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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.'"
What a surprise... Linux today says linux is cheaper. There are many ways of calculating TCO. What makes this more credible than the next?
According to this article, only 27% of the Linux servers studied used purchased copies of their Distribution...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? Who were they talking to about this, or did they just make it up?
How Jaded Are You?
From the article:
Companies will typically purchase commercial versions of Linux for pilot projects, says Robert Frances Group senior research analyst Chad Robinson, and download free versions off the Web for production deployments.
---
Isn't it the other way around? You want support for your production machine don't you?
I think it's more interesting to hear Ballmer acknowledging this too.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I've always thought something was wrong with those TCO studies that say MS has a lower TCO than Linux. It just seems blindingly obvious that free software would give you a much lower TCO than something that comes with massive license fees, regardless of what other factors you work into the equation - - - and I've always suspected that those other factors are mostly just handwaving and smoke and mirrors.
The PDF for the study is hosted on IBM's website... I'd be willing to bet that it was IBM that commissioned the study. Anybody know?
;-)
**begin sarcasm**
What a big suprise that would be if a study funded by IBM finds that their Linux solutions perform better than Windows and Sun!
**end sarcasm**
That said, it is nice to have some pro-Linux FUD out there!
Ben
So the article says that Linux web servers are cheaper to run than Windows ones. Is anyone surprised by this? Is it actually news?
I'm still waiting for the article to come out discussing TCO as it relates to desktops, which is where most of the money is lost in support dollars....
If you could put a price on both sanity and your precious, precious soul, then I'm sure linux would come out ahead even further.
---------------------------
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).
Will I retire or break 10K?
They probably didn't factor in the cost of a janitor to clean up after that penguin.
I am assuming that the Linux and Solaris admins are using the CLI to manage the servers via SSH but I believe the slowest way to manage a server is through a keyboard and mouse -- pointing and clicking away. Most of the Windows servers I have managed in my career were through a GUI interface using a remote control program like PC Anywhere and Microsoft's Remote Admin software. With Linux, Solaris and now Mac OS X Server, I use SSH and a keyboard to do my work. With shell scripts and other tricks, I can blaze through server management that I would never be able to do in a GUI environment at the same speed. Even with Mac OS X Server's great GUI management tools, I prefer to fire up Terminal and remotely manage the system through a CLI -- or maybe I just long for the days of my Apple ][.
On the other hand, with the massive numbers of zombied Windows machines probing my networks, it could be that Windows-only Admins are just plain idiots with a MCSE which accounts for the productivity gains of Linux and Solaris admins.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
No sig
For example, at the University of Waterloo, you can get a Windows XP CD for free if you are a student. I'm sorry, but I don't know how much Waterloo paid Microsoft for this... so maybe it isn't quite free. I actually got Windows XP from them. I'm mostly a Linux user, but they sucked me in with the free CD thing. Came with a unique activation ID and everything. How soon will it be before Microsoft starts giving away Windows XP to small businesses, home users, then big businesses. They can still make their main money from Office and other things. I think they're going to have to keep cutting costs, in order to match the cost of Linux.
Basically what I'm trying to say is that Microsoft fully realizes that Linux is a somewhat cheaper system to opearate, and this is one way that it is trying to change that. By giving it away free, they've reduced the cost of running Windows by a lot.
Start a timer, tell each admin they need to perform some obscure task. Now see who gets it done first, assuming their skills are the same for their respective systems. A windows person might be lightening fast because they just have to click in a couple of places. Then again, they will probably have to reboot. A Linux person might need to check the info (or man) page and pray it is well written for their part then try to implement it. However they will most likely not have to restart anything except that particular service. Solaris? Well I suppose that depends on the version.
It amuses me that everyone on Slashdot will read this report on LinuxToday and say "oh, wow, now there's proof that Linux TCO is low!" Tomorrow, if Windows magazine released a study showing the opposite, everyone would be rushing to say that the source is obviously biased. This is nice to hear, but no decision-maker worth his salt is going to take it seriously until it's reported by a respected and at least nominally impartial source.
The study is from Robert Frances Group, not Linux Today. You would have known that if you had read the article before posting.
As for productivity, there will be significantly less time spent on Blue Screens of death, software updates that break most of the functioning, software virii commandeering programs and wiping your hard drive clean and the like.
Your KIA/BMW comparison is highly inaccurate. Linux to Windows is comparing a Honda and a Ford Pinto with a full tank of gas and a bunch of near-sighted rage drivers right behind you rushing home to find their glasses.
I've been looking a bit into the group that did the study: The Robert Francis Group. I'm having a hard time really finding much information about them. It looks like they are basically an analyst group like Gartner. I found some CNET articles, one involving Sun and another involving Microsoft. In both cases, it looks like the analyst was just there to bash the two of them.
I'm wondering if there is a history of bias against the two companies in favor of Linux/IBM. It does look like they are general pro-Linux and GPL in their recommendations. But their bias could be based on the various studies they have done in the past. Does anyone else know anything about this group?
Forget the whales - save the babies.
How can you come to this conclusion? If you have ten low-to-mid-experienced people in an office who have used Windows for the last 10 years (figure $100 every two years for OS upgrades per user), it costs $5000 in OS upgrades and everyone already knows how to use the software.
Replace everything with free Linux and you get to send all ten to training courses for Linux desktop and office suite training (10 x 2day training @ $500 at least) = $10,000, and that is before paying for the time it takes to convert incoming documents from MS Office and making sure they look right in MS Office when they are outgoing.
Bottom line: free _doesn't_ mean cheaper from an IT management perspective. If you are starting an office from scratch and basing its operation on Linux, it is probably going to be cheaper. But converting an org from Wintel to Lintel is very expensive.
There's an interesting book at http://www.winface.com that looks at how to re-orient a whole IT department from Windows to Unix/Linux. It's mainly about using Unix, but Linux gives the same advantages, only even more so due to improved compatibility across Linuxes compared to the various Unixes, and much lower licensing costs, lower hardware costs for Intel deployments and so on. The book has some annoying errors in places, but the guts of it are very useful for costing out complete deployments of Windows vs. Unix, for small through medium to enterprise scales.
You can download some parts of the book for free to get a flavour of what it's about. I actually bought a copy and would recommend it for anyone thinking about converting from Windows to Linux - it's only $30.
Last year we decided to migrate off Windows.
We first moved to OpenOffice. Painful, when your clients all use MS Office, but it's possible.
Now we're moving to Mozilla-based browsers.
All our servers (except one) went to Linux in the last year or two.
