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."

Comments

Completely subjective

[Mwongozi]

I never understood the X is cheaper than Y argument. Surely, it must depend on what you're using your OS for, how many servers you're running, etc?

I have no doubt that Linux is cheaper in a lot of situations, but I am also sure that Windows, or indeed any other OS, is cheaper for some things.

There can be no one perfect solution.

That's because Linux admins are self-taught

[wackybrit]

It is because Linux admins, although slightly more expensive, can handle a significantly larger number of systems than their Windows counterparts.

Th-they skirt over this point a bit too quickly. The obvious reason that Linux admins are better sysadmins (overall) and can admin more machines is because they're, er, mostly self-taught.

After all, how many great sysadmins spent years pouring over 'How to be a Linux admin' books, struggling to get their 'LCE' (Linux Certified Engineer) certificates? None. Unh. Yet that's exactly how Microsoft admins are raised.

Linux admins (and originally users) are experimenters.. that's why they're not on the MS platform. Experimenters make good sysadmins, because they learn by themselves, learn clever admin tricks through experience, and, er, don't just rely on a bit of paper that says 'I'm a good sysadmin.'

I'd be a bit weary about the point that Solaris admins can 'learn Linux' (ohh, unh) within a few weeks though. People from stricter UNIX disciplines think Linux is some, er, easy-to-learn UNIX renegade. (unh, unh) It ain't true folks, it's like deep and stuff.

Re:That's because Linux admins are self-taught

[Bert64]

Fixing a unix problem is usually made a LOT easier by the error messages.
Typically if something goes wrong on a unix system, you will be given a usefull error message, that if all else fails you can paste into google and see what comes up.
Contrast with windows, which often gives far less usefull error messages and frequently wont let you do anything else while the error requester is displayed on the screen. You are resorted to trial and error to fix the problem, a very time consuming process.
People complain about the verboseness of unix/linux, but this is a GOOD THING.. even to newbies, if a newbie sees an error he could paste it to someone who knows how to deal with it.. instead of panicking and freaking out.

The windows mentality has resulted in a lot of new linux users who assume the error messages are useless, thus they dont even read them atall.. they paste them to someone (like me) and ask for an explanation, usually i paste the error right back and they go "ohh, now i see"

Good news?!

[gpinzone]

Let's see... The article states that Linux/Unix admins USUALLY do cost more, but now they don't due to the tech slump. In other words, the TCO is lower because of all the out of work admins drove down salaries. Therefore, more sophisticated Linux/Unix admins are getting screwed.

Now answer the question, "Aren't you happy to hear Linux is now cheaper?"

You're company is probably screwed regardless.

[dmaxwell]

Just to be clear: I'm not saying Linux is worthless, I'm saying that this zealousy over it won't solve anybody's problems. As a matter of fact, it'll probably cause problems. Most of my company frequents Slashdot. Let's say they were taken in by the hype and adopted Linux. Guess what? Expectations are high, which means that every little problem will be blown out of proportion. Before you know it, everybody's anti-Linux. We're already having that happen today. Some of the engineers have been moved to Linux, and they're fussing over every idiotic problem that Windows just doesn't have. The worst part is having to look up badly spelt commands in order to figure out what to do. They're having to make compromises in order to get through their day.

If your company tried Linux on the basis of hype, it probably means they initially got hooked on MS hype too. I doubt either decision was made objectively or wisely. Did it occur to your Slashbot bosses that maybe they should have only tried Linux out on a few machines first? That way it needn't have caused any significant pain. Also, a newly deployed Windows system isn't that hot either. You're co-workers are comparing something that's probably had months or years of bug-fixes, tweaking, and workarounds to something they just adopted. NEWSFLASH! Everything sucks just in different ways. Like any tool, Linux can do the job wonderfully once it is learned. Of course, you'll mash your thumb a few times on the way. 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.

Linux doesn't sound like a problem here. Quit believing hype and maybe you'll have better new product experiences.

Incidentally, Slashdot is not a monolith. We have 15 year old young minds who think every piece of OSS software is GPLed and anyone who makes money with it is a thief as well as 15 year old Young Republicans who think OSS is communism. I'm sure others can think of even more savory types who hang out here. Remember, the IQ of a mob equals the intelligence of it's stupidest member divided by the size of the mob. It's pretty useless to give it advice.

Re:A significantly larger number of systems?

[Fnord]

And this is why windows admins don't understand how Linux admins manage that many machines. VNC is a bad hack that you'd only use if you needed cross platform remote display. You do realize that if you really needed to remotely run graphical apps, X programs are inherrently remote displayable. Not only that, but the power of linux administration is the fact that you *never* need to run a graphical program. If I have a farm of 150 web servers, I can make an httpd.conf on one of them and with a 3 line shell script (typed interactively on the command line) scp it to every machine on the network and restart those webservers. Or I could tie it to a cron job, or a script monitoring /var/log/messages for a certain event like a service going down, or have procmail do it when it recieves an email. Yes I know with the right packages and third party tools windows is scriptable as well, but its not designed around scriptability. The simplest way to permanently change the host name of a machine is still to go in with vnc (or terminal services, I have to be fair) and open up the network configuration dialog and change it. Which is easy, I admit. But over a slow network its infuriating. I can ssh in from a modem and edit /etc/sysconfig/network with vi and it'd be just as responsive as if I was on the local network. Again, I see the benefit of both approaches, but never would I personally want to administer a significantly large windows data center when a unix based solution was feasable.

Ignore TCO, go for flexibility and freedom

[Paul Johnson]

TCO arguments are pretty much a waste of time. The answer depends a lot on the assumptions you make about the future (e.g. cost of Linux sysadmins vs Windows licenses in a few years). The real killer argument for OSS in business is freedom: the freedom to run your business the way you want to, rather than the way the vendor wants you to.

• Freedom from surprise audits (and associated fees)
• Freedom to change your support supplier, or even do support in-house if you want to. With closed-source software, if you don't like the quality and level of support offered by the vendor (or their authorised suppliers), you can lump it.
• Freedom to carry on using an obsolete version because you don't want to upgrade. I've seen projects doing intensive development on top of a database for which support had been withdrawn by the vendor. Not fun, and a major risk factor for big projects. Particularly when the obsolete binary also ties you to obsolete hardware.
• Freedom for your staff to install a new copy without having to get a purchase order authorised.
• Freedom from having to track all those proof-of-purchase pieces of paper.

"Always in motion is the future" said Yoda. Decisions need to be "future-proofed". That needs flexibility. If you have room to manouver then you can react to the unexpected. Open source gives you that room to manouver.

Paul.