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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."
maybe I need to read the article.
...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
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
Maybe Redhat could get some mileage out of this.
How can you tell that it is near the end of the work day in my timezone and I desparately need to be entertained?
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
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.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
This article seems to deal mostly with servers and corporations. What about desktop users and/or other home users.
While there are probably a lot of corps out there thinking about switching to linux from unix/windows, there are also an increasing amount of home users searching for an alternate desktop environment.
I wonder how this might tally if things such as linux firewalls, mp3 servers, and other more custom uses were considered?
Our company (admittedtly a small one - around 35 people) has done both migrations at the same time and have saved a ton of money in the process.
We are an engineering company, and used to have two computers on every desk - a UNIX workstation (combination of Suns and HPs) for the "real work", and a Windoze PC for things like email and documentation. Now, these have both been replaced by Athlon 2000+ machines running Linux. The main thing we were waiting for was the UNIX EDA software (from Mentor Graphics) to be ported to Linux. We now use mainly OpenOffice for documentation and Evolution/Kmail (depending on personal preference) for email.
The combination of ditching the expensive workstation hardware and the MS Office software has made the basic platform really cheap. The main cost, however, is still the EDA software, but even that is coming down. The added side benefit is less computer clutter and much simpler system administration.
Steven: Yeah, I used to tell people to buy Window based computers all the time.
[Camera pans around a bit]
Steven: Yeah, and um, down in Austin it would get like intense over those blue screens that would pop up and like, I just totally couldn't stand that freakin' paper clip. Then my comp sci professor introduced me to Star Office. Like whoa! No paper clip! And like, my buddies say I can play around with the kernal! Yeah, I think he does fried chicken and stuff.
[Camera cuts to close-up]
Steven: Uh, my name is Steven and dude, I got a Del... uh, Linux. Yeah, that's right! Linux.
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*).
--- polarbear
When I started my job two years ago, our data center was 100% NT-based. Little by little I've convinced management to migrate various tasks off of Windows and onto Linux. My single 2U RedHat server handles our corporate website, Intranet, FTP, DNS caching, and more. This eliminated several other systems and their associated licensing fees. The machine has been powered up stable since day one, and at 240 days, my uptime is the best in the room.
Linux has also proven itself at our company as a great free network monitoring tool, thanks to snort and MRTG, etc.
One of the biggest wins with the management here was that I was able to prove that Linux can play nicely in an NT domain. People are always surprised that it authenticates domain users and that sort of thing.
We still have alot of NT servers on the rack, but so far my one Linux box runs so well, I don't think we'll ever need another!
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.