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InfoWorld on Switching to Linux
brentlaminack writes "The latest Infoworld is running a lengthy piece about
The Real Cost of Switching to Linux, where it makes sense and where it doesn't. As one of their columnists points out, the debate has switched from "if" to "where". One of the big wins for Linux was in the area of remote administration. Specifically noted was ssh. Also of note is the shift in calculating cost from TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) as has been calculated in the past, to ROI (Return on Investment) that focuses more on what you can do with the technology to get work done."
Thing that I've noticed is that if a large organization gets into Linux, even if they buy it, it's theirs for the duration and all of the upgrades that they can work into it, instead of requiring either yearly site license fees or massive payouts every so many years for new versions of software to do essentially the same thing. Even paying a consulting company or services company to deploy Debian would make sense in a way, as long as the apt server were the organization's, versus a public server, so that as long as someone is maintaining the package database on the local apt server, they can keep updating the workstations.
Large organizations usually have some form of IS department, so instead of paying them to run around and fix Windows Millennium or XP problems, pay them to keep the network deployed OS current, and fix the bulk of the problems from their desks.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
The real value of Linux is it allows an I.T. staff to get a job done in an organization. If it has to work if it has to be done it can be. In more beureaucratic organizations the effect is even more pronounced as no one has to seek approval to get the needed piece of software while the company is down.
What I would like to see is one of these TCO surveys that consider the cost of software audit compliance and purchase approval on the windows side.
I understand that Linux is the new darling of the tech industry, but why do reviews like this completely ignore operating systems likee FreeBSD (which out performs Linux in several serving tasks, and is in general more mature)? People who write these reviews on TCO and other stats think Linux is the only alternative to Windows servers. It gets annoying after a while.
will still be an issue in my eye.. once our propritary software will run on linux.. then we'll think about switching.. for now Windows 2000 will do the trick..
even if MS's linux myths page was correct about linux having a greater TCO, business types don't care that much about the initial cost. That's why RH can get away with charging 10K for a multiprocessor licence. Businesses will buy it if it will earn them money in the long run. Of course it really helps if there is a low TCO because that will make your ROI go up.
the linux myths page focuses solely on TCO. Someone should set up a high profile windows myths page that focuses on ROI. It'd be funny if it were full of FUD about windows, but better if it were actually truthfull. Get the PHB's out there to tell the IT guy, "i want one of those lunix boxes on my computers"
If bad puns were like deli meat, this would be the wurst
I think it's kind of sad that all that matter is money. Personally I'm not running Linux because it's beer free. I'm running it because speech free. I'm taking some of those ideas into the company I work for too. You can't put a pricetag on everything.
will put the flags in temp.text on your local machine, but -will put it on the remote machine instead.> One of the big wins for Linux was in the area of remote administration. Specifically noted was ssh.
I admin ~25 machines remotely, most of them in a room that I don't even have access to without special arrangements. With SSH I can do that without ever having to make those arrangements, except in the case of a major upgrade or a hardware failure.
You can write scripts that will take a shell command as an argument and then step through all your machines executing it on each in turn, greatly simplifying remote management.
You can also use pipes and redirects to channel information between processes on the remote machine and your local machine, e.g. -
Or, if you want to do all the work on the remote machine and only redirect the output to your local machine, use -and the grep will actually execute on remotehost.
The example is trivial, but you can do some powerful sysadmin stuff that way. However, there are a few gottchas: a few services crap out if you try to restart them with -so you do have to be careful about some things. (Sure wish someone would figure out what causes that and fix it!)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"The jury is in. After years of experimentation with Linux in the enterprise, customers, analysts, and vendors are starting to sing a consistent tune about where Linux makes financial sense and where it doesn't."
They still don' t get it. Even though the article is moderately positive, any article about Linux that starts with "the Jury is in" was written by someone who does not fully understand the dynamics of Open Source. How can "the jury" be "in" on an environment that changes so rapidly as Linux does? How can you say for certain where Linux has a role and where it doesn't? A move in the right direction, but the hacks still need some educating.....
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
I have to admit, this is definitely one of the better write-ups that I have seen on the subject. Most, as the article states, base all decisions on the TCO (amount spent) rather than the ROI, which allows organizations to determine how much they would save in the long run if they were to switch.
Main thrust seems to be that the savings increase with the amount of technical resources converted to Linux systems. Perhaps this could be a deciding factor for many companies and organizations considering taking the plunge.
Favorite Quote:
"Discount retailing's a tight business, and we're wicked cheap," explains Burlington Coat Factory CIO Mike Prince..."Instead of having a superhorse you have a team of horses -- you don't have to have this genetic [RISC] wonder."
-CSA
..i've seen nothing but positive articles discussion the abilities and the future of the Linux operating system. The only negative things I have read were from the Gartner group.. no surprises there though.
:)
When (most definately not an if) SCO are finally trampled, I think either this or next year will be the real boom year for Linux.. commercial interest and vendor support has never been so good.. I can't wait to see where Linux goes!
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
My colleagues and I had several discussions about switching to linux costs during the past years. I am not going to report everything we talked about (especially when we got "hot" and yelled using not very fair terms), but just the essentials. The cost, both for just server or even for workstations, depends a lot upon whether there's at least a professional employed there actively using linux (a geek almost necessarily) and the kind of applications needed to be "ported". In my case, a switch not only would be very expensive (30 workstations using Windows and -gosh- MS Access), but almost impossibile without thinking about an almost complete rewrite of the applications. In many other cases though the switch is not only possibile (email, wordprocessing, spreadsheet) but even very very inexpensive.
"Discount retailing's a tight business, and we're wicked cheap," explains Burlington Coat Factory CIO Mike Prince
I take it that's Burlington, Massachusetts?
"There were a lot of costs I didn't expect-- hidden migration costs," says Cedars-Sinai's Duncan. During the migration from NT to Linux, his staff insisted that because they had been running RAID disk mirroring and striping on NT they should buy SCSI RAID controllers for the Linux servers. "It was like $1,000 per box extra that I hadn't planned on."