Now we're killing the last Windows desktops, putting Lindows-OS in their place.
Apart from the license savings, everything just runs better.
There is a huge fear of change, and this works in Windows' favor.
But there is no doubt that open software is better built and cheaper to run.
Changing costs something. But there is no doubt about the TCO of Linux (and its applications) being lower.
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It's interesting what can be done with the manipulation of data and definintions. Perhaps this survey would have been of more value had they included some of the other variations.. such as running Windows with Apache? That would have a huge impact on thier licensing and security costs.
I also have a difficult time believing that one windows sysadmin can only handle 10 machines, while a linux admin can handle 44 in comparison. Of course this could be a reflection of the quality of the MCSE's out there that are brought into the sysadmin fold. *shrug*
Either way... perhaps someone should do a study of a mixed environment? Find out the optimun TCO mix, not just the black & white versions of all one way or all another.
CodeTrap (www.codetrap.net)
So you are saying:
747 = Linux = suitable for mass usage (i.e. transporting millions of passengers every week.) now an established part of every day life.
Shuttle = Windows = tempramental, specialist technology,costs millions of $ per use and is only operable by an elite highly trained few.
Er... ok if you say so, not the ususal argumnent I have heard from either side of the lin/win battle, but I'm all for free speech...
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So, Google was one of the 14 companies surveyed? Anyone else know of a company running 10,000 Linux nodes for their web serving environment?
Cheers.
A webserver is a webserver is a webserver. If it spits out HTML, that's all that really matters. There's no room for feature difference as a web server does pretty much one thing... spit out HTML over TCP/IP
Start getting into application servers, that's another story, but really, there's nothing you can do on Windows/IIS/Activex that cannot be done on Solaris/Iplanet/Java including (Centralized Authentication, Database Access, Server Side Dynamic Code, Client Side Dynamic Code, etc.)
Only difference is it costs 1 admin to maintain 10 NT/IIS webservers and 1 admin to maintain 30 Solaris Servers. Now add scaling onto that where one Solaris Server can hold 2 or 3 times as many processes/applications than an NT box. Also add that it is cheaper to reach 3/4/or even 5 9's with Solaris/Iplanet, and you get these Total Cost of Ownerships.
Finally, I haven't read the artical yet, but am very familiar with webhosting issues, it is imperative to compare level of support. If you are looking for 99% uptime, I bet the numbers between OS's are very similar, and probably Solaris and even Linux looks expensive. However, aim for 99.999% uptime, and you will realize that NT/IIS just isn't capable of reaching that level. To reach 5 9's you almost have to go with a real Unix on real (non-intel) hardware.
To reach 5 9's on an NT environment, you will end up spending between 2 and 10 times more than with Solaris. (That's because after fighting with NT(4.0 and 5.0) for a year, you'll eventually sell the hardware and licenses and build a Solaris environment)
This isn't the sig you are looking for... Carry on...
So, let me get this straight... they actually expect us to believe that WinAdmins make almost 70K a year to handle 10 machines? I don't know what kind of fantasy world this study was done in, but I want in!!!
Of course, far be it from me to suggest that this portrayal of WinAdmins might be a bit off... but, for reference, I support close to 200 WinTel machines and 5 servers, and I don't make anywhere close to 70K US a year... I think I may print this article and see if I can get a raise out of it...
Lesse... 70K per 10 boxes, 200 boxes, equals... woohoo!
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
Is the cost of the car to drive out to the bloody machine to reboot it everytime it crashes or needs work.
If you have a system of 100 computer you now need two, maybe three *nix admins, where as you need a minimum of 6 windows admins.
What really makes Linux more affordable and better for corporations is that you don't have to burden the cost of a BSA investigation, raid, and lawsuite.
Dealing with the BSA alone costs companies an enormous amount of money, especially if they have to deal with an audit and lawsuite. Even if not that, all of the work to ensure compliance is very costly. You don't have to bother with such for Linux.
BSA-related costs alone make Windows more expensive than Linux.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
-- Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
and what? so no studys about operating systems and web servers can be posted on the net because then there will be a bias?
If they want to do TCO of apples to apples, maybe they should have used Sun LX-50 x86 box, instead of their Enterprise class machines. There are feature sets in that class of machine (eg domaining, redundant hardware, hotswap etc) that are just not available in an x86 box. The cost of those features greatly inflates the TCO for Solaris.
"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Not only can Pirates get Windows XP (with a haxxored activation ID) but they can additionally get Office XP for an additional 0 dollars and 0 cents!
Our source was Lee T. Hacksor, a 13 yr-old who claims to have "0wn3d" XP for a little over a year now.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
"Gross pay" is what the employee recieves before personal taxxes are deducted, leaving "net pay." In other words, if you make 100k a year, your "gross pay" will be about 100k and your "net" somewhat less (depending on country.)
Above "gross pay" is all the invisible (to the employee, but not to the employer) costs that you mention that lead to the "loaded labour rate," or the cost to employ that person.
I knew that accounting course would come in useful someday!
I guess some people think you're just being an asshole; the moderations seem to imply this, anyway. But I'm curious. What kind of SLA is Microsoft willing to offer you? I've never investigated getting one, myself, and frankly the thought has never even occurred to me.
Can you provide details?
Could be a personal choice issue with me but I find myself faster with a CLI than GUI when it comes to server management. Most of the people I have worked with seem to follow the same pattern as myself.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
If you'd like to recommend to your superiors to look here for Linux-centric employees...
What's this Submit thingy do?
The wording wasn't the best, but they were talking about servers, not workstations. I'd have to say that sounds fairly acurate. I don't think Linux is three times easier to administer, but from what I've seen those numbers are accurate. Of course, I've seen exceptions too. I'd guess it's a mix of the best admins prefering to use something better than Windows for their servers and the Windows admins often being in charge of the workstations as well as the server.
Science may someday discover what faith has always known.
It's "total cost of ownership," not "total cost overall."
First, you're wrong. The sampling method, by which one collects a number of data points and uses them to extrapolate trends, is perfectly valid. In fact, it's really the only way to do predictive analysis.
Second, there's a better example of flawed logic; it's called a misaligned syllogism. "All men are mortal. Socrates is mortal. Therefore all men are Socrates."
...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.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
If you blog it...
