Slashdot Mirror
USA Today says "Linux waddles from obscurity"
JCallery writes "The Money section of Monday's USA Today carried a feature article entitled "Linux waddles from obscurity to the big time Momentum builds as upstart operating system proves it can compute". It carries a discussion of time and monetary savings in business, basic Sun and Microsoft arguments against Linux, growing popularity with Wall Street, Hollywood, and government organizations, and the credibility of Linux due to alliances with other industry companies."
Momentum builds as upstart operating system proves it can compute
It never ceases to amaze me how an 11-year-old implementation of a 30-year-old design is called an "upstart".
The Unix servers took 17 hours to calculate how much cash the bank needed in reserve to offset its investment risk. The Linux servers made the same calculation in 11 minutes.
What they'd do, upgrade from 20mhz Sun boxes to Pentium III 933's?
These kind of performance comparisons are just SILLY
For a long time the media took everything MS said as the literal truth. So today, when a newspaper that lives and dies by it's advertising is running a front page article that praises Linux and doesn't fully support Microsoft, it's an interesting situation. I'm sure that Microsoft is an advertising customer of USA Today and this article is hardly in their best interests. Will Microsoft use the same sort of threat tactics against the newspaper that they did against PC manufacturers? Probably not, since the media usually doesn't threaten easily, but MS isn't known for being smart about PR either.
This sort of thing will become more and more prevalent though because people are interested in it, and newspaper/magazine readership drives advertising sales. Media coverage will help to build momentum for Open Source software, which will help to build interest in reading about it, creating a neat little circle that helps immensely.
Over all a good article for the non-IT folks and helpful to the Open Source cause.
In my universe I'm perfectly normal, it's not my fault you don't live in my universe.
The idea of loading up an unsupported OS from download
I'm an IT manager and it doesn't make me nervous. I can purchase a CD set of RedHat 7.x with whatever level of support I want. I can purchase one copy of it and install it on ALL of my PC's and servers. That means I can purchase all of my computer equipment that will run Linux with no OS installed, saving anywhere from $100 to $10,000 on the price of the equipment.
Get the facts a bit straighter
In my universe I'm perfectly normal, it's not my fault you don't live in my universe.
The functionality is pretty close to that of WinXP
Oh, is that right? I can run Microsoft Office then, can I? Or Visual Studio? Or any one of the other industry standard packages I need to do my job? Or is it just that it has toolbars and windows?
Also, easier than Windows to install, my ass. Wake up and smell the coffee.
This article isn't for us. It is for our bosses, and their bosses, and so on and so on. It is a momentum builder. So the next time you mention Linux, instead of blank stares, your boss will dig into his memory and find a positive image of Linux as a REAL OS, and it will be a little easier to get him/her to go with your suggestion to use our OS of choice.
Use this article for what it is, and don't complian about what it isn't.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
What does the availability of MS Office have to do with the functionality of the OS? And yes, you can run MS Office through Wine, or you can use OpenOffice instead, which does a damn fine job of working with MS Office files IME.
As for the installation issue, I installed Mandrake 8.2 and Windows 2000 (with SP1) on a machine as recently as last week. One went on without a hitch, automatically setting up suitable partitions, installing all required software, connecting to the internet and downloading security updates. The other threw a hissy fit because it didn't like the format of the drive it had just formatted itself and went into a vicious cycle of rebooting. No prizes for guessing which was which.
I remember the days when Windows was easy to install and Linux wasn't. Those days are gone.
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
I bet they replaced *really* old UNIX boxes with Linux boxes. Moore's law gives you about '92 for when machines were 1/92 as fast as they are now. Probably it's a calculation they only care to do once a day, and they couldn't justify buying a new UNIX box to do it if it was still getting done on time. The thing about Linux is that you can just buy a machine if you feel like it, because the hardware is cheap. And whenever you buy a machine, it's significantly faster than the machines you had before.
"These kind of performance comparisons are just SILLY"
Not really. Go price an Sun 450 with 4 processors. Then price an equivalent Dell/Compaq.