That wasn't a hidden cost. Linux could have easily handled RAID disk mirroring and striping without the special controllers.
This was an example of the IT staff knowing they have a much larger than normal project budget and milking it for all it was worth.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Ok not to be a nitpicky jackfuck, but isn't "if" and "where" as used in this context (to use linux or not) the same thing? "Where" is referring to what situations/setups make for a proper place to run linux. "If" is just another way of saying that. For example: Where your servers are important to you and you can't afford the downtime associated with microsoft products, linux is for you. OR -- If your servers are important to you and you can't afford the downtime... then linux is for you. Same thing. Even if you take "where" to mean a purely geographical location (e.g. linux is proper in arizona) another way of phrasing that is "if you are in this geographical location then linux is proper."
/nitpick off
My point is "where" is no more narrow than "if" when you are talking about linux making sense to run and not making sense to run. Thus going from "if" to "where" means nothing vis a vis the advancement of linux.
Going from "if" to "when" is, however, a statement that does have meaning. Maybe that's what they meant here? Going from if you should run linux to when you should run linux mean eventually, you should be running linux.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
Finally Linux will be all it can be. It just need improvment from Bill. When MS-Linux is here, you will get 1) DirectX, 2) an intuitive GUI, 3) easy and painless installation, 4) seamless installation of drivers, 5) real apps made by real coding companies.
The best part? The MS-Linux distriubution will be the only one will all this! None of it will be GPLed, so there won't be any hobbyists to muck up Microsoft's good coding!
All Linux needs is MicroSoft. And it will come. And there's nothing anyone can do about it.
If you're developing on it. If you're using it for regular users who need email and web and word processing, it doesn't matter what the licensing is. Your memo written in ABIWord doesn't have to contain the GPL.
And if you're developing, there are commercial libraries available to you. There are BSD-licensed libraries too. You don't have to use Stallman's libraries, you can get them elsewhere. Hell, IBM even builds compilers, as does Intel. The entire point of GPLed stuff is for it to remain for everyone. If you don't like that, build it yourself, buy it, or find another non-GPL one.
It's not impossible to do this. It just takes brains and research. I'd rather sink my money into that than into a mindless purchase of a product that goes "BOOM!" far too frequently and forces one into paid upgrades.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
the various BSD's don't have the rabid hordes of evangelists that Linux has. So many IT people are fans of Linux, but don't know much and have not tried any of the BSD's. My room mate used to bad mouth the BSD's all the time (after playing with freeBSD for all of five minutes), but after seeing enough posts about openBSD's stability and security, he tried it for his webserver and DNS and he loves it (though he'll still bad mouth freeBSD on occasion).
my pet machine
What you failed to understand about the parents post is that he is talking about site license fees, renewal fees, etc ... You don't have to spend $500/seat with Linux every five years as you do with Microsoft. "It's theirs for the duration" means, simply, that they don't need to pay out the nose. Itdoes not refer to the GPL.
A note about the GPL, which you also missed, is that if you make a change to somones GPL'd software, you must also make your code GPL, or a compatible license. However, providing source code is a provision only when you are distributing. If you don't distribute that work outside of the company, your GPL'd work doesn't see the light of day. Once you distribute it, however, you need to provide a way for the person who obtained the binary to obtain the source code.
Also, you need not provide everyone with the source code: you only need to provide those who have obtained, through you, the source code in question. Of course, they are also given the right to use, modify and distribute that source code. However, that doesn't mean you need to put it on a public FTP server in a tarball for every person in the world to download. Which, actually, destorys your argument in it's entierty really. You can profit, you just can't have a stranglehold on the world with your technology.
--LordKaT
Linux servers and workstations have rapidly increased their share of the market at the expense of Sun Microsystems. According to "IBM steals server sales from Sun", the sales of Sun servers running Solaris dropped by a whopping 19% from 2nd quarter of 2002 to 2nd quarter of 2003. Yet, the sales of Linux servers increased by a sizeable 40%.
The bell tolls. It tolls ominously for Sun.
Windows software is cheaper because it has so much bundled in???
It sounds like the logic used I Love Lucy where she loses money on each item sold but plans to make up for it by increasing the number of sales.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
I notice nobody has mentioned security... What about the fact that linux security is a lot easier to matain remotely than Microsoft. What are you supposed to do if some security flaw is released for microsoft and you're at home. You can't just run PC Anywhere... Plus, uptime is so much better on linux.
What is slashdot?
That is such a load of crap! I can't begin to address all of it. If your worried, first use Kylix it is a commercial development suite. Next, there are plenty of commercial products available for linux. Third,you obviously know nothing about the GPL and it's requirements so why do you post such dribble. You can change anything in the source code of a GPL's product and use it for your benefit, what you can't do is redistribute it. If the GPL were so restrictive companies such as theKomany.com couldn't exist. So go back and research your topic before posting.
I haven't yet seen a TCO study that includes the risk of a BSA audit in a Windows shop. The TCO for running Windows should include the cost of insurance against the disruption of a BSA audit and the penalties paid for apparently unlicensed software.
Mike O'Donnell http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~odonnell/
One of the big wins for Linux was in the area of remote administration. Specifically noted was ssh.
Okay, I recently came to be in charge of a small office with maybe 20 machines with different hardware and different versions of Windows. Anyways, I was wondering if anyone has had any success or experience managing a group of Windows machines using the open ssh server or perhaps VNC. I'm mostly looking for more efficient means of patching than walking around from machine to machine after hours. While about half of the systems are 2000 or better, SUS isn't an option until I can convince people to get me my 2000 server.
grep [pattern] [somefile]
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Jackass.
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
No joke. It's like they never heard of software RAID.
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
Sure, there's Windows and Solaris and AIX and FreeBSD and NetBSD and OpenBSD and OS X and Linux, at least.
If you look at current history, they normally expect that different OS systems do not play that well together - and normally, they'd be right. Windows + Linux already sounds fishy to them, but something even more obscure than Linux? Sounds like a patchwork of problems to them.
