-100, 100-500, 500-2000, 2000+
You don't need to buy books, there's a tonne of documentation that comes with almost every distribution... man pages are pretty authoritative, and stuff in /usr/share/doc is usually pretty thorough... almost every package has a website with a mailing list and posts the author's contact information. If you need to buy a book after all of that, it's not the fault of the developer. Books are nice, but not necessary. I havn't really used Windows since Windows 95, but I remember that the documentation sucked, and if you wanted to understand how much actually worked, you'd have to buy a book or dig through websites that were badly organized.
Windows:
1 Win98 (included with machine): $0
You can't be daft enough to assume that the OEM didn't make sure to pass on the full cost of a Win98 install licence in their profit marign, regardless of the actual price from MS to them. Or are you?
The only "free" Windows is a warezed one you put on clean hardware you build from components.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Ahh, ok. I wasn't even thinking about the lawsuit over the licence thing because 1) I don't think MS cares, and 2) the warez scene doesn't seem to consider the consequences much :)
As for the rest, I only skimmed the article, and skimmed the comments. The discussion here generally peters out too quickly for me to want to get involved anyways. 2-3 days tops.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I spent 30 bucks on a retail package of Mandrake about 2 years ago, and I've never bought Windows. I think I bought MS-DOS once, though. Does that count?
I started with RH5.2(?). Prior to DSL, I purchased any updates on Ebay for about the price of the disk ($10 is the most I think I spent)
That being said, if we compare apples to apples this is a difficult metric. Historically, I would get a "patch" from Windows. However, with Linux it has proven to be just as easy, especially in the newest releases to install the entire new version. I get everything that is up to date without hunting for the Access Fix, the Word Fix, MSIE's security updates of the week...etc.
If you are out purchasing the full retail, box version for each new release, I would ask "Why?" What can you possibly get in the 7.2 box that you didn't get in the 7? [This is easier to understand when companies foot the bill. For some reason we can always spend someone else's money easier than taking our time to download a version, burn new CDs, etc. ]
If you are buying new retail versions each time, I would make the suggestion that you buy a good set of manuals (look around here someone is always suggesting). Then get your distros through ftp (or auctions if you cannot download at high speed). You will be money ahead and have a better working reference.
One caveat, if this is your first implementation buy the retail with the manuals, etc. The install guide that goes with the specific distro you have is invaluable when you first start. Other manuals may be better, but you won't know until you have done the first install.
Any casual user who buys a boxed set every time is a goddamn moron
Or maybe they just want to support the OSS and actually pay the distro authors for their work...
I know I have never paid for M$ software. I have purchased second hand a copy of Warp 3 Red Box though. And I have probably spent $300 on Distros in the last two years.
some karma... and kinda lukewarm about it.
- Database management
- E-mail server
- Terminal server
- Revision Control
- Compilers
- Encryption software
- Firewall software
- Unlimited-client fileserving
For anyone who actually uses their machine for more than just surfing the web and reading email, a Windows machine needs lots of costly packages added just to be in the same league as a $50 Linux distro.--
314-15-9265
Who says you need to download an entire ISO to install a distro of linux?
I have never paid for linux, albeit a distro attatched to a magazine which i have never installed. I started off with debian 1.3 just downloaded the rescue & device drivers floppy images, as well as the base system (which was only a few megs then). And i just continued to use dselect to upgrade until apt came along and now its never been easier to keep up to date.
when everything is working perfectly.. BREAK SOMETHING before something else FUCKS up!
Which doesn't exist, but I'm sure someone could whip something up for ya'!
Interested in weather forecasting?
My very first Linux distro was Slackware, downloaded over a modem back in about 1996 or so. I was mainly curious and managed to get it working into a usable system. Remember, back then, there was a LOT more configuration to do before you had a 100% functional system the way you wanted it. I toyed with it on and off for two years, but just as I was getting permanently hooked on Red Hat Linux 4.2 (bought on cheapbytes for $2), I had a bit of lifestyle change and effectively went without a computer for 8 months.
In the middle of 1999 I returned to the real world and decided that I really wanted Linux on my current computer, a laptop. While browsing through a department store, I happened upon Mandrake 6.0 for about $40 and up until about 1 month ago, remained a dedicated Mandrake fan.
A month ago, I purchased the Mandrake 8.0 PowerPack for around $75 and was immediately disgusted when neither machine I installed it on would boot. On one machine, it took about a week to customize it, that is, to remove all the extraneous crap. Don't get me wrong, Mandrake is probably a fine distribution for many people, but I've gotten to the point where I just want a minimal working system and then simply add my own customizations and software.
After cursing myself for the Mandrake debacle, I started looking for other distros. I considered Debian, Slackware, even FreeBSD. (Note: I know BSD is not Linux.) I even tried putting together my own system, but glibc proved to be too much of a challenge.
Just as I gave up on glibc and my homebrew distro, Slackware 8.0 was released that same week. I downloaded it, installed it on a crappy P166 to see how I liked it, and found that I liked it immensely! I installed it on the rest of my machines with no troubles and no regrets.
Funny how I had the right idea all along in the beginning of my Linux adventure.
Just to make this post a bit more on-topic, the Linux distros I've bought total about $150. The only copy of Windows I ever bought came with my laptop, and so cost me around $90. Glad to see that Linux has gotten more of my cash.
All you have to do is search out all those wonderful drwings that they do when they are doing expos on cable modems and whatnot. I luckily won a PC that had a legal copy of WinME already installed.
Correct me if I'm worng, but isn't there a gcc package available for windows also, and if there is why would you need to bother with VC++ since you like running the compiles from the command line anyway. Also since your office software needs are so basic, why would you need to upgrade from Office '97 in the first place...given you wouldn't be able to open Office XP formatted files unless they were saved in rtf format or as text.
So I agree with the previous poster your comparison is fairly daft
This seems like an apples to oranges comparison, because a significant number of people I know use Windows which isn't legally licensed! Time and time again, I see burned copies of Windows being installed and sitting on bookshelves. This doesn't seem to be a problem with Linux, because the distro is essentially free, with the value add being media and documentation packaging.
My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!
I have been used Windows for 6 years now, since I bought my 1st PC. I currently have 98 Second Ed. installed and am waiting for XP to come. In all those 6 years, I have paid $0 for Windows or any other Windows program.
In Turkey, OEMs are not required to bundle the computers they sell with an OS. Most local shops here add WinXX to their configurations in their ads but you can always have them deduce it. Some of them even prefer to illegally install Windows on thier customers' PCs for a small fee. And this is not an occasional, it is a very common business practice.
What's probably more amazing is that there is a growing market in Turkey: Pirated Software. You can find and buy pirated software/digital media very easily in any of the larger cities of Turkey and not just Windows 98 or ME. You can find just about any version of any Microsoft product as well as games, movies, music CDs and even shareware for a few bucks! This business had a huge boom with the price drops in CD recorders. For example an "Ultimate Archive" CD I saw included two version of Win98 (Turkish and English) + Norton Internet Security + Norton Anti-Virus + Xing Mpeg Player and a few extra stuff I can't remember.
For legal purposes: I never buy or use pirated software, especially Microsoft products! Never ever!
But I digress... What I wanted to tell is most people in Turkey don't prefer Linux because it's free. In Turkey, for the common user, Windows is just about free, too.
PS: I am actually waiting for the Windows XP activation crack to come. Then I will consider upgrading to XP.
Can someone tell me what this "Sig" box is for??
Here at work we have a lot of PC's running various versions of Windows, and a WAN network of Linux servers. The WAN covers most of Oz, so we can't visit these sites easily. The Window's machines are a PITA to support because each one is configured differently, so we looked at issuing a "Standard Operating Environment", based on Windows.
That idea was dropped fairly quickly when we realised that we would have to buy a new version of Windows for most machines, and that would cost many thousands of dollars. Actually the problem was worse than that as we have some standard apps we run on those machines, and in many cases that would have to be upgraded as well. The cost would be well in excess of $300 per machine.
Now as it happened we recently went to the some auctions to buy some machines. (Up till recently we had piles of recycled boxes lying in corners, but somehow they all used up, so it was time to buy some more.) We got some Dell 266Mhz 3Gb 64Mb boxes for AUD$300 each. More than enough to run Linux or Win9x and any office app. And there were piles of them there, all identical, more than we could ever use. We could outfit the entire organisation with these things.
It was then it hit me - the cost of just the base software, not including the office and accounting stuff, just the basic OS, virus scanners, and some Wan software, was more than the cost of the hardware. We could literally replace every office machine in the organisation with one of these things using a Linux based SOE for less that the cost of bringing the software up to a standard level on our existing hardware(!) In fact when you take into account that "older" hardware lasts 2-3 years and I would like to roll out a new "Standard Operating Environment" every year it is much cheaper.
We can't do it of course because the open source office apps aren't quite up to scratch yet. But the will be in time - roll on KOffice. Guess what I going to do then!
At last check, 344 articles pending review. I'd say not. Bad editing? Maybe.
...warez sites are for Windows!
Yes, I spend more on Linux than Windows.
The only version of Windows I ever bought was an OEM Win '95c way back in the day, but on my bookcase in my home office are Red Hat 4.0, 5.1, 6.[something - can't remember] and SuSE 6.3, 6.4, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2.
The important thing to note is that we do not *have* to buy these (we could just FTP them), we *choose* to do so.
Why do we choose to? Simple - Red Hat, SuSE, Mandrake, etc, etc are part of the GNU/Linux community. The pay people to contribute code to projects and software we all use (eg SuSE heavily fund XFree86 and ALSA development). So we buy their products to support them.
It's similar in a way to buying shares in a company (but without the post-IPO dotCom blues) that you believe in.
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Listening for the sound of the coming rain...
If you are spending money on GNU/Linux for a first time install or an upgrade, you are making a conscious decision NOT to keep your money.
Remember, GNU/Linux is FREE.
Granted, some people may not have the resources or bandwidth to grab and ISO image and burn it, or to upgrade their Debian system via apt. So then, it is a matter of convenience to purchase a CD.
As for those who spend $50 or whatever the price is for RedHat or whatever other distro, you are still making the decision to spend your money on support or some included proprietary software and not the actual GNU/Linux, I hope.
Remember, GNU/Linux is FREE.
By all accounts, when you "pay" for some distro of GNU/Linux, you are not paying for GNU/Linux but for something associated with GNU/Linux by someone who wants or needs your money, like the CD, or some books or support or whatever.
I mean, jeeze, everybody knows you DON'T PAY FOR FREE SOFTWARE.
Tyler's words coming out of my mouth.
I started with a free slack download, and except
for a cheapbytes freebsd cd, very cheap, I have
never paid anything else. I have always downloaded
debian. On the other hand, I have purchased a
number of computers, all of which had some flavor
of windows, thus, I have paid much more for
windows. I bet my experience is pretty typical.
Gary Dolan Debian GNU/Linux 3.0r1, Kernel 2.5.10 FreeBSD 4.8 OpenBSD 3.3
Bought a copy of SCO 286 Xenix. And a copy of ESIX, and a copy of Unixware. Picked up a cheap olaris development set. $3,500 or so
Bought a copy of 3.1 NT, upgraded to 3.5, then 3.51. Bought a "reseller" only verson of 4.0, "for evaluation purpostes...you an:t use it for day to day use" or some such restriction. $1150 or so.
Got handed a copy of NetBSD and FreeBSD 2.0.5, and have just used the features like FTP install and packages/ports. $0.
DLing a FreeBSD release mens I get it faster than they can ship it to me.
With the ability to DL new releases with FTP, the packages/ports, why would ANYONE bother buying one of the 200~ linux versions? Sticking with FreeBSD made it (SO( easy to kick the Microsoft habit, the SYS V habit and no need to spend $30 for "a better linux".
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Now that I have a DSL line and Debian's apt-get, who needs to buy anything?
Bought a copy of redhat 6.0 with the A?M mag (a little 20 page booklet in .au) a few years back for A$20, back when A$20 bought something, and then got someone to burn 6.2 for me, but after perpetual problems with deadrut being sucky (rpm version 3->4 upgrades, anyone?), and aquiring this here fast ethernet connection, and a fast link to mirror.aarnet, debian apt-get saved my life.
Of course, I don't do anything too drastic with the bandwidth - it's not like the uni have heaps of money to throw away on me downloading hundreds of megs of .debs.
TimC.
I bought a big book once, and it taught me how to learn about linux the tradition way). No need for a tradition distro box set at all.
TimC.
I sometimes buy linux stuff, stuffed penguins, stickers, CDs, etc just to show support for linux, but I download the distro (debian) I use from linuxiso.org. I usually burn the images onto those neat blank CDR's with the cool debian logo on them you can get from copyleft.net.
I'm sure MSCE-types buy lots of dorky Microsoft(TM) junk (they're clearly gulible people anyway).
Quite a number of people steal their windows, but it is Microsoft that defines sharing CD's as theft. Besides, if you run windows, sooner or later you pay the microsoft tax anyway.
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
Who would be silly enough to spend money on Linux distributions? If you like their work, donate, but you already pay for bandwidth, you might as well use that for something.
That's my model at least, I've never purchased a distribution, and I probably never will, all I can find around on shelves around here are distributions I would *never* use.
--
If there is a God, you are an authorized representative. - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
If there is a God, you are an authorized representative. - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Where do you get that Linux distros "force" you to upgrade? I have a firewall running RH 5.0. I haven't upgraded anything on it for years. It works, I leave it alone.
âoeIn theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not." â Albert Einstein
I don't have choice about what digital format I get movies on
You want then in DivX or MPEG?
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
I only ever bought one version of Windows (95 cuz I HATED 3.11 that came with my Pentium 100). Since thern I have been fortunate. I got 98 with my current machine which has a new brain (everything from my old Pentium 450 except MB, CPU and heatsink which have been all been replaced with a Duron 700, matching heatsink and ASUS A7V MB), and I won a copy of Windows ME in the launch contest for Windows ME. I had my CD one day before the launch. With Linux I have bought Caldera 2.3, a slew of Cheapbytes CD's, RedHat 7.1 and then I have downloaded various distros....Debian, Redhat and Slackware. Total spent on Linux, counting blank CD's, about 70 bucks (30 times 2 and about 10 bucks on blank CD's). For the 96 copy, I paid approximately 90 bucks (plus or minus 10 bucks). So, I spent more on Windows, especially since you consider the 98 I got with my machine was probably rolled into the cost of it. That said, I usually try to buy every other version of my current favorite Distro, RedHat. Missed 7. 0 and have not bought 7.1, but I may wait since it's been rumored, and denied by Red Hat that there's a beta floating around. Maybe they are trying to hype up things for 8.0??? (new GCC 3.X and other things....)