I've worked as a Unix and Windows admin at various times. And here's the deal: A company that knows enough about IT issues to seriously consider UNIX probably hires good admins, whether they are Windows admins *or* UNIX admins. The companies that just blindly buy a bunch of Microsoft stuff to slap on the boss's old Dell machine (which is now the "server") probably don't hire good admins. Or, honestly, have any kind of cohesive idea about what they are using their PC's and the network for. Which means they will ALWAYS be dumping money into it to try to make it work, to cover up for their lack of planning. UNIX, on the other hand, isn't even CONSIDERED by shops that aren't pretty fuckin' serious about their network/workstation/applications, and they'll keep costs down, because they aren't screwing around. What I'm saying is, Windows works fine, if it does what you need it to do, and you hire people that know how to do it. But that's rarely the case with Windows shops. And it's almost *always* the case with UNIX shops.
And All this Time I have been using Linux for free.
;-)
Ignoring electricity bills, hardware, and all the time you spent when you could have been flipping hamburgers.
Within the tiny domain of costs for right to use it is free (which is quite apparently not true for many distros anyway).
We are typing Total Cost of Ownership here. When you get cancer because of what the power plants are doing to keep everything in your box spinning remember that.
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
Since there's virtually no Linux software or hardware for me to buy down at the local computer shop, there's no way for me to _increase_ TCO on my Linux box anyway!
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
i recently asked my new admin (at a new job) if i could bring in my iBook and use it.
"No. No personal machines on the network."
"Oh, any reason? Other than just policy?"
"Well, they are mostly concerned with viruses and stuff, we can't control your personal computer's virus protection. But its mostly a policy thing."
"Oh, its okay, its an iBook - running Mac OS X."
"There are plenty of viruses out there for the Mac and Linux too, not just windows."
"Really? Name one virus on Mac and the ssh hole doesn't count."
Its been 3 days now. He's started calling me at home late at night, breathing heavy... mumbling something about burning down the building and his stapler...
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
The report was originally discussed here
Half the price and half as useful!
God, poor karma.
Seriously though folks, there is a reason Windows is expensive as it is. It's part corporate greed, but it's also part quality of product.
I run Linux on quite a few web servers and a database server here and there and I love it for my servers. It's fast, stable and black and white. Just like I like em. I run Windows on my desktops. Recently I decided to install RedHat 7.3 just to see how things were coming on the desktop front. It was pretty smooth, until I decided I wanted to move my mouse, at which point the X installer locked up.
Seems the X mouse drivers can't figure out a plain ol' optical mouse running through a Linksys KVM. I searched and searched to no avail. The mouse just resets over and over, every second or so.
Screw it. Back to the server room with you! Where's my XP CD?
Red Hat 77
Microsoft 70
FreeBSD 25
Sun 6
Novell 4
OK Here is the shattered remains of this pathetic TCO. Warning STRONG language later on as I was getting very pissed at the half assed job they did. This is a rant about the TCO NOT LINUX. Keep that in mind.
..."
... is... beyond comprehension.
First of all this thing is 8 pages? The last 15 or so TCOs I've had to read through have been in the area of 70 to 400 pages in length. This looks like something a 10 year old would write in highschool. But I digress. Here we go:
1 - Executive Summary
Who are these numerous executives? (I had coffee with Elvis)
How many is many? Many people have Aids but MOST people do not. (I eat a lot of food compared to a starving Ethiopian)
Survey Participants? Who are they? How do I know you didn't make this shit up? Where is your work sited information? The least you could do is say Client - A, and Client - B if there was a NDA issue.
2 - Methodology
Ok so their WHOLE concept of this TCO factors ONLY web servers? This should be titled as TCO of LINUX WEB SERVERS. Holy Shit I'd fire these guys if they were my consulting shop.
One or two processors in the machines? How do I know the majority of the MS or Solaris machines are not Single versus Dual on the Linux Boxes? Where is my node breakdown summary?
"External" support hardware and software were excluded?! Holy Fuck! Ahem! I consider hardware and software compatibility pretty fucking important. The NIC performance is crucial! If I have to alter my NIC choices based on driver availability that can totally skew a cost per MB in a TCO. The difference, for example, in a web server using Intel and 3Com NICs amounted to $1500 dollars when placed into a Proliant server doing SQL after boiling the TCO numbers. BIG difference if I have to have 100-200 of those.
All prices are based on retail!? What moron pays retail for a corporate purchase on Mid to Large sized companies!? Mother of God are these guys scamming their clients? I get a bulk discount on orders greater than 20 from 3Com. Used to level the playing field? Ahem this is a COST analysis! Enterprise discounts are not irrelevant THEY ARE CRUCIAL! Case in point if Intel gives my 20% off on an order of 2000 NIC cards and 3Com gives me 25% off and Linux won't support the 3Com card (for the sake of argument) THAT IS RELIVANT TO THE TCO!
3 - Cost Breakdown
Software purchase costs per processing unit? Ahem where is the implementation costs, maintenance costs, or as I like to put HOW COULD THESE DOLTS COMPLETELY IGNORE THE SYSTEM LIFE CYCLE!?
Paragraph 3, line 4 "beyond the purchase of the software", ahem DOES LINUX INSTALLS AND CONFIGURES ITSELF!!?? FUCK DUDE I'M SWITCHING NOW! They cover this later; I'll bitch about it when I get there.
CALs are primarily used only in Intranets unless your are running remote services like Outlook's Mail program. But authenticated services are NOT being specified on both systems, only MS. Are we running software here besides Apache and IIS comparisons? Now we have a whole separate TCO on just the application alone! God this TCO is a mess.
Also there is no lie in the last paragraph, the new terms from MS are terrible.
No lie here, Linux is cheaper cost wise for the software. Too bad like in automobiles labor is the major cost. Even then the data is terrible at best.
3.2 - Hardware Cost Breakdown
Wow Linux only beat out MS by about $1000 bucks? I'd rather pay the $1000 bucks and write that off as application compatibility, hardware compatibility, and more importantly I actually have the MAJORITY of hardware vendors writing drivers NOW for Microsoft. Don't tell me "But that is changing" TCOs are a static snapshot, "What-Ifs" are not allowed, otherwise they become Cost Projection Reports.
Concerning their benchmark concept per processing unit how do we know we have the same data going across? Where are these number coming from? I have yet to see any concrete data. I get the results but how was the data collected? Was the test based on identical web pages? Was it base on client side or server sides scripts? WHERE IS THIS DATA COMING FROM? When I play cards and my friend says he has a full house he's gotta show me the cards. SHOW ME THE DATA!