Linux is starting to have large industry backing, with giants like IBM. What does *BSD have? Sure, Apple took it for OS X, but do they provide any *business* backing to *BSD? No. Without wanting to join the "BSD is dying trolls", Linux is racing ahead while BSD isn't developing at nearly the same pace, because with mindshare comes users and developers.
Linux is being promised to be the one solution on everything from embedded devices to supercomputers, and with time even the desktop. This study is one of many to see "where" this is true, not "if", as the submitter said. Even if BSD could win such a comparison, it wouldn't have anywhere near the news value or interest. "Linux: Now also good for your servers" does a lot more than "BSD does good in server study".
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Articles like the parent contain useful information and deserve to be modded up.
Female Prison Rape in NY
Trolls aren't even coming up with new material these days. This "press release" is exactly the same as:
4 0/5022/28#28 )
4 520 )
3 715 )
0 540 )
"Windows is dying" ( http://pepper.idge.net/slashdot/windows_is_dying )
"I love you is dying" ( http://images.kuro5hin.org/comments/2002/7/5/1411
"The web is decaying" ( http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=31884&cid=343
"Google is dying" ( http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=43480&cid=454
"Gtk+ is dying" ( http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=76201&cid=680
If you're going to troll, at least come up with something original.
Breakfast served all day!
After the MSBlaster worm and SoBig virus activity of the last few weeks, you'd think that there'd be a little more than a passing reference on page 3 of the article saying that Linux is "virtually virus-free".
I'll bet that none of these expensive studies ever include the cost of cleaning up after the virus/worm of the week that comes with running Microsoft NT/2000/XP. Having everyone in your company having 2 or 3 days a year when their desktop/laptop/server/whatever is unavailable because of cleanup activity should have a definite negative impact on TCO or ROI.
Yet one more reason to use Linux, *BSD or OS X.
"same oepration would take 2 minutes, if that"
Notice any resemblance to other trolls?
Some lame ass anonymous coward wrote: "When linux speeds up to acceptable levels, and supports Professional hardware, we will consider it again in a few years."
I smell a troll...
Totally clueless, probably not real. Linux runs circles around OS X performance wise. What the troll was complaining about (if it was actually an actual real life occurrence) was the performance of the gimp vs photoshop on a certain operation.
I'm skeptical, and would love to see a benchmark of common graphics operations on gimp/linux vs photoshop/osx and photoshop/windoze.
Who knows, perhaps the gimp is doing some things in a non-optimal fashion. If so, the comparison would cause the gimp crew to step up and make it right.
TCO and ROI are important measures if you consider switching from a certain system to another one. Many people are thinking of switching to Linux and use the above measures. I do not know of organizations thinking of switching from Linux to OSF, Windows NT or whatever OS other than Linux. I think this is an important fact if you consider switching to Linux, a more important fact than economical measures like TCO or ROI published every now and then.
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
There's a very simple reason my FreeBSD is being eclipsed by Linux and it has nothing to do with the other reasons mentioned.
The key reason FreeBSD is stagnating is because some versions of Linux, most notably Gentoo, are gaining the advantages of FreeBSD.
Look at it this way. Suppose you're a BSD fan. The flexibility of the BSD ports is likely what attracts you most. But FreeBSD is not the only distribution that has BSD-type ports. Gentoo does also. So which OS are you going to likely choose:
* "an OS with more compatibility with more open source projects, more compatibility with commercial products, more drivers, and more user support" (a.k.a Gentoo)
or
* "an OS with good compatibility with many, open source projects but versions are released later than the Linux version, less support for commercial apps (e.g. the JDK is still at 1.3.1 ), less drivers, and fewer users so you have less user support" (a.k.a. FreeBSD)
The choice seems clear, doesn't it? FreeBSD is a great OS, but it's more than an OS, it's a way of doing thing that's not limitted to the FreeBSD code base, which is why FreeBSD (the software) is dying but FreeBSD (the spirit) will never die. It will live and thrive on in its children (e.g. Gentoo).
OK I know you are a troll but I'll educate you anyways...
First, Yes Lots of MCSE or Windows admins will raise questions about requirements about linux that are incorrect, the "demand for scsi raid cards to replace the scsi striping that was available in windows" was FUD peddled by the IT staff that were pissed they had to retrain, or simply not educated enough abou the OS they are switching to. This brings into question the so called "retraining costs" that are touted so highly by the windows fan club members...
First off today in corperate america, if ther eare changes, you either learn the changes or expect to ge replaced by someone that already knows it. There are no costs for retraining. you can completely fire your entire IT staff and replace them within 48 hours with linux experienced professionals for the SAME pay rate. Espically now when there are so many out of work.
Is that a bastard's attitude? yes, only a complete asshat PHB would do such a thing, but that is how it is in corperate America right now.
"Adapt or there's the door, we'll have your replacement in here signing papers before you pull out of the lot."
Basically, if yout IT staff are not smart enough to be adaptable, were already learning on their own and watching inductry trends to get ready form them.... you might be better off with fresh meat in that department....
The days of a company paying to retrain you are over. you retrain you for free if you want to stay employed....
maybe someday we can get back to the good-ol' days of being treated like humans, but I doubt that we will see it for another 5-7 years....
Until then.... Adapt, Innovate, and Overcome...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I'm skeptical, and would love to see a benchmark of common graphics operations on gimp/linux vs photoshop/osx and photoshop/windoze.
It doesn't sound far-fetched to me. I have had some dealings with Adobe in the past, and from those experiences I've reached the conclusion that Photoshop filters are extremely carefully written and optimized. It would not suprise me one bit if Adobe's implementations make much better use of processor extensions and represent a lot more care and investment in hand optimized assembly than Gimp does.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
This is troll, based on the classic mac problems troll. Its spiffed up to make it look legitimate, but its full of bullshit.
a) Debian 3.1 dosent exist yet, and debian dosen't sell boxed versions.
b) Doing a gaussian blur on a 4096x4096 image on my machine only takes 15 seconds, and is much slower than this XEON bo.
c) Photoshop 9.0 dosen't even exist yet.
There are many other points, but this troll is obviously not just another GNAA or goatse troll, he is a professional.
What rubbish! Complete fucking rubbish.
