Linux TCO: Less Than Half The Cost of Windows

ggruschow writes "Linux Today reports 'The cost of running Linux is roughly 40% that of Microsoft Windows, and only 14% that of Sun Microsystem's Solaris, according to a new study which examined the actual costs of running various operating systems over three years.'"

Comments

Microsoft says so, too!

[dpbsmith]

I think it's more interesting to hear Ballmer acknowledging this too.

Re:Microsoft says so, too!

[Nugget]

I fail to see how this is oxymoronical. Might not be accurate, but the statement is perfectly consistent. Think for a few minutes on what the word "total" is doing in the phrase "total cost of ownership".

Gross pay is less than half the cost of employment

[yerricde]

So the majority of the costs are based on the server admin's cost, which averages $71,xxx a year...my question is, where are this jobs as linux admins for $71k/ year?

An employee's gross pay is typically less than half of what it costs to employ him or her. An employer needs to buy office space, power, lighting, air circulation, health benefits, not to mention the employer's share of the taxes (in the USA, payroll tax and Social Insecurity matching payments).

Re:first?

[susano_otter]

Totally. I am an "admin" who "manages" about 150 Windows systems these days. Of course, I'm supported by other teams of "non-admins", so even that figure doesn't clearly indicate the Windows TCO.

Re:Consider the source

[susano_otter]

According to the article, the report was prepared by an independent research company. Linux Today carried the story because it contains positive statements made by a third party about Linux.

Meanwhile, here on /., people seem to be saying that the report came from Linux Today, and therefore is too biased to be trusted.

So on the one hand, you're wrong about the source of the report, just like a lot of other posters. On the other hand, you're wrong about /.'s response to the report.

But hey, at least things are somewhat better than you expected, which is always pleasant.

Perhaps...

[ZxCv]

...it is simply the fact that Windows systems just generally take more time and effort to secure. Whether it is simply because there are more patches, or that those patches just take forever to install, or that those patches create further problems that have to be addressed, I can firmly say in my 6 or 7 years of administration, the few Windows boxes I've had to manage have been a far larger administration headache than any of the Linux, FreeBSD, or even Solaris machines.

Re:first?

[scot4875]

Here at the University of Idaho, we have about 750 public NT4 client machines managed by about 5 part-time administrators (who also happen to be students). Every workstation has a complete suite of over 200 applications installed.

The OS is installed and configured automagically via scripts, and each machine can be completely reformatted/reinstalled by pressing "N" as it reboots.

The back-end is NetWare, with ZEN for application distribution. So no, it's not all Windows, primarily because the university has been pretty much in bed with NetWare for the last 10-15 years.

So when you say that "complex things are unscriptable," that leads me to believe that you have no clue what you're talking about. How is it that editing text configuration files is so much easier than editing text registry patches?

And no, this isn't a "Windows is better!" debate. I just think that if you have people running your systems who aren't morons or zealots, you can make just about anything work well.

--Jeremy