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."

Comments

Linux is the only option.

[Quasar1999]

With the price of WinXP, even though I do like it, it's way too prohibitive to run throughout an entire business.

The functionality is pretty close to that of WinXP, so why pay $300 a copy? Sure it requires a bit more elbow grease to get configured just right, but it works great, and with distro's like Mandrake, it's almost easier than Windows to install...

Re:Linux is the only option.

[NetJunkie]

Who pays $300? On the price of a new PC Windows XP adds about $100. For that you also get support from the vendor (in my case Compaq). Go buy a PC with Linux preloaded from someone like Dell. It's usually the EXACT SAME PRICE.

The idea of loading up an unsupported OS from download makes most managers nervous. They'll happily pay the $100.

Re:Linux is the only option.

[Paul Neubauer]

It's not the only option. There are the BSDs, for example.

But you are right about the fairly easy install of Mandrake, which I tried recently. It was one of the easier installs I've done. And getting things going that weren't part of the default install for the way I had selected turned out to be almost trivially easy.

I still do use Windows, for now, but I think things are at the point where I could make the jump to Linux without much difficulty. It's now not that things are hard or even obscure as they had seemed before, but just different.

The big thing for some might be Windows-only programs they need to run, especially for work. At home the transition can be eased by using cross platform programs where possible on Windows, so that when (if) a jump is made the transition isn't so jarring as many of the applications will then be familiar.

Re:Linux is the only option.

[Telastyn]

The problem is of course that any business large enough to have enough machines where $300 a machine is a costly amount, also likely has some "Enterprise level" crap ass software that only works with windows (Exchange, most any CRM package, most any financial package)

Re:Linux is the only option.

[ericman31]

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

Re:Linux is the only option.

[shepd]

>On the price of a new PC Windows XP adds about $100.

That's home edition. Its so castrated, I, a home user, am entirely angered after purchasing it.

I decided to set up a samba domain server to make my life of logging in between my laptop and my XP desktop easier. I like to keep settings between logins, and I like to keep my bookmarks between sessions. I also like a little privacy.

Lack of Domain support in XP Home Edition makes this impossible. Removing this feature is like selling a door that cannot have a deadbolt added to it. No thanks.

And, over here, in most shops (such as future shop) Windows XP Professional is $500. Blech!

Re:Linux is the only option.

[garcia]

Most people are going to see XP right next to Mandrake or Redhat. When I was in Staples/Best Buy I see Linux listed for $100+.

Now, people know that XP runs all software and know that Linux is lacking in that department (if they know anything at all).

$300 for XP or $100 for Linux... It's an easy choice for a user.

Re:Linux is the only option.

[iapetus]

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.

Re:Linux is the only option.

[The_Shadows]

Where I'm interning right now we can purchase one copy of all MS software for use on all our Desktops too. Of course, that doesn't cover the servers. And the cost is about $300000/yr, which includes support and updates to all software.

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.

Re:Linux is the only option.

[ShwAsasin]

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.

Re:Linux is the only option.

[bigjocker]

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?

What a bunch of CR*P !!! WTF are you sayin??? Can you run postgres in windows? no. Can you run the linux XFree86 binaries on windows? no. You see, there is a whole world out there just waiting for you to discover it.

We are talking about OS, you are talking M$ FUD. Why do I need Visual Studio on linux?? I am a Java Developer, I dont need Visual Studio. In fact, Visual Studio would make my life a LOT worse. I dont need MS Office either, you know, a lot of people dont send .doc attachments in every e-mail.

I for one consider linux to be a LOT better that Windows. I make a living out of it, as does a lot of other people.

Linux is far better than Windows, it has been for some years now. The fact that a lot more people uses windows can be answered by some of the quotes in the Darwin Awards: "The sum of the IQs of the whole humanity is a constant. As the ammount of people grows, the more idiots there will be".

Re:Linux is the only option.

[AngryPuppy]

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.

Re:Linux is the only option.

[AlgUSF]

Yeah, because Dell has to pay MSFT for every computer they produce, whether it has Windoze on it or not. It is called the Microsoft tax, and that is why real geeks roll their own PC!

Re:Linux is the only option.

[13Echo]

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.

Re:Linux is the only option.

[13Echo]

You'll also see Mandrake right next to that for $24.99.

Re:Linux is the only option.

[4of12]

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.

Re:Linux is the only option.

[swillden]

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.

And, at least for me, OpenOffice is a *better* tool than MS Office. It has a significant feature that MS Office lacks, which is an open, and easy to use file format. I've recently discovered that the XML files that OpenOffice reads natively are extremely easy to generate programmatically using standard XML tools. I create a lot of highly-structured documents, like legal documents and software design documents, which are a b*tch to make tight and consistent when you have to edit everything by hand.

So, I create custom XML schemas that define tightly structured "documents" in which I only have to define each thing once, and then use XSLT to transform them into other, more "human-readable" formats. The XSLT stylesheets also "expand" them, implementing all of the structure that is useful to human readers, which means the very redundancy that is such a pain to manage manually.

What I've discovered recently is that OpenOffice files are very easy to generate with XML/XSLT (well, and Zip, you need Zip), and they can then be saved as RTF, MS Word, etc. I'm working on some other stylesheets now that will automatically generate OpenOffice presentations from my documents as well (which are easily convertible to PowerPoint, if necessary).

Oh, and OpenOffice is no slouch when it comes to manipulating MS Office files, either.

However, all of this Office stuff is a red herring when it comes to the Linux/Windows debate, sine both office suites run on both platforms.

Re:Linux is the only option.

[13Echo]

$65 is for the el-supremo-Suse-like version of Mandrake that is called a "PowerPack". They also have a version on DVD that is about $10-$15 cheaper. They also have a version called "PowerPack" that comes with with Star Office 6 and some other things.

For the majority of users though, the $25 3-CD "Download Edition" that retails in most stores, including Wal-Mart, is most certainly good enough.

Re:Linux is the only option.

[J Story]

What I've discovered recently is that OpenOffice files are very easy to generate with XML/XSLT (well, and Zip, you need Zip), and they can then be saved as RTF, MS Word, etc. I'm working on some other stylesheets now that will automatically generate OpenOffice presentations from my documents as well (which are easily convertible to PowerPoint, if necessary).

This is interesting. How about working up a mini How-to about this? I bet more than one person would be interested in in your approach.

Re:Linux is the only option.

[donutello]

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.

Hate to nitpick but you won't get support for all your PCs and servers for the price of the one CD set. If you want support, you have to pay for it for every machine you're running it on.

Re:Linux is the only option.

[bigjocker]

Postgres can be built on linux, but you cant run it for anything serious.

And, still, you cant run the linux binaries for XFree86 under Windows.

The point is that you cant come to a discussion about OSs and defend your side arguing about which applications run where, much less using the applications developed by the creator of the OS.

I cant say "linux is better than windows because it can run linuxconf and windows not". There are a bunch of applications for linux that runs for windows, but that's thanks to the linux developers, not the windows core.

The issue here is: in almost every field (including ease of use) linux has surpassed windows.

Re:Linux is the only option.

[jaavaaguru]

Ximian Connector for Evolution will allow a desktop Linux box to make use of the functionality of an Exchange server, just like Outlook 2000 does.

Re:Linux is the only option.

[Lumpy]

huh? that thought only bother's uneducated managers or managers that really dont know anything aobut the field of work they are supposed to be managing. Happily paying $100.00 for whatever OS installed is great for the care-free money flush IT manager of 1997-1999. Today? money is tight. IT managers are being asked to squeeze the existing equipment into service longer (My corperate standard recently handed down in a memo changed from a 2 year old PC... replace it to do not replace any desktop that is faster than a Pentium-II 350 or any laptop that is faster than a Pentium-II 250.. Yes... you heard that right kiddies Pentium II-400 is still OK in the eyes of corperate standard for 2003 use.)