.NET development tools, to quickly code up anything you need that can't be covered by the above.
Microsoft crushes Linux in terms of remote administration:
- Remote Desktop/Terminal Services (you don't even need a RD client, just a browser, which nearly every modern machine has, unlike ssh [yes, i know putty is just a quick download away, assuming you have rights to do that on a machine])
- VBScript (horrid, but gets the job done most of the time)
- WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation, do damn near anything remotely, but be sure to properly secure your network)
- The MMC tools (ADUC, etc etc), which fully operate remotely, as well.
- The
I don't know, Sir. The gimp team has had years to "step up" and make the interface right and they haven't bothered to do so.
d) You can't get a dual 3GHz Xeon for $725. You might be able to get a single 3GHz Xeon CPU (just the CPU itself) for around $500.
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
I'm suspicious of this poster. Photoshop 9 doesn't exist. Photoshop 8 is still in beta and probably not available until near the end of this year. A few obvious facts wrong make me suspicious of the rest of the tale, including the speed of running 4Kx4K Photoshop images under an ancient version of the software on an ancient version of the hardware so quickly.
And also that someone would make such a huge leap to a new hardware/os/software platform without testing it on one machine first.
3 Ghz dual XEON machines. It costed us $3000 (725 for each computer
Lastly, where can I buy some dual 3GHz Xeon machines for $725 a pop?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Was that a joke?
Since when did Microsoft ever want you to evaluate the things you were paying them money to "improve"? Mandatory upgrades anyone?
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
Last time I checked the theoretically correct approach was to consider Net Present Value of alternative choices (which embeds ROI, in some sense).
:(
*Payback* time is, however, a very important factor in real life (TM) management decisions. And initial costs highly impact payback time. Nobody really respects theory...
Please also notice that small business are sort of like individuals, they don't have a budget department. Even in western great corporations, there are high rewards for short term results, so that initial costs will highly hinder someone's personal chances of survival.
Because of that, linux is much more menacing than previously thought. For some businesses, initial proprietary prices make all the difference which leads someone to adopt Linux.
Interesting because while MS could always argue TCO, there's no way they can argue ROI with the price of keeping their software up to date.
Whereas Microsoft expects you to pay to upgrade every couple of years, Linux can be updated for free with a very little fear that proprietary apps won't work. Or at least companies can expect that their apps won't require much tweaking to get them to work.
but after seeing enough posts about openBSD's stability and security
So after reading something enough times, he just starts to believe it? What a moron. Does he read his junk mail, too? I bet he believes by now that those penis pills really work, and he will be impressing the ladies in no time.
The bad news is that Linux on the mainstream desktop will continue to be a non-starter until all three of the following things happen: 1) WINE can run the vast majority of Windows apps perfectly (and I do mean absolutely, no exceptions, no if's, and's or but's perfectly, 2) there's a drop-dead easy, one-click way for mainstreamers to move their entire Windows installation to a Linux system, including browser bookmarks, app options, desktop icons, the whole smash, and 3) a user can walk into BestCompUSAMaxaples and buy any peripheral that works with Windows and get it to work with Linux just as easily.
Make your own assessment of Linux's chances of achieving all that. I know for a fact it can be done; the only question is whether the open source community will do it.
This is parent speaking here, some people have been accusing this as false, but it is a true experiance. I am replying to correct some doubts about my story.
First of all I meant to say Photoshop 8.0, not 9. It will be realeased soon, and it will come with our new macs.
Some people are wondering where we got the cheap xeons. Well our company is based in Canada, and it costsed $725 canadian, not US. Debian unstable is known as 3.1, and we got the boxed version from a debian reseller who sold us a snapshot of the unstable tree.
I hope this clears some things up, as this is a true story.
Cancel the above - as others have pointed out this is an obvious troll. Boxed set of Debian 3.1? Very Funny. Also, Epson Stylus Pro 5000 is supported.
First of all, it looks like fvmw2, which I've been using for years isn't a standard rpm supported by the RedHat folks. So I moved to gnome, something I'd been planning for a while. Wow, what a nasty thing. You name it, it didn't work. Printing was a mess (it wouldn't change the default printer and it really really hated the 103 printers in the printcap file.) I couldn't figure out how to set things (like turn off the system beep from the terminal) and found nasty hacks to get around them. It refuses to use my good sound card and instead uses the on-board card. Etc. etc. etc.
My point? I'm still trying to figure out which of these statements is true (may be more than one):
As Nietsche famously said, "If you stare too long into the Abyss, 1d4 Tanar'ri of random type will attack you."
I would appreciate pointers to articles that show companies making a migration from any operating system to any BSD varient
And many more to get done. I doubt I'm going to inspire anyone to write an article. I do contract security/admin for a handful of mom and pop ISP's and smaller webhosting providers. I set a bunch of them up with FreeBSD initially when I found ancient slackware or debian. If they needed a new machine for something, I'd use FreeBSD. After a while they started noticing the FreeBSD machines were no trouble. I had some standouts that run redhat with plesk, cpanel, hsphere, etc. environments. A lot of them are getting hacked because it's ancient redhat. I'm getting a ton of new customers that want FreeBSD because they have ancient redhat/slack/debian (mostly redhat with plesk) and want something not only more secure, but easier to secure and keep that way. I can't be the only guy that does what I do. Lets wait a few months and see what the netcraft numbers say. There has been a rash of website hackings lately (mostly brazilian groups) that target old redhat systems. A lot of these smaller companys are using redhat 6, 6.1, 7.2, etc and have a guy that was just smart enough to install it but had no idea how to update it. A lot of them don't want to pay for up2date. FreeBSD is supported by Plesk, so it's a natural choice for a lot of customers. Some customers are sick of paying for Plesk so I migrate them to webmin/virtualmin/usermin. I'm not sure how netcraft tallies their numbers, but about 15,000 websites that resolve to about 500 unique IP addresses are now hosted on FreeBSD instead of Linux. I mostly serve the lowest tier providers though. We are talking joes chicken shack (one location) and about a billion bored housewives with crafts businesses or people who sell on ebay exclusivly. It's not like the big boys are calling me. But the biggest boys are already running FreeBSD according to Netcraft.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
In order to make that FUD work, Microsoft has to convince IT managers that the only way to switch to Linux is to switch the whole company at once. It's an easy enough idea to sell, given that many Windows or MS Office upgrades have had to be done all at once, in order to avoid compatibility problems.