Gorkman
I tend to buy the distros for my company because we use the heck out of the books that come with. For us, it sure beats surfing around the web looking for the docs, or using pico or something to read the READMEs. Red Hat ships a great set of docs with 7.1 I think. Windows.... well, honestly I've never bought a copy.
Seriously, though, I think a major point of Free Software isn't that it is free, but that once you pay for it, you shouldn't have to pay for every bug fix and add on and incompatibility forced upon you, and I'm glad redhat is dedicated to keeping their stuff open (if not consistent.)
I haven't spent more than $20 on Linux distros. I bought my first Linux three years ago, and half a year later a Mandrake CD. Since then the 10 MBit line in my college dorm does it all... rpmfind.net or, for my other box, apt-get are better than any CD.
I buy OpenBSD twice a year. $30 + shipping every six months...
Debian costs me 2 blank cds (sparc & x86)
Windoze...I got the 3.11 version with my old computer...that's about it.
Chaos, Mayhem, and Destruction: Not
I'll tell you what I'm doing on my personal system. Every day, I type
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
and my system is updated to the latest version of Debian. No charge, ever, and the software quality is best-of-class.
Why don't you just set it up as a cron job?
crontab -e
Just a suggestion.
Best Slashdot comment ever
Your comparison is totally daft.
...
1 Office 97: ~$500
1 Office 2k upgrade: ~$250
1 Office XP upgrade: ~$250
The problem with Linux is that you can't buy a decent Office package for Linux for any price.
1 Visual studio 6 (incl. NT4): ~$1600
Did you get a rock solid, visual development environment on Linux for free? Sheesh
Windows XP betas have been available as cracked warez for months now. Office XP, too. MS's vaunted "copy protection" lasted all of about 2 hours.
-Legion
yup plus, ... I thinks it's ok to be jumping back to Win is because the Linux learing process has stuffed things irrevocably so a reinstall from CD is called for (I've got really good at this) BUT
1. this week for the first time, it worked the other way & I recovered a Win \system file learning experience from Linux thru being able to read the Win files; AND
2. Aust personal Computer Mag do some neat handbooks so A$15 or so buys two or three distros, plus the monthly cover has had them on too, else just CDs for convenience from Everything Linux for maybe A$15
3. So ..this last year, new PC so $1xx on Win and $15 on Mandrake CDs
Yeah, manpages are a great thing and all (hell, I even own the original BSD4.3 rainbow series) but recently, I discovered the gnu info system. apt-get install pinfo sometime, even if just for kicks. Compare tar(1) with tar.info: fucking volumes of chapters of pages of great information. And if a package doesn't have any info nodes (it's a sort of hypertext, BTW), most info readers will bring up the appropriate manpage.
--
My point is that if you are currently running Debian stable, and do the apt-get dance, you will be upgraded to the new Debian stable next time it gets updated (with only those two commands). With Windows you can put a lot of time into patching your old version (i guess it's harder than with apt-get), but if you want the latest version you'll have to shell out again.
So, Debian = install once, update easily, run forever. Windows = buy once, install once, update manually, run until the next version is released, buy that one too, install that one once, etc... So you could say that Windows is only cheap (compared to Debian) if you don't want any updates / upgrades and your time has no value :-).
Cheers //Johan
Installed the Bubblemon yet?
and I've never bought a linux distro. I've only downloaded slackware a few times.
Erik Dalén
Windows *can* be free, but only if you steal it. Assuming that this is not an option (especially in a commercial environment), there's no way to acquire, implement, and support a Windows system for free.
Got Rhinos?
When you purchase a pre-OSed system, you're still paying for the OS!
Sorry, someone had to say it.
Got Rhinos?
Now that I have a DSL line and Debian's apt-get, who needs to buy anything?
First post?
--
The antidote for misuse of freedom of speech is more freedom of speech.
-- Molly Ivins
I can't imagine possibly waiting to download a distro anywhere other than my old college dorm. My Cable connection at home wouldn't come close to staying staying stable for that long (yeah, yeah, download managers work), and I don't have to patience to download a distro over a week. Over a modem? My heart breaks for anyone who's had to try it.
On the other hand, I've never "purchased" a version of windows in the sense that I've gone out and bought it (or any other MS product) off the shelf.
At least you'll feel good about yourself supporting a cash strapped distro instead of The Beast of Redmond.
Error loading humorous sig.
I bought SuSE 5.3 back in the day. Ever since I have always dl'd whatever distro I wanted to run. The "evaluation" SuSE distros work fine for what I need. I've never bought any M$ OS's seperate, they've always been included in the new computer I buy. I generally purchase a new computer every 3 years or so. I definately spend more $ on Windows machines than I do Linux. My job spends tons of $ on M$ and Adobe stuff. Thankfully my boss is open to Linux and we are migrating several of our services to being linux based. In doing this, we are saving lots of money.
-quackPOT
Being a windows and linux user myself, I _should_ be spending more money on windows, because I have to buy the software I use (eudora, X server, etc), but I don't. And linux I just download, and it's not illegal.
It's about the money, but it's also because it's more confortable to download the cd and burn it without having to go to some store with salesmen.
--
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
spent a lot more money on purchasign Linux distro's, books, software than I have on Windows anything.
I pre-order my distro's from the various sites (inc Redhat and SuSE) so that when they are released, they're shipped to me as quickly as possible. I purchase update CD's instead of downloading a whole heap of software.
I only have a simple dial up and home, no DSL or cable, so its a lot easier for me to support the software I actually enjoy and have a strong passion for by purchasing it than downloading it. The way I see it, if you truly like something then you don't really have a problem spending a bit of money to get that item, and help those that put it together. This applies to anything, not just software.
vs Linux buy once use many.
It's almost impossible to buy a PC with out Windows pre-installed on it. This is the only thing that keeps people from buing Windows in a retail box. This means even if you are replacing a machine that you will no longer use, you are going to pay for another copy of Windows. If you decide to upgrade a machine to another version, the OEM license does not give you permission to transfer the old version to another machine so you have paid for 2 licenses and you only get to use one.
With Linux (for most distros at least), you buy one factory burned set of CD's and you can walk around to 100 different machines and install it. If you buy a new machine you don't get forced to buy a new Linux distro. If you upgrade your distro from version x.y.z to version x.y+2.z you don't lose your right to use the x.y.z distro.
The only reason why Linux seems more expensive is because the cost of purchase is very clear and immediate. Microsoft buries the cost of Windows into the machine and so you can't see that $100.00 worth of that machine went to Microsoft. If computer retailers could break out the costs of the computer I'm sure there would be no talk of what we pay more for Windows or Linux. Windows is definitely more expensive.
I have installed linux on 8 computers in our Taiwan office (although over the past three years, at least 4 times on each computer updating), and will install another 8 in China this month.
I have never paid for a distro. I have always downloaded them and burned ISO's or done FTP installs.
We purchased one bulk 10 user NT license years ago. NT just sits in a cardboard box (not a real boxen) in the backroom. Linux saves us thousands of dollars per year as a company, when considering that we do not need Office, Exchange, etc.
Real men don't need signitures!!!
Most people download their open source OS. After all it _is_ free :-)
I have never spent any money on a linux distro, having used debian or slack for most of it, and trying redhat and a few others that i d/l'd.
I have however donated money to several open source projects, but that doesn't count, can't write off a purchase of windows.
I don't know much about the situation in U.S. but at least here in Spain most people, and I mean computer iliterates too, buy computers with no OEM Windows on them. Unless of course, they buy it from a big store and buy a branded one. I guess not many people will admit it, but here is very usual that the installed Windows version is pirated, even the ones intalled by the shop (of course, it's just for testing the components so you can see the computer works, you should delete it afterwards). I agree it's bad, but the situation that we are is that there's almost no choice (no, Linux is not fully ready for the desktop, try to ask my mother to use it) and the price here is horribly high, as much as 25% of the cost of the computer just for Win98, WinMe is even more expensive.
But the sad part is that getting Linux isn't easy either, hard to get in shops and not really cheap, though much cheaper than Windows. There's no Linux on most computer stores, unless you live on the top 5 biggest cities, and then many times they are old versions of the distributions. Buy through Internet? Here students don't have a credit card, just a debit one at most, so no way either. And sadly there's a lot of copying of Linux disfribution because of all this.
If it was easier to get Linux in Spain, I know many many students and people that enjoy computers (geeks? not really, at least not the way seen by americans) would buy them, but the nearest shop to my place is 200 km away and with a very limited quantity. Yes, people that care can pass over all difficulties to get his/her prefered distribution, but most of the time you do what's easier, if just they took seriously the Linux market in Spain they would sell a lot.
About Windows, unless they make it much cheaper (I guess that when the hell freezes over) they won't sell much, no matter how much marketing they make (very little here by the way).
Finally I'd like to know in which other countries this is the same way, and if it's really so hard in the U.S. to buy a new computer without Windows in them. Even not branded ones have Windows even if you don't ask for it?
I've only "bought" three Windows packages directly. One XT with DOS 3.2 on it. One 486 with Win3.1 on it and bundled software. One laptop with a bare Win95. The last purchase was a waste as Debian works much better on it. That 486 was upgraded with someone else's software, and other machines were treated much the same. Three years ago, I bought a Watcom Fortran Compiler for Windows. All of it helped at the time, but now I regret all the time I spent learning MS BS.
Indirectly I've supported much greater costs. My schools and now my company pay out the nose for Windows junk. It's sad. Yes, you and me both are paying for all those windows boxes in all those labs on campus and sucking the life out of you at work.
Linux has cost me much less and provided much more with less efort in the end. My distros have come from books, CD shops and from the web. The book, Linux Unleashed (Red Hat 5.1), was a good place to start but newer are not as useful. CD shops, Cheap Bytes and Linux Central for example, carry up to date CDs for cheap. All can be gotten from web sites if you know what you are doing. Debian is the easiest to get that way and to learn about. Books on most specific subjects I'd have to have bought in the Windoze world anyway, so I won't count that as a cost.
The time saved has been amazing. Installs are much easier for Linux. Without all the propriatory BS of install floppies for each and every device and program, and much less baby sitting Linux installs go fast. Documentation is worlds better under Linux, so I waste much less time trying to figure out how to do something that should work but does not. G77 runs older FORTRAN code without modification and that saved me considerable time for CFD class. FTP, Telnet-ssl and X works much better than Window's quirky file and resource sharing, so there's more time I've saved. Another great time saver is not having to rebuild periodically. Stuff just works when you need it to and it's easy to upgrade when you want to.
As the last of my windows boxes die, I'm just letting them slip off. Now that I've great print support set up on a Red Hat 7.1 box, I have little need for those windows boxes and don't bother with them as their print service fails (parallel and USB!). I tried putting W2K on my wife's box but it failed to even format the hard drive. I put on the older 98 because the Voice of Command demanded it. That was three months ago, but already the printing on it died. Red Hat runs it good. 98 stays there until I can find a driver for the Cannon parallel scanner (doubtful) and a D-Link USB camera, or it quits booting or running those devices. 98 no longer boots on my last windows box, and it's been great to spend the time on cool stuff like IPChains, Exim, Chat, Gphoto, Gimp and gcc instead. Good bye broken, shitty, begging MS junk. I'm off the upgrade mill, cause you suck!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Sorry, it's much cheaper to buy $400 worth of parts, install Linux and keep the thing running for years. It's even cheaper to pick up a "obsolete" box and put Linux on it. After getting over the Nix knowledge hump, it's been much easier to maintian Linux boxes that don't break. As Bruce Perens pointed out above:
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
will keep your Debian system patched (not that it needs much of that) and updated against security holes.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
When you can download. I also never buy Windows of any kind. I always find friend with a CD. I'd rather die than give MS a friggen dime. (Guess I'll have to jack up a delivery truck to get my XBOX).
Does anyone know if the "white album" OpenBSD 2.9 cover will make it onto a poster?
I would only purchase a distribution for the work environment. In which case I would probably buy 2 or 3 copies(~150$) for the server(s), and then replicate freely across hundreds of corporate users. Think of paying Windows licensing per workstation vs using Linux? even if you pay for the distro, you're saving a SH**LOAD of money(and/or legal expenses getting sued by MS for pirating).
l
As far as home users, my friends and I have all paid for one or two distribution copies. At 30-50$ we'll say we spend 100$ total on linux. Ever.
Meanwhile with Microsoft, we all have probably twice as many licenses as we do computers, seeing how they come with everything but Color TVs. So while I'm using Windows on a single PC at home, I've paid Microsoft upwards of 500$ for that single license.
That's not even mentioning the support fees. I have tried many times to get tech support from Microsoft, and its fscking impossible! And if you do get through? They charge you for it. Nevermind that I just spend >100$ on a crappy OS, but now I get to spend money just to get it working. According to this presentation I ran into today, this guy at a corporation was spending thousands of dollars in tech support to Microsoft, trying to get them to fix the instability of THEIR OWN PRODUCT! Is that f*cked up or what?
http://citv.unl.edu/linux/LinuxPresentation.htm
Between friends, Linux User Groups(LUGs), and your own bandwidth, Linux is free. Tech support? More for free online(and more helpful users) than you can find for Microsoft Windows.
So your answer? We spend less on Linux. *FAR* less.
There are 3 reasons I have ever bought a "boxed" Linux distribution. These are very simple, yet I know a lot of people who live Linux the same way:
1) Hard Copy Documentation. And Vendor Specific Documentation. There are times, at least on my system, when for whatever reason the MBR gets overwritten or trashed...sometimes by Windows, an AV program, or LILO being written to the MBR instead of GRUB (LILO *hates* my hardware setup). Linux documentation on the internet is *useless* when all I see when I turn my computer on is LI L0 LI L0 LI LO... What saved my ass? The RedHat Manual that came in the Boxed Set. After noticing the damned Boot Disk also used LILO, which was useless for me, I just grabbed the box, flipped to the LILO/GRUB section, and the Rescue Disk/CD and in 5 minutes had a happy system again
2) When I am trying to introduce someone *new* to Linux. Buying a "boxed set" is perfect for both me and them. Many, many times it has been more than helpful and useful for me to say "Hey, just take a look in the book...It will probably help you more than me, because I have become to good at this that I am sure I will miss something that is important to you and not to me anymore..." For example, I use the BASH shell, and I love it for one reason above all else...Command Line Completion. But, as I discovered, I don't even think anymore when I am trying..."Type first 2 letters.....1 more letter.....etc. etc. I can whip around my system like a jet plane. But when I was trying to show my friend something the other day on his *new* Linux install, he stopped me in the middle of my typing to ask me "How do you type so fast...?" That was when I knew I was over his head...It was simply time to give him the book which came with his Distro. It explained, in plain English, what a "shell" was and what "command line completion" was about, and many more things. Books that come with "boxed sets" like RedHat or Mandrake are absolutely invaluable to me and many, many others. Everything you could ever want short of being a system admin can be found in those books.