Oh wait...not fair...the midrange sun only goes up to 450mhz. To get the fast processors you talk about, you have to go top-of-the-line Enterprise and pay 6 figures.
Not fair at all, is it?
I like sun stuff, but they're servers are WAAAAAAAAAAAY overpriced for the performance they bring to the table. Years ago, they were the P/P king because they were being compared to RS/6000's and HP/UX machines. They were less robust, but a lot cheaper. Now when they're compared to white-box priced equipment, they lose.
Live by P/P, Die by P/P.
Sun should know better.
You do understand that the examples used in the USA Today article are all very large institutions? They run Enterprise software; its pretty much bespoke, and they pay a shit lot of money for it. If you're a bank and you decide to switch to Linux, your vendors will either port that enterprise software, or you can stop paying them and pay all that cash to a company that will do it. You pay the one off costs of doing the port, and then you continue to pay the same licencse costs as you were with your Windows platform.
Your list of "Industry Standard" packages ain't as "Industry" or as "Standard" as you think they are.
Yep, I'd say so. For example, I just don't buy this:
I don't care how expensive those old unix systems were (when they were new), replacing them with ANYTHING costs more than simply continuing to use the existing machines that are already owned.
Yeah, yeah, I know, maybe they mean new unix boxes would have been $50k vs $3k unix boxen, maybe. But that's not what it actually says. The article is so loose with the language that they probably are comparing NEW boxes at $3k each to OLD boxen at $50k each. Sounds like the real benefit was computing the cash requirement faster, and a fair comparison would have actually compared the cost of new linux servers against the cost of new unix and windows servers, and the resulting performance of each. But that's a lot of work... maybe almost as difficult as it would be for Byron Acochido (the author of that article) or his editor to proof read their text from a critical viewpoint and edit it to be factually correct.
Of course, the poorly worded loose language works in Linux's favor in this case, so it must be ok. If it were in Microsoft's favor, would I be screaming FUD?? Hmm...
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
The lack of rebuttal, and use the word "warns" (which implies a notification of a real threat) rather than a more correct one such as "claims" or "asserts", gives undeserved credibility to this shibboleth.
;-).
As a journalist, one should never use such words as "claims" or "asserts". Why? Because both words inject the idea that the JOURNALIST doubts this. Microsoft "warns" is clearly attributed to the MICROSOFT. (To be a real stickler, it should be says/said) Further, the use of PAINT should certainly be enough for you. It implies that this is microsoft's "deliberate attempt to take certain materials and make them look like IT wants them to look". Don't require the writer to be biased towards your side. Especially when you're right
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
The reason their industry standards is because Microsoft wrote them specifically for their OS. If you use Wine/WineX, you can run Microsoft Software in Linux, along with a wide range of other software packages. And maybe if you wrote programs in Java, and used OpenOffice you wouldn't need any MS software.
Linux although it's not dominant, is here to stay. It may not have a forced 10,000,000+ copies a year sold from Desktop Vendors (Compaq, HP, Dell, IBM, NEC, etc...) but millions still install it. In 95% of all name-brand machines cases, you cannot subtract the price of the OS/Software from the cost of the machine, therefore you are being forced into a product you don't want (monopoly).
If all PC's came without OS's and people were offered $500 for Windows or $0-50 for Mandrake/SuSe, the general masses would chose linux, in one form or another. Most people surf the net, do office related stuff, use instant messangers, and download music, all of which is easily done in linux.
Linux isn't just a "hackerz" trinket OS, but a new and lethal force on the pc market. The popularity and stability are making people try it at their own will, not their forced will.
You may see Linux listed for $100+, but you don't have to pay for it. It can be downloaded for free or you can legally copy the core disks from a friend. At that, $100 is still less than $300.
XP does not run all software. XP runs all Windows software. It can no more run a Linux binary and than a Linux box can run a Windows application.... oh, wait a minute... there are emulators such as WINE that do allow Windows apps to run under Linux. Score one more for Linux.
There are native Linux apps for every purpose that I need. I run StarOffice currently for word processing, spreadsheets, etc. Konqueror works great as my web browser. I can scan, burn CD's, watch DVD's, play games, listen to my MP3's, etc. What am I not able to do that you can do under Windows.