And we see that idea being promoted in at least one one of the linked articles. The author promotes the idea by making it a foregone conclusion throughout his article.
A requirement for a "massive migration" would be enough to scare most IT managers away from Linux, that is, if it was true.
But it's not true!
For many companies, the most painless approach to introducing to Linux on the desktop is . . . start small.
Unlike Windows XP, Linux will fit nicely into a Windows 95/98/NT environment. Using Samba, Linux can connect to the Microsoft network, and using OpenOffice, Linux users can share MS Office documents.
Therefore, for many businesses, the best procedure for migrating to Linux will be:
In other words, if you are considering Linux for your company, you don't have to plan a mass migration, and wait for TCO studies and the like.
Instead, start today! Find someone in your company who knows Linux, and try it out. This will give you some real world experience that is worth more than ten Gartner TCO studies. And from there, you can carry on -- without the confusion and disruption of a mass migration.
1- you don't need new hardware. linux runs on damn near any platform, at least those that count. x86-yes, sparc-yes, ppc-yes, big iron - yes (thanks IBM)
2- the options taht linux gives you are unlimited. with windows, what they give you is what you get. for instance: let's say you have 20-30 older boxen. turn them into thin clients. suddenly adding 30 new cubicles and need a bridge or router. fine. where's that old pentium 120 we had laying around.
3- with windows you either upgrade when they say, or face EOL'd products. even if yo have an old RH5.2 mail server (and you know who you are!!), you never have to upgrade. and you have the source.
those are examples that the article missed. i'm sure there are many more. this is where TCO analyses falter. how do you calculate the cost of things like these?
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
At one point in history, Adobe did have a version of Photoshop for Solaris 2. Part of the reason I know this was I was looking into big ass monitors in the mid 1990's, and discovered I could get into a sun with a big ass screen with a buttload of ram for about the cost of a new big ass multi-sync monitor, and the same chap that was selling used Sun equipment also had copies of Photoshop for sale. Plus my scanner had NO win95 support, but did have Sane support. For your average user, this wasn't what you would call an acceptable solution as it was a multi-grand software package where PC editions were just under a grand. Near as I can remember, there was NO option for for direct purchace of a *nix edition. X support was really quite spiffy.
I think version 3.x was the last version for the Sun but it leads me to ask.... if they developed a Solaris edition, why have they not bothered with a BSD/Linux edition.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Cygwin runs well and does ssh. It will run remotely everything that doesn't need a GUI. For patch installation, it runs fine, it is only on sowftware installations that you may need the GUI, then VNC will help you out there.
See my journal, I write things there
You know, if you're going to lie, it helps when you don't provide the evidence in your own post.
In the first part of your post, you say:
> it looks like fvmw2, which I've been using for years...
So you say that you have been using a Linux GUI (fvmw2) for years.
But further down you say:
> Attempts to make linux GUI driven is doomed to failure.
I think you should go back to Microsoft and tell them that you quit. Tell them that they need to hire FUD writers who are at least smart enough to keep their lies consistent from one paragraph to the next.
And that's the reason that BSD isn't as popular as Linux, even knowing that IT IS a better system than Linux. Linux is more democratic, anybody can join the group, (even the ones that doesn't have the skills required to build an OS from the ground up, hehe), and BSD is controlled by the FreeBSD Core, like the other BSDs. I think in the end maybe some corporations are "afraid" of the commitments with a group, and they see linux as a wild spread fenomen that is just impossible to stop and control, because there are just too many options, too many distribuitons, and that's a good and a bad thing. Well being a BSD guy, I admit, Linux is winning, but market dominance, doesn't mean better products, or peoples lifes easier, just look at M$ and Windows, so Linux must be carefl with that. ===== FreeBSD user since 1994, and OpenBSD since this year. OpenBSD pf is kicking ass. Linux user since 1994 ??? only when an app or doesn't work or avaiable on FreeBSD. ;-)
Windows??? Never as server, most of the time as desktop.
If and only if they were doing RAID 5 (not 0,1 or 0+1) in hardware on NT (don't think anything runs that in software), getting the same for the Linux servers would be reasonable
:-/
I gathered from the article that they had been using a software raid mode in NT and they were re-using the same hardware and the raid hardware was an additional expense. I've used the software striping and mirroring stuff that's built into NT before, and learned my lesson the hard way not to do that anymore! Even though Linux does indeed have very good software-based striping and raid capabilities, hardware raid is much superior, especially with hotswap and auto-rebuild capabilities. I concur that the IT guys probably knew this very well and did take advantage of the situation to convince their managment to spring for the raid hardware, which was a smart thing to do. At my job, we now have a prohibition against acquiring any new server-grade machines that do not have hardware raid in them. After having my managers witness drive failures under software raid, along with the disruptive replacement and recovery procedure, followed by a similar one in a Proliant with hardware raid that stayed up and running during the whole failure + hotswap + auto-rebuild event on that machine, the senior brass agreed in a heartbeat that hardware raid was the only way to go from now on... Of course the discovery that hardware raid was better suddenly became their idea and not mine, but you all know how that goes
- Risk of the 'Software Police'
- Timewasting 'licence audits'
- Microsoft business practices
- Paying again every 5 years
- Viruses, worms
- Staff timewasting on Ebay etc
- Overworked, frustrated tech staff
All these are avoidable... as Sternie Ball of guitar string maker Ernie Ball explains here....the minute you install it onto a Windows box you take an extremely security-nightmare platform and then turn it into a breathtakingly, exhorbitantly, grossly, superlatively extremely security-nightmare platform.
Sure you can tunnel VNC protocol inside SSH to help out a bit, but that's assembling a rube-goldberg contraption which may be ok for a trivially small handful of boxes, and impractical for mass-deployment on an enterprise scale.