3) I feel that giving my small contribution of money to Linux makes me feel like I am giving to a cause I can relate to, understand, and at times defend very wholeheartedly. I feel computing at times makes me want to vomit and run away from the United States to find a country where intelligent, normal human beings use computers and make the laws. But, then I realize that battles and wars are won, not by the big battles, but sometimes by just a lot of people fighting the good battles. Giving a little to the good and small fight. And if my $50 can one day help a platform like Linux bring reality back into the computing landscape, with a hope for fair competition, standards, and decent laws...then it was a $50 well spent. And a cause I can be proud to say I was a part of...even if in the smallest way
I spend much more on linux. I happen to think Free software is worth spending a lot of money on.
================
================
Microsoft is not the answer, Microsoft is the question. The answer is "no".
You already can set your own price for Mandrake :)
Go to Mandrake's Donation Page and give them a buck or two. You can even specify a project you'd like to help fund.
my $.02
mr
I've bought Win95 and the Win98 upgrade. This set me back almost $200. I haven't purchased any Windows OS in almost two years though.
I've spent about the same about on Linux distributions, since I think it's a good idea to support the official distros. In addition to disks from lsl.com and cheapbytes, my total is about the same for Linux as for Windows.
But, with a GNU/Linux distribution I get a whole lot more. I.e., graphic editors, compilers, word processors, plus just about every utility you could imagine. This is in *addition* to the server packages such as MySQL, Postgresql, etc.. that are a premium on Windows OS.
I only purchased Linux twice, once was for a
1997: Linux Developer Resource 1997 for about 30 guilders wich is about $12,50, it came with red hat 4.1, debian 1.2.10 and Slackware 3.2. I played with that a lot.
The other was
1999: SuSE 6.1 which I thought was great After that I discovered Debian which I downloaded and installed, now my workstation and server are running debian, I installed it middle 1999 and never reinstalled another thing on the box I only upgraded packages and kernels. I just don't understand why everybody needs to buy new distributions try them out and a couple of weeks buy another one and try that out. My advice: use Debian; apt-get into it, and you don't need anything else anymore. Linux = Linux + packages, just because you've got another theme doesn't make it a different Linux. Yeah ok some admin tools are userfriendly, but who cares you only need to learn one admin tool and that's "vi"
OTH; the problem in the country where I live (Netherlands) you've got to pay for every second on the telephone net, which makes downloading expensive. I think I spend about $30 a month on downloading packages, but it gives me the most up-to-date machine.
BTW: I never purchased windows (no OEM or what soever), it was always pirated, my philosophy is: I don't pay for bad software. Now I don't use Windows anymore, no need for it, makes everything so much easier....
Besides, why not think of it as actively supporting the OSD community.
jwd
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
I have the CD Burner. But getting broadband simply to download distros would be way more expensize than buying the boxed set, and OS would benefit less. Make no mistake, I would like broadband. But right now I pay less than $10/mo for my IS. Broadband in my area costs anywhere from 3 to 5 times as much.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
But I've spent a lot more on application software for my Windows box. (Call me when GNU Cash can replace Quicken and the GIMP knows about Pantone and CMYK. Admittedly, GNU Cash is getting Really Close.)
Oh, and I'm still sad about losing FrameMaker on Linux. I'd pay more for that than the Windows version, if only Adobe hadn't canned it (or let it fizzle, like the Irix version of Photoshop).
My next computing appliance would be a Mac (for color management), except that I work for a Big Evil Closed-Source PC Maker, so I get Wintel boxes cheap enough to give away as Christmas presents. I'm probably still paying the full Microsoft Tax, though. :(
The problem with Linux is that you can't buy a decent Office package for Linux for any price
...
Really, StarOffice meets my needs. The only "need" any of the cited M$ products fills is file format compatibility =P. Gnumeric is my spreadsheet of choice. Admittedly, my office software needs are not too complex... I fill out my time sheet and complete test reports, and the most basic office packages can do that.
Did you get a rock solid, visual development environment on Linux for free? Sheesh
yes. gnu autoconf + gnu automake + gcc + perl + python + jikes + kdevelop + glade + WxWindows + Tcl/Tk + Forte
WTF is a "visual" development environment anyway? I got a rock-solid, free development environment. kdevelop and glade are pretty damn visual, FWIW. I don't use VC++ in visual mode anyway... I mostly use it from the command line with nmake. Too many options are simplified away in visual mode. My Linux development environment is infinitely superior. I spend a ton of time in my development environment, and the Windows environment is just not up to snuff. I guess if I did lots of platform-specific GUI development, Visual Studio would be worth what we pay. Generally, it's just not.
Your comparison is totally daft.
Your comments are totally daft. My comparison was spot-on. I was comparing my windows configuration which allows me to be almost as productive in Windows as in Linux to my (preferred) Linux configuration. Fortunately, my employer and the licensing agreements for Linux allow me to duplicate that at work as needed, so I don't have to spend too much time in the horribly crippled WIndows environment. Seems stupid at best and trollish at worst to call that "daft".
cheers-
pétard
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You can't be daft enough to assume that the OEM didn't make sure to pass on the full cost of a Win98 install licence in their profit marign, regardless of the actual price from MS to them. Or are you?
You can't be daft enough to have missed the fact that I calculated my cost in the same (flawed!) way the article did. Or are you? My (not too subtle, I thought) point was that even if you didn't count the cost of the OEM software, since the article didn't, in my experience, it cost (my employer) more than 5x as much to get similar but lesser functionality from a Windoze box as I got from a Linux box. And the cost on the Linux box was optional-- I paid for convenience.
The only "free" Windows is a warezed one you put on clean hardware you build from components.
There's no such thing as a "free" copy of Windows. Even if neither I nor my employer had to lay out a penny of cash for Windows-related purchases, the cost in lost productivity and risk of lawsuits for being in contravention of M$'s license would be >$500, IMO.
If I didn't recognize your handle, I'd think: "IHBT. IHL."
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Here's a breakdown of my expenses over 3 years for two machines with similar functionality (from my perspective, the Linux box actually gives me more... the Linux one doesn't handle Office-format docs as well as the Windows one, but that's ok by me... I save as portable formats when I take work home) One's my home box, the other my employer provides. Linux cost me 1/5 as much... certainly not more than Windoze! And let's be real. I have broadband. I only buy linux distributions because it is, relative to Windows, cheap & convenient. It *could* have all been free :-). Windows could not have, at least not legally.
Linux:
6 distros @~$50 = $300
4 books @~$50 = $200
Windows:
1 Win98 (included with machine): $0
1 Visual studio 6 (incl. NT4): ~$1600
1 Win2k upgrade: ~$150
1 Office 97: ~$500
1 Office 2k upgrade: ~$250
1 Office XP upgrade: ~$250
1 Winzip: ~$25
1 Nero CD Recording SW: ~$70
1 Norton AntiVirus: ~$70
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I think a more broad look would be helpful. I mean yah I bought a debian distro for $9. But then I had to purchase a book to learn how to use. Then I have to pay for bandwith to download the latest kernel. ad naseum. There are a lot of little costs with linux. However I don't believe they compare to the initial costs of windows which can be quite large. And then the bandwith for downloading all the patches. etc, etc.
"It has always been this way and it won't change, god bless the fucked up USA" The Briefs
I'll use SuSE in my example, since that's my distro of choice. Why? Because that's what the guy who introduced me to Linux used, and it works well for me. I'd rather not get into a discussion about the relative merits of various distros, mostly because it's largely irrelevant to the arguement I'm trying to make. So, with that out of the way...
I recently bought SuSE Professional for about $85 including shipping. It took about 2 hours to do the full install (bootable DVDs rock!), and everything worked except my printer. So far I've spent about 45 minutes on that problem, and while it isn't fixed, I know how to fix it as soon as I get the time to do it. I expect it will take about 1 hour for me to complete that, or considerably less if I enlist the aide of the afore-mentioned friend.
Yesterday, it was determined that all the computers at my place of employment were to be upgraded to Windows 2000, starting with mine. The upgrade version cost us a little under $200. That should be per station, but frankly, we can't afford that. It took me about 1.5 hours to perform the OS upgrade, plus .5 hours to upgrade Office 2000, plus 1 hour to reinstall the CAD software we use, plus 1 hour to get my NIC to work (mostly because, for some unknown reason, Win2k support info is hard to find), plus 4 hours to discover that our HP JetDirect won't work with Windows 2000 and we will have to buy a new print server(see previous parentheses), which will cost us about $130. I estimate it will take me about an hour to get that working when it arives.
Now, to find the actual cost of Windows, we need to add the prices of Photoshop and MS Office (which I honestly haven't looked at prices for in a while, but I'm going to arbitrarily say $500 each), plus $150 or so for the copy of Windows 98 that we were uprading from.
That gives us a cost of about $1500 and 8 hours for Windows, versus $85 and 4 hours for Linux, to achieve the same functionality (I've left the CAD software out of this equation, mostly because I haven't checked out any of the CAD packages available for Linux. If there's one that's comparable you can add $9000 and 1 hour to the Windows totals). I think we can safely conclude that Windows has been much more expensive, in terms of both time and money, than Linux. However, even if the times were switched, I don't know anyone who's time is worth over $300 per hour, so I think it's safe to say that Linux would still be considerably cheaper.
That said, I think it would take me a lot of distro buying to equal the amount I have to spend to get the same functionality under Windows. After all, a computer with only an OS installed is just an expensive boat anchor.
There's my $0.02. Bring on the flames...
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
As for Linux, it seems like two or three times a year, someone "gives" me a complete distro, either as an advertising promotion or bundled with a magazine. In between times, I download updates at work, burn them onto CDs, and take them home.
Wake up. You're being manipulated, and y'all don't even know it.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
At least no one is forced to buy Linux software. People buy it because they want to.
Besides, do many consumers actually flat-out buy Windows releases? Probably not. They're so damn expensive in return for what they get that they're too busy pirating them. Who hasn't?
Greg
The point is not the price of Windows, but that the Windows upgrade path usually involves purchasing a new PC, which only happens every once in a while. The real question is: Do you upgrade GNU/Linux or Windows more frequently? A secondary question is: Do you pay for your Linux upgrades?
The answers to these questions are interesting from two perspectives. First, if I am in the business of selling GNU/Linux distros, frequent upgrades coupled with actual purchases would mean more -revenue-. Second, if I am a consumer or corporate buyer, frequent upgrades coupled with actual purchases would mean more -cost-.
Since the GNU/Linux distro business ain't all that hot, I suspect that GNU/Linux users don't pay for upgrades - especially if they upgrade frequently. Consider, for example, the fact that Google runs almost entirely on RedHat, but pays for a paltry number of licences.
Personally, I use Debian and apt-get so I rarely upgrade in the sense that I go through some monolithic process to convert my Debian installation to the most recent version. Instead, I upgrade each component of my OS the way god intended: Incremently, as the need arises. Periodically I will purchase a Debian box, but only as a token of good faith.
Debian + Cable + Apt == Free Upgrades For Life
I started using Slack last month, the install was so clean. No sendmail, no logrotate, I could do whatever I wanted with it. I love Debian too, I run that on my desktop that runs X and gnome and all that other junk, but sometimes package manglement can get in the way.
chris@xanadu:~$ whatis /.
/.: nothing appropriate.
Of course most people get the latest and greatest version of Linux by downloading (and burning) themselves. Not everyone has the bandwidth. Some people buy the boxed set to get the support, the goodies, or to just support the company that bothers to put the package together. If you want them to stay in business, then you find a way to give money to them.
For every OS ive owned in the past 6 years i have paid a total of $2. That was for a RedHat CD i got from my university.
My company pays for the whole MSDN thing so i always get my gaming OS from that. You could say indirectly i pay for that.
I always have a Debian CD with me. Along with most my DVD's and my favorite music. I used to carry a Mandrake CD also but it never worked on any hardware i tried so i tossed it.
the difference of course is when you buy Windows part of the money goes to the people who make it, and part to the brainchild Bill Gates who conceived it. Whereas when you buy Linux, 0% goes to Linus and probably 0% to most of the hard working programmers, too.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
I have noticed that newbies mainly purchase distros (and many more at that) than the older more experienced linux users.
This is due to the following reasons:It is kind of sad in a way that the newest GUI's for Linux are so good. I have talked to 3 different people in the last month or so that use linux alot but really have little or no inkling "what lies under the hood". (graphical logins, great KDE and gnome interfaces on the newest distros, auto-update features etc.) They have never had to tinker so they are in essence becoming virtual clones of the users they were with M$ gui's.
I have two shelves full of old Linux distros, starting with the 0.99pl14 Ygdrassil release, and progressing through the Morse Telco, SLS, Slackware, and RedHat, and finally my current favorite, SuSE.
For a while I was buying every InfoMagic multi-CD release as well, and sampling the various systems on them. I've never bought any Windows software or operating systems, except Academic versions of Office, and Encarta for my daughter in college.
Every other piece of Microsoft software I have came with the systems I purchased, except a Visual Studio '97 I won at a Microsoft demo in a local bookstore.
Geez. I've spent more money on Linux-related T-shirts than Microsoft software, and I don't have a single piece of pirated Microsoft software. Don't need it. Eventually, my house will be entirely Microsoft-free. Good riddance.
ihmo windows pc's are much more expensive.
Now when XP becomes standard with their draconian registering procedure and computer tracking code. People will pay even more, because there won't be the casual pirating of windows that occurs now.
I think ca. 1994 or so I bought a Slackware subscription, but I haven't paid for Linux since then. I've downloaded Debian and RedHat distributions ever since.
All my computers at home are selfmade and completely free of any microsoft tax. I did at one point purchase a copy of Windows to run tax software (use it once a year), but I made sure to get it as cheap as possible (OEM version, CD & license only).
