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Deciding Between SCO and Linux?
wolfbane01 asks: "I spend some time giving tech suggestions to a medium sized business firm (~100 employees) with a large amount of demand placed on their file server. Their current server is a dual Pentium 500 with RAID array and they are looking to upgrade it. The dilemma is the current server OS is running SCO OpenServer 5.0.5, and their new raid array requires 5.0.7. Their programmers have demonstrated that a Linux box can process records much faster, but are still worried about the investment and potential problems that switching OSes would entail. I have already mentioned the cheaper price and the community availability when problems come up, but what other reasons have Slashdot readers come up with for a switch? What arguments am I forgetting that make Linux more attractive then SCO? Should I advise against switching to Linux and advocate them sticking to SCO? Is SCO going to even be in business long enough to make the upgrades product cycle?"
Okay, forget about the fact that they are trying to destroy the entire computer industry outside of Microsoft (i.e., Linux).
How about the fact that actually paying money for a x86 Unix license (rather than just support) these days is an incredible waste of money??
Find a Linux vendor like Red Hat that will give these guys support, and hook these guys up.
Cripes, I was recommending Linux over SCO more than *5 years* ago, I thought by now SCO would finally be dead.
Get these guys off the whip and get them some Free software. Don't forget FreeBSD either, that's actually my #1 choice these days.
PS: I love this quote on SCO's page:
I guess technically they are correct, but if you expand that list to include UNIX-*like* operating systems, you'll see a different picture......
Why not just switch to the industry standard, Microsoft Windows 2003 Server? You can bet that it supports your RAID hardware...whoever made it would be out of business if they didn't supply Windows drivers. And the FUD campaign against Microsoft's best-of-breed server solution, including Internet Information Services (IIS) and SQL Server, has been shown to be incorrect -- most reputable analysts now agree that Linux has considerably more security eratta than windows, and one great thing about Windows is that there is a centralized source for all security updates, backed by Microsoft's massive QA infrastructure and decades of experience, so as soon as a problem arises, you are likely to be able to find a patch immediately and install it immediately, instead of having to deal with recompiling from source code and using developer releases in order to fix major exploits.
And thats not even taking into account the well-known fact that Windows has much lower long-term total cost of ownership (TCO), and is much easier to use than any Unix. Linux will probably never catch up with Windows in these areas, even considering the improvements made in version 9, and SCO is decades behind Linux. Heck, even Linux users are switching to Windows now that 2003 has come out...why shouldn't you?