This is a tough one to do as it is necessarily based on probabilities of problems and estimations of the related costs. Even more, the cost estimates were frequently so high that they looked unreasonable to most managers - but those costs occurred with low probability. (It would probably be unkind of me to say something disparaging about managers who can't learn about probability and so on. Appropriate. True. But unkind.)
I think the combination of the sheer size of the costs and the fact that they were probabilistic was just too much for most bureaucracies to cope with so those costs stopped being included.
It doesn't help when you compound one lie with another.
Canadian money is worth LESS than American money.
Therefore, in Canadian money, the Xeons would cost MORE than they would in American money.
So your new story, that the cost was low because it was Canadian money, is obviously made up.
And even if I thought your original post was true (it's not), your story says that you bought multiple machines, and paid thousands of dollars, without even trying it out to see if it works. So even if you weren't lying, you would be proving that you are a fool, and your opinion of Linux would still be worthless.
Can someone tell me how linux is worse off here?
Microsoft bundles a lot of stuff into Windows, into SQL Server, into the .Net framework ? if you?re looking to build a generic app and deploy it at an all-in price point, Windows is going to win hands down because you get so much bundled in.
Lets see, we have MySQL and PostrgesSQL. We have several frameworks to choose from (manmy are crossplatform so you can run windows or linux). Granted I don't know how they compare, but I would think you can find equivelent functionality for free for linux. These trems are so vague though that they can define some wierd subset that linux doesn't have, but we can do the same in reverse if it comes to it.
Evaluate all the packages, and decide what really fills your needs. Nobody can use all of the .NET framework, but the parts you use are what you need to look for.
What makes Slashdot readers think Linux will take over the desktop and server markets when FreeBSD didn't?
Hate to say it, but it's the GPL which will enable Linux to gain in marketshare beyond what BSD has.
The BSD License allows companies to take the work of the BSD developers, make changes, and not share those changes back with the original developers.
You could say that BSD codebase has been adopted widely throughout the industry, but it has been through other companies adopting (read: "Embrace and Extend") BSD code into thier own propoietary products without compensating the developers or community that made that code possible.
In this sense the BSD License is "more Free" than the GPL, but the BSD license does not ensure that that changes to the code will be Free as well.
Read, L
Well our company is based in Canada, and it costsed $725 canadian, not US
That would make those Dual Xeons cost $520US, and thus your story grows even *more* far fetched...
There is no TCO with Windows. You don't own shit. It is licensed to you for your use. Don't forget that. You hand M$ your balls the minute you use their stuff.
Those big movie studios who are moving to linux even on the design machines use their own tools or at least heavily modified versions.
A good rollout would first have tested the software on a cheap machine maybe someones home pc. Not ordered a couple of dual xeon's in the hope it will work out. And debian not supporting the printer may well be true but this too should have been tested for.
As to using debian. Lets face it it is not exactly one of the most up to date distros out there. Maybe a more uptodate distro like say any except debian would have the support :)
So your experience sounds really like bad planning. Would you be as suprised if you bought a bunch of iMacs and then found they did not meet expetations?
Moral of the story. Try before you buy.
Oh and I hate americans. Did a price check on dual Xeon 3ghz for 725 dollar? Damn we are being overcharged here in europe. I could barely get the motherboard for that. Sigh.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I tried to read the article, but didn't get past the image.
Am I blind or does everybody have problems reading the 3x5 pixels font on the "Switching to Linux? Consider This..." picture. Even after clicking on the 'click for larger view' it hurts my eyes trying to read anything else but the title.
The whole image is friggin 500x252 pixels. What? Is that article written for people who still have their screens at 640x480?
What kind of magazine editor would let that kind of crappy layout through?
Is the content under equally well done quality control?
Geesh man.
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
People seem to gloss over the office suites. OO is NOT a functional replacement for Excel. It provides the core, but the migration path for most heavy users would be uncertain. The problem is that Excel is used in such wildly different ways that if you asked 10 different users I expect you'd get 10 different feature sets that they use occasionally.
Now, a whole separate issue is should people in an engineering organisation even be analysing using unmaintainable code written for Excel (whether VBA, or just cell commands)? I don't think so.
If I were running the joint I would insist that all design calculations are done using a proper mathematical worksheet, like Mathcad (or Scilab, I guess).
One of the constant annoyences is dealing with the question of "IF".
Microsoft can easly throw at us simplistic assumption filled situations and it becomes a whack a mole game as soon as we refute one assumption annother pops up.
The basic problem is the situation changes dramaticly when you use Linux and most people are only familure with Windows and the related costs.
The cost of securing a Windows server vs the cost of trainning Linux users.
Productivity from uptime vs lost productivity due to reorentation.
Diffrent configurations result in diffrent costs.
If every user is expected to maintain his/her own system you'll have a lagistic nightmare when it comes time to install a software patch on Linux.
But if you expect techs to handle this task then it becomes many times easier with Linux.
And some configurations that DO make certan tasks easier on Windows are also illegal or in violation of the DMCA or Microsofts EULA.
It depends on what your trying to accomplish and how you plan to accomplish it. This will determine your totall operating cost.
I believe all of Microsofts FUD is like this. It's true only a small fraction of the time.
I don't actually exist.
-
They were running hardware RAID on NT, then this is a wash, and not planning on it just indicates that Duncan didn't budget correctly.
- They were doing it in software on NT but insisted on hardware for Linux. That would indicate they didn't understand how to to software RAID on Linux.
Either way, there are no 'hidden' costs here, except in the sense that things are 'hidden' from an ostritch when its head is in the sand.[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Hey everyone, I have a question
I've had Mandrake 9.1, Damn Small Linux, and now Mandrake 9.2 RC1...how do I get internet to work on it????
I am using a router (D-LINK DI-604, which is connected to a cable modem), my host PC is Windows 98SE, and I am running virtual PC 5.1
On Virtual PC 5.1, I have the shared networking option ON, and I am running Mandrake 9.2 RC1, and I have it automatically set to use DHCP to get an IP address and access the internet
In my web brower on Linux, I can access my router, 192.168.0.1, but that's it!