3.3 - Support
Oh God I loved this part:
"Support Costs Were Those Fees Paid To Consulting Providers or Product Vendors...." "Many administrators were taking advantage of mailing lists, free news groups, support,
Hmmm how many of those groups will mail me monthly CDs like TechNet for a fee? I wonder if that added to the cost? WE DON'T KNOW THEY STILL HAVEN'T GIVEN US ANY DATA. WE ARE SHORT ON BRENT SPENER (Did I get his name right? I'm not a Trekkie) JUST RESULTS. Did your result of 42 come from 40+2 or 21x2 or WHAT!? They say $46,360 for MS. I have been consulting 8 years and have NEVER seen an administrative expenditure like that. Show me the data! Are we looking at 1000 Linux Workstations for every 4000 NT based systems? Right there the admin costs should be x4 as much. No data, no trust. Tell me where that 46k went and then I'll listen.
Oh how about this one,"... for the purpose of this survey administrators...."
Ok so my NT guy that handles my SQL server, Exchange, and 4 other servers is only going to be counted for the web part. Hmmm... Wouldn't that deflate the number of Web specific servers per admin? WE DON'T KNOW! GUESS WHAT? STILL NO DATA! If the 1 Linux admin handles 10 web servers, but all he does is handle 10 web servers that is going to drastically skew results of the MS web guys all share duties on 5 other types of server which is the case.
How about bullet #2 "... System automation tasks... had not been written yet for Linux..." Is this guy drunk?! Holy try going to one of hundreds of scripting pages for Linux you dolt!
4 - Soft Costs
"... Difficult to assign values to..."
Let me think, WRONG. I can roughly estimate over 3 years what those costs are by taking fixed costs and subtracting budget expenditures for the year and I can write THE WHOLE GOD DAMN THING OFF as a soft costs and estimates. That is how you in part determine the next year's budget. The more years you factor in the better the estimate. There is a reason TCOs I read are at least 30 pages long. I accept nothing less.
4.1 - Security
No arguments save one, The reason Linux SEEMS more secure than MS is that is hasn't been as critical of a target. I remember some Linux admins (back when Slashdot was just starting) making the claim that Linux was IMMUNE to viruses. No, people just haven't been writing Linux based viruses. Same with hacks in general. Here is a real solid fact:
Based on the number of attempts and system penetration MS products are 20% more likely to be hacked and infected than Linux. This is a basic arithmetic case of market share. If 60% of the targets are red and the other 40% are blue. Red is 20% more likely to be targeted than blue. It's that simple.
4.2 Availability
Holy this doesn't even get a page?! If I do 4 billion dollar of transaction a week this had better fucking be at least 30 pages long with in-depth up-time analysis including MTF ratings and severity analysis. This is a glaring example of RFG's TOTAL AND COMPLETE LACK OF CREDEBILITY. If I am Amazon or Barnes and Noble if my site isn't up I have no business. How they could blow over this is
4.3 Scalability
One word, Datacenter.
From a cpu standpoint MS leads, note the fact they kind of gloss over this section. Damn near a page for software costs with some statistics but virtually nothing here. This fucking piece of trash looks more like a poorly disguised outsourcing bid from some half-assed Linux shop. With the advent of cheap blade servers and AMD's entry into SMP this should have been a 60 to 100 page section! What about support RAID systems, Fibre Channel links, high speed switching systems, clustering, FUCK THE LIST JUST KEEPS GOING ON AND ON AND ON....
These people have NO FUCKING clue how to do a TCO. NONE. ZERO. ZIP. My 14 year old non-techie niece could do a better cost analysis.
I am not going to even bother on the rest of this crap. I have only one thing to say in my summary:
IF RFG IS WORKING FOR YOU, FIND BETTER. THE HOMELESS GUY DOWN THE STREET MIGHT EVEN BE BETTER.
Suggestion to web sites that quote this: Give Linux a real chance to succeed Bullshit like this doesn't help.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Did they calculate in the cost of Downtime w/ Microsoft Win.?
It is common knowledge that properly configured Windows boxes achieve at least "five 9's" of uptime. The real issue to focus on is cost due to security issues. Internal servers don't really suffer from this as much, but Web servers, Mail servers, etc. are. Although Linux has had it's fair share of security issues as well, most agree that Windows is still a less secure OS. It would be nice if they could quantify this as part of the study.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Never heard of premiere or select agreements? I would guess (though not enough data is present to state as fact) that that is what is being included. Spread the cost of those expensive agreements over the number of servers in the organization and get another line item in the TCO calculations. BTW, the lack of details is exactly the kind of thing that makes people go back to Gartner and the other large research firms. Even if they bat under 50% for accuracy on predictions it is hard to argue with the raw data they collect.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
We wanted a Debian-based install for our workstations (because of apt) but it inevitably took most of a day to get a Debian up and running.
Lindows-OS is Debian with a pretty skin and it installs completely in about 10 minutes.
Yes, it runs entirely as root, but we don't mind this for workstations.
(I know that's bad but remember, we're comparing to Windows.)
Lindows-OS cost us $99 to download, but we've easily saved that several times over in install times alone.
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Where did they get those machine to tech ratios? Maybe small businesses that only have a few machines anyway. The shops I have worked in and friends in the industry the ratio is MUCH higher anywhere from 50 to 1 and up. We were mainly Windows shop and added Unix systems to the mix as time went on. In fact our management kept showing us reports from industry groups showing 100 to 1 as a common ratio. My argument was and still is what type of systems were they? In an ISP or ecommerse site with farms of servers the ratio can be high, because a system can go down with minimal effect. I worked more on large databases, and business systems and when systems were down it affected revenue and we had to get them back on-line ASAP.
Articles like this don't do Linux any good, when management see bogus numbers in them. This is not a an artice I would show to management to try and get Linux system integrated.
www.ibm.com...
The link at the bottom goes to ibm.com(/FUD)
I wonder if they would per chance be biased against solaris in anyway?
Maybe that explains why they think people will use 6800's to run a web farm. Their hardware comparison is dell pcs and 6800's and 4800's.
Really...
1. They are comparing WEB servers. These are not app servers, or file servers. The total number of web servers in your enterprise is not same as the app servers.
2. They claim Linux is cheaper that Windows due to licensing costs. I think it's cheaper because of lack of downtime and less time spent on the phone with the vendor trying to fix a problem. Downtime alone is what makes me HATE MS Exchange as a product. The 2000 release may be better, but the 5.5 release was nothing but a headache.
Personally, I like Linux, but NOTHING beats a Novell server for a general purpose file server. There is no one OS that will serve your enterprise needs. It's as simple as that. Novell makes EXCELLENT file server. Linux make great web and database servers. If you want your e-mail to never crash, run Lotus Domino on an AS400 Server.