On the Linux side I have bought a variety of distributions (TurboLinux, Mandrake, Caldera and a few others) until deciding that I liked SuSE the best. I have since then bought every release of SuSE for two reasons:
- I want them to stay in business
- I like the convenience of installing everything from a single DVD
One of the things that the pro Microsoft camp at the UofM here likes to claim is that the administrative costs for Unix/Linux is higher than for Windows NT/2000. They also like to claim that one can administer a Windows based server with less knowledge than a comprable Linux/Unix server. Both claims are false. Admin costs for running a Linux web server are basically those of hardware and manpower. Which means that you miss the licensing fees of the various Microsoft servers. I dunno what that's up to these days. The other problem you run into with MS products is falling victim to security bug of the day which may cost you dearly. The linux community is a lot more forthcoming about these things. In so far as books go, I have picked up Linux Unleashed, and this really cool Penguin computing Linux book and those are the only two I've needed. Meanwhile three books on NT later and I still had no idea what I was doing. And that brings me to the learning curve part. Windows can get a novice off to a quicker start because the can kind of stumble around the graphical user interface and start to do things pretty quick, but that's a long way from being able to administer a network connected server. In order to run a windows server, you need to understand the registry, TCP/IP, Netware, process control, security, and well, all the other things you'd have with any server. Meanwhile with Unix/Linux you don't have to deal with the registry. Yee haw! So, yeah you have to memorize obscure command line syntax to run linux, but almost everything works, the registry doesn't self destruct every six months, the documentation matches reality, and you don't have to reboot every few days.
The last time I got a Dell catalog in the mail, I noticed that there was a section for customizing your own computer. It started with a base computer with a PIII (I think) and some flavor of Windows. So I called the sales department at Dell and had some fun. Since the sales lit said that I could get any computer I wanted, I figured I could get an AMD processor instead. The sales guy sputtered something off about Dell doing research and finding that AMD processors don't last as long as Pentiums.
So I guess the computer isn't exactly what I wanted, but maybe I could get a free network card in exchange for keeping Windows. When I suggested this, the sales guy first thought that I was crazy and then said, but Windows comes with the computer for free. I pointed out to him that M$ wasn't going to _give away_ Windows, so it had to cost something. In the end the sales guy decided that I couldn't trade Windows for anything (guess it is worthless).
The moral of the story is that Dell shouldn't send me anymore catalogs since I will never buy from them anyways and I find that being annoying alliviates boredom.
BTW, I won't buy from Dell 'cause their tech support people always yell at me when I call 'cause I put Linux on their pretty little laptop.
when you get it with a machine.
Linux is purchased as a donation.
The difference may be too subtle for some to grasp I guess.
KFG
- Slackware 3 - With sam's book
- RH 4.1 - Purchased RH
- RH 4.2 - CDR from work
- RH 5.0 - Purchased RH
- RH 5.1 - CDR from friend
- RH 6.0 - Purchased RH
- RH 6.2 - Cheapbytes
- Debian 2.2 - $10 donation
- RH 7.0 - CDR from work
- RH 7.1 - Purchased RH
During all that time I've purchase one copy of Windows 98 full retail for a system I built, and also a copy for OpenBSD 2.4 that ran on my laptop for a bit.So I ended up paying about the same for RH linux as I did for Windows ($180 yeesh!).
One thing I strongly believe in is voting with my $$$ in things I have choice about. I don't have choice about what digital format I get movies on, but other things such as where I aquire something I will support local retailers as much as possible.
I may shop for books online but when I actually buy them I get them from a local retailer because most the ones in the area have been put out of buisness by BN, Borders, Walden's, etc. I will also buy as many things as I can from the local hardware store & food store because I can afford to even if it costs me a couple percent more than the big chains.
- subsolar
Here is how one should really look at it. How much money do you spend on something you really like? I'll use music as an example. I will ALWAYS buy CD's by certain groups, but NEVER by others. If I care about something enough, I will spend the money for it. If you only like one-third of something, I doubt you're going to go out and purchase it. If you are worried about legality, you will do what you have to.
"Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
I've only ever bought three Linux installation CDs, and that was before I got a broadband connection. I got them for $3.00 or something at Linux Mall.
I see one of the benefits of Linux (and any other open-source software) being the ability to download ISOs, with the only cost of an installation suite of CDs being a $0.15 CD-R.
______________________
... you think that's free?
----- sXe
Me too, but it's an investment, because most of what I learn about Linux applies to unices also. It's fun to learn how to do stuff too, where if you purchase a Windows book, it's probably because you're too stupid to find Help. I doubt that you can learn anything applicable to other systems in a Windows book.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
I'm used to starting up a fresh windows machine and having absolutely no capability. I have to go through the install dance for every single thing I need to do.
Linux just has it all... no wandering around, having to slowly regain the capability to do silly, simple things like opening zip files. It's all there. I've been exploring what capabilities I have right here on the Mandrake install CDs, and it surprises me every time. For most of the time that I need something, pretty much every single time the program to do it has been right there in the package list.
I'm enjoying Linux more each time I use my machine.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Well, assuming you don't count the $0.50 per CD-R and the cost of downloading the ISOs.
I've spent about $500 on Microsoft software (Windows NT and Office), but I got much less use out of it than any one of those Linux distros. When I bought NT 4.0, it was very broken and had poor driver support - as a result, it wasn't really practical to use with my hardware for about a year. After a year, the driver support got better and the service packs caught up with the really bad bugs, and about a year of real usefullness followed. After about a year, NT 4.0 started to look really shabby next to Linux, so I stopped using it. After that experience, I'm never going to buy proprietary software again if I can help it. $500 for a year's usefullness is a ripoff.
--
In spite of the suggestions and all the tests that I have made, I have not cavato a spider from the hole.
For Linux: $3 (+shipping) for Debian 2.2r3 and 2 blank cds for Mandrake 8.0
Do the math.
Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose
The point is you can get Linux free via download, at $1 or so mostly the cost of the CD or purchase it for $40...
You can also get a CD copy from one of a friend of yours...
Disclaimer: "I am the sole owner of this comment I will open its source soon."
--- Bouh !!! ---
My first and only distros I bought was RedHat 5.2 like many people at a "Best Buy" store near me... Since then I got my ADSL line (two years ago) and all the distros I wanted to try...
But I still purchase distros to offer them to my Windows wanabee friends... Maybe the high sale numbers came from there...
Disclaimer: "I am the sole owner of this comment I will open its source soon."
--- Bouh !!! ---
I started off with Slackware back in 95 or 96.. I think it was bundled in some other package of CDs. In any case, I guess I may have picked up at least three versions of Slackware from Walnut Creek for $29.99+ per, a bunch of distros from LinuxMall for $1.89 per (including Redhat 6, Redhat 7, Mandrake, Debian, FreeBSD). And most recently, Slackware 8.0 from store.slackware.com for $39.99. No more than a couple hundred bucks.. installed on over 70 servers.. not bad ROI, eh?
With each computer we buy, we always get Windows installed (Dell notebooks primarily). So, it goes with the package.
I, too, have tried to stray from Slackware, but man -- in my opinion, it's just the best damn distribution out there because it doesn't make the presumptions that you want your server with all of the "default" settings.
Once a month? While Windows does suck, once a year sounds more like it.
Well, I need a copy of Windows for games, etc.. So I got a copy of 98SE when I built my duron last year. It cost under $200CDN at the time. (when you get a copy with a new pc, the os is not free, no matter what you may think!) Since then, I have tried out about 6 linux distros--but their cost was limited to bandwidth and the cost of a couple of cdr's. I've spent WAY more on windows than on linux. Allan
It really has nothing to do with buying distros. MS CALS and enerprise licensing is where the real money is spent. Take for instance we just built a web application that used MS SQL. We then found out that it would cost us a enterprise SQL license at 50 K just because a web application was hooked to it. We converted the application to use Postgres in a few hours and saved the 50K. Nuff Said!
Got Code?
aztek: the ultimate man
No sig for you!!
When you can be a partner and get all the new distributions for free! =)
But seriously, If I try a new distro, I don't buy it, I either get it for free or D/L it via FTP.
But we are both RedHat consultancy partner and SuSE value partner, and I personally run SuSE, so I always have a CDset available.
Since then I have not purchased any linux distribution. On the other hand, I've only bought one version of windows aswell, a retail version of Windows98 (First Edition). It's getting really old now though...
My guess is that many people buy their first Linux distro just to get some setup help, manuals, a nice bootable CD, floppy tools etc etc. Later, they realize it is cheaper to download it.
I also guess that some people care to buy a Linux distro for like 50 dollars (perhaps cheaper then downloading for most people), but doesnt really care to buy a windows licence for 150 dollars.. If the price is low enough, it is always more convenient to buy a cd then to download it.
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
For example, Mandrake 7.2 (downloadable version) shipped with a bad ipop3d. I eventually fixed the problem but Mandrake never did - the package that came with the retail Mandrake 7.2 worked fine.
Mandrake 8.0 (downloadable version) shipped with kernel source which wouldn't compile the modules unless you did a "make mrproper" which killed the default config. I'm not sure that everybody confident enough to rebuild the kernel would think to do a "make mrproper". To the best of my knowledge, this hasn't been fixed either. I don't think it's a problem with Mandrake 8 retail.
I still use Mandrake because I like it... But if you get the downloadable version, expect complications.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
Surely they contain a whole bunch of stuff you're just not going to use?
Personally, I just download the Debian boot disks and 'apt-get' just the packages I want. The downloads are much quicker since I don't have to download all that stuff I'm not interested in.
my $0.00
I tend to define an 'operating system' as the bare bones required for a system to be functional - ie, whatever that's needed to get to a UI and let you run programs.
/useful/.
/any/ that - I just downloaded it.
A distribution is much more than just an OS - it is a suite or clients, apps and utilities which actually make the system
Case in point - any Linux distro worth its salt comes complete with a huge range of server software - webserver, DNS server, Kerberos KDC, DHCP, SSHd, Samba, etc. etc.
I didn't have to pay anything for
How much would I have to pay to get the same functionality from a Microsoft distribution?
I prefer to put 50$ for the Windows copy in the PC... but here what I get: Supposed I buy a Debian CD from Cheap Bite: 10$. I install them on the developpers machines of a medium-small enterprise in the Engineering field: 5$ Debian CD x 50 machines = still 5$. But the Windows OEM just have cost me 2500$. So, especially in the enterprise level, Windows is very more expensive since it doesn't scale well. But we already know that Windows doesn't scale, no?
Fabien Niñoles - Debian Maintainer
I've spent about $70 so far for Linux, I paid an extra $40 on a scsi card a few years back to get one that had good stable linux drivers, instead of a cheaper one that had no/flakey linux drivers. I count that as spending money on linux (although woudln't you know it, that card works fine in linux and win98, but win2k won't boot with it in..but I digress)
.... of course they worked off the bat in a linux-based PC.
An other was for an $8 copy of LinuxPPC because I had a modem.
The rest? Blank CDRs that I have filled with my favorite distros, and my very own source/binary collections of utilties.
Thats all I've spent on linux in 5.5 years of using it as my primary OS.
In that same time I've spent an estimated >=$350 on windows, by being forced to pay for the bundled win98, winnt and win2k with machines over the years.
And that doesn't even include the money I had to spend for new pci cards when I found out my mac-pci cards woudln't work under Windows. They won't without hacked drivers
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
Okay...my real issue: you seem to know about slack. I want to customize my distro hard...only what I need. I have an old laptop who doesn't need much and a modern computer that can cope a lot of things.
Is the slack CD just another of those fancy 'I wanna install Linux' installs or can I do whatever I want? If I am at the mercy of an installer I'm not interested. (Moderators: mod down my post without text, I deserve it!)
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
In order to see just what the ratio of Windows vs. *nix users there are visiting /. This would indicate what (approximately) the costs could be, estimating $125 per winbox and $40 per *nix
Try not to oversimplify the answer - Gartner make buckets of money on these kind of surveys.
Your OS (besides the initial outlay and the hidden OEM costs) takes time and effort to support. Hardware and Software: maintenance, upgrades, patches, networking, security, warranties, blood, sweat and tears: boil down to the former hot buzzword Total Cost of Ownersip (TCO). The tandem buzzword Zero Administration greatly backfired when even executives smirked at such total bullsheet endeavours.
MS have locked in the belief that a homogenous platform greatly reduces TCO (despite early Gartner group reports to the contrary).
What is interesting is that a Single Platform of Choice (SPOC) morphs into support structures who address Single Points of Failure (SPOF). Eh, yes i know this sounds like a paradox but "one problem=everyones problem=one solution" is rarely a big deal when balanced with the savings on the off-the-shelf MS techs. Multiplatform support is bloody expensive.
Perhaps respecting the user experience got lost in the MS Shut Up and Reboot (SUaR) support implementation. From an end-user perspective, the costs are measured in downtime. MS have been working on fast rebooting "Instant On" initiatives for some time.
Intelligent implementations of solid platforms enable productivity regardless of the market domination creed professed in the development shop. And you can take that all the way to the bank.
I never paid for Windows. I build my own Pcs to avoid the MS tax. I bought a couple Linux distros, once to get a book and a couple other distros to compare. You know why? Because I had the choice to. I first downloaded it to be sure I could and this was no rip off. Then I wanted to encourage the programers.
I my server cabinet, in addition to our OpenBSD zillion dollar EMC, I have 6 Linux servers and 4 NT servers. Linux: I've bought 3 RedHat Distro's (5.2, 6.1, 7.0): ~$120. NT Server: One license for each (no client licenses, they come from our $$$ Enterprise agreement): ~$3000 + 2 Exchange licenses. Linux wins here, no contest. Shoop...
And who paid for that?
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
I have been buying Linux distros from the start. I have Slackware, Corel, Red Hat and Mandrake sitting in my desk. I also picked up a copy of NetBSD at Comdex just to toy around with. I think that if you like a product and want the company to keep producing, you should buy the product.
Now I'm not saying that I've bought every OS that I've used, but I buy major upgrades when they come out just to show someone cares.