I keep trying websites, but no go
I have tried, on other versions of linux, to use a static IP, but that doesn't work AT ALL (quickly says host cannot be found)
At least now it tries to resolve the host, but with no luck
Can anyone help? I really like running Linux on Virtual PC, but I need to have it be able to use the internet! I figure super cool and intelligent and cute (Where are you Georgy?) slashdotters could be able to help me out... Thanks!!
user (555410) calling user (19622) a noob. Yeah.... That's why I love Slashdot!
Put identity in the browser.
"When you're building apps," notes Forrester's Schadler, "it's not a Windows versus Linux decision. It's a Java-on-Linux versus Windows decision. Microsoft bundles a lot of stuff into Windows, into SQL Server, into the .Net framework -- if you're looking to build a generic app and deploy it at an all-in price point, Windows is going to win hands down because you get so much bundled in."
Am I missing something?
Look: Suppose you manage an infrastructure of 1000 hosts scattered across a WAN separated by several regional warehouses and a corporate epicenter. I've actually worked (in a previous job) in a situation like this, though I was by no means the CIO. When you evaluate an OS like Linux you're not concerned with what it may do tomorrow. You're concerned with what it can do today and with what deploying that solution costs under Linux compared with any other alternative. Period. You have a list of services you must provide to the organization and a budget of recurring and fixed upfront costs to provide those services. IT is a cost center for a reason - we don't generate revenue in most organizations, we're here to reduce overhead costs across the organization, and justify our existence only in our ability to reduce organizational overhead at least an order of magnitude more than we charge.
From this perspective, these guys are completely right. They're asking "what do I get today?", "How much will it cost across the life of the platform?", and "How does this compare with any other competitive solution?".
Now, I'm of the opinion that Linux is a great value in large corporate deployments. I don't think we'll see home adoption of Linux for many years to come, but I do think we'll see large scale adoption of Linux on the corporate desktop. The reason I think this is because Linux gets progressively cheaper the larger your deployment. The more hosts the fewer admins compared with Windows. The security headaches are easier with Linux because the security model was thought through years ago and still works. Also, the per seat licensing costs will always beat any commercial OS. Linux wins, but only if you have an infrastructure capable of supporting the OS, and then only if you're large enough to leverage these skills into a significant cost savings. Otherwise, if you're a small department or a home user you might as well run Windows. Or buy a Mac - my preferred solution.
Cheers,
--Maynard
What the heck are they smoking? Unless the admins wanted linux to look better (hardware raid is better than software), I have no idea why anyone would do this?
I run RAID arrays, and I am looking into a cheap RAID-5 UW SCSI controller (as in the used $5-$40 type :) helps to have friends at shops) but is it going to be worth $1000? I don't think so.
gotta say I disagree here. Factually, of course you're right on. But the conclusion, that the licensing differences between GPL and BSD amount to the reason why Linux has taken off commercially while *BSD hasn't, I think that's in error. I do agree that there's a slight selection pressure in support of GPL'd code, simply because it tends to favor the creation of more GPL'd code, but wouldn't be enough to accound for the vast commercial success of Linux.
Think about it. How many companies out there have chosen, or even been forced, to release GPL code simply because of the featureset Linux supports that they couldn't get in *BSD? I can't really think of any, beyond Trolltech - and they did so for marketting reasons only. You don't see this in the embedded market, because in the embedded space companies use Linux as a platform with which to develop their proprietary apps. Same on the server side. Would these businesses see any licensing advantage with BSD over Linux? No. And that's why the GPL is neither an impediment, nor an advantage, compared with BSD licensing for most commercial developnent houses.
Linux is winning because of network reasons. The AT&T lawsuit had a lot to do with stiffling the adoption of BSD back in the early - mid nineties, and we're seeing the result today. Combine that with more varied hardware support among embedded platforms that matter (and I mean ARM, MIPS, and PPC), compared with BSD and you see what I mean. OK, so NetBSD supports every weird old hardware plaform around. You want to run on an old MicroVAX or Sun 3, go with NetBSD. You want to run on a modern embedded ARM, go with Linux. That's why Linux is winning commercially.
Not that BSD is bad or doesn't deserve consideration. I run it and like it. But I also understand why it might not be considered for the next TiVO - at least not just yet, when Linux would be easier and cheaper to deploy,
Cheers,
--Maynard
Yes, this is all very well and good, but what is your stance on poo???
The most common answer to the question "What don't you like about Linux?" is: "The people that use it."
In general, that is my answer to that question. I'm glad those people aren't using *BSD.
try setting the router as your default route, some routers don't always do that through dhcp
That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
"try setting the router as your default route, some routers don't always do that through dhcp"
Huh? Does that mean some tweaking in the D-LINK DI-604 router or something else? Please explain if you can, thanks!!
"How do you handle the steady steam of security patches needed? It's a lot quickler to slap on RPMs than to compile form source, but for that you need a distro with a longer support horizon, which costs more, at least in RedHat land."
I am not directly involved with the maintenance of these computers, but first and foremost, these machines are not publicly accessible. They're only accessible to the userbase of the WAN. Certain protocols, like SSH, won't route to the box for local users at the site that it sits at, and will only accept connections from the IS network. We also have our network vlanned all to hades and back, so one site won't necessarily be able to access another.
One thing that I can tell you is that the computers are only running what they need. This pretty much comes down to samba and appletalk for the fileservers. If what I think is correct actually is correct, they have placed samba in a chroot jail. They do update it, but also bear in mind that some protocol exploits require a fairly specific set of circumstances in order to work, for the vulnerable function might be some slightly obscure thing. If the features in use don't include this there is not critical need to update it.
I'm not entirely certain how they roll out changes. I suspect that they have one of the fileserver-style machines in the office, and they simply make a note of the state of the filesystem, make the change, diff that, and make a tarball to deploy, but I'd have to ask. That's how I'd do it if I were the one maintaining the fileservers.