We are NOT buying or deploying XP or W2K server. and we are being asked to continue to increase the IT abilities and performance in the face of the mandates to freeze our IT technology to early 1999 levels. Hmmmm, what is the answer? Linux RedHat on the servers and the workstations for the drones.

My test group of 20 PC's is chugging along flawlessly after switching to linux from W2K. the receptionist and sales people didn't commit suicide or form a union. the whiney creative people in production did bitch the loudest, but they have quited down and are STILL producting as they did before.

Nope, that Os that was downloaded doesnt scare competent IT managers one bit. Espically with the cheaper support contract we got from Redhat than the Windows support contract cost.

My budget dropped for 2003 from the 2002. and I am able to maintain the same objectives and productivity... Which means I will still maintain my job, recieve another outstanding performance award and get linux in the door of my company even faster now....

what IT managers here have the guts to stand behind their decisions or reccomendations?

The best part... I get to whip out some numbers to upper management on how I reduced our software liability by 40% and can reduce it even further.

They love hearing things like that.

Re:Linux is the only option.

[budgenator]

XP runs all Windows I doubt it. Most windows software has not been made with any attempt for security awareness. One of the big changes for XP is a modicum of security, little thing like seperate user profiles. From what I've heard most windows software won't even install on XP; you have to get a special XP version. The only thing I run in my personal windows partition is my scanner and its software is written for windows 3.1, I'm sure XP would choke on that.

Re:Linux is the only option.

[digitalsushi]

"the whiney creative people in production" ... "recieve another outstanding performance award"

You don't explicitely say this, but I hope it wasn't a monetary award. If I were an artist at a company, I think I'd be livid beyond belief if the person who manages my machines got a little something-something for forcing me into using a different tool than I am most familiar with. Course, that recourse wouldn't be aimed at you directly, cause you're just doing your job, but it wouldn't stop me from being completely upset.

Re:Linux is the only option.

[Telastyn]

Right, and IIRC this requires the Exchange server to be running the web app version of Outlook, which requies IIS, which isn't exactly a rock tight web server... ...And it's not ALL the functionality and...

Exchange should never be used. There's no excuse for it.

Re:Linux is the only option.

[digitalsushi]

I don't think that's a good attitude towards the problem. I'm all for learning new stuff, and even forcing people to learn new stuff, but if you're doing it so that you can stop using something that *works well* to save money, then you seriously need to re-evaulate your business. The people are where the bulk of the cost is. It doesnt make sense to me to take them out of their element to save on the smaller portion of the money. Using your programmer example, would you force your Java programers to redo all their code in C, just to enjoy the 100 dollars rebate special that month? Or 1000 dollars? Or 49% of what you pay them? Well I'm sure somewhere between a grand and half their salary is that magic point, but for a lot of applications, I think its just silly to take this route. Morale does have a dollar amount, when you get down to it. Maybe you can't calculate it, but pissing your graphic artists off to save a few bucks is just gonna get lost again via spite.

Re:Linux is the only option.

[bigjocker]

Postgres can be built on linux, but you cant run it for anything serious

Sorry, i meant windows there

Linus is still obscurity

[asv108]

From the article:

What a long way Tux has traveled in the 12 years since Linus Torvald

Torvald? You think USA today could manage to get the creator's name right? I've never seen an article misspelling Gattes, Balmy, and Ilison. Other than that, you couldn't ask for a better PR article for Linux.

Re:Linus is still obscurity

[BigJimSlade]

Torvald? You think USA today could manage to get the creator's name right?

Have you ever read USA Today before? It's like the MTV of the print news industry. Lots of pretty pictures and flashy colors. It does not surprise me that they spelled his name wrong.

Re:Linus is still obscurity

[nvainio]

One missing 's' is nothing but what is "University of Finland"? There's 10 to 20 universities in Finland (depending on how you count). Linus studied in Univ. of Helsinki.

Re:Linus is still obscurity

[Jucius Maximus]

"Torvald? You think USA today could manage to get the creator's name right?"

Perhaps you should go to the corrections page for usatoday.com news and politely mention it to them. I certainly did.

Re:Linus is still obscurity

[Citizen of Earth]

What a long way Tux has traveled in the 12 years since Linus Torvald

In other news, Linus was quoted as saying, "I don't care what they say about me just as they spell my name right."

Re:Linus is still obscurity

[dimator]

I bet its fun for the CS students at his school to sit in the same labs that Linux was hacked on...

What we need now are USA Today polls and graphs

[Navius Eurisko]

that have a Cowboy Neal option. :)

Wow...

[Meefan]

Nothing like paying good money to read newspaper reporters restate the painfully obvious.

"Breaking news: Some Americans now driving to work in lieu of walking!"

Dave

Upstart

[Citizen of Earth]

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".

Re:Upstart

[FreeUser]

It never ceases to amaze me how an 11-year-old implementation of a 30-year-old design is called an "upstart".

For the same reason that a structure based on a 2000 year old design, using 50 year old construction techniques, materials developed anywhere from 10,000 years ago to 20 years ago, and architectural designs that are ten years old, is still called a "new building" when it is built.

For that matter, the hardware all our operating systems run on is based on a 70 year old material sciences, a basic transister design that is 60 years old, and semi-conductor technology that is at least 40 years old.

Re:Upstart

[EnderWiggnz]

right, and if i were building a bridge, and the civil engineer i contracted said "i'm not going to use any of this "old" technology, i'm going to do everything from the ground up with NewTechniques that have never been tested"

i'd fire him on the spot.

time to stop re-inventing the wheel - we've got perfectly acceptible wheels, now its time to perfect and hone them.

This is why I hate reading about IT in the media

[qurob]

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

Microsoft FUD Parroted

[Steve B]

The main flaw I found in the article was the paragraph:

Microsoft paints Linux as a threat to intellectual property rights. Software developers who make their applications Linux-ready risk losing their proprietary products to the public domain, Microsoft warns.

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.

Re:Microsoft FUD Parroted

[aengblom]

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 ;-).

Re:Microsoft FUD Parroted

[rseuhs]

Actually, Microsoft is pretty stupid warning about this.

Because when Microsoft sais "Linux is a threat to intellectual property rights", all Joe Sixpack will understand is "If I want to keep pirating mp3s and moviez, I'll have to switch to Linux"

So far, Microsoft has not found FUD against Linux that actually works...

Re:This is why I hate reading about IT in the medi

[Steve B]

Since the article says that each Linux server was over an order of magnitude cheaper than each Unix server, I suspect that they now have more of them at work. They should have been more specific about the cause of the speed increase.

17 hours to 11 minutes!??!!?!?

[isa-kuruption]

Then Dresdner discovered a bonus: Linux, the upstart open-source operating system, was not only cheaper -- but also faster. 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.

Come on! They must be leaving out ALL kinds of information here! What kind of machines were they running before? SparcStation 2's? These machines must have been 10 years old! There is no way just simply switching from SOME-OLD-UNIX(R) to Linux is going to improve the performance this much. I'm sure they would have seen a similar performance increase if they upgraded to Sun Fire V120's too.

In fact, there MUST have been some porting of the algorithms used to calculate this data. I'm sure some programmer looked at it, realized it was poor, 10 year old code, and modified it to run faster.

This isn't a valid one-to-one testiment to how Linux is faster than any other UNIX system out there and really shouldn't be in the THIRD paragraph of the article! (if at all!)

Re:17 hours to 11 minutes!??!!?!?

[Blob Pet]

It's probably true that a lot of details are being left out...nonetheless, old UNIX machines can be expensive to maintain due to proprietary hardware and service contracts.

Re:17 hours to 11 minutes!??!!?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's the London office it'll be Sun, probably recent Suns, and indeed this doesn't make much sense unless they've got fancy with SSE-2 or something. So more likely it's the Frankfurt office where they have mostly old IBM RS6000s. Although there's a lot of old Siemens Unix kit around, it's very unlikely this was used for analytics in recent years.