Remember, Microsoft wants us to believe one OS can do it all and do it all well. Well, Linux can do it all. But it can't do it all well. But no matter what it does, it still does it better than anything Microsoft has out there.
I'm no Linux supporter or campaigner. At present I don't even use it at home, or on my network at work.
But I'd just like to say that these last few articles on Slashdot are just what the Linux doctor is asking for. Seeing stuff like this slowly works its way into my brain like one of those Wrath of Khan worms.
I swear I'm going to give in soon - go down to the store and pick up a major Linux distro to try out. Also at work I've got a webserver to set up - those Frontpage bugs really make me nervous and I'm thinking more and more that I need to bite the bullet and go Apache.
The only problem right now is how daunting it is to get started - (especially with the web project) - I have to get familiar with Linux and Apache (which I assume I can get with most major distros), but also with an Open Source database (sounds like MySQL is about right for my needs at this time). As opposed ot just installing FP Server extensions and living with it hehe.
What's the point of this story? I like stories. Seriously though just some encouragement to the Linux people out there - I think the message is slowly getting through (to me anyways).
It seems to me that a lot of the push for Windows comes from the development side, especially in the web environment. They like being able to open up Visual Studio and have it write a solution for them. Granted, it will be full of buffer overflows, but it will be finished by the deadline, if not before.
This article makes it look like people who buy Sun are complete idiots. Their "PU" measurement is severly flawed. All web pages are not created equal. Some take far more cpu/io to produce. And you are 100% correct about comparing advanced Sun hardware to some low end intel servers.
They should have used X1's or at least compared the Sun's against mid range intel Xeon HW, with all of the same redundant power, etc. The comparison they make is stupid. The Sun HW offers the flexibility to replace processors without shutting down the system. That kind of function costs money, but in this comparison it has no value.
If I were they I would have looked at the results and said "Holy sh-t, this can't be right" and investigated where I went wrong in my calculations.
Its the unquantifiable stuff that makes Solaris, and Linux so good. The security, the reliability, the sane licensing. All the things that they admit do not factor into their TCO measure.
My guess is that they do support as well and your wife does not.
Still, you're right that that seems a smidgen high. I mean, full time work where you're responsible for five Windows computers? Not exactly working one's tail off...
May we never see th
If you swap out a NIC in Windows, will your machine GUID be regenerated? I remember hearing that the MAC was an input into the GUID, and I could see that being a bit sticky...
May we never see th
An SLA really is nothing more than a contracted warrenty that says what is covered and what is not covered.
Um. No, it isn't. An SLA is a contract that commits the vendor to deliver certain things. It's not a warranty. A warranty says, "If this device fails for any of the following reasons, we (the vendor) will accept complete or partial responsibility for fixing it." An SLA says, "This device will not fail, within these given parameters." SLAs include such things as vendor penalty clauses in the event that the level of service promised isn't delivered.
An SLA and a warranty are very different things. I think it's important that we clarify this if we're to discuss this issue at all.
Now, as I understand it, Microsoft works with certain partners to offer complete managed solutions for their Datacenter product line. I'd imagine that a managed solution-- in which the hardware, software, service, and maintenance are all provided by a single vendor-- would come with an SLA. But anything less than that, no. As far as I know, there's no way Microsoft would ever offer an SLA on their software by itself.
Now, if I'm right about all those things, then I'd go on to imagine that there are-- or, at least, could be-- companies out there who will offer you a similar fully managed solution based on Red Hat Linux, complete with SLA.
I'm no Microsoft apologist, and neither am I a particular fan of Linux. I'm just trying to make sure we're comparing apples to apples here.
But that model brings up important questions of trust, reliability, and control. Just because anybody and his sister could release patches or updates to a product doesn't mean that I would accept them. How do I know the fix that John Doe #231 made is reliable? In order for me to trust it, it's going to have to go through a central authority that checks it, ensures compatibility with other fixes from other John Does, and stands behind their conclusions. This is basically no different from the closed-source model: one group, company, organization, or person has to sign off on all the code changes before I, as a user, am willing to depend on them.
I say that the "open source leads to faster fixes" argument just doesn't stand up to careful examination. It may be true that some open source projects fix their bugs very quickly, but it's equally true to say that some commercial software vendors fix their bugs very quickly. I don't accept that there's a strict correlation between the two things.
I was principal architect for Excite Clubs for 4 years. During a period of one year, we went from 100K page views to over 20M page views a day.
,the page generation times went down to .1 seconds and the highest observable CPU load was less than 10%.
We had a rather unique situation. We started the project on Windows NT 4.0 and later migrated to Win2K. During that time, we were barely able to handle 1M page views per day on the windows boxes. In addition, the average page generation time was 2 seconds. The 20 windows boxes we had in production cost approximately 17K a piece (quad compaq proliant with 1 gig of ram) and were all experiencing 80% or more CPU usage.
The 20 boxes were managed by 1 sysadmin (6 years experience from MS consulting services) with a full time assistant. This does not count the high school students we had wandering the racks hard rebooting terminally ill boxes.
Most admin time was spent on upgrades, boxes that would just stop working (we called it spontaneous server rot) and trying to use a host of opaque, inadequate tools to detect and eliminate bottlenecks. Build, rollout and staging tools were also a big time synch. Finally, the installation of software onto a new machine in the right order with all configuration parameters took an extradinary amount of time.
In addition, I had one full time engineer writing noting but 'nanny' programs to monitor the program and restart the process when there were problems.
With all this work, the system still went down daily.
After much politicking we translated the program to JSP (straight page per page translation) and moved to solaris machines. The java middle tier ran as on solaris. The 20 compaq boxes were replaced with 16 solaris boxes. Oddly, we paid almost the same amount per box (20K versus 16K).
Immediately, we were able to more that 5M pageviews per day with no changes to the software. In addition
Our sysadmins were replaced with a part time (less than 5 hours per week) solaris admin. The roll out scritps were trivial to write and maintain. We had very few upgrades/security patches.
Most important, the host of tools provided to monitor system performance and tell exactly where bottle necks were and the truly deep understanding of the system internals by the sys admins allowed us to eliminate the remaining problems and scale to 20M pageviews per day.
That is right. two orders of magnitude better performance for precisely the same code. And and order of magnitude less admin time.
Those were measurable results. Here is my 'opinion' of why the differnces were so dramatic.
