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Linux Is Cheaper
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet is running a story on what a lot of us already know: Linux IS cheaper than Windows. This not because it is free. It is because Linux admins, although slightly more expensive, can handle a significantly larger number of systems than their Windows counterparts."
You are a nitwit. You say linux admins are good because they are self taught, but windows admins who pour over books are bad? Please tell, what is the proper way to be self taught, especially on a closed source operating system? How should someone learn solaris? Kidnap a solaris admin?
ostiguy
Ownership implies that you can do whatever you want with a product.
That's a strange definition. Most people would say that you can own a car. And those same people, when they get pulled over for speeding, don't say, "What?! But officer, I own this car! I can do whatever I want with it!"
Are you saying that it's impossible to own a car (or a gun, or a knife, or a pair of pants)?
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
" Here's another newsflash: You've had years to forget how much it hurt when you first started using it. Don't bs me otherwise. I cut my PC teeth on 3.1 and have cursed at every version up to and including XP."
So it didn't suit you. BFD. Doesn't mean it didn't suit everybody. You admitted yourself that everything sucks for different reasons. It runs both ways, my friend. Everything is good for various reasons as well. There are lots of things that Windows has always done better than Linux, and guess what, people care about them. How many gamers out there are running Linux exclusively? Blah blah blah.
There's two sides. There's ALWAYS two sides. Sticking to zealousy will not work.
I'll probably get marked as a troll by those linux zealot moderators among us, but oh well.
This "study" is preposterous. While Linux has a lower TCO in small lab or workgroup environments it is highly unsuited for real enterprise environments.
While Linux has many of the same feature analogs that Windows 2000 does, the Linux ones are usually incomplete or far inferior to their Microsoft counterparts and require a significant amount of time to install (In order to install software X I have to recompile these libraries too?!? But software Y relies on them, oh? I have to recompile that also?), maintain, and upgrade.
Some of the features required for a successful enterprise solution:
- A Distributed Directory Service. OpenLDAP with SSL? PLEASE! Active Directory works well, right out of the box.
- Client Policy Management. Uh, I can install Samba and hack away to get ntconfig.pol to work, which is a seriously out of date policy scheme from the NT/9x days, or Active Directory.
- Remote Software Installation? In Linux, whichever hack you choose, it's going to require a lot of administrator time. With Windows 2000, you've got the package installation via GPO's. Easy to setup, and you can automaticaly configure clients with software packages based on the organizational unit (eg. Lab 1 in building 4) they're in.
- Centralized Management Tools. There are a few crappy third party tools for Linux, but they suck, to be frank. With Windows 2000, you have the MMC tool. Heavily upgraded since the NT4 days, this tool allows you to generate custom toolsets to administer your entire organization from one window, if you choose. Just add a snap-in and go.
- Remote Administration. Linux? X11 or VNC. Windows? The excellet Remote Desktop/Terminal Services software. Much more stable, smoother (movies & sound via RDP anyone?), and not clunky.
- Kerberos, with no dicking around, nuff said.
- Enterprise monitoring utilities. With Linux, you have things like BB and syslog, yippee. With Windows 2000, you have BB, but also excellent tools like Microsoft Operations Manager, and the numerous other network monitoring tools (like the cool ones from Solar Winds).
- Automatic Updates & Patching. I think Red Hat still has that crappy update utility, sucks if you've gotta update 50 servers that way, though. Microsoft? Software Update Services and Automatic Updates right now. Not the perfect solution, but much better than what Linux has going for it.
Plus, with Automatic Updates configured to automatically download (but not install) your patches, you don't have to sit around in the middle of the night waiting for the downloads to finish for all 50 servers.
With an even moderately competent Win2k administrator a network can be almost completely managed from his desktop.
One can even argue that, with a competent administrator for each, Windows 2000 can be made more secure (while still being perfectly usable). I won't even get into the whole debate about the number of Linux exploits compared to the fewer Windows 2000 exploits on Bugtraq, because that really doesn't mean much overall.
When it comes to pure software price, sure Linux is cheaper. When it comes to the enterprise? Please! Linux can't compete, right now. Microsoft software appears expensive (and most certainly is overpriced), but when you figure in man hours installing, updating, and maintaining, salaries for those people, and downtime while you recompile app x and lib y and app z that depends on y, Windows 2000 starts to look very attractive.
As the old saying goes: "Linux is free, except when it comes to my time".
A Web app is useless for users with laptops who are travelling. The fact you would propose it as a solution says more about your utter cluelessness than my skills which are in any case irrelevant since I am a research principal and not a Web monkey.
You're mind-stuck with what Windows
No, you are mind stuck with the idea that there is always a better open source solution and anyone who says different myst be ignorant or lacking in skills, yack yack yack, chunner chunner, Microsoft eeeevvvillll, die die die.
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Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/