Re:17 hours to 11 minutes!??!!?!?

[American AC in Paris]

Come on! They must be leaving out ALL kinds of information here!

We're talking about USA Today here. You know, the "All The News That's Fit To Distill Into Cute Little Piture Graphs Somewhere Beneath The Full-Color Ads That Run At The Top Of The Front Page Every Fscking Day"-paper.

Be thankful that it was at least a favorable mangling of facts...

Re:17 hours to 11 minutes!??!!?!?

[kiwimate]

Exactly. It'd make a lot more sense if they compared how long the code took to run on:

* Linux servers;
* Windows servers;
* new UNIX servers;
* Sun servers.

Okay, so it's a USA Today article, not a tech rag, but you get the point. They still should have specified how old the UNIX servers are, and perhaps how much it would cost to replace them with new UNIX servers versus the Linux servers.

I loathe these alleged journalists.

Re:17 hours to 11 minutes!??!!?!?

[47PHA60]

I read that with disbelief, then considered the source. USA Today is not really an in-depth reporting machine. It's either sloppy fact checking or, as you say, they left out the details of what changes were made.

I do find it strange if the architect of those system upgrades was surprised, as the article implies.

Re:17 hours to 11 minutes!??!!?!?

[grytpype]

Reporters rarely get anything right, especially if it doesn't involve sports or celebrities. At least the error was made in favor of Linux.

Re:17 hours to 11 minutes!??!!?!?

[iabervon]

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.

Re:17 hours to 11 minutes!??!!?!?

[Chicane-UK]

This reminds me of a hilarious thing I once read on the Microsoft site about new features for their latest version of Media Player. It said that compared to the old version of Media Player, the new one could copy music onto CD up to 10 times faster than previous media player versions!

Then the little '*' down the bottom said 'compared to (old) media player using a 2x CD-R drive, and (new) media player using 20x CD-R drive.'

Well, I found it funny :)

Re:17 hours to 11 minutes!??!!?!?

[pjrc]

Come on! They must be leaving out ALL kinds of information here!

Yep, I'd say so. For example, I just don't buy this:

... switch to the Linux computer operating system in 1999, it did so to save money ... So it replaced 32 computer servers, based on the time-tested Unix operating systems, at an average cost of $50,000 each, with 40 Linux servers, at $3,000 a pop.

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...

Re:17 hours to 11 minutes!??!!?!?

[FreeUser]

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.

You are ignoring the cost of a service contract, which anyone like Dresdner is going to have for a mission critical system. If Sun Microsystem's service contracts are any indication, the cost could well have exceeded $3,000/node, in which case the savings would have been immediate and very, very real. Replacing 1992 hardware with 1998 hardware and getting a 92x speedup would have been icing on the cake.

Re:17 hours to 11 minutes!??!!?!?

[Fished]

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.

Actually, you're very wrong here.

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.

Re:17 hours to 11 minutes!??!!?!?

[dh003i]

No, its more likely that the article mis-stated what occured.

There's no way that one could be able to calculate something in 11 minutes (which before took 17 hours) just by switching to Linux. Linux may be good, but this would imply that the Unix code was so crappy that it was hundreds of times less efficient than it could have been. Doubtful.

More likely that it went from 17 hrs to 11 hrs.

Re:17 hours to 11 minutes!??!!?!?

[pmz]

Actually, you're very wrong here.

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.

Actually, even this is arguable. With competent administrators, continuing hardware support is probably just a few thousand a year for several servers (replacing hard drives, the occasional memory DIMM, etc.).

The hardware support you seem to be speaking of is the "sucker-grade" support that manufacturers sell with multi-thousand-dollar/year pricetags just for the contingency that something will break.

By the way, it is usually easier to diagnose a fully-firmware-equipped UNIX box than it is a new PC-based box, so fixes can actually be made more quickly on the older hardware.

In all of this, however, it does require competent people to work on the machines day-to-day. Otherwise, any option will be expensive, as the admins just flounder about trying every little thing that pops into their head.

Re:17 hours to 11 minutes!??!!?!?

[Fished]

Actually, even this is arguable. With competent administrators, continuing hardware support is probably just a few thousand a year for several servers (replacing hard drives, the occasional memory DIMM, etc.). The hardware support you seem to be speaking of is the "sucker-grade" support that manufacturers sell with multi-thousand-dollar/year pricetags just for the contingency that something will break.

I'm tempted to ask how long you've been in the industry to say this.

The specific system I had in mind when writing this was an old HP3000 minicomputer from Way Back In The Day. The 500MB disk drives weighed in at over 100lbs. each. HP (this is the old HP, not the new and sucky HP) hated continuing to support it because they no longer made the parts that the system required. On more than one occasion, they had to hire outside consultants (in their sixties) to do the repairs. And often these guys got their parts out of junked 3000's. Needless to say, this came at a high cost. HP was charging us over $100,000/yr to support this beast, yet there was no way we could do it ourselves because we lacked the skills - which were I must tell you quite a bit more than replacing the occasional DIMM - and the parts. In fact, to replace one of these 100 lb. rack-mounted hard drives, the HP techs used a small hand-powered crane that attached to a special mounting bracket on the top of the rack.

No, Virginia, I don't think a small college IS department could have supported this without some serious help from HP. And, lest you think we could have gone Time & Materials, let me point out that if you go T&M the vendor is under no obligation to provide you service for a particular outage if they don't find it convenient. And, did I mention that over 100 people depended on this box to do their jobs daily, and if the box went down they couldn't work? Salary costs alone for outage were in the tens of thousands per day.

We replaced it with a new HP mini for $75,000. Maintenace was only $3000/yr.

Welcome to enterprise computing. Doesn't it suck?

Sun vs Microsoft

[Zayin]

That will be tougher for Sun and Microsoft. Both live and die by licensing fees stemming from their proprietary operating systems. To the extent Linux rises in corporate use, they stand to diminish.

That might be true for Microsoft, but Sun has a huge hardware division. Why should it not be possible for them to follow in IBM and HP's tracks? To say that Sun "live and die by licensing fees" is a bit far fetched...

17 hours to 11 minutes.

[Kaypro]

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.

Does anyone else seem to think that maybe their old Unix servers were considerably slower than the new Linux servers they witched over to?

Re:17 hours to 11 minutes.

[Kaypro]

witched=switched

Bad place to miss a key huh ;-)

Re:17 hours to 11 minutes.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Cost of Servers...

[TibbonZero]

So it replaced 32 computer servers, based on the time-tested Unix operating systems, at an average cost of $50,000 each, with 40 Linux servers, at $3,000 a pop.

Why in the world did each server cost them anything? They already had 32 servers, and I am sure Linux would have ran on them, so why didn't they save the 96,000 and just use existing hardware..

In addition, they make it sound like "Unix Hardware" is more expernsive than "Linux Hardware", which while Linux works on just about anything, I don't see why they didn't use 3,000 dollar each machines for Unix in the first place. I don't see a 47,000 difference, unless they were stupid and just scrapped important stuff like memory, RAID, good mobos, redundant Power supplies, etc...

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

I don't think that if they had ran the same software on the unix servers, with the same hardware, that they would have had a speed increase really. Perhaps it was that they upgraded to new servers for the Linux, and used 8 year old Unix servers? That would make a good speed difference. I am glad that Toms hardware doesn't measure that way....
ie. "Well, Linux certainly beats Windows 95, we put Windows 95 on an old 386sx, and Linux on a spanking new Dell server, and found that Linux must be the faster of the two..." Retards...

Oh, an yea, I like linux, but this article is backwards.

Re:Cost of Servers...

[Amarok.Org]

Why in the world did each server cost them anything? They already had 32 servers, and I am sure Linux would have ran on them, so why didn't they save the 96,000 and just use existing hardware..