Viv
-----------
Viv
Gmail invites for ip
It may well be possible, but in places like the UK where local calls are not free, a full ISO download would end up costing a lot of money. For instance, 6 days is 8640 minutes. Our cheapest local rate is 1p per minute and is usually about 3. So call it 2p per minute on average and that download costs me £172.80 in phone bill, as well as tying up my phone line. I don't tend to worry about boxed distros, I buy my disk sets from http://www.cheeplinux.com/ and reccomend them. You get all the CD's, no documentation (but that's what Google and Usenet are for) no need for long downloads (apart from getting updates once you've installed) and that costs me about £12.99 for a 6 CD set. I've just been given a boxed copy of SUSE 7.0 as a mate of mine has upgraded. I just need to be brave enough now to trash my Windows box that has taken me two years to set up to perfection. *sigh*. Chris.
--- "TANSTAAFL" --Robert Heinlein (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch)
I notice there aren't any posts rated above 3, and only a few of those. I think this newslet misses so much in terms of real rational thought that no one really has anything substantial to say about it. Strikes me as odd that something so non-news would even make it online.
Personally, I bought Mandrake 6.2 when I was first learning Linux. $30. Haven't spent a dime on Linux since then. Technically, one could say I "didn't pay for Windows" because it came on the PC, but that's flawed reasoning. The licenses for MS products are all included in the sale price OF the PC. I payed for Outlook 98 when it came out, around $100. At that time in my life, it was worth every penny. It no longer is. I didn't pay a red cent for PINE, Evolution, NS Messenger, "Gnome Office", Star Office, or KOffice. MS Office, on the other hand, is up to something around $450 retail, and you pay more for a PC with it installed than without it.
I dual-boot a couple machines right now. I've worked for a Solaris shop that distributed every jot and tittle of company correspondence in Office 2000 format, so they required me to have available Windows and a company license of Office 2K. I found it a tragic joke, frankly. The day I need a new computer and it's only available with XP is the day I build one from scratch with Linux on it and never look back.
--
-j
-j
Why is it people think that Windows is free because it was already loaded on a PC?
Windows isn't free. The PC manufacturer paid something for it and passed that cost, plus a markup, onto you. Granted, it's far less than what you'd pay in a store, but there is a real cost associated with it.
So, let's say that a PC manufacturer pays about $100 for a Windows 2000 license on a new PC.
Each Linux distro costs about $39 for the plain installation. So, you can buy almost three copies of a distribution before you're paying more than you did for Windows.
They key point you're missing here is that you don't have to pay for the distro. Most of them can be had for only what it costs you to download the boot images and the various packages the installer retrieves. Or, if you're a real purist, you can download the entire ISO instead.
Windows has never been free.
--
All opinions presented here aren't mine.
If the RedHats and the Mandrakes and the VALinux-ers etc wouldn't support the original programmers, who developed the code, I would say your arguement would be right. But I think they try to do what they can to support developers. So
"the RedHats" or "the Mandrakes", who do you think they are ? Some strange evil species or what ?
My retarded half brain bought the boxed distros in the beginning, because I was too retarded to download all the stuff over a stupid modem.
/. would be a much nicer place to live in.
Later my retarded brain became so sophisticated that I bought the boxed distros for the accompanying documentation to see which distro cares more about their customer's fullblown retarded brains.
Who would try to use the opportunity to write good handbooks for their distros so that potential clients would finally get cured from their retardism and be ever so grateful to become loyal supporters of open/free software ? That was THE
question which my heart desired to get an answer to.
Now I am cured and have a big, mellow heart. That's why I am still buying every disto I want to try out in a boxed version from my neighborhood computer store. I just fell in love with the idea that people work to keep the source code open and I think they deserve my support.
Actually I am proud to be a retarded supporters of companies, who support free/open source software and am quite willing to invest my couple of pennies in them.
If just the geeks would be as retarded as I am, the world of
MS is getting pretty anal about their licensing.. so if you have several PC's at home and u wanted to upgrade to the latest version of Windoze u would have to buy copies for each of the machines in the future.. Not so when it comes to buying a Linux upgrade...
Slackware 2.3,3.0,3.1,3.2,4.0,8.0: downloaded.
OpenLinux 1.3,2.3,2.4: downloaded.
Red Hat 5.0,5.1,7.1: downloaded.
Total I've spent on distributions: $0.00.
Applications are another issue.
I bought every game Loki ever released for Linux.
I bought Corel WordPerfect Office 2000 deluxe for Linux.
I bought Corel Draw 9 for Linux.
I bought VMWare for Linux.
I bought Win4Lin for Linux.
I bought ApplixOffice 5.0 for Linux.
I've probably spent over $1000 on Linux applications. But that's nearly what a family member paid for Windows 2000 professional and Office 2000 professional alone, so I still feel pretty good.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
FreeBSD and NetBSD have admirable and excellent update and build systems (ports, kernel, etc)
... Debian's *.deb/apt system may now have surpassed *BSD but *BSD is certainly worth mentioning.
Debian was surely inspired by these systems (which use CVS and CVSup)
The pile of distro boxes in the back of my room are proof that I used to buy a distro about every six months or so. But once I got to school,I had a connection that was fast enough to get cd images. It all depends on your situation. Even if you don't have a means of downloading the O.S, you can get the distros dirt cheap from certain computer magazines. I think that most people end up buying their first distro full price, but once they become more experienced with Linux, they'll most likely find a cheaper way to get it.
- A real programmer uses $ cat > a.out
I've never bought a copy of Windows.
I have two Windows 95 CDs, one inherited from an old computer of my mother's (which was stolen), and another which belonged to a former live-in boyfriend of a woman who I used to date. :)
I also have a CD with MS-DOS 6.22 and Win 3.11 on it, from the same ex-boyfriend of the ex-girlfriend. (Fortunately, I get along with both of them fairly well. :)
I did buy PC DOS 7 way back when IBM was still selling operating systems.
My Amigas and 8-bit computers all came with operating systems. Same for my Mac.
My other computers run FreeBSD, which I downloaded and burned...
So I guess my biggest OS expenditure has been to IBM. :)
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
Do we spend more money on Free Software or $Expensive$ Software?
Gee, let me get my calculator...
Got friends?
I can see the flames coming...
I use both Windows and Linux. There's a time and a place for both. Specifically, my Games machine is currently running Windows 2000 Professional. In the last year it's run Windows 98SE, Windows ME, and Whistler. My workstation, my Seti@Home box you mean you don't have one? shame..., my firewall, my mailserver, my DNS server, etc. all run Linux. Most of 'em are running RH 6.2, but the DNS is running 6.0. I have no reason to update them, as they do everything I need. The firewall is a firewall. No open ports, so I'm not afraid of hacking.
But that wasn't your question. You asked, how much have I spent on Linux, and how much have I spent on Windows. I've spent the same: The cost of 4 blank CD's. About 3 dollars. Not even, because I buy them by the hundred for $30. I've bought one copy of Caldera for the manual. Everything else I've downloaded. The Windows has been acquired thanks to my friend's department (20 people) having a 100 user license and not being allowed to share the licenses with other departments. I feel like Dilbert....
To put it another way, I've spent more money on Everquest in the last year than I have on Windows and Linux put together, and I've only been playing it for 3 months.
HTH
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
You forget that Micro$oft also has other, non-OS products.
;-)
They make a killing selling Games, Office suites, graphics suites, etc. RedHat makes Linux. That is all.
Sure, Microsoft sells a 1-user license for Windows 2000 for $700. But the OS sales only make up a small part of their final revenue. For every 1 user that actually buys Windows 2000, Microsoft has 20+ users that buy the latest copy of MechWarrior 4 or whatever for $80. They've also got a large number of users buying MS Office every year for $600 a pop, and the graphics programs for $600 a pop. Then you've got Visual C++ and Visual Basic. Those cost another $800 a pop.
Do the math again. You'll see that the OS's only make up about 5-10% of Microsoft's final revenue. Probably less, because they charge $45 a call for Tech. Support. I'm Canadian, and using Canadian dollars, here. Feel free to convert that to American, but don't flame me because you don't speak Canadian....
So we return to your math. Assuming that RH has a share of 50%, and makes 0.1% of what Microsoft makes. Factor in the 5-10% (let's be generous, and say 10%), that's 1% of the revenue being spent on MS OS's for RedHat. That's a significant change.
Why is it a significant change? Simple: Numbers. For every diehard Linux user you can find, I can find you 100 or more who want nothing to do with it, and would rather use Windows because it's easier.
Q.E.D.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
I have definately spent more on Linux than I ever did on Windows. The whole reason stems from the fact that I enjoy being on my computer more now that it doesn't have to be rebooted in the middle of whatever I'm doing. I have also purchased more games from Lokigames than the total amount of games I ever did from multiple Win games distributors.
Simply put, I save the company a bundle. I watch my colleagues bumble about, patching things, writing out alot of purchase order requests, and scratching their heads inquisitively as blue text and white letters shine on their forehead.
In comparison, my company has had to buy me absolutely nothing. I don't even know how to write purchase orders, as I have no need for them. I download the operating system, run Apache, PHP, MySQL, and various other open source utilities that make our website and intranet tick.
I also have alot of time to relax and observe nature's most bothered creature: the NT admin.
Perhaps I spend more money on Linux, per se, than Windows, because I'll never purchase Windows. But, how much money do others not spend because they burn the CD's from me? Also, at work we buy every new distribution version (for the distributions we use) when it comes out, but not for every server, like we would have to for Windows. So, in the end, our cost is much lower than if our servers were Microsoft based. Plus, I would wager that a lot of ./'s download ISO images instead of purchasing the CD's.
Jeez, if you have to use Windows then run it on Win4Lin (http://www.netraverse.com). Here at work we use it for Quckbooks and the occasional Windows development that crops up.
http://james.nontrivial.org
Its been my experience that developer desktop's get re-imaged (clean install of OS and applications) at least 2 times a year. For me, at least 4 times a year. Various reasons, sometimes due to general weirdness resuting in extreme measure to get a stable machine again.
Since most business desktops are running Windoze, that is where most of the image $ go today.
If desktops start showing up as Linux OS more often, we will see a similar rate of Linux rebuilds as we see Windows rebuilds.
Servers are different. They are by intent less tampered.
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~~ the real world is much simpler ~~
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Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
Ok, so not everybody has a fast connection like cable or dsl at their home, so downloading may not be very feasible, even with go-zilla or another download manager. Have you checked with your local college or university? Most Computer Science departments have at least one, and probably a lab full of linux/BSD boxes...and will be happy to cut you a cd if you bring them one.
You still have the problem of no paper manuals, but with the $20-$30 you just saved, you can buy an O'reilly book that will be handy for the rest of your computing life...
Would you care for a jellybaby?Would you care for a jelly baby?
so, if i were to go to a rock n roll forum and ask, "what do you spend more money on Rock CD's or Classical CD's?"
what do you think the answer would be, duh!
Well considering how much time you put into Linux I'd have to say that linux takes a lot more money then windows easily. Someone on slashdot awhile back had this for a sig.
Linux is only free if your time is worthless
I tend to think that is more correct then funny....
Before switching to linux, I was an OS/2 user. I paid for that software, and registered many programs under it because it was useful. I never registered any windoze programs.
As far as linux goes, before I had bandwidth, I used to simply buy the cheap bytes CD's ($2-$3). Nowadays I simply suck down a distro when I want to upgrade, archive it on one of my 'always on' machines, and perform an FTP install on the workstation.
But I don't do that often. If the software is doing the job, and doing it well, why fuck with it?
There really isn't much of a need to buy a linux distro 'off-the-shelf' for most people who use it (maybe the first time). All documentation is online, and you can download the software as well. Why spend $30-$50 on something I can download in a few hours over the cablemodem?
I think people may buy a shrinkwrapped distro once, and if they are smart enough to actually learn how to use it, they will use cheapbytes, or download it themselves from that point forward.
Have not bought a Win CD in 2 years.
But have purchased Linux distro's at least 3 times this year (at $70 a pop, then throw in some Linux games, you get the drift).
windows has slowed down, if not frozen.
StarTux
JWD with the modem,
You need to get broadband or some friends (with broadband and cd burner)
The question is, do you know who you're supporting? Who are the people who did the hard work? Linus wrote the kernel, and a whole bunch of other folks built the gnu stuffs and other software that comes with your distribution. You're not paying them. Instead you're paying the Redhats and the Mandrakes. Why? I can understand if you're buying service from them. But what have they done to give a free operating system an extra $79.95 in value? I have to agree with the original poster that people paying for Linux (and not getting support in return) are retarded.
I know I spent a ton on books for Linux. Not counting COM - I can't really think of any Windows books I've purchased.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
I paid for DOS 1.0 because I'd never heard of Linus. I would have waited, had I known the best was yet to come.
if 'fruits de mer' = seafood
if 'fruits de mer' = seafood
does 'fruits de merde' = mushrooms?
I hate to say it, but the replies you get may be a *bit* biased at slashdot. :)
I spend money on SuSE because I would like to support the company, but as far as windows goes, I cant see paying good money for a gaming OS.
blah blah blah....
drightler@technicalogic.com
My poor Linux box is a dual 166MHz Classic Pentium... But then, it doesn't NEED an upgrade, either.
I do everything I need to do with free (beer) software, although Loki occasionally tempts me to spend some money on games.
I actually bought a copy of Windows 2000 for my personal use a while back. It was $200 something if I remember right.
.. i have downloaded ISOs of Slackware, Debian, RH, Mdk and FreeBSD, OpenBSD. Of these I have gone and purchased the official boxed set of Slackware, FreeBSD ($99 with Applix), OpenBSD and Debian.
..
As for Linux/BSD
While the total amount of money I paid for Linux is more, consider this: I had it when I downloaded the ISOs, I paid and purchased the boxed kit because I wished to support the vendors as opposed to Windows which if I buy a machine, I get to buy Windows whether I want to or not.
When Windows XP comes out there isnt going to be a free download from MSFT, you are going to have to pay top dollar for it, but for Linux/BSD you can download an iso or get one from cheapbytes or LSL for $0.99
Never spent a dime on Linux. I download the ISOs from the websites at work, then take my old harddrive and copy them over, then burn them at home (cheap portable storage, don't care if it gets broken really). I get all of my info from the web. (maybe that is why I keep breaking it?)
Before I had a burner, I downloaded the slackware packages from the web (mid nineties), and installed from my dos partition.
In between, I didn't have linux. I probably wouldn't now if I didn't have the cd burner.
room101 -- how much can you stand before they break you?
(they always break you eventually)
If it's a company you believe in, there's nothing wrong with buying the product that keeps them afloat.
Linux: Because a PC is a terrible thing to waste.
Linux: Because a PC is a terrible thing to waste.