I taught Win32 programming and system internals for four years. I was also chief scientist for Redmond Communications who publish a technical journal on Microsoft Software/strategies. So I am not a linux bigot.
My observation has been, that no one truly understands the internals of a windows system. Just as I start to get a handle on the latest caching, memory management, threading issues, there is an 'upgrade' via some patch that changes many of the internals. In addition, as shown by the above threads, most windows sys admins seem to have vastly difference experience and understanding of how to configure and maintain systems.
Unlike most nerds, I will not blame the admin, but blame the system. In the scientific community, windows, in practice, has proven to be somewhat opaque.
Unix, on the other hand, is incredibly well documented and all source is available. Uncertain how inodes are locked and released? No problem, there are many books and references to help you. If worst comes to worst, crack open the damn code.
This has nothing to do with open source, but more to do with the which communities evolved the techonlogy and the underlying motivations of companies hawking their wares.
Note, this is not a good thing, or a bad thing it is only a thing.
There were many people out there criticizing the studies accuracy. I must say I do not have a single colleague that I have spoken with that doubts its varisity from personal experience on BOTH sides of the isle. I just knew that I had to share my own experience with you. My only doubt about the story is that I would say 'order of magnitude' for production servers.
Thank you for your time,
Carmine Mangione
Client Access Licenses.
The server licenses are _nothing_ compared to the cost of CALs to cover a medium sized business. And with Licensing 6.0, you are going to pay for those CALs every year.
Actually, skilled windows administrators are harder to find because so many of them, tired of beating down on the "It's not documented, and I can't see the source--what's the command-line option to do foo" song and dance eventually turn away in disgust and start hacking away on an old boxen with a downloaded linux distro.
Then, later, they decide that the ftp server could be linux and no-one in the company would know.
Then, later again, they decide that they're going to invest their precious time in learning linux and python/perl and they slowly migrate from a windows admin to a unix/linux admin.
Also, the fact that if you get out of the loop for two or three years as a windows sysadmin you have to relearn everything from scratch because windows servers will look completely different doesn't help. Some people decide that they've learned enough and don't want to mess with re-learning all the tricks every time MS wants to change its paradigm.
"Piter, too, is dead."
Even though I'm not a heavy scripter my story follows:
I used NT/IIS 4.0 for several years switching to 2000/IIS 5.0 when it was available. I have a small business and primarily use my websites for testing solutions that are implemented for my clients and for e-mail. That being said I had to check my servers daily for hacks and patches and got rooted several times. After switching (sorry Apple) to Linux I've been rooted 1 time (my fault for leaving a known bug open via ftp). Going from checking daily (sometimes 3 to 4 times a day) and still getting hacked, to checking weekly (unless I notice an article here a la openSSL, etc.). My TCO is dramatically less. It has also allowed me to confidently recommend Linux solutions at my full time job.
Time is $$$ and the less I spend trying to avoid script kiddies the more time I have to do real work and get paid.
Last year we decided to migrate off Windows.
We first moved to OpenOffice. Painful, when your clients all use MS Office, but it's possible.
But what kind of work does your company do? What are all those people doing with OpenOffice? Are you a bunch of programmers who occasionally write letters, a resume writing company, a real estate office, what? I keep hearing all these anecdotes about various offices in the abstract. Everyone works in these hypothetical, theoretical, nameless, faceless business office situations. I'm beginning to wonder if they really exist. I'm sure CIOs at big corporations do too, when they read this stuff...
You know, you don't have to subscribe to software assurance. If you (as a company) prefer, you can just pay the one-time license fee per computer. You only run into SA if you take Microsoft up on one of their volume licensing plans.
Lots of people complain about the new licensing. But let's not forget that nobody's got a gun to your head. If you want, you can just pay full price for every computer in your company and be done with Microsoft forever.
You forgot the little detail that Sun charges for Solaris--this might just account for the difference.
It doesn't account for the order-of-magnatude difference cited by the TCO "study". For small servers (one to four CPUs) the differences in software costs is really insignificant compared to other costs, such as the sysadmin's salary. As far as the hardware costs go, entry-level Sun boxes are damn cheap ($1000 to $2000), which also pales relative to other costs. As the servers get bigger (over two CPUs), Sun hardware really has many features that can be hard to find in any one x86-based package (ECC on all busses, FibreChannel, remote management support in hardware, hot swap CPUs/RAM/disks/power supplies, and so on). I feel very strongly that the TCO of Solaris is right on par with Linux (both of which have TCOs less than Windows).
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Looking at the hardware costs for Solaris, they mention the "most common servers in use were the Sunfire 4800 and 6800". This doesn't sound accurate and I'll explain why.
Both of these servers are enterprise-class machines usually designed for high-availability, processing-intensive applications, such as databases. Very few sites would use such big iron to run webservers on. For webservers, most companies would use lower-end hardware, such as the Sunfire 280r or the Ultra Enterprise 420r. At a former dotcom I worked at, we had about 400 third-party E450s and 600 Ultra 10s, which were used both in production and development, and were handling an average of 12 million connections every day. We had 8 Ultra Enterprise 6000s (the precursor to the 6500 and 6800) which were exclusively for databases.
In addition to this overkill in hardware costs, the report is also incorrect in the licensing costs. They mention the vast majority of customers used 8-CPU systems (very strange; the 4800 can hold 12 CPUs and the 6800 up to 24; it'd only be sensible to max out the boxes to offer better performance), which makes the licensing costs claim dubious at best. The cost of a Solaris RTU (Right To Use)license upgrade for a 5-8 CPU box is $6,000.00, not $12,500.00, as listed in the Sun Store.
So, either the report's data is slightly askewed, or they picked the wrong companies to use as models for this study.
Just my two cents...
"We'll need 2000 crickets, 4 cans of Easy Cheese, and the fluid from 18 glowsticks for this plan to work...." - ph0n1c
Second: MS instability is not FUD. You do not describe the average user. The majority of users use Outlook and IE and have Office installed. Outlook and IE both intrinsically leave users vulnerable to all sorts of malicious forms of attack (the list keeps expanding). And because of their tight integration with Office and Windows, their initial potential harm is multiplied.
Also, because you seem to primarily limit your x86 efforts to a small group of non-MS products (games, Mozilla), your exposure to bad MS code (beyond the OS) is more limited then most.
Saying "But it's a Mac ..." is simply the logical fallacy of special pleading. If you don't understand why network admins wouldn't want a personal machine on the network, you don't understand security.