How are you sure of this? Microchannel architecture RS/6000s (don't laugh, there's THOUSANDS of them still in production) don't run Linux, and even if you can (or someone has) - the hardware is so outdated as to be pointless. I'm not familiar with the hardware from other Unix vendors, but I'll bet you'll find a lot of legacy hardware out there still in production that won't run Linux.

In addition, they make it sound like "Unix Hardware" is more expernsive than "Linux Hardware", which while Linux works on just about anything, I don't see why they didn't use 3,000 dollar each machines for Unix in the first place.

You've obviously not spent much time around server class hardware. The "first place" in this case is probably 10 years ago when your only REAL options for server class Unix hardware WAS the $50k machines from the big guys (IBM, Sun, HP, etc).

The major cost difference between desktop/consumer class hardware and server class hardware is engineering, not MHz, GBs, MIPS or any of the other numbers that people like to throw around when talking about WinTel vs. IBM/Sun/HP/etc. Try pushing millions of database records through your PC's IO bus, and then do the same with any of the big Unix boxes out there. You'll suddenly understand where those other $47k went.

This article is fatally flawed in a number of areas, but the fact remains that the *IS* a place for "real" servers over the hopped up desktops that a lot of people call Linux servers. For what it's worth (not much), I'm a professional sysadmin on the "big" boxes, and also run Linux servers personally so I see both sides.

Re:Cost of Servers...

[morie]

Might it be that they upgraded the servers and cut the cost by choosing linux servers in the upgraded system rather than some more expensive unix-variety? that would be a reason not to run the linux on the old servers and the explanation of the speed increase. It would also point out how cheap you can do a upgrade as long as you use linux...

Re:Cost of Servers...

[Corrado]

Why in the world did each server cost them anything? They already had 32 servers, and I am sure Linux would have ran on them, so why didn't they save the 96,000 and just use existing hardware..

The old boxen were possibly on lease. When they stopped paying for the software/maintenance, the hardware went back as well.

In addition, they make it sound like "Unix Hardware" is more expernsive than "Linux Hardware",

"Enterprise Hardware" is more expensive than "Desktop Hardware". You have things like redundent power supplies, network cards, memory. Not to mention things like really big I/O busses and serious enterprise stuff that common PC hardware falls down at. This is my main argument against using MS Windows for anything "Enterprise".

Re:Cost of Servers...

[spacefrog]

Why in the world did each server cost them anything? They already had 32 servers, and I am sure Linux would have ran on them, so why didn't they save the 96,000 and just use existing hardware..

What makes you think that they would run Linux? The fact that they are $50,000 Unix boxes should give us a pretty good clue that these machines were NOT PC'S

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

Once again, we have a pretty good clue that not only are these not PC's, but that they are obsolete as well.

Remember, they didn't say when they paid $50,000 for the machines.

Re:Cost of Servers...

[avdp]

And as the article itself points out, Linux runs on all kinds of hardware including proprietary unix-type hardware and mainframes.

I am not really defending the original post mind you, just correcting yours.

Re:Cost of Servers...

[Amarok.Org]

where could i see the mainframes in this? i mean, how are they situated compared to the plain-household-linux-servers and the *big box* servers

IANAMF (I Am Not A Mainframe Admin), but they're kind of sitting next to the big Unix servers. They're a completely different mindset when it comes to architecture, but remember that Unix (and the follow on hardware) came from mainframe guys, and while they wanted to improve on the design you usually start with what you know.

The big difference between server class hardware (mainframe or otherwise) and consumer class hardware is their ability to handle large amounts of data and transactions (more or less) simultaneously.

Re:Cost of Servers...

[Amarok.Org]

Actually, linux does support the MCA bus.. So I don't think it would be that big a stretch getting it working on the rs/6000.
And if you look at...

You failed to note this part of my original post:

and even if you can (or someone has) - the hardware is so outdated as to be pointless.

Faster too...?

[phoenix_orb]

From the Article:

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.

-------------
I just woke up, but if my math is correct, this is almost 9300% faster?!? I cannot believe that just the optimizations of Linux have done that.

Linux is fast, but they didn't even mention the fact that the new hardware was quite a bit faster then there legacy Unix systems. It is a bias in the way of making Linux appear even better, so I can't argue too awful much, but consider this point.

No program that I have switched over to Linux (IIS to Apache, etc) have gotten that kind of speed gain. The only thing that I have seen with that kind of performance increase was when I put novell 3.12 on a P3 1.3 ghz (from a 33 mhz 486) :)

I didn't read the article online (I read it at lunch yesterday in the dead tree edition... Had a nice army of Tuxes on the cover of the section).

Re:Faster too...?

[jejones]

I just woke up, but if my math is correct, this is almost 9300% faster?!? I cannot believe that just the optimizations of Linux have done that.

You can't get more than 100% faster, or you'd have the answer before you asked the question. It used to take 1020 (17 hr * 60 min/hr) minutes, and now it takes 11 minutes; the time it takes has been cut by 1009 / 1020 * 100 percent, about 98.9%.

Can it really have sped up that much? Yes, but it's hard to believe that the OS is the cause. They almost certainly got faster hardware when they switched, the compiler technology may be better, and if they have to consult a database to do the calculation, they quite possibly have a different or newer (and one would hope improved) DBMS.

Taco's priorities....

[Ravagin]

from the and-when-usa-today-gives-you-props-you've-made-it dept.

Okay, I see the point about recognition from pop media, but still - this is USA Today we're talking about. The newspaper that thinks it's a TV show, fer cryin' out loud.

</geek type="journalism">

Re:Totally useless article...

[yatest5]

Absolutely detestable journalism

Linux FUD!!!!! Torvald Shills!!!! And all the other /.-only phrases that would be dragged out, if only this article was pro-MS.

Please try not to be so blinkered, slashbots.

Wrong about Sun:

[larien]

That will be tougher for Sun and Microsoft. Both live and die by licensing fees stemming from their proprietary operating systems.

Bull; Sun make very little from OS licensing. Hell, it's free for systems up to 8 CPUs, and everything over that size comes with an OS license. Sun make money from selling hardware, primarily servers & storage. They do sell software as well (e.g. Sun Cluster, SRM), but that's mostly so they can offer a total solution, in the same way IBM has done for a long time.

Re:Wrong about Sun:

[(H)elix1]

Hell, it's free for systems up to 8 CPUs, and everything over that size comes with an OS license.

They fixed that with Solaris 9 -- they charge a couple hundred bucks for a 2 cpu version...

Sun is talking about compatibility?

[gosand]

From the article:
With so many cooks, Linux is destined to splinter into incompatible versions, Sun says.

Not as long as they follow published, open standards. They may not LOOK compatible, and may not have the same, homogeneous interface, but they will be compatible. The strongest will survive the best, but the others will still be allowed to live. That is how things will be different than today.

The Media reaction is interesting

[ericman31]

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.

Re:The Media reaction is interesting

[MtViewGuy]

I think the reason why Linux has finally gotten popular for servers is the fact the 2.4.x kernel releases can do the type of heavy-duty volume transctions that used to the realm of commercial Unix releases such as Solaris. I think a lot of the 2.4.x improvements were prodded on by IBM, who has a vested interest in running Linux on most of their big iron hardware.

It's the 2.4.x kernel that makes to possible for a company like Google to do massive web page indexing and Usenet archiving with a massive server farm, that's to be sure. =)

Because Linux can finally do large scale data processing, the OS has finally gotten the notice of Fortune 500 firms that want large scale data processing but blanch at the license costs of a commercial Unix like Solaris.

Re:Question. This is a good article...

[yatest5]

Seems to me the average USA Today reader doesn't have a clue what Linux is.

The average USA Today reader doesn't know that burgers are unhealthy, or that coffee is hot. They're AMERICAN. ;-).