James Brents
One of the reasons why the Win box costs up to $500 more is that the OEM had to pay a reduced rate for the OS and bundled apps.
...) came with the pre-install.
And all my Win boxes (which I use for games
On the other hand, while I always buy a pre-install of Linux on my Linux boxen, I've bought a few distro releases since purchase.
One of the problems with the current legal status of the MSFT antitrust case is we don't have transparent pricing - we don't know how much it costs the OEM to preinstall, depending on what spifs they got, volume discounts, non-competes, ad and icon placement, and so on.
So my guess is most of my Win box probably ran between $200 and $400 for the bundled Win OS/app package it came with. Not that I would have paid for it, but that's probably what they paid.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
If money was the only reason to choose an OS, I'd pick up a copy of OS/2 for $10 at Goodwill (still sealed) and be done with it.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
in the last year or so, i have tried at least 3 redhat versoins, 2 mandrake versions, one debian, one slackware, and one caldera. Ive been 'taste-testing' if you will. at cheapbytes, each of these cds cost me 2-4 dollars. plus i even got freebsd and netbsd once for free on clearance with my other order! yay! (still need to try one of those out..) This is dirt cheap compared to _ONE_ copy of windows 2000 i bought. I imagine that when i find a distro that i really love, ill buy it retail with the manual and bells/whistles. but even then, the cost will pale in comparison with my expenditure on only one version of windows.
I don't spend money on distributions much, as I have a DSL line, so I am able to download pretty much anything I need. I did buy Slackware 8.0 though, just to support the distribution as they are in a severe bind right now, from my understanding.
Many people have the wrong impression that ISO's take up MORE bandwidth. In actuality, they take up less. It is much easier to download one ISO, burn a few copies, and send it to friends, than to have each friend spend time downloading their packages. ISO's are essential if you want to manage many machines. You cannot go and install every machine from FTP. It is just too much bandwidth.
Not to mention, most newbies have no clue about downloading just the boot disk, and for crying out loud, when i build a new machine, there is no reason to waste time, money, and space with a floppy drive in each machine. I know I am not the only person in my shoes, so there is definately a need for ISO's. One thing that might make things a little bit easier is floppy organisation. Last time i installed Debian, i spent 30 minutes reading documentation on what i needed to do to get a working boot disk to allow me to install via FTP. There should be a full featured boot ISO out there to download (10-20 megs) with everything you could possibly want. it's hard to find a machine without a cdrom that isnt bootable nowadays.
just my 2 cents.
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
I have not met anyone that has actually bought a copy Windows. (generally advanced users)
I have purchased several shrink wrapped Distros including Red Hat, SuSE, Caldera, and Mandrake. I currently purchase the update for SuSE when it is avaiblable in Profesional. I love SuSE and want to help support their hard work. I also burn several cd's from the internet for INSTALLFESTS. Several people have mentioned Books being the largest cost I have to 100% agree. I have spent over $1,000 on books and about $300 on Distrobutions. This being said I have only spent the OEM price for Windows 98 that came with my PC and Widows ME for the wife.
Rusty Minden Scientia non est potentia, quae prologum potentia solidum est. Knowledge is not power, but the prelude to
Back in the day before unlimited time I was paying by the minute for a long distance phone line, because there was no local number to call and by the minute for GEnie, Delphi, Aohell, or Compuserve which ever system I was using in a particular month. So I feel your pain
I have boxed copies of Redhat 6 and several different versions of mandrake 7.1 and 7.2 as well as Free BSD 4.x but the local walmart/staples/officemax hadn't recieved 8.0 yet and I din't feel like ordering it thru the mail so I just d'loaded it...
A couple of weeks after Mandrake Gnu/Linux 8.0 was released I left my Puter on non stop for around 6 days to get the two ISO's over a 56k dial up I got droppped a couple of times but whenever that happened I just resumed the download. I think I took a break for about a day between the first ISO and the second becasue we were expecting an incoming call and didn't have a second line. So it is possible
When we statred using Red Hat in my office, first thing I did was buy Professional Server edition. Could I have downloaded everything I needed? Sure. I have the bandwith and the burners. I made a CHOICE to buy it. How many copies of windows have I bought? One with every PC that was ever purchased here (except for the HP Netserver running Linux, that came os-less), since there was no other CHOICE in the matter. Oh, lets not forget all the NT liscenses required so that the machines liscensed to use WIN95/98/ME are allowed to use the network drives as well. Oddly, the drive on my RH box with Samba didn't require any such liscense... But I also have a WIN95 license for the 3 pentium boxes running Linux (Installed from the same CDs). Those same CDs also installed the 3 machines on my personal network... and upgraded my friend's 6.2 install... and went on a co-workers home machine when they wanted to learn Oracle and had to choose between Buying NT or installing Linux... the list continues but I think the difference is clear.
Have you read the Moderator Guidelines yet?
I have to work in both worlds, I use W98 at the office, because it is a standard, and even though I haven't spent a penny myself let's say that my PC has more than $ 10,000 worth of software in it (considering the upgrades of the programs every year). My Linux box at home has programs for most of the tasks I do here (except for real-time simulations and AutoCAD) and I have spent something like $ 100 in all the stuff I bought for it when I converted it from W95 to Linux, including a distribution, manuals and a "software pack". It took me a lot of time to configure my house machine, but I never lose anything in the middle of my work (like in W98), there are no viruses and I have a lot less heartburn using it. Therefore, the Linux machine costed me a lot less than the Windows one.
Free software. good. ook download with cable modem. mmmmmmmmmmmm.
It depends .. on whether you use Linux or Windows. Whether you buy retail or download for free. /. ?
Slow news day,
Uh you use linux for pine? that's the first time i've heard that.
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www.shockthemonkey.org
Photos.
I spent much much more on Linux than Windows. The pirate copy of Windows 2000/98/95 only costed me $10; while I spent more than $6000 on books and VA/Redhat's stocks.
You are right, Linux suck hell lots of money out of my pocket. This sucker.
BTW, If you excuse me, I'll go back to my $20,000 freelance job implementing Linux servers.....
A couple of weeks after Mandrake Gnu/Linux 8.0 was released I left my Puter on non stop for around 6 days to get the two ISO's over a 56k .... So it is possible
:)
Don't underestimate the power of desperate users.
1 MSDN subscription = $500 (= 10 licenses)
2 SuSE releases, 2 RH releases, and a zillion Linux distro's to test (@ 1.95 each) = c. $150.
Of course, other than Kylix, I have not bought any Linux software, while I have splurged on various Windoze games, apps and development tools (many shareware goodies too - Yes, I paid for my WinZip!)
Considering that my ISP charges $20/gig downloaded, I've spent maybe $60 on windows and $40 on linux. Oh wait...you mean actually BUY it??
Maskirovka
All the distributions makers allows you to download their products from their website. Sometimes they give you .iso files to burn cds, sometimes you only have the packages. You don't have to buy a new distro to upgrade!
I'm a Debian user. A while ago I bought a SuSE 7.2 for a customer. The manuals you got with the cds are wonderful. If you compare it with the Windows manual (how to move the mouse, how to close a window...), SuSE is a steal!
Nobox: Only simple products.
Well freedom is never free, but in GNU software it comes pretty close. My cost's for Linux run considerably less than for Windows. But it's not really a cost issue for me. To be honest it's not really the stability either (though that is a nice bonus). To me it is the natural intergration of tools like Perl and other legency warez plus the opportunity to learn something that may be very valuable to my future. The time and knowledge needed to be at 'home' (pun intended:) with Linux may be a little higher that Windows, but that makes it more a valuable asset. Even if a future employer or customer can't see the benefit I still win by expansion of my conceptual capacity.
As for the cost well lets see I have a several DOS licenses, a license for Windows 3.11 and 95 and 98. The 3.11 came with a system , the 95OSR2 I purchased with an old broken system for $50.00, plus 98 on the latest system. I have a slew of Linux versions around (currently running Mandrake 8.0 on all systems) most which came with a good book. Plus I have several OS/2 licenses. The worst part of this is I had no choice in the M$ expense, and get little for it since I rarely use it. All in all Linux is by far the best deal, both in terms of value and expense.<--(that's a PERIOD folks)
Cost Details below: (Man I have blew a lot of $$$ on this stuff)
Matt
Take my family, for example. We moved over to the US in the 1950's. Some of my aunts and uncles never learned the German language aside from hearing it (or, to parallel, reading it in the man pages). What they really needed was some formal (read: book) lessons. It's possible to do it without it, but more formal and boiled down books make it easier. At least when I learned German it did. The "man" pages just serve as a (parallel: German) dictionary so you remember how to use the word you want, not necessarily a means to learn the finer points of Linux.
I figure that I spend more on the OS, but don't have to purchase a lot of software for the system to be useful there after. But I have no problem supporting Patrick, and wish more people would.
Click here or here.
Don't think you're not paying for windows, just because it came on your new pc. With micro$oft, nothing is free. And when was the last time your organization spent 100K on server licenses for a Mandrake or Redhat?
My sig sucks.
Definitely more on Linux, considering the books and lately I've been buying boxed sets. Started out with cheap copies of distros from LinuxMall.com. But I've recently acquired a burner I'll probably d/l my next upgrade. However the *nix books keep coming in, as I'm trying to learn more about the OS and it's functions. And at average $30/book it adds up.
That said, I wouldn't dare try to compare the costs of a correctly configured (ha!) Windows machine to a Linux machine in an end-user environment. Books and training alone for a corporate end-user w/ Linux at their desktop would exceed the cost of that $100 license for Windows 2000. I've only purchased Windows once.....Win2k on the first day it came out. Why you ask? I had beta version and tested it for 4 months (burned copy from real beta tester:). I was so happy that Windows had finally gotten stable after that 9X/DOS crap, I wanted to buy it, not wait for a friend of a friend to burn me a copy. So I bought a full version and have told everyone I know that works in Windows to upgrade to it. Don't get me wrong.... I still have have Mandrake 8.0 dual booting on my computer. I bought RH 5.2, Mandrake 6.0 and Suse 6.2 from Best Buy.
I compile my most important apps from source, so they are more likely to be up to date.
One of my SuSE distros had a problem with Zip drive support. When you mounted a new Zip disk the system still thought the previous one was mounted. After MANY emails to SuSE they were able to recreate the problem, provided me with a patch to the kernel module and gave me detailed instructions on recompiling the kernel. I don't know if this level of support is typical, but I never got that kind of support for Windows.
In any case, I do buy boxed distros at full retail price every time. I know I don't *have* to, but to me they are the best software bargain going.
Looking at the bookcase, I see a bunch of Linux books. A few books on Borland C and C++ for Windows. Don't want to know how much is spent. As for the distributions, I enjoy trying all that show up at Borders. Like many others, I started with Slack and still enjoy it's feel.
I haver purchased RH 5.2 , 6.0 , 6.1 , 7.0 from reatail outlets and 7.1 from the red hat direct store. I do this to support the linux comunity, not because i have to. I hate buying windoze software, but pretty soon (except for a couple specialized workstations here) we will be Microsoft Free.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
$0 - Caldera 2.2 (free with book)
$30 - Caldera 2.3 (boxed set)
$10 - Caldera 2.4 (upgrade with rebate)
$0 - RedHat 7.0 (preinstalled on new PC)
$80 - SuSe Professional (boxed set)
And also for my Linux bookshelf.
$40 - Special Edition Using Caldera (Que)
$40 - RedHat 7.0 Bible (IDG)
I've also bought boxed editions of Oracle 8i, WordPerfect 8, WordPerfect Office 2000, and a handful of books on HTML, PHP, MySQL and so on. But for just Linux, I've only shelled out just $200US in three years. Even including all the optional software and the other books, I doubt that it exceeds $400.
I shudder to think what I would have spent on Microsoft to do all the things I'm doing with Linux.
Oh wait, my Linux distro cost me about $80 USD more than my Windows98 OS. :o)
I never have a problem forking over some green for free software. It's paying for the over-priced stuff that makes me heave.
"From of old, there are not lacking things that have attained Oneness." - Lao Tzu
I have never had a problem with Mandrake 7.2. I went to Insight.com and started pricing Windows software to do the same things I am doing with Linux and stopped looking when the total went over $2000. The learning curve isn't that bad and even at my income level $2000 buys a lot of learning time. In three years I have spent less than $200 on Linux. You are not forced to upgrade every six months with Linux. You need to upgrade on every major version if you want to be able to use 3rd party binaries but that isn't necessary if the software you have is doing the job. Out of the box Win2000 doesn't even begin to have the functionality and completness of Mandrake.
"If there is nothing you are willing to die for, then you are not really alive." Myself
I buy linux cd's because I like to have the new versions of the packages and not to get stuck in 'dependencies'. I bought win NT annd win 95 in 2nd hand for ....(so cheap I don't remenber) from old computers (tehy are good for me to put Windows Truetype fonts on linux).
I think everybody should buy Linux new distros, you get Manuals (SuSE), new versions of apps (Mandrake) and help the people who devellpoed it.
Year:
2k:
Personal Copy of ME: US$89 (upgrade)
Personal Copy of Win2K: US$199 (Upgrade)
MSDN Professional Edition: US$499
(Above not licensed for home use. But you can make a "personal web site" with the server - however the licence was amended this year)
OpenBSD 2.7 and 2.8: US$40
Mandrake 7.1 : US$40
Solaris 7 Platform Intel: US$40
2k1:
Copy of XP public Beta (do not forget your MSDN Beta cannot be used as a "productivity" OS.): US$20
MSDN Professional: potential US$499
MSDN Universal: Potential US$1999
(cannot figure out which I'm buying next month)
OpenBSD 2.9: US$40
FreeBSD 4.3: US$40
Mandrake 7.2: US$40
Solaris 8 Platform Intel: US$40
Not counting the Cost of Office Suites, Anti-Virus, Personal Firewall, Decompression (Win Zip, WinRAR, Win ACE), etc. My own internal analysis of the Windows TCO Vs. Other OS TCO is that Windows costs more - by an order of magnitude or more! And YES, I own BOTH WordPerfect Professional for Linux and a CD of Star Office. Not to mention OSS for Linux and BSD. Do not forget that most development tools are free for BSD and Linux while a single Sun Forte' for Java is $500 (Win32 or Linux), Java Platform is $500 (Any platform), your favorite C++ is US$1000 to US$2000 on Win32.