The only places where I see Linux having a disadvantage is in the commercial software market. The software is not on the shelves of your local Best Buy.
Some people consider maintenance/configuration to be too hard under Linux. I would argue that yes, it takes more work up front, but once you've done that work you can rest easy. With Windows, I'm always wondering when the next lock-up will happen.
I believe that what you've said matches peoples' perceptions. But in this case, perception is not reality.
I think the point is just to get more readers aware of what is happening here. A lot of companies are opting to go for Linux instead of the other alternatives.
In desktops, it is less focused and doesn't have a lot of market share because of a few major factors. The first is the issue with MS threatening OEMs to only sell Windows desktops. This causes the second problem, lack of momentum to catalyze the development of comercial software packages for home users. So what? That will change with due time. Eventually, open source Linux software will be very mature, and different things will start to merge, making way for the commerical, closed software.
You can't change that. It is showing no signs of slowing down.
Linux was never intended to be a desktop OS, but continuous tweaking over time will make it an awesome desktop OS (it already is, if you know how to make use of it). If you've used the right distribution of Linux, then you will find that many of them are easier to set up than WinXP. Face it... Most computer users couldn't install Windows, let alone any Linux distribution. If Linux was able to make its way, preinstalled into retail computers, then a lot of things would begin to change... Slowy, but it will change.
While most of the USA Today readers may have never seen a server (or even know what one is), many of them are hearing about this amazing Linux thing everywhere. On TV, on the radio, on the Internet. My parents are about as computer illiterate as can be, but they are still eager to learn more about this Linux thing that they keep hearing about.
I wonder if they even got the bank correct. Here at Deutsche Bank we have replaced an overnight processing system which took around 8 hours on one / two Sun E10000 servers with a rack of 40 3U Linux servers. The processing time has ben reduced from 8 hours to 45 minutes, and will be halved again when we up this to 80 Boxes. The code was completely rewritten from C++ to Java (I think), so we are not comparing apples to apples but the cost reduction was 90% and the speed increase around 900%, which was an additional bonus. This was a major win for DBs Linux team, hence it may have leaked out into the press, but after this we will see a lot more applications moving to the Linux platform.
Note that IBM and HP are pushing Linux very hard in banks, and are fining a receptive audience. The version we are using is SuSE's Enterprise Linux, which has proved a superb platform for these applications, they may have a press release about this and similar applications out in the near future.
The users don't know what they want. They'll just use whatever is in front of their faces. What they don't want is to have to "re-learn" their software.
And they don't have to relearn much of anything, if they have the right Linux (Windows-Like) environment put in front of them (Lycoris, Mandrake, Suse... Etc). It isn't like you have to force a Gentoo and Blackbox machine with Star Office 5 and Pine in front of the users. There are choices.
The main reason is because the user want Windows. The team here would very much like to go Linux, but the users are the real hold-up. Honestly, $300000 / year could do a lot here.
You might be surprised at what your users "want".
Sure, many have invested their precious time in climbing the learning curves of Word, Excel, Outlook, etc. and can't be bothered to learn alternative open source applications.
But others, usually the more technically adventurous types (like yourself) are willing to try out something new, to invest the time just in case there happens to be a reward for the risk.
Most sites just use Linux as an under-the-radar server OS that is cheap and reliable.
But do take the next step of building up a nice desktop version for your site. With a little tuning, the new Linux desktops can be made into something productive for your users.
After a while, others will notice the new boxes and Linux growth will sell itself as people begin to ask questions that never get asked in the monoculture environment where there are no alternatives.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
In Enterprise systems, you have to have hardware support - you can't just assume that the box will keep working or that you will be able to fix it. It is not at all uncommon for the hardware support costs on a very old box to be substantially more than it would cost to replace the box. This is part of how OEM's encourage people to upgrade - the older the boxes get, the more the support cost, until finally the upgrade is the thing that makes the most sense.
Often, replacing old hardware Just Makes Sense.It's kind of like the point you reach with a car where the repair bills are more than a car payment would be.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1