Real Computing??

[cluge]

I love the article when it says things like "inexpensive driver of Web pages, e-mail systems and computer servers on the edges of corporate networks, Linux has begun seeping into corporate data centers where serious computing takes place" Serious Computing?? Lets see what causes the most uproard, a finacial report isn't ready on time, or your companies e-mail server is down.

Serious computing takes place wherever downtime cannot be tolerated. That is the very reason many web and e-mail servers have been running linux. An interesting article that shows the amount of ignorance about Linux that exists "in the mainstream".

cluge

Re:Real Computing??

[Pfhreakaz0id]

you're kidding right? When the financial report is ready on time causes FAR more uproar, at least among upper management of a public company.

Re:Real Computing??

[Pfhreakaz0id]

Geez. I meant ISN'T ready on time. I need more cofee. Back in a second ....

Re:Real Computing??

[TechnoVooDooDaddy]

Lets see what causes the most uproard, a finacial report isn't ready on time, or your companies e-mail server is down

depends on your definition of uproar..

Sure lotsa people will whine when the email server is down, but if the financials are late in a publicly traded company in this market, you'll see that stock drop faster than an unpached Windows ME box on an IRC chat.

Re:This is why I hate reading about IT in the medi

[JWW]

Those kind of comparisons aren't silly, they're real world.

In the real world you upgrade pathetic old equipment with powerful new equipment. I upgraded from an old AIX box to a new one and acheived a 500% speed increase.

Sure comparing new equipment to old isn't fair, but the speed you gain is real.

Linux just enables you to make these gains at a very low cost.

Patience

[47PHA60]

Every time I see a story about how "Linux is Dead on the (desktop, webserver, database server)" I wonder why I should listen to the opinions of people who helped to build the last stock bubble with companies that did nothing (but they did it fast!).

Nobody knows how long it will take to 'correct' Microsoft's nasty effect on the the market, but remember, MS wouldn't mention Linux 5 years ago, then they laughed at it, now they're competing against it.

I think that some in the Linux community got scared because business people were pronouncing defeat for Linux because of, well, think of any reason you can: no apps, performance and security problems, no support, lousy interface. Recently we've been seeing that those opinions were just immature impatience, as Linux adoption continues in spite of 10 years of gloomy forcasts from the pundits.

Re:Patience

[donutello]

Every time I see a story about how "Linux is Dead on the (desktop, webserver, database server)" I wonder why I should listen to the opinions of people who helped to build the last stock bubble with companies that did nothing (but they did it fast!). Nobody knows how long it will take to 'correct' Microsoft's nasty effect on the the market

That is one of the stupidest statements I've ever read. Microsoft was and is one of the few companies who actually made money. I don't know if you're old enough to be able to do math but when you are you should look at some of the more recent financial statements. This is a company that is making BILLIONS of dollars in real money.

The stock market hype and inflation was because of the startup .com's and linux-based companies who paid off analysts to rave about their prospects while not having any sort of business model. They were attempting to imitate MS's success without having any of the fundamentals.

Look up the stock values of some of those companies compared to their highs. Microsoft, on the other hand is still valued highly because it is not just hype but real dollars.

You really ought to get your facts from somewhere other than Slashdot editors and their blind raving.

Re:Patience

[47PHA60]

I see the source of your misunderstanding. I did not write that Microsoft lost money; I was actually alluding to their habit of killing promising technologies and companies with illegal tactics to maintain their monopoly (I got those facts from the New York Times, MSNBC, and the Department of Justice). This is a reference to the software market, not the stock market.

I don't know if you're old enough to read yet, but your snippet of my post is misleading; the sentence about MS is actually the "topic sentence" of a new paragraph, which indicates the start of a different idea.

When I write "their effect on the market," I may have shown a misguided faith in your comprehension skills and knowledge of current events; I presumed that anyone who has read a newspaper in the last three years could figure out that I was referring to Linux as a tool to help undo some of the harm MS did to the technology market. Remove the OS from the realm of competition, and they lose their clout to kill the next Netscape. Make them compete on technical merits with another OS, and they will have to improve their software proportionally to the money they charge for it.

In other news

[af_robot]

Same story, two years later:

The Germany-based bank sought a less-costly way to calculate risks associated with its portfolio of investments. So it replaced 40 Pentium II computer servers, based on the Linux operating systems, at an average cost of $50 each, with 50 Windows.Net servers based on Intel Xeon VI processors, at $50,000 each.
The Linux servers took 11 minutes to calculate how much cash the bank needed in reserve to offset its investment risk. The Windows.Net servers made the same calculation only in 3 minutes (not including several reboots time)
With a better and more frequent handle on its finances, the bank could shift tens of millions of dollars from its reserve account to active investments of MSFT

Quit being so negative.

[El_Smack]

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.

Re:Quit being so negative.

[NanoGator]

It may be a 'real OS', but it still has some problems to shake out. I have 4 very experienced software engineers sitting behind me (who all have background in Unix and Linux) who have switched over to Linux for development. They have all had little niggling issues that took DAYS to work out. Linux does not provide an 'easy to use' enough interface to troubleshoot and fix these problems like Windows does. Linux may be cheap/free, but there's still the adoption cycle that costs time and money. Will it be worth it over time? Well I hope so. I'd love to see Linux become more successful.

Despite popular belief, Windows 2000 (and even XP) is reliable. Plus, it's the defacto standard that both software developers and your onboard staff can use. Linux has gotten a lot better over the last couple of years, but it still needs some end-user refinement. When the Linux community starts focusing on GUI design (as opposed to fixing 'bugs'),MS will really have something to wee-wee in their pants about.

Take a good hard look at OSX. It's built on top of BSD. It's fully functional as an OS, and it's useful! You don't even need to know the root password to get around on OSX. The user uses it, and doesnt feel like he/she's gonna break it. The Linux Community should be observing OSX under a microscope. Apple has put a lot of design effort into this OS to make it useable. This type of usability can be done with Linux.

Today, Linux is still a niche OS. Chalk me up to trolling if you like, but I would strongly recommend the Linux community listen to my criticisms. The worst case scenario is that Linux becomes a better product.

Re:Quit being so negative.

[NanoGator]

"I would have to honestly question the skill of those four "very experienced software engineers"."

Careful, that sword is double edged. If they're unskilled, then Linux is a terrible end user OS. If they're skilled, then Linux is a terrible end user OS. Best not to get into that debate, other than to say "it could use refinement". The problems were along the lines of getting network connections going.

"A windows enviroment is hardly a "reliable" enviroment. Development on a windows box is painful at best, having kernel level memory leaks, lack of control of the development enviroment makes it a worst case enviroment not a best case. BTW, what makes you think that windows is the "defacto" standard for development? "

I didn't communicate very clearly, I apologize. I was talking in terms of 'usability', not development. Development on any environment is a bitch. I won't argue with Windows having kernel problems, but Linux has it's own set of problems. For example, hardware support is nowhere near as robust as it is on Windows. The worst part is that vendors don't support Linux. Is that Linux's fault? Not really, no. However, anything it can do to get on more desktops would help that A LOT.

As for boosting productivity: I have no doubt that Linux has some nitty gritty one could get into to tweak productivity. That doesn't mean everybody will do it. The design of the interface and the apps have to expose that type of functionality. If you're having to learn scripting in Linux to make this productivity happen, then it is an area that could use refinement.

Re:Quit being so negative.

[NanoGator]

"However, the interface has NOTHING to do with development!"

On other point: Interface has everything to do with development. Software engineers do more than just type in code and hit 'compile'. They go through lots of design revisions. They have to communicate with their team. They have to pass documents around. They browse the web. They use their computers the same way anybody else with an office job does.

Once they got Linux working, all that stuff basically works now. But man was it a headache getting them running. It's funny how finnicky Linux can be sometimes.