HTH
P.S. Do Not forget to amortize your costs over the effective life of the OS. Most "free" BSD's and Linices had an effective life of 6 months and should be compared to Windows NT, 2K pro or XP pro (which have effective lifes of 2-4 years). If you develop, test or support professionally for Win32 then the MSDN and/or tech net tools must be factored into your calculations!
The answer to this question all depends on what you use the os for. If you're running it as a server, then I'd say it costs way less to run Linux over M$. Here's a breakdown:
Pros:
- Linux is way more stable than M$. I can't count the number of times ASP 4.0 just didn't work right unless I rebooted the machine.
- You can customize it however you like because the source code is available. I've already modified Bind and Apache so much just in the last 3 months alone!
- Less resources needed because you don't need all that fluff.
Cons:
- Less product support from other companies. However, since mine is serving only web traffic, most of what I need is already out there.
- There's no MSDN of Linux, unless you consider usenet to be it.
- More learning curve needed. With Windows you just point, click, install, and you're done. With Linux often you'd have to muck around with text configuration files and cryptic directives.
Now for those running Linux as a desktop os, I'd say the cost is higher than if you're just running windows. The reason is simple: product support. Without software support, no matter how great the os is, it's useless. Kind of like going to a dance club. It's not the decorations that matter, it's how many hot chicks that show up that counts.
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Did you just fart? Or do you always smell like that?
eTrade SUCKS
Here's what I've spent since I've been using Linux (Jan 2000). Linux Mandrake retail - $30 FreeBSD 4.0 - $50 After that, I've downloaded all of my distro's (Debian (2.2r2/r3), Red Hat (6.2-7.1), FreeBSD (4.1/4.2), and Mandrake 7.0-8.0. I've purchased and OEM Windows95 OSR2 from a local retailer for $69. I guess the question that SHOULD be asked is how productive are you after you purchase either Windows or a Linux distro and do you need to purchase additional software afterwards. For linux, the answer is almost always no (in my case anyways). I've purchased 2 games for linux, but that's it. No need for development enviroments, Kdevelop takes care of that. No need for office apps, Star Office handles that. To achieve this in Windows costs far more $$$.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
Also, you have to consider the fact that a lot of these Linux distros that people are paying top dollar for every 5 or 6 months aren't nearly as complete (and sometimes not even as stable) as a full-fledged commercial OS like Windows 2000. Plus there's the problem with getting support, and what are people going to do when their Linux distro of choice goes out of business? Who here ran Stormix? And really, folks, when do you see M$ going out of business?
Sometimes, you just have to look at the bigger picture.
--
Is your company running tools written by ma
I think the main point is being missed IMHO. Apart from the fact it would take quite a while to download over a slow connection, I think that this might show as to wether how willing we are to pay for Linux or Windows.
I have never bought a copy of Windows in my life and yet have purchased both Linux CDR's and boxed sets simply because I want to support the people who took the time and effort to create the products. That's part of what Open Source is all about.
"Why, Johnny Ringo. You look like somebody just walked over your grave." Doc Holliday, Tombstone.
I know this may sound like flamebait, but I do not intend it to be. I, personally, have not spent money on either. Any Linux distro I have (Mandrake, WinLinux, and I plan to have LinuxPPC soon), was from a free CD or downloaded (on my 56k modem, mind you). That is how dedicated I am to saving money.... the most I have spent on an OS is $120 for OS X, and I got my money's worth, although I will never spend that much again... I try to not spend money on anything but games (and I have been successful). Just my 2.
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Slashdot Trolls BEGONE!
Elmo knows where you live!
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$ chown -R us:us yourbase
I have bought the SuSE Distro and SuSE update disc a few times.
The only Windows I actually paid for was the
one on my first PC (Windows 3.1)... ^^;
Now I'm running Debian, which only costs me
bandwidth to update/upgrade...
Tobias
Redhat 5.1
Redhat 5.2
Caldera 2.3
SuSE 6.1
SuSE 6.4
Mandrake 8.0
SuSE 7.2
I'll never pay retail for windows. Closest I came is ordering W2K OEM edition so I could have a reference copy
Since Windows 3.1 and (later) Office 4.3, I've spent about $1,600 on Windows/Office/Development Tools. You really need them rolled together to do anything productive. That includes the OEM bundle, upgrades, and so on over the life of five machines. On various distros of Linux I've spent about $330 - with development tools and a decent Office suite. I've owned more boxes (Timex Sinclair, Vic 20, Tandy Color Computer, IBM XT) in the pre-Windows and pre-Linux (heck, pre-DOS) days.
Keep in mind that I was a student and purchased MS products at a significant discount.
My Windows/Linux boxen were:
386-DX/40 with 16MB of RAM (self-built)
Windows 3.1 (later 3.11) & DOS (purchased)
MS Word (purchased)
Pentium 75 with 32MB of RAM (Midwest Micro)
Windows 3.11 (later Windows 95) & DOS (OEM)
MS Office 4.3 (later Office 95) (OEM)
Slackware Linux (circa 1996 & 97) (with a book)
Visual Basic 4.0
Pentium II 233 with 64MB of RAM
Windows 95 (later Windows 98) (OEM/purchased)
Office 97 Pro (purchased)
Slackware Linux (with another book)
Redhat 5.2 (purchased)
Visual Basic 5.0
O'clocked Celeron @450 with 128MB of RAM (self-built)
Windows 98 (later Windows 98SE) (purchased)
Office 97 Pro (later Office 2000 Pro) (purchased)
Visual Basic 6.0
Visual Studio
Redhat 5.2 (purchased)
Redhat 6.1 (purchased)
Redhat 6.2 (ISO download/burn)
O'clocked Celeron @992 with 256MB of RAM (self-built)
Windows 2000 Pro (purchased)
Office 2000 Pro
Redhat 7.0 (ISO download/burn)
Mandrake 7.2 (purchased)
Clearly, Linux is the cheapest - but that means I've spent nearly $2,000 (about $400 per box) for software. That averages out to $66 spent on Linux and $320 on Windows per box.
But in my case Windows gets the most expensive place as I had to purchase a version with the DELL laptop, as they had no other option, bless Microsoft. It will be many CD's till that difference is overcome.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
That budget didn't change when I stopped buying Windows products and put my expenses in Linux.
Buying distibutions is cheap, but since I want to know how the things work I spend lots of money on books (I guess Tim O'Reilly will be happy if he sees my bookshelf).
So the investments are the same (because of the same budget) but the return of investment in none monetary terms is a big difference:
Working with Linux improves the knowledge a lot. And its knowledge that is useful for a long period of time. I remember that during my Windows times the knowledge was out of date with the next version of Windows. No I just add to my Linux knowledge every day and my job is more secure because I have all that knowledge.
This is also one of the worst things about Microsoft software. You need to track down the Certificate of Authenticity to install anything, but the CUAs look like junk mail and blend in with all of the other crap. What's worse, they always get separated from the disks.
I know that this is a little late in the thread, but what the hell.
I have been using linux for about 2 years now and I totally am in love with it. I also have never bought an OS from a store. The thing thats really cool about linux and the open source community is that everything is open and free. So you might say, 'If you love it so much, then why don't you give some money to support it??'. Well I do in a way, I help make software for Linux. I go to sourceforge and sign up to work on various apps and whatever. So I donate my programming skillz and time. That way I feel like I'm giving something back to the OS and community that I love. So time and code, not money.
personally I think that code is more valuble than money anyway.
Corporations are Microsoft's biggest customers. They buy Windows licenses by the thousands or even tens of thousands. Whereas if a corporation uses Linux, they may buy a few copies because any IT dept. with its salt knows you don't have per-seat nonsense. All those thousands of copies of Windows cost a lot of money. With all this money going into paying for software, someone has to absorb it. These costs are passed on to the customer.
:-)
I'm sure Slashdot users consume lots of goods and services provided by companies both big and small. Most of these companies probably purchase a lot of Windows licenses. As a result, money spent by Slashdot users may indirectly go to paying for a copy of Windows.
Good work everyone, way to support Microsoft, ya bastards.
Why bother.
I'll buy a copy of Linux on CD about once a year, but I usually buy it just to put some money back into Linux (and for the pretty CDs). I've been doing the same thing with OpenBSD ever since I started playing with it last year. Most of the time though I just download linux (all right, I bought a french linux mag once because it came with Mandrake 7.2, but it also came with a whole crapload of good stuff too).
Help find a cure for cancer!
Linux, by definition, can't be pirated, and I have spent essentially $0 on Linux. However, I know plenty of people who install Windows with all its bells and whistles, including Office, etc., who also spend $0. Of course these people aren't doint it legally.
I will reiterate a previously raised point ... MS's decision to crack down on piracy opens a window for Linux, since these people will be looking for a new free (as in beer) OS.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
It will take at least 6 such Linux distros to catch up to the cost of an OEM install if you look at it this way, so by the example given Windows is still winning.
As a footnote, it's crap like that (as well as the even-more-restrictive OEM liscencing) that has caused me to never buy an OEM machine for personal use again.
I recently starting working at a large organization (1300 users) and the entire setup is Intel/Microsoft. I work at the Help Desk (say what you will, but people need their hand held when they use Outlook, and I needed a job) so I see the admins and "security experts" as they busily go from task to task. They are so swamped trying to implement MS software, especially feature add-ons, that they can't do a decent job of keeping up with people who forget their password, etc... or give me appropriate admin rights to handle that kind of thing. If there isn't something wrong with the Exchange server, there's something wrong with the SQL server, or one of the NT servers, or maybe the IIS server. Worse yet they have to buy "incidents" from Microsoft - that is, if they have a question that they can't solve on their own, they have to pay MS for support. I haven't been around long enough to tell them they're completely crazy, but they are. Crazy. I can't imagine how a OSS/FS setup would cost any more in man hours than the MS setup they have now. BTW, Servers rebooted several times a day -- they don't know what a fricking joke that is!
Stick it to The Man!
My Karma was at 49, then they switched to words. All that work for nothing!
The only distro I ever bought was my first distro, MkLinux DR3. Could have downloaded it too. Since the time I figured out what the hell I was doing, it's been strictly FTP installs for me.
I think the problem is not the cost of the distro, but the cost of supporting materials. I am sick of the OS being free, but having to buy $50 O'Reilly books all the time. I must have over 1 kilobuck of books from ORA, Wrox, etc.
I don't pay for either of them... ;-)
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
In order to make some sense out of things you would have to compare both sides.
first, let's consider that you buy windows once( or come with a machine that you buy) because microsoft publishes a new version every so many years. Linux companies publish new versions every 6 months. Many of the users buy distributions regularly, and that because others want to see how functional it is, other just want to see the difference and contribute something, others because of better hardware support.
If you just think about it, what's 30 dollars every six months for a new distro. if you put the total together it comes out to around $120, for 2 years vs m$ which comes to around $100 in case you upgrade to every new version of windows.
that said,
one has to think about how much money you actually spend with in those three years on third party software. personaly i never bought third party software for linux. For windows that's not the case. I know people that every week they are out buying new software for their win box.
To me, linux costs much less rather than windows. maybe i'm spending a few extra cash in different distros but oh well, still the loss is much less than that of windows.
that's all folks!
I had two choices, hump 30 to 40 minutes away to the college &/or stay late after classes ... slugging it out on brain-damaged DEC Ultrixes ... or programming my projects in the relaxed confines of my undies at home.
Granted, it cost me more money to have my own hardware as opposed to using the schools, and although I used a dual boot, I still gave Linux it's own hard disk. And at that time, Linux was and the web relatively new, so it took me almost an entire weekend to get it done.
That said, the productivity and privacy I enjoyed, along with the speed bump from not having to share resources, and the security of knowing my work was safe more than paid for itself.
I could have NEVER accomplished this if I were entirely dependent on Windows.
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
Several times I've downloaded ISO's at 56k (or 44k I guess). Assuming that you do sleep and work, you'll be away from your PC 16+ hours per day. Just start and resume the FTP downloads accordingly. A 44kbps connection can download around 20MB per hour. At 16 hours of downloading per day, your new two CD distro should arrive after about 4 days.
I have never paid any money for linux, or any UNIX system, barring phone bills. I have obtained it all by FTP. I have probably paid up to $200 on Windows 98 and 95 in total (excluding other microsoft 'products' i have purchased).
ghaa.
Mine did. I used Download Accelerator http://www.speedbit.com
-==-
We are Microsoft. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Whoever write that article must have the Microsoft "must-upgrade-at-every-opportunity" syndrome. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And if it's free, don't pay for it. Ones should ask three questions before buying a new distribution. First - Does my current distribution lack features or support that a new distribution will bring? Is there a point to upgrading in the first place, other than new desktop games? Second - If there's a compatibility issue, can that be fixed by a quick kernal upgrade? Third - Do I need the documentation and frills that come along with purchasing a distribution? If not, can I download the ISO and burn it or get just the CDs from somewhere else cheap? It's understandable how someone new and enthusiastic would like to see every last piece of documentation there is about their new software, but eventually they'll just get buried in papers and confused. So to summarize, I don't see why they would need / want to pay the premium for the extra documentation, and one would guess that after a few months they'd get comfortable enough with Linux to the point where they wouldn't find the need to pay for tech support or would have colligues that could answer most questions for them. They most likely did not need to pay 40+ every six months for new distro's, but rather chose to because they were uncertain what they would get without paying the extra money.
I am a law student and "nerd." My nerdy interests tend to include science-politics-philosophy-economics. I have never used Linux (and so am implicitly excluded from/ irrelevant to much of the discussion on Slashdot), but the idea fascinates me. To the point of the thread, though, what deters me from trying out or switching to Linux is not just the learning curve and the time, but the opportunity cost. By this I mean that time spent learning and doing real computing (as opposed to hobby stuff) on a Linux box is necessarily time that I can't spend doing my work on an OS/software that I know, if not exactly love.
I'm to the point where I'm fascinated by the idea of Linux and open source software (though not ideologically committed to it to the exclusion of proprietary software), but that's all it is for me, a fascination. I'd like to challenge open source advocates to show the masses (or maybe just people like me, mildly smart and willing to experiment, but conscious of my own ignorance and the opportunity costs involved) a cost effective way to switch over to or integrate Linux computing into their lives in a way that doesn't leave us dependent on the help of people like you in the same way that we're now dependent on Microsoft, Dell, etc. for the same thing, or sacrifice the ability to do the same things we can with mainstream desktop software. That, in my humble non-computer-geek thinking, is the biggest obstacle to be overcome in swaying average people (and their dollars, time, and commitment) to accept the neat things you do.
