Linux Replacing Windows More Than Unix

LordNimon writes "Over the past couple years, we've been hearing several Linux migration stories, but they have been mostly migration from proprietary Unix systems rather than from Windows. Well, this story on News.com indicates otherwise: of the migrations, 24% were from Unix, but 31% were from Windows. Sounds promising."

Comments

Interesting but..

[Derkec]

This is an interesting figure, but I'd like to see the numbers of migrations compared to past years. Is this flip because more people are converting from Windows or is it because those that are going to move from proprietary unix to Linux have already made the conversion. Are windows migrations increasing, or unix migrations decreasing? Or both, or what? This is an interesting stat, but fairly meaningless without more information...

maybe I need to read the article. :)

Even Better...

[WEFUNK]

...of the migrations, 24% were from Unix, but 31% were from Windows.

On first reading I was wondering what operating systems could possibly make up the missing 45%, but it's not 31% and 24% of the *migrations* but of the total new Linux servers:

"For those that have recently purchased new Linux servers, 31 percent were adding capacity, 31 percent were replacing Windows systems, 24 percent were replacing Unix and 14 percent were replacing other operating systems."

So as a percentage of migrations, nearly half are Linux replacing Windows (maybe over 50% replacing MS systems including DOS):

45% Windows to Linux
35% Unix to Linux
20% Other to Linux

31 % adding capacity.

[Forge]

That is the REAL encoraging sign.

Sure there is the odd case of an incorectly sized server being put to a task it can't manage.

However most "Adding Capacity" is from satisfide customers who are moving other services to the platform in question or even better have grown the business so much that they need to buy more and/or biger machines.

Mac/BSD people are too self important apparently

[polarbear]

Free clues for BSD fans:

1. The percentages were for _servers_. Sorry, but apple's server market share is like 0.00001% right now ;P Every mac "server" I've seen so far in the "real world" is a lowend fileserver for a cluster macs hidden in some publishing office.

2. The only people (numerious enough to be of any statistical relevance) "migrating" to MacOS X are Mac desktop users upgrading from Macs and a small number of windows/linux/whatever converts (though judging from apple's sales figures those probably fall into "not statistically relevant")

3. I love when BSD fans latch onto Mac OS X and say stuff like "see! BSD is more used then Linux!" blah blah blah. Meanwhile most people don't give two hoots about any BSD parts of the OS (they don't see it, don't really program for it). And proprietary apple-only APIs are what developers use to get the most out of the hardware and operating system. Sorry, but your average well written native apple app is about as BSD as Windows NT is UNIX (tm) Photoshop for FreeBSD anyone? Yeah... I thought so...

Oh well... time to get mod'd ( -1, The Truth Hurts )

Re:Aye, but I'm not a Mac user.

[polarbear]

There has always been an element of the growing linux userbase that decides to move to a *BSD for various reasons (most for real reasons, matters of preference, etc, other for less then admirable users but thats troll take). Some move back (quite a few users of new distros like Gentoo, etc are former *bsd users who moved back for some reason or another or run both happily)

Quite frankly I think BSD is enjoying the "wake" created by Linux much like migrating birds fly in the wake of others to make the trip easier, etc. The Linux camps attracts the bulk of new users to the Linux/BSD camp and some naturally spill over to the *BSDs. Is that a bad thing? Nope, its only natural. But it was the early Linux advocates and zealots who created the wake... It was their open and more inviting attitude and it was later the GPL and the growing wake produced by early Linux that attacted the corporate interest in Free Unix after the BSDs lost it due to lawsuits and attitude problems.

The Macs are a special case where you have loyal mac users who would quite frankly use anything Apple gave them as long as it got the job done. Your average mac user will probably see never even know the terminal window exists or if they do, they might mutter something like "oh its dos" or "wtf is this" and promptly close it.

Any "techies" moving to this form of BSD are greatly outnumbered by more "mainstream users" and I believe are stastically irrelevant. Also any "BSD developer" on Apple is either going to be using "non-BSD" apis or not doing anything involving GUIs or the nifty features that make Mac OS X different from Windows, KDE, etc.

As I said before, some BSD fans are overestimating the importance of BSD. I doubt it will ever make an appreciable dent in the server market compared to Linux, Windows, etc. Though it will be interesting to see how far the X-server servers go, the only reason I can see to buy one is the pretty case but its a server, so why pay for a proprietary server platform when we are trying to get off of others (*cough*sun*cough*).

This year may see a lot of converts in particular

[paladin_tom]

...due to Microsoft's new licensing scheme. That's something a lot of businesses hate with something of a passion, I believe.

Re:This year may see a lot of converts in particul

[rseuhs]

I couldn't agree more.

The Winlots might say that it's not so bad or it's only for their own good (having always the same version) some other market-speak.

But there are 2 scary facts:

1: With the new licensing scheme, Microsoft is taking the power to decide away from the user.

2: Microsoft showed that they don't hesitate long to change EULAs and licensing schemes the way they see fit.

Even if it were not more expensive (but it is!) it would be hated.

Re:If it's like a lot of places I've seen. . .

[DunbarTheInept]

~Management and a few staff love Windows, the rest hate it for religious reasons.

Yes... of course... because it's impossible that maybe they have real reasons for hating it that make actual sense, oh, no, it can't possibly be that. No, let's just call them religious reasons.

Here's the explanation for the moves to Linux

[Sara Chan]

The Economist had an article about this recently. Here's a relevent quote.

Traditionally, vendors have driven most big IT markets. They have been, for example, quite successful at locking in corporate customers. Once a company has deployed a piece of proprietary technology--say, an expensive package of enterprise software--it is very costly to switch to another provider. Software vendors can thus milk their "installed base" by selling them one upgrade after another.

IT buyers, however, are increasingly reluctant to play this one-sided game. They are putting pressure on vendors to make it easier for them to link the various bits of their systems. Indeed, the concept of collaborative e-commerce makes sense only if applications have a common language. What is more, vendors themselves increasingly favour open standards as a defensive strategy to neutralise the power of proprietary-minded competitors.

Being forced to do more with less, IT managers are coming to like Linux, the free operating system. Linux and the universe of "open-source" businesses that surround it are one of the few areas of the technology business that is actually growing. Almost a fifth of server computers sold by Dell now have Linux installed rather than Windows. Sun Microsystems has begun offering Linux servers, and might soon add a Linux PC to its product line.

It's a good article--worth showing your manager.