Re:Quit being so negative.

[Jason Earl]

It is not that Linux networking is really that much harder than Windows networking. In fact, in some ways Linux is probably easier, but only once you get to know how it works. That's one of the major problems that Linux faces. Even in those instances where Linux is better than Windows most folks are already used to doing things the Windows way.

Linuxers certainly want to "refine" Linux, but they don't want to copy Windows warts and all, and so you end up with bits that seem tricky.

In the end you have to balance the cost of training your employees to use Linux against the ongoing costs of paying for Windows (and upgrading your employees' Windows skills). I know that for me the switch has been very beneficial, and the cost of relearning was definitely worth it, but Linux is still not for everyone.

For example, in my own case the added productivity came about because I now had access to a much more powerful set of tools. Python, bash, make, grep, sed, sort, etc. have allowed me to do some fairly amazing things, and they are available on basically any Linux machine. Sometimes scripts can easily do things that are nearly impossible to do with a GUI.

Re:Quit being so negative.

[NanoGator]

Just to be clear: I'm talking about giving more visual control to the user. I'm NOT talking about removing things like scripting in Linux.

Re:Quit being so negative.

[dazed-n-confused]

Exactly so: I printed out and gave a copy of this article to my boss today, after he'd more-or-less frivolously asked whether we should have a Linux strategy (re: MS license hikes).

Next up, I'll try to rework the Villaneuva letter into a principled Corporate Social Responsibility statement - i.e. why a reputable business with long term responsibilities to its customers and investors should go Open Source.

Caveat: I work in IT audit, not IT policy. But this is *just* what I needed to open the door.

Re:Quit being so negative.

[NanoGator]

"You sound to me like a paid MS asstroturfing piece of shit."

So? You sound to me like a close minded dumbfuck. Never mind that a good portion of the 3D rendering industry relies on Windows to get their rendering done. Don't believe me? Go find out how the visual FX for Voyager, DS9, Babylon 5, and countless other TV shows/commercials are made. They wouldn't rely on Windows if they couldn't.

Re:Quit being so negative.

[budgenator]

This is going to sound like flamebait but here goes, I don't trust any operating system that doesn't require a root password. Maybe you trust your users that much, I sure don't trust mine. It just flabbergasts me that while the WinME ask's for password you can just hit cancel and proceed to destroy the machine. Actualy I'm not sure I trust me that much either; the root password also lets you know things are getting serious.

Re:Quit being so negative.

[NanoGator]

Good point. To be fair, though, one doesn't use an OS for something it wasn't designed for. WinME is far from bullet proof. (which is why it kicks ass as a gaming OS...)

I mentioned in another thread that the best type of security is to minimize damage from the worst-case-scenario. If you think somebody's going to use Windows ME and accidentally wipe your Windows folder, for example, then the best solution is to make regular backups as opposed to buying a new OS just to get a working 'login feature'.

Get what I mean? Here, I'll give another example:

Worried about somebody getting your credit card # from your computer? Let's face facts: CC#'s are far from secure. You just can't keep it to yourself. What you can do is keep your CC limit low. If somebody steals your card and maxes it out and you end up having to pay the bill, then there's only so much damage you can do. You could use only credit cards that have policies in your favor about stolen cards. You can check your statement on the web every few days and make sure erroneus charges don't show up on it. When they do, call them up and get them removed.

These steps are every bit as important as using the web responsibly and protecting your computer with patches and firewalls. The problem is that somebody will always get through. It doesn't matter what OS you use or what websites you visit. The best thing you can do is make sure the worst case scenario isn't tragic.

Re:upstart!!?!?!

[Ivan Raikov]

USA today is not the best paper for eposing new trends, in the world. The WSJ or FT, for business, WP or NYT, for Politics, and there are several good international papers for foreign news, and analysis.

The Financial Times, while having interesting business and political analyses, is sometimes very biased towards big corporations, particularly Microsoft. In fact, I canceled my subscription when they published an article in support of Microsoft's proposition to donate computer equipment and software to public schools -- blatantly deceptive propaganda, which sounded eerily similar to a Microsoft press release.

Both the New York Times and the Washington Post possess a heavy political bias, and tend to have the annoying pseudo-liberal tendencies that are so common among Western journalists these days. I really wouldn't allow either of those newspapers to affect my political and/or social viewpoints. A matter of preference, I suppose.

Are you sure?

[juuri]

Sun's intital profit on hardware isn't very much.

Where Sun cleans up and this is something they pioneered well, is the multi-layered support system which has a yearly fee for each piece of hardware (and in some cases components inside of hardware).

Correction:

[mekkab]

The newspaper that thinks its a FOX tv show!

What they lack in journalism they make up for with large fonts and color.

That being said, I like the WSJ's new(ish) color format!

Re:Is Linux really THAT much faster?

[Queuetue]

I agree with your point, from a technical perspective, but look at it from the management perspective...

$1.6MM and 1020 mins vs $120K and 11 mins.

What they see is the the price/performance going through the roof, at 1/10th the price.

No, they're not silly

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Re:No, they're not silly

[Nothinman]

You can do up to 64G total with PAE, sure per process you're limited to 2/2 or 3/1 split of 4G, but you didn't specify which you meant.

Re:No, they're not silly

[pmz]

Go price an Sun 450 with 4 processors. Then price an equivalent Dell/Compaq. ...

Sun should know better.

Interesting thing is, I would still take the Sun E450, since Dell or Compaq don't sell an equivalent machine. The 450 will hold five independent SCSI controllers for 20 drives. All in one enclosure. It's also robust as hell. They don't have to cost more than $10,000, either, if you find a good used one. Plus, once you find out just how much work an E450 can do, it just might be the only server you need for much of a small company's infrastructure.

Sun competes on things beyond price/performance. Consistency and reliability are one such thing. A more balanced architecture is another (576-bit memory busses, SCSI/FC-AL standard, large CPU caches). Well-engineered enclosures is another. I would also bet that each Sun server design goes through much more testing and quality control than most Intel-based servers (I've read that the UltraSPARC CPUs have a very low errata rate relative to Intel CPUs).

Sun still makes a strong case for itself in its markets. In some ways the prices can be hard to stomach, but, if a company is to the point of affording a real IT infrastructure, they should be as concerned about risk as much as they are up-front cost. Sun equipment tends to be low-risk and very long-lived. It is somewhat harder to claim this for Intel-server Brand X, although I'm sure there are a handful of winners out there.

A lot of these arguments apply to IBM (Power), SGI (MIPS), and other hard-core UNIX server companies as well. The prices vary pretty widely, but they all share a core quality that makes them worthwhile as a long-term investment.

Re:No, they're not silly

[Riskable]

Sun hardware isn't as great as you make it out to be...

I work at a failing Tier 1 ISP that will probably be declaring bankruptcy soon. We have (had) about 4500 Sun boxen (Servers, workstations, SunRays, etc) ranging from old Ultra-1s to E-10k. Most of which is E-3500 and E-4500. I call Sun at least once a week because some peice of hardware failed in some machine somewhere. Suffice to say, it seems like EVERY new Sun machine has at least 1 CPU problem (read: ecache error) within 1 month of operation.

Most of the time it's the processor, but a lot of the time it's the power supply or the memory.

We also have a "Gold" contract with Sun that entitles us to a 4 hour "fix it" window of support. When I get Sun on the phone they're courteous, knowledgable, and generally trustworthy. However, as soon as one of their techs shows up on site, any number of idiotic things can happen. Whether it be powering off the wrong machine, cabling RAIDs to the wrong machines, or just generally forgetting to put parts back into the boxes.

So from my point of view, all that crap about Sun hardware and service being great just doesn't add up. I'd much rather have a fleet of Dells running Linux than one E-4500. Even if one of the Dell's fails, at least the others are there to pick up the slack.