I tried to buy RH. Using their secure server, I gave them my CC# and asked for a distro. A couple of months later when I realized I still hadn't been charged for it, I called thier 800 line. I was able to give them the date, and the confirmation # in the return e-mail, but it just wasn't in the system. Their CS rep told me it just wasn't possible. (What, like I was making it up so I could be charged for a product but with drama?)
I would've ordered it again, but between that call and getting my CC a co-worker told me he'd had the exact same experience (!) when telephone ordering 3 distros from RH.
I used Mandrake disks he'd downloaded and have done so ever since.
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Uhm, why? A few proprietary drivers, some packaging, and technical support that would be free if you spent a tad bit of time online anyway? Yes, Linux costs money in the sense that your time is valuable - but a free distro, one that can be downloaded and burnt to CD, is great. Actually, Slackware is my favorite and it's entirely ftp-distributed (except those places that package it)
--
think for yourself, you won't like the results if others do it for you.
I thought the question was in regards to organizations - wouldn't they have faster connections? And don't most of us have friends with connections anyway? And who needs both the install.iso and the source.iso? Not I - install from the install.iso, any source can be gotten as needed.
Even if you do only have 56k, just get the base disksets and install from another partition. Add other stuff as needed. Much more efficient
--
think for yourself, you won't like the results if others do it for you.
I would have to agree with some of the posts that I have read about buying distros. If my income level was higher, I would definately buy more copies of Linux. As it stands, I download the releases of the OS that I utilize at home.
I believe that it is very important to support the companies that have brought ease of use and a large amount driver support to the OS. If we wish to have these companies continue to create the next release it is only right for us to purchase their products or donate some money to their coffers in another fashion. Doing my part, I advise anyone that is interested in Linux to buy their first release off of a store shelf. I usually mention to them to locate Red Hat or Mandrake.
I started off my love affair with Linux with Red Hat 5.2 after it was mentioned to me by the systems admin where I was working at the time. The book that came with the release I bought was very usefull in getting me started and has a few things that are still relevent with newer releases of Red Hat or any other distro.
Recently, I saw SuSe on the shelf at the local Best Buy and it comes with the whole thing on one DVD as well as several compact discs. I have considered buying it simply to see how Linux loads off of one DVD. I may just pick that up this weekend.
For those of you that believe that buying a Linux distro is a waste of time and money, I have just one thing you should really think about. Take that distro, that you use, and remove all vestiges of code that was created by the company that made that distro. Take a good look at what you have left. In many cases you will have no method of installing your OS. In other cases you will have no method to configure most of your hardware. So, ask yourself, if that company didn't exist would you be able to use Linux?
I am quite certain that most of you would have to say that you would not be able to use it. Think about that the next time you are walking through Wal-Marts and see Mandrake on the shelf, or Best Buy and see SuSe, Mandrake and Red Hat on the shelf.
--
.sig seperator
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If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
I bought a Cheapbytes 6 CD set with 4 unofficial distributions about 4 years ago for $18. I bought a new 386sx in 1992 that had Windows 3.0 on it. My guess is that the Windows OEM price was higher than $18.
Every other OS I run is a free download (or copy), whether the company intended it to be that way or not. I haven't bought an off-the-shelf machine since 1992 (my first and last).
I must admit , much as I love linux , I spend most of my work day in Windows. I have both infront of me.... (95 & red hat). For work i use alot of excell... and just find it easier to use the windows machine for that type of work. My red hat machine , usually just has pine open....
Cruise TT
Honestly, why would anyone get the RETAIL version of a linux distro every 6 months?
/would/ just DL it, but when I can get it all on cd's for the price of burning them myself, there's not much to think about...
My first copy of RH was a retail box, I figured 'Well, there, I've contributed some cash to the cause...' After that I've been getting burned cd's from LSL. Hell, I
Each time a new update of RH comes out, I get the 2 RH discs, the RH powertools, RH docs, RH source, and the RPM archives cds, plus the latest KDE and Gnome cds. On average this costs me less than $20 with s/h. I'm still nowhere NEAR what I've spent on M$ software/os's
---------
"Look. Endsville is burning." -Mamimi, FLCL
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
No matter what we say about how often we buy linux distros compared to windows, the fact remains that we are simply not a representative sample. Most people don't even know how to pronounce linux, let alone use it, or have any interest in buying it.
USA Intellectual Property Laws: 5 monkeys, 1 hour.
I'm the stranger...posting to
A chunk of the money you spend on a new PC goes to Microsoft, even if it doesn't have Windows installed. If you don't believe me, go to (e.g.) the Dell site and check out the price of a PC with Windows installed, and the price of an identically configured PC with Linux. You will find they are EXACTLY THE SAME.
There are a few vendors who will sell you a PC without a Microsoft contribution, but they are small, a neglible market presence.
This does come back to the question of what is free... Here in the UK, dialup access generally involves a charge for the phone call (this isn't universally true but the alternatives cost something somewhere else down the line instead). Downloading 1 GB of stuff at 6 kB(ytes) / s would take about 3000 minutes. UK local calls are 1p / min at weekends - that's £30 ($50). Without an alternative, buying the boxed set is faster and not much more expensive...
# of linux distros bought = 3 # of windows OSes bought = 0 # of windows OSes stolen ... priceless
I bought Mandrake 6 when I first got into Linux. I felt good supporting the development of free software. I've since downloaded any other Linux software I need, just because it's so convenient, I have good bandwidth and a burner.
I would still consider buying a distro from the store if I happened to have the 30 or 40 extra bucks in my pocket at the time.
I know the money goes to Mandrake, Red Hat, or what have you, but Red Hat for one battles on the legal front to help defend open source software development. I give them huge kudos for doing it, especially since one of lobbyers against OSS is Microsoft. They also throw in some darn nice ease of use features (eg. RPM?) that might not be there without their help, IMO.
i only had to buy a debian cd once and then just compiled EVERYHTING since then.. ^_^
If i was you, you'd be me and we wouldn't be having this conversation
I'm sure more than enough people know about this already, but if you don't try http://www.cheapbytes.com if you want a cheap way of getting distributions...
Angelo
"he drew his sword Ringil that glittered like ice... and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds..."
And the cool thing is that you can decide how much you want to give to a Linux distro company.
If you think $20 a year is fair, buy their $80 distro once and download new ones for the next four years.
Don't they sponsor some open source projects too? I know it doesn't seem proportional ($0 for the OS and all the software : $80 for putting it together), but I think what commercial distro people are doing is good (and what Debian is doing is great!).
Gee, didn't know that. That really sucks. I didn't know the Mandrake people were bastards like that.
That has to be completely intentional because it really isn't very hard to copy a CD ISO (or directory structure) to their FTP server. If anything, I would expect the downloadable version to have fewer bugs because any problems can be fixed (unlike boxed CD versions).
Since the price of Windows is $99 + your eternal soul, I'd say Linux and its free cousins are definitely cheaper.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
I've been using Linux for almost 4 years now, off and on. My very first version was Slackware 3.4, which I downloaded from sunsite.unc.edu over one weekend on a 486, 33.6K modem, and Win3.1. (I still have a working copy of that version too.) I'd alternate between it and Win3.1, and when I upgraded to a PIII I did dual-boot between Win98 and Mandrake. I bought my first few versions of Mandrake at the store for ~$50 or so. Once I got used to using Linux, I started downloading ISOs at work and burning them to CD. :) When I built this machine now, I didn't even bother to load an M$ OS on it.
:-) Once you know it though, no need to pay for manuals and a pretty box.
I tell newbies to buy their first version (or two) at the store, because they'll get a lot of helpful (to them) manuals. Once they read through those manuals a few times and become familiar with Linux, then they can move on to just downloading the ISO images. (Although I'm not opposed to buying the occasional version or so just to help support the effort.)
Start with the store-bought Mandrake versions, learn it, and then download their ISOs. The store-bought versions have a LOT more newbie-helpful stuff than the ISOs will probably ever have.
There is always your local library. Check their computers for somthing like Redhat Bible or just do a subject search for linux. It's probably in the 005 area of the nonfiction section.
Nice Marmot
This is an easy one for me: $1.89 / cd of a 2 cd set from lsl.com + shipping every time RH releases new software. Maybe $24 a year?
MacOS and Windows versions I have used were always bundled (The PC was free, what can i say?). *nix distros i have used were always just downloaded... I had RedHat on the PC (which is now in pieces...) and I run MacOS 9.1 on this Mac. I haven't spent a cent on any OS, ever.
i bought one redhat 5.1, i think it was 9.99 when I had a 26k modem. The rest have been downloaded.
Microsoft: $0 (spent no MS-tax!)
Linux: $150 (Debian and SuSE-boxes)
It seems like the proprietary business-model is basically flawed. No money here.
given that most linux distros come with an office suite (K) compiler and everything else linux users take for granted as free, it's not really a fair comparison. as a windows user, i spent a hundred bucks every time there was an upgrade but 3.0 was included with my first pc. as for linux, i paid $100 CND for yellow dog 2.0 but most of that was shipping costs (note to yellow dog, you're international shipping rates are ridiculous)
Gee, not sure if I'll ever say this out loud, but
I've _never_ paid for an M$ OS, 'cept on a new PC.
The only u$ software I have paid money for is
Flight Simulator, which (uncharacteristically) has
been a very good product (damn! that helicopter
sim is _way_ too realistic).
I _have_ purchased 3 revisions of Red Hat Linux at
retail outlets.
I _have_ (being an MCP cert, gotta make a living)
received time limited versions of various u$ OS's
which seem to somehow continue to operate beyond
their advertised capacity (he, he).
I'm afraid that the real promulgators of M$ OS's
are the Corporate Goons who don't know any better.
These silly IT/IS bastards are going to ignore
all the threats to: (a) competition, (b) security,
(c) _true_ innovation, all because they feel M$
is the leader. Somewhat like in the old days when
"you can't get fired for buying IBM."
Damn.
If everyone gets their software from a 'friend' who buys the stuff then that implies that there is only one 'friend' out there who buys software out of the entire human population. (This person also buys many many copies as Windows sells in the millions of copies) So if there is only one person then we can have the 'Six Degrees of The-Friend-Who-Buys-Software-and-lets-Everyone-Cop y-It-From-Him game'
I'm probably at about 3 or 4 degrees as I always get CDRs :)
I may be a pool man, but I am f@#*&ng Jon Bon Jovi's pool man!!!
Whenever a new major distro comes out, my boss and I will buy it. And if we see some neat software package come out that is written for Linux (Civilization, BRU, etc), we'll buy that too. If the local computer shops see that people are buying Linux stuff, they are far more likely to keep getting new stuff.
Sure, we can just download the latest from whichever distribution, but it really doesn't hurt us to spend $50/year on a new one, and it's a way of showing "commercial" support for Linux.
I spend money on linux not becouse I have to I do it to support a good OS. Now if you try and make me pay I will not buy your distro but I buy a debian box set and slackware becouse they are good and do not try and make me pay.
This is a call for papers on the subject. If anyone has seen or has in the e-possesion this type of analysis I could use it.
[Ok yes the e-mail is a hotmail domain name. I say "Use the bitch for what he's good for"!]
Chaos, fear, dissent! My work here is done.
I installed Debian 1.3 from disk images I downloaded on a 28.8Kbps modem way back when.. I bought the 2.0 CD's for $8($3 donated to Debian), the 2.1 CD's for $15 (donating $10 to the Debian project), and the 2.2 version I had the company I work for buy for $100 (Donating $95 to Debian).. Consider this, I make $0.64 per minute and an average reboot takes about 1.5 minutes(SCSI BIOS to recognize the RAID5 array and such) .. If I were running Windows then you can figure at least 1 reboot per day due to the fact I'm pretty hard on my machine. This would total up to ~$165 per year it would cost my company if I were to run Windows on my workstation. Add to that the cost of the OS initially (~$100 for 98, substantially more for an NT variant) and the difference is clear. Also consider the cost of finding someone to replace me when the frustration of working solely with such an inferior OS drives me away. My UNIX server farm is all that keeps me from hacking the windows machines to pieces with an axe.. I have a stable environment to retreat to.
Here's an example of the linux machines in the server farm:
spasm:~# uptime
6:50pm up 454 days, 5:20, 4 users, load average: 1.00, 1.00, 1.00
(load is due to mprime running in the background)
yourlord
I think there are at least two good ways to spend money on Free Software.
One is to buy distros. But having paid for a distro, give the supplier lots of high quality feedback. Nit pick (politely and accurately) about the details that matter most to you. That helps them decide how to spend money on development. If you get no uptake from one supplier, switch to another.
Another good way is to pay developers directly. The street performer protocol is easy to implement and _should_ work, if more people volunteer to pay. My implementation is on www.regexps.com.
Personally, if you had to *pay* a windows vendor for the same capability and usefullness as what comes with a *vanilla* linux install, you'd surpass the expense of windows by far-- even if you purchased the latest versions of Linux when they came out. I've been begging my employer to buy a commercial C++ compiler for my company-provided laptop (don't worry- it dual boots) and they traditionally whine about cost. I like the thought that I can download for free damn near everything that I want. Compare the cost of a fully-functional version of Blender (free) compared to 3DStudio Max, Maya, Lightwave or anything from Pixar. You'd find that the Windows versions are not under 4 grand!
I did buy the RH 5.2 distribution for $55 back in 1998, but since then I've spent about $20 in obtaining about 6 different versions of Linux to try out.
When my parents bought a computer for me in 1996, Win95 came with it, including Office 95 (an extra $300 slapped onto the price tag), and I've been in college for the past 5 years, so I've been fortunate enough to get free copies of Win98, Win2000 Professional, Small Business Office Suite, and Office 2000: Mac. But if I had been a standard user, all of that software would have cost me close to $800 or $900.
Now if we consider how much I've paid for other Linux software, that would be $0. But since the release of Mac OS X, I've been using Macs most of the time. I paid $75 for OS X (which includes OS 9, too...so two OSs in one box, actually). Getting OS 9 was also a good deal since I could upgrade my old iMac to OS 9 without having to go and buy OS 9 separately.
So if I actually bought or upgraded all of my Microsoft software, I would have spent tons of money, but Linux would have been extremely cheap, and Macs land in the middle, closer to the more inexpensive side.
I don't know about everyone else, but I download my distros. I bought a distro once, just for the book, but I don't see it necessary to buy a new distro every chance I get. Btw, I have a 28.8k connection.