I take care of 14 unix servers (11 Linux, 2 FreeBSD, 1 NetBSD, for anyone who's curious) and one NT4 box used for handling the domain a bunch of workstations log into.
I rarely have to touch the unix boxes. Even security updates are automated. The NetBSD box is scripted to grab updates (it's a file server) for all machines (including itself) and notify affected machines to install updates and restart affected services.
The machines still do an MD5sum from their respective update repositories against the packages before installing them in case of corruption or the file server getting compromised, though... We just want to save the bandwidth on the package downloads.
Aside from kernel updates (which we want to handle ourselves) or hardware failure, I don't think I ever have to maintain those boxes.
This is a stark contrast to the NT domain controller, which gives me no end of trouble. If workstations have joined the domain, but are later renamed or even moved to another department's domain (using the proper procedures no less), they sometimes get stuck in the system. I've had this lead my domain and that of another department to cease trusting each other, much to the chagrin of the users.
Yes, one of the controllers actually revokes trust for the other.
I'm constantly maintaining that domain because it does a bad job of keeping track of workstations and servers on the domain. I don't dare run anything else on the box, like IIS. It gives me enough trouble as it is.
Disclaimer: These machines are not my only responsibility in my job.
However, if the unix boxes gave me the kind of hassle the NT box does, I don't think I'd be able to maintain them all alone even if administering them were my sole responsibility.
It is common knowledge that properly configured Windows boxes achieve at least "five 9's" of uptime
That's 5.2 minutes a year of downtime... at the VERY MOST according to you. I'll give you 3 or 4 9's but not "at least five 9's". How often do you apply patches? What about following Microsoft's recommended practice of rebooting weekly to recollect dirty memory? I tend to subscribe to the theory that any **application** can achieve 5 9's when sufficiently scaled horizontally.
In a past life, I supported over 100 NT servers running file/print, websphere, domino and clustered db2 but now I do server consolidations to Linux mainframes. Believe me, it is most definitely not common knowledge that any MS OS regularly achieves five 9's.
Intelligent Life on Earth
What's funny is they'll post TCO stories from LINUX TODAY, but won't post any from MICROSOFT such as this point-by-point comparison found here. How is it FAIR to link LINUX TODAY, but not MICROSOFT? Ahh... more classic Slashdot bias (notice all of the other OS's get real icons, MS get a borg Bill Gates... very mature)
Basically, the LINUX TODAY article is saying the TCP (Total cost to purchase) is equivalent to TCO (Total cost of ownership)... in effect saying that any positives and negatives Windows may have in the software itself has NO value. As other above have said, you can calculate TCO in many different ways. If you want to assign EVERYTHING other than software licensing a VALUE of $0... maybe this article strikes a chord with you.
All I am saying is consider the source!
Prevent linux based DDOS's!
http://linux.denialofservice.org/
Today a Microsoft spokesman introduced a new concept : RTCO, Really Total Cost of Ownership, while promptly adding that Windows' RTCO is far below Linux'
In a past life, I supported over 100 NT servers running file/print, websphere, domino and clustered db2 but now I do server consolidations to Linux mainframes. Believe me, it is most definitely not common knowledge that any MS OS regularly achieves five 9's.
Yes, in your past life there was also NT3.51 which was a joke of a server OS. NT4 was OK but we all scheduled weekly reboots. We're talking Win2K. It's a world of difference. I'll agree that five 9's is virtually impossible if you have a box on the 'Net that requires constant security patches. I'm just saying that for boxes that on on Intranet's that don't require the latest security patch, it's possible to run a very long time without a system failure.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Scripting is close to the true reason linux admin takes less effort.
With linux the admin's education is never limited because everything is open to inspection. With windows the admin's education is limited to what M$ wants them to know. Thus severly handicapping their diagnostic abilities and their intuition.
This effectively reduces the effect of eXPerience for the windows admin. A 5 year windows vet will likely be no smarter than a 3 year vet. However, a 5 year linux vet has every opportunity to exceed his 3 year counterpart.
Qhat a surprise, their figures are based on totally bogus reasoning.
They equate single and dual-CPU commodity x86 boxes with 24-CPU US3 servers with 100% redundancy for guaranteed uptime.
No wonder their figures are utterly bogus.
If you take their own calculations, factor in COMPARABLE figures across all 3 platofrms, then you get Windows as the most expensive, Linux second and Solaris woith the lowest TCO.
But then, that would not have made for a good story, would it...
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
Second, you hit the nail on the head about patches... 5 9's means you have a max of what, 3 patches/config changes per year that require a reboot? Acrobat 4, at least, requiresa reoot upon install or upgrade, as do several other packages.
<rant> My biggest pet pieve is developers forcing users into poor security practices. I think mentality in development is very different between the *nix and Win32 worlds. NT 4.0 will forever bluescreen from a printf("\t\b\b"). That strikes me as rediculous. XP merely reboots from the smae printf. The same mentality seems to trickle down to the applications developers. I explaned to my GF why she must always use an unprivledged account for her day-to-day work then installed Marcomedia Fireworks (I cen't rememberthe version) on her Win2K box. It refused to run in an unprivledged account! Besides servers/daemons requiring port numbers below 1024, I can't think of any software that must be run as a privledged user under *nix. (Fireworks is desktop software for goodness sakes!) Most *nix network apps can now tunnel over ssh and/or TLS/SSL. Until MS takes action to back up its claims of caring more about security, it's silly for users to demand more out of their apps than out of thier OS. Oh well, I guess most of us security freaks get our start cracking windows boxes, so worse Windows security now may mean better OS security in general 10 years down the line.</rant>
Copyright Violation:"theft, piracy"::Anti-Trust Violation:"thermonuclear price terrorism"<-Overly dramatic language.
your two weeks of installation and configuration could have been avoided if you used debian and 'apt-get install squid' and spent 15 minutes reading the squid howto located here
people use microsoft because it is easy. people use linux because it works better (has a much higher price to performance ratio).
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
Perhaps. It depends a great deal on how often his business sends and receives MS document files outside of the company. My observation is that most of the use of Office is for internal documents, and for that OpenOffice will work very nicely even if MS decides to go to a new document format.
OpenOffice only has to run well enough and do enough. There are probably a few things that Office will do that OpenOffice cannot, but I'd bet that those things are very esoteric. As it is, OpenOffice will do quite a lot, including things like embedding spreadsheets and other objects. The one killer app Office has is Outlook, but even that isn't irreplaceable: there's Evolution on the Linux side.