Also a thing to note that people don't usually take into consideration: The more processors a machine has, the more likely it is to fail. The more processors you have, the more chances you have for a CPU panic.

Re:No, they're not silly

[moogla]

I think it's obvious he meant in a single process... even with PAE you can have 36GB but you can only address 4GB of it.

Re:No, they're not silly

[pmz]

We have (had) about 4500 Sun boxen (Servers, workstations, SunRays, etc) ranging from old Ultra-1s to E-10k.

With that much hardware, what do you expect? That's many thousands of processors, peripheral cards, etc. One call once-a-week doesn't sound bad for such a huge installation of hardware. If all of those machines were Dell boxes, you would probably be making calls several times a day!

Suffice to say, it seems like EVERY new Sun machine has at least 1 CPU problem (read: ecache error) within 1 month of operation.

I thought the E-Cache issue is several years old, now, and has been dealt with. Are you talking about brand-new machines delivered within the last few months?

Other issues could just be the initial shake-down for a newly-installed big server. Electronics fail in a distribution that is heavily skewed towards the first moments of operation. Once the initial "wear-in" period occurs, the server should be good for years with few break-downs, if any.

However, as soon as one of their techs shows up on site, any number of idiotic things can happen.

If you don't like their techs, you are fully capable of learning how to fix things yourself. Even big servers don't take a rocket scientist to maintain; it takes a willingness to learn, critical thinking, a static-strap, and some patience. That's it.

So from my point of view, all that crap about Sun hardware and service being great just doesn't add up. I'd much rather have a fleet of Dells running Linux than one E-4500.

So, how are you going to manage a fleet of Dells? Also, clusters or grids scale well for some types of computation, but can be a real PITA for general-purpose computing. There is a big difference in applicability between a cluster and a single SMP server.

Also a thing to note that people don't usually take into consideration: The more processors a machine has, the more likely it is to fail. The more processors you have, the more chances you have for a CPU panic.

You should be able to work around down processors without much trouble. Thankfully, I haven't had to deal with this.

Re:No, they're not silly

[stephenbooth]

Sun uses a different architecture end to end to Intel. Because of this, based on my own experience and comparisons, for running databases or backoffice applications (indeed anything that involves moving large amounts of data around or lots of number crunching) a 450MHz Sparc will usually out perform a 1.2GHz Intel.

Stephen

Re:This is why I hate reading about IT in the medi

[max cohen]

I think the point was Linux allowed them to upgrade to servers using commodity components instead of RISC based proprietary servers running Unix. The performance of commodity servers has really caught up with most RISC servers, except at the high end. Also, while the comparison is uneven, it is a real world situation. Most companies go from the stone age systems to bleeding edge, then repeat the cycle many years later.

Great article

[WCMI92]

Well written, and done so that the most nontechnical (ie, the types of managers who make decisions regarding IT purchasing) can EASILY understand it.

This article is DEVASTATING to MS... It's main point basically was:

Linux: Better, faster, less restrictive, and you can't beat the price!

I noted that the usual MS FUDddie-duddy response was in there, the fear of "importing your app to Linux means that you jeopardize your IP" crap.

What shit, deliberatly aimed at implying that the GPL means that the FSF owns all programs that will execute on a GPL'ed OS...

I believe that MS's licensing system (which leaves you open to BSA audits and ANY future condition they care to slip into the EULA for the priviledge of downloading a fix for a product defect) is FAR more "viral" than a license that simply says that "if you make use of our code to make an application you have to let the next guy build off your code"...

The opening example of the bank that saved so much money and got a faster system as a bonus is a killer one...

And everyone ripped MS's cost of licenses... MS can't be happy that this is running.

Oh, I can't resist

[The_Shadows]

"Linux waddles from obscurity"

In other news, BeOS left a sharp stinging pain.

FreeBSD claimed the souls of the damned. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Sun shined brightly. Mario was unsurprised.

Windows has been shattered.

Unix has been castrated.

Re:Oh, I can't resist

[zCyl]

Hurd is almost audible.

Re:upstart!!?!?!

[13Echo]

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.

Re:Is Linux really THAT much faster?

[Junta]

I thought that whole bit was misrepresented and really dumb from a technical standpoint.

But from a business standpoint, that is exactly correct. They have a legacy, Unix based system for performing these calculations. Getting it to work on Windows would be extremely expensive if possible at all. Also, getting Windows to work as they expect in a clustering configuration would also not likely help the cost of migration in any case....

But when stuck with whatever Unix they had, they were also tied down to Sun, HP, or IBM equipment. Those pieces of hardware are expensive as *hell*, upgrading a few systems is bad enough, but a cluster of 32 would take some serious cash.

Now enters Linux (from the business perspective). They can run a full-fledged Unixy system on commodity PC hardware. Coughing up the cash for 40 PCs is no problem at all. The commodity, high speed hardware is the difference here, and Linux is perceived as the enabling technology to let this happen.

Now was Linux required? No, not at all. x86 Solaris might have worked, but it is seen (rightfully so) as Sun's red-headed stepchild, dismal hardware support and performance, meant to give a taste for Sparc computing or learning the system rather than be a production system. Any BSD could have been used just as easily as Linux, but Linux was tipped into the light by the lingering hype and broader userbase/community support. They aren't looking at redistribution, so the GPL/BSD argument is a moot point, so Linux is just a valid choice as FreeBSD.

The point is a new PC with Linux can compete competently with super-high-priced Unix workstations. In the really super high end single servers where intel architecture cannot adequately scale on a hardware, Unix systems are still king (Linux may run on some of them, but if you are dishing out that much cash, you can get the system supported top to bottom by a single source), but in the workstation and clustering arena, PCs with a competent *nix (Linux or BSD) are quickly becoming king....

tape as primary storage

[shren]

If it was old enough to use tape as primary storage, then yes, the old UNIX boxes could be that slow. I'd like to see some specs on the old boxes too, but if the old machine was "PDP-11 old" or close to it, consider this:

Dbit's PDP-11 simulator

Imagine doing table joins swapping large tables in and out of 4 megabytes of memory - or less - and imagine grinding away on the 60 hz processor. The machines they are replacing are probably not that old, but could be close. Two orders of magnitude improvement isn't that hard to believe when you think about Moore's law.

Ummm, consider the source

[Wee]

As a journalist, one should never use such words as "claims" or "asserts".

Remember that you're talking about USA Today, here. It's not exactly the paragon of journalism. They hire "writers". You might as well argue that sentences shouldn't begin with conjunctions.

-B

Re:Ummm, consider the source

[pnatural]

You might as well argue that sentences shouldn't begin with conjunctions.

And just what in the hell is that supposed to mean?

Re:Ummm, consider the source

[Wee]

Oh, come on, SOMEONE's got to mod this up as funny...

And how!

-B

Re:Windows is the only option

[13Echo]

make uninstall

So programmers need to write uninstall scripts that run through the GUI. That isn't hard. It took MS OS developers more than 10 years to do this right.

Re:Hey, they misspelled Linus's name

[anonymous_wombat]

Linus Torvald? Who is this guy?

I believe that he is one of the many clones of Linus Torvalds. Linus finally got tired of hearing that he didn't scale.

Re:Not to worry...

[symbolic]

Just a little later on, it states:

''All the noise and optimism of the early adopters doesn't in any way guarantee Linux will cross into the mainstream,'' says Peter Houston, Microsoft's Windows server products director.

What this tells me is that M$ is in a state of denial. So be it. All it means is that some day, perhaps a few years from now, a sea of change may sweep over the IT sector, and M$ will be fighting for its life.

If I were Billy, I'd be lobbying Congress to enact laws that would ensure my existence - how a law that mandates that the government fork over the cost of one XXXP license (or whatever it's called by then) for each citizen on an annual basis? What better way to insulate against unauthorized copying? And, what better way to waste taxpayer money? It's all there - a perfectly American plan.

