Verizon Switches Programmers to Linux

wackysootroom writes: "According to this article at News.com, Verizon saved $6 million in equipment costs by switching its programmers from UNIX and Windows workstations to Linux workstations running OpenOffice. The article says that the average cost per desktop workstation was cut from $22,000 to $3,000." jeffmurphy noted the same story, and wonders "What kind of (Windows) desktops were they buying previously at an average cost of $22k? It seems like software alone wouldn't account for that big of a cut."

Comments

Savings.

[saintlupus]

Verizon saved $6 million in equipment costs by switching its programmers from UNIX and Windows workstations to Linux workstations running OpenOffice.

I'm surprised they didn't just fire all the programmers, to save the maximum amount of cash.

--saint
(bitter ex-Verizon employee.)

Verizon to Microsoft....

[wowbagger]

"Can you hear me now? GOOD!"

differences in how processors treat numbers

[Skapare]

Fundamental differences in how Intel and HP processors treat binary numbers meant that some software was very difficult to translate, leading to delays that kept newly purchased equipment idle. "It's now working, but what a mess," the employee added.

Translation:

We were dumb and wrote endian-dependent code, such as accessing multi-byte numbers by loading one character at a time. We assumed the high-order bytes were first, but with the Intel processor, it's the other way around. So we had to go back and re-do it all over again. Don't worry, we'll find some way to blame management. They told us to write endian-dependent code; yeah, that's right.