MySQL is the wrong free database to be using in your comparison because as database engines go it's not particularly capable (but it's obviously capable enough for many of the things it's used for. And as with most Free Software, it's improving over time). Try PostgreSQL instead.
Exactly. The type of business determines whether or not the freely available tools will do the job. What many of us contend is that the freely available tools are now good enough to do most jobs, and that Windows is no longer a necessity to nearly the same degree that it used to be.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Given that Linux SysAdmins need to be a lot more knowledgable than Windows SysAdmins, the difference in salaries over 3 years probably closes the price gap. Wasn't it Churchill who said something like "There are liars, damn liars, and statisticians."
Vote for Pedro
Computers are getting fast enough that we don't need firm-ware intregration of everything and can apply some abstraction layers/components. If we abstract the following features:
1. Execution environment (like a run-time engine)
2. Database
3. File System (use #2 instead?)
4. Networking protocols
5. Workspace managers (desktops)
6. Graphics and hardware interface
behind standard paradigm-neutrual protocols, then the God-Damned OS does NOT mean diddly squat.
I have too much existing Windows software to just chuck Windows. I don't want to depend on MS, but I don't want to start over. Thus, if you want to make MS irrelavent, then make the OS irrelavent using/making the above standards, then we don't have to marry neither Bill Gates NOR a smiling penguin.
F the OS wars. Think beyond it people. Think abstraction and standards. Windows will shrink when standards make it so that you don't need Windows, not because Linux crashes slightly less.
The Penguin can go fuck Clippey for all I care. You are all fighting the wrong war.
Table-ized A.I.
Here is the Windows 2000 Web Server Best Practices that talks about a new tool that absolves admins of the need to reboot servers on a weekly basis:
Haven't been able to find better backup yet. It might've been a SANS.org or cert.org recommendation that I was remembering. But the best practices tidbit comes pretty close to actually recommending it.
Intelligent Life on Earth
Have a life outside patching your POS MS IIS server daily. How many tools does it take to secure a MS server?
Since we are all IIS/MS at my full time job we run, the MS Lock Down Tool, the MS Security Analyzer, the Windows Update feature (daily) and check TechNet daily to make sure those critical patches that show up in the Security Analyzer are actually installed (since they are on TechNet anywhere between 1 to 3 weeks before actually moving to the critical update part of windows update).
That being said, if you don't check your server daily you can and will be rooted. It's that simple. Same goes for linux but at least with linux the likelihood is far less because I select the s/w that runs not MS.
BTW anyone with a functioning brain (or balls for that matter) doesn't post criticizims via AC.
You can put a price on your soul when you examine the EULA. If your data was not lost in the above mentioned failures, Bill Gates owns it in the name of protecting himself and others against copyright infringment. If your data is the soul of your company, you literally give that soul to M$ when you use their software.
So what's that worth to you? Compute the cost of developing that data and then consider publishing it or mailing it to your closest competitors.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Miss one byte in the no standards registry and your computer does not boot. Very few text files can do that to a linux box. Most simply screw up a particular service and you can fix it by editing the text file again. On the windows machine, you have to lug the hard drive to another machine or reinstall everything. Which do you prefer? Which do you think costs more time and money, especailly when programs can screw the registry for you?
This is not a debate, it's a "Linux TCO is cheaper" statement of fact. M$'s fragile junky O$ with it's 2 year planned obsolescence costs more to own and keep up. Duh. You can be a freaking genius and WinWhatNot will fail in two years.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
So wait, I'm confused. Are we talking about getting things fixed, or getting things for free? They're two different things. If we're talking about getting things fixed, I still say that there is no clear correlation between speed of bug fixes in the open source versus commercial models. You can find both instances of both fast and slow fixes in products from both sides of that fence.
I'm not saying this is what you're doing, but it just annoys me when I talk to open source advocates-- zealots, often, to be honest-- who propose a number of arguments in favor of open source non-commercial software, only to find that their arguments all boil down to either politics or cost. I do hope that's not what's going on here.
Seems like Slapper was showing some signs of promise. You almost have to feel sorry for the poor Linux worms.
The SLA says what they will and won't cover.
Dude, I don't mean to be rude here, but you've got it wrong. As I said before, a warranty says, "In the event of failure, here's what we can do to help." An SLA says, "Within the given parameters, there will be no failure. If there is, we'll be in big trouble." They're totally different.
You also seem to be ignoring the fact that neither Microsoft nor Red Hat offer an SLA for their software. Given that fact, I have to wonder why we're having this conversation at all.
I think we're on the same side, here. I wouldn't base my business on Linux any more than I'd hire little Jimmy from down the street to be my CTO. But I think talking about SLAs just clouds the issue.
Reminds me of an old Linux Journal article where the authors told of using Linux to burn installed images of a fixed Win95 for something like 2000 client machines.
Your Moral of the Story is right on. Learning Linux can help you understand and admin not just Linux but also to understand Windows better.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Support & maintenance contracts on Sun hardware are brutally expensive. This may account for the difference.
However, they are completely optional. Solaris and Sun hardware are very well documented, and there are a number of independent websites with FAQs and mailing lists. There is more than enough documentation to do without formal support from Sun, and regular maintenance items, such as patch clusters, are freely available. The only real benefits of Sun support are for people with truly critical applications, where the support is much cheaper than delays or downtime.
I think that most people who think that support contracts are too expensive are not in a position to really need them. Without support contracts, the Solaris sysadmin is essentially in the same boat as a Linux sysadmin, where the quality of the systems is somewhat independent of Solaris or Linux--the network architecture and policies are far more influential on TCO.
There are cases when Sun hardware can actually lower TCO, due to better OS-independent hardware diagnostic tools, which don't rely on a running OS kernel to work (they are accessible from a firmware command prompt). Although I haven't used them, Sun also offers remote management cards in some servers which allow OS-independent SNMP and telnet access to the card for monitoring, diagnosics, and remote reboot.
People who voice opinions about how much more Sun costs relative to System XYZ are either comparing apples to oranges, using pricing data from ten years ago, or overspecifying the Sun system to artificially inflate its price. Sun sells UltraSPARC-based systems costing $999 (one cpu) to millions of dollars (>100 CPUs). It is easy to pick a higher target when comparing Sun's systems to white-box x86 systems that really aren't fair comparisons. The "Linux TCO" article above is doing exactly this.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
*gobble gobble*
Mmm... trollie bait.
Please, Sir Troll (or anyone else), explain how this is an opinion? =) I'd be very interested to know.
Don't waste your time splitting hairs with me.
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.