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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?"
This sounds like a joke, but OK, I'll bite.
There are a lot more software packages that will run under linux, there are many packages that will compile with less effort under linux, there are more people with experiance administering linux than there are on SCO.
If the software they are currently running can demonstratably run under linux then its hard to imagine reasons to continue running SCO. There are commercial vendors who will support linux (RedHat,SuSe,Mandrake) and there is only one company that will support SCO's products.
First post to touch on my point. SCO is desperately trying to scrounge up the last dregs of revenue in exchange for the last dregs of their reputation and goodwill. Linux is going to be there whether it makes money or not. The GNU environment that uses it will be there whether it makes money or not. Both are making money for people even though they can't directly charge for it. In a couple of years, SCO will be some competent company's redheaded stepchild, and their users will be a pure revenue drain as the OS sunsets. They can move now, or they can pay licensing for 20 or so months, THEN move. Depending on the business, there are advantages to both paths. This is the environment in which they must evaluate their decision.
I'd suggest looking into UnitedLinux; heck, even SCO likes it! Evaluate it and see if that's more compatible out of the box with your stuff.
If you want a second opinion, here's some more advice; he also confirms that it's easier to move existing SCO stuff over to UnitedLinux than it would be to switch to RedHat Linux, for example.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Summary: you have a working SCO 5.0.5 system, required hardware upgrades are driving a minor software upgrade to 5.0.7 with presumably low associated risks.
Question: is it worth a major software change to Linux with high associated risks? This change is unplanned and the programmers have already said they're worried about potential technical problems.
Answer: no. You shouldn't be using a required hardware upgrade to drive a major software change. That's a bad practise to get into. You should be approving the minor software upgrade to SCO 5.0.7.
However: given the lower TCO of Linux and the proven higher performance with your application, you should also be proposing a long-term project to evaluate a migration to Linux. The evaluation should include a risk assessment, full technical approval from the programmers, consideration of knock-on costs like training and support, etc.
Never use minor changes with low risk to drive major changes with high risk. It makes you look like a cowboy. If the SCO system was failing and there was an impending deadline and the 5.0.7 software upgrade carried a high risk... THEN and ONLY then would a hasty Linux migration have any merit. I doubt that's the case. Don't put your balls on the block when this should be a simple low-risk software upgrade.
SCO might be evil, but so is microsoft and that hasn't stopped corporations from buying windows.
It's not stupid. It's advanced.
Their programmers have demonstrated that a Linux box can process records much faster
If this is true, then it seems to me like a small step to just create a Linux shadow system operating in tandem with the existing SCO system.
If the shadow system demonstrates the needed performance, reliability and maintainability that your organization requires after some weeks or even months, then it will be a simple matter to switch the roles of the two systems and ultimately unplug the SCO box and redeploy it if the cost of that "security blanket" is too high.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Most organizations would benefit greatly from free-as-in-speech-and-beer software, but aren't going to be prepared to hear the real reason why.
d ay.
The reason is that the decision making processes in most enterprises in incredibly inefficient and cumbersome. The ability and willingness to get things done is distributed along a bell curve. Most organizations have a small corps of change agents, a bulk of people who go along, and a small corps of obstructionists. Formal decision processes and policies are the natural friend of the obstructionist, and while the constructionist can sometimes use these to his advantage, they almost always slow him down. Where policies allow for free software, people who want to get things done don't aren't left cooling their heels while the management hierarchy decides whether (a) it can be paid for and (b) whether the current licenses allow this use and (c) whether it fits with this year's grandiose-plans-that-will-never-see-the-light-of-
The problem with giving individuals the power to get things done is that it is scary for many organizations. Individual initiative is seen as a chaotic (which is somewhat true) and destructive (which may or may not be true) element. In an organization with clearly articulated goals, and a sensible and flexible strategy, and well thought out policies -- in short in a organization with strong leadership-- individual initiative is a powerful advantage. In organizations that have vague or unacheivable goals, badly conceived or articulated strategy, and accreted years of policy that is tied to neither goals nor strategy --- in other words ones with weak leadership -- suffocating individual initiative is the closest semblence to order that can be acheived.
The great power of a piece of free software like Apache or Linux is not in any technical advantage it has over its proprietary competitors. It is that a free software package empowers the individual and the small team that are close to customers to create new solutions for customer needs.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
It was a simple change that an in-house developer could have done in a single afternoon, but unfortunately we didn't have that option.
No future price hikes because Linux is free.
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Commercial support for vendor Linux (like Red Hat) will increasingly be fore the "Professional" version of the OS and will cost more and more money. My budget for Red Hat Linux support is higher than my budget per node for Sun Solaris on Sparc systems. Anyone who would suggest a heavily used system for 100 people rely upon newsgrous is insane. That is clearly a situation for vendor support. That means $$. Better get quotes before the choice is made.
Price for each version won't change.
The free version is practically ruled out. So that means annual maintenance fees. SCO may be more cost effective over the life cycle of the server. (Red Hat Advanced Server ~ $1,500/yr)
No planned obscelescence, you're in control. Run kernel 2.2 and use KDE 2.2 untill the end of time if you want.
Commercial vendors are regularly dropping support for old Linux releases. If you want support you have to be on a supported release. No difference there, except that Linux vendors churn their kernels faster than SCO.
No forced bundles. What happens if SCO decides you can only buy their OS if you also but program X and a 1000 seat license for it (at $500 a pop)?
Speaking of which, no per seat licenses. If SCO doesn't charge them now, how do you know they won't in the future?
Linux is a forced bundle. Minimal installs from commercial releases tend to install tons of unneeded crap. Trying to pull parts of it out is a pain since the dependencies are like a giant house of cards. The extra stuff means more stuff that needs to be patched to avoid security problems.
Upgrades are free. Security patches are free. It's ALL free.
Not if you're paying maintenance. And if you're using a freware release, who is doing the regression and compatability testing needed for a production environment of 100 people? The SCO upgrade will almost certainly be easier and lower risk. By the way, you did notice that this is an upgrade of an existing system?
It's TRUELY open. You have a problem? Your techs can look at the code to see what's going on. You don't need to call in an expert from SCO.
So you expect the Sysadmins to be kernel hackers, NFS hackers, NIS hackers, file system hackers, etc., etc., etc.? Don't you think that a company that is supporting its products with the people who wrote the code might solve the problem quicker, particularly since their tech support will probably have seen the problem before?
Need a feature? Add it! You can add it directly to the software, you don't need to do it as some hack script that you run things though.
Its a production file server. What "features" aren't likely to be there or available in regular software?
Not tied to a company. What happens if/when SCO goes out of business? You have to find a new company for support (costs more $$$), you'll have to switch to a different OS (costs more $$$).
"Not tied to a company" isn't an advantage. They will still have to pick a vendor. SCO has outlived many Linux companies. Now that Red Hat may be about to exit the consumer market, who knows how long it will last. SuSE layed off most of its US staff almost two years ago. Mandrake is in bankruptcy.
Linux has Tux, the cute/cool little mascot. What does SCO have?
The tree.
You get companies like IBM working to improve things like the core system (the kernel) and other programs (samba), and you get those improvements for FREE. That's NO $$$.
Most Unix freeware will compile and run on SCO, so no advantage there. A lot of the work on Linux is trying to make it the equal of Unix. SCO's products are Unix.
Not tied to any specific architecture. What happens if SCO say "From now on if you want to run our OS, you must run it on our new SCOlding 7 processor." So you switch platforms (massive $$$), or you switch OS ($$$). You c