USAToday Hacked Again?

[breser]

Are we sure they weren't just hacked again and the hackers put up a Linux story this time?

Re:USAToday Hacked Again?

[Shelled]

Open Source Journalism?

Re:Linux is the only option. - real cost here

[shepd]

>The OEM version of XP is unlicensible and comes with no service IF you move it to another machine??

Yup.

Here's M$s take on it.

BTW: You actually don't get any support either way with M$ OEM products. The all say somewhere in the manual "For support of this product, please contact your computer manufactuer". Nice, eh?

And, last but not least, you can't transfer your OEM license to another machine. Whatever computer it goes on, it stays on. Which can really suck when it goes on a cheap computer.

BTW: Here's Microsoft's own MSRP for Windows XP. Its actually more than $499 CDN (but maybe I'm overestimating the dollar exchange...).

A quote from M$s EULA FAQ:

# OEM standalone product. This form of license misuse occurs when OEM version software has been unbundled from its designated computer system and distributed as a separate, "standalone" product. As stated in Question No. 23, Microsoft's agreement with computer manufacturers prohibits them from distributing Microsoft products in this fashion, i.e., without accompanying PC hardware. Microsoft products on the retail shelf should never include a line on the front cover of the User's Guide that states, "For Distribution Only With New PC Hardware."

And, the last word comes from M$, in this handy document:

What is the difference between OEM product and Full-Packaged Product (FPP)?
ANSWER. OEM products are intended to be preinstalled on hardware before the end user purchases the product. They are shrink wrapped and do not come in a box like the retail products do. Full-Packaged Product (FPP) is boxed with CD(s), manuals, and the EULA and is sold in retail stores in individual boxes. The End User License Agreements (commonly referred to as EULAs) for OEM and FPP products are slightly different. One main difference is that an OEM operating system license (such as the license for Windows) cannot be transferred from its original PC to another PC. However, the FPP version of Windows may be transferred to another PC as long as the EULA, manual and media (such as the backup CD) accompany the transfer to the other PC. Also, when a customer purchases an OEM product, the OEM license requires the OEM to provide support for the product.

So, to sum it up, when you get an OEM windows, you get no support, you have to buy a new computer, and you cannot use the software on any other computer. Which means selling OEM licenses separate from the computer isn't a viable way to license your computer from Microsoft, since they still consider you to have broken the law.

Isn't M$ licensing lots of fun. ;-)

Torvalds with an S

[MsGeek]

Although to be fair, Torvalds is not a standard Swedish surname. There are hundreds and hundreds of people named Torvald living in Sweden, Finland and for that matter all over the world.

If you bothered to read "Just For Fun", Linus explains that his grandfather changed his name from Torvald to Torvalds. There is exactly one family with the surname Torvalds, and it's Linus' family.

I suspect that somebody with knowledge of Swedish flagged "Torvalds" as a typo.

Re:Torvalds with an S

[Dirtside]

Although to be fair, Torvalds is not a standard Swedish surname.

Linus Torvalds is Finnish, not Swedish. Regardless, it's simple laziness to make assumptions about peoples' names like that -- there are far too many people with very slightly "nonstandard" names. A ten-second search on Google would have returned more than 600,000 hits for "Linus Torvalds" versus 8,000 for "Linus Torvald", but apparently that was too much effort.

Re:Torvalds with an S

[MsGeek]

Precisely. He is a Finnish ethnic Swede.

Point Is...

[Bilbo]

A strawman argument
Wow today's technology is cheaper and runs faster~~!!

Well, yes and no.

I think the important point to make here is that, with the extremely high price of those old Unix servers (or the new ones that they would likely be replaced with), the company couldn't afford to replace them with new hardware and software. So, even though the major portion of that increase in performance was due to the hardware, it was the Linux OS and applications sitting on top of those shiny new boxes that made it possible.

Re:Don't forget about ...

[laserjet]

HP is always written as "H-P" in the press. I am not sure why, but it is.

Re:Dude

[NanoGator]

"I think when he means by a REAL OS he means a server OS like soalris and AIX. I dont think he was talking about desktops. "

Hmm I didn't assume that because I thought it was common knowledge that Linux has a huge share of the server market. Even my dad knows that. Heh.

Fair point, though. I agree with you there. Linux is a kick ass OS for servers, and it also kicks ass for developing PC-based appliances.

Re:This is why I hate reading about IT in the medi

[Arandir]

I'm wondering what today's $3000 PCs would have cost in 1993.

Article Executive Summary: "Due to Linux Goodness, a fresh apple tastes better than that orange that's been sitting in the back of your fridge since 1993."

Re:Don't forget about ...

[laserjet]

Yes, I am aware of that. However, even HP the company abreviates it "HP" or "hp", so I would think the press would do the same. Either way, I don't really care.

Re:news.com used 'upstart' until recently...

[budgenator]

I agree there is nothing upstart about Linux; it was on my desktop prior to Windows95. The windows users I know, when they see linux, they are envious; 4 desktops on one monitor, much easier copy-paste operations and habitualy running four or five applications that would hobble a windows OSed machine.

If we show them stuff like that, we'd get a lot more converts.

Re:This is why I hate reading about IT in the medi

[harlows_monkeys]

What they'd do, upgrade from 20mhz Sun boxes to Pentium III 933's? These kind of performance comparisons are just SILLY

Actually, they aren't that silly. One of the advantages of Linux over the proprietary Unixes is that Linux runs on commodity hardware, allowing for more frequent hardware upgrades, which means that you can generally run on faster hardware.

One of the studios that switched from SGI to Linux on Intel for rendering a while back pointed this out. With the expensive SGI hardware, they could afford to replace the rendering farm something like every six years, so on average they were using three year old hardware. With Linux on Intel, they will be able to replace machines on, I think they said, a two year cycle, so on average, they will be rendering on one year old hardware. One year old Intel hardware kicks the crap out of three year old SGI hardware.

what horrible journalism

[WebMasterJoe]

Without the pie charts, USA Today articles just can't stand on their own: Sun has derided Linux... as a "bathtub of code." With so many cooks, Linux is destined to splinter into incompatible versions, Sun says. What is with all the metaphors? Too many cooks splinter the bathtub? And that website is embarrassing - shouldn't they at least put a date on the article? I especially like that last statement "Linux is first on the horizon," Wicker says.Cover storyCover story - is that some sort of superliminal thing?

Re:what horrible journalism

[SkulkCU]

I like the huge header:
NEWSPAPER STORIES

Wow, who knew?

Re:This is what is silly

[cheese_wallet]

I can't believe that was moderated as a troll.

Re:Windows is the only option

[budgenator]

try installing and removing Gator from your windows box, formating the hard-drive is the only way that I have found to remove Gator; no linux app is that hard to get rid of!

Replying to myself (baka)

[moogla]

To clarify, the verb address means use any X amount of memory in a random-access fashion by a single process.

Re:upstart!!?!?!

[epukinsk]

You can't change that. It is showing no signs of slowing down.

What's even better is that Linux is magically insulated from market forces. In a bear market lots of unemployed developers have more time to improve Linux. In a bull market, more Linux-supporting companies can thrive. Basically, "The Linux Movement" is the most stable software development institution around.

Erik

Re:Windows is the only option

[ninewands]

Actually, Ad-Aware does a pretty good job of rooting out all the trash Gator, Bonzi Buddy and Comet Cursor leave behind when you uninstall them. In the "deep scan" mode it even manages to root out all the crap they leave in the registry. I recently installed it on my roomie's Windoze box and the first time I ran it it removed some 200 registry keys and (IIRC) 116 dlls that various crapware she had loaded on her machine over the years had left behind. Her box went from damn near unusable to fairly stable (for a Windows Box) in about an hour.

Where the fsck has USA Today been?

[Col. Panic]

Haven't any of their editors seen a magazine cover in the last two years?