Remember, Slackware was designed around many of the older UNIX paradigms, which relied more heavily on root to know what (s)he was doing. Building scripts to deploy stuff, or to poll to see if something new needs to be retrieved shouldn't be out of the bounds of what a SysOp should be able to do. The hardware that we run these machines on is extremely cheap, at this point I'd guess that you could buy one of our fileservers for $150 in parts from the used surplus dealer in your hometown. Most of the machines are PII's if memory serves. There has been no need to replace them. Because of the lack of expense, it is easy to justify having a few laying around the office to use for guinea-pigs.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
It's tweaking from withing Mandrake, for some reason the D-Link router isn't telling your computer that it's how to access the internet when you get your DHCP lease. if you're using static IP addresses then you didn't specify it. I'm not sure about the whole situation if you have it on a virtual host though. There may be more to it if you're using a virtual interface.
That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
It is a Virtual PC thing, because Virtual PC is the DHCP server in this case, not the D-LINK router.
The Virtual PC DHCP server gives my linux an IP address of 192.168.131.68, so in effect my WIN98SE and Virtual PC Linux share the connection to the D-Link, but from the D-Link's point of view, it's own DHCP server only assigns one address to my computer, 192.168.0.100 (for Windows 98SE)
Virtual PC 5.1 shares that connection with Linux by using a DHCP server of it owns to assign an address to Liunx (192.168.131.68)...
I have tried the ISC DHCP client, dhcpcd, but I can't (don't know how) to get it work...like I said, it can access the router webpage just fine, but nothing else...what gives???
That might have been true a few years ago, but you won't find BIOS redirect to serial any longer. I think most server board vendors want to sell you something fancy, expensive, and typically less useful.
Can you provide links that show that this is available in stuff you can buy today? Because I looked, and didn't find.
Jonathan
Ahh, ok. You've got to set up ICS on the Win 98 machine, so that it'll masq the linux machine. I know they are the same physical machine, but it thelps thinking of them as seperate, because they are virtual computers. The Linux Box needs to route through the windows box, needs to route through the router. even though the linux box is imaginary. if you were to install linux in a dual boot config it'd work right when you boot into linux, but virtual computers can make life a little harder.
That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
Many of these services are active by default in Windows. You don't turn them off because you don't know what they are and how vital they are. Then along comes an exploit using software that does not belong on a server (e.g. MediaPlayer) and you are hosed.
Contrast this with Debian, where a minimal install gives you the basics (including ssh) and you can add what you need with apt. For example, I usually install the basic X apps, but do not run X on the console. I either run and X server on a non-server or fire up VNC on one of the servers and shut it down when I'm done. That way I can keep the process table pretty clean, enabling me to spot any unusual acivity.
Have any TCO studies included the cost of worms and virus outbreaks ? Of course, this sort of thing can happen on any operating system, but you see these estimates flying around in the media: "such and such worm cost X billion dollars". How much of that was borne by your company ? I think this issue makes a strong case for Linux on some desktops, particularily secretaries and people who don't need specialized applications.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
When you ask about the cost of converting from Windows to Linux, there's a companion question: what's the cost of converting from Windows to the next version of Windows? Look at the licensing terms MS has now, and notice that they pretty much either force you to upgrade every 2 years or so or pay huge licensing fees when you do upgrade from an "obsolete" version. Also look at the history of cascading upgrades on Windows, where you need a new version of Word which forces an upgrade of Windows itself (the new Word won't run on older versions of the OS) which in turn forces upgrades of other software because your current versions won't run right (or at all!) on the new version of the OS. This is the dirty little secret cost the MS sales reps will never mention.
Am I the only one who first read "TCO" as "TACO"? :-)
The BSA can get a search warrant and even break down your doors. But I have not heard of such actions, ever.
Instead the BSA usually uses the agreement you signed with Microsoft for your site license as a legal authorization to demand you perform an audit and to check your results themselves.
If you have not signed an agreement for any site licenses that can be audited, then the only ways they're getting on your property is if you let them in or they get a court order to come in.
...but the day MS makes a Linux, I'm getting it. What will be funny is how MS will make even more money.
an intuitive GUI? Germans did a study comparing KDE to win XP, and XP came out only slightly ahead. One wonders if thier subject already had windows experience and no KDE experience and it was still close.
easy and painless installation? Several distros have had that for a while. Hell I just instlled slackware and the hardest part was partitioning the hard drive, everything else was cake (it surpised the crap out of me).
No, what I want s easy and painless CONFIGURATION. And not even all applications, just the select few that everybody uses/needs, but are impossible to figure out how to configure. I.E. why is X so hard to configure. I don't mind editing text files, but what the hell is up with modelines? Can't I just specify my monitor and video card and default resolution and have X figure out everything else?
He's Canadian. And a troll.
A small commercial distro (slackware based) called Yoper (Yoper.com) from NZ uses the Knoppix hardware detection routines to install.
It worked well on my machine shot of an obscure winmodem, which was on disk 2 and needed source headers. although it still lacks a graphical partition tool. (Mandrake has its uses)
Bank on topic - The main opposition to the adoption of Linux is a lack of marketing (in Europe anyway) it gets a lot of column space in the computer press but to non techy types its still all gibberish.
Distros need to work on brand awareness... "You know, the one with the penguin" even if people dont care, they still need to know it exists.
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
aaditya@member.fsf.org
Being able to use your older machines as thin clients without worry of win 2000-2003-XP style obsolescence..priceless. This is the real value of Linux, the ability to create thin clients and scale to your needs, without the mandatory upgrades to hardware. The environmental savings are enormous as it can keep millions of old p1s and p2s functioning and save businesses billions. I go to the Government of British Columbia liquidations and see old p11 Dells and whatevers being sold cheap. They have all been made to be out of date and are just great as cheap Linux desktop thin clients. I use one myself. Cost me 100 canuck bucks. Runs great as a firewall, print server, etc. They even sell things like old Compact servers dirt cheap. An old prolient 4 processor with lots of ram, working for a couple hundred bucks. All of this is made possible by the MS upgrade madness. Small businesses can create viable small Linux systems with this hardware dirt cheap. Pare down the server and just use it right and the cost savings are enormous. As far as the huge cost of training staff to use Open Office or Star Office (if you want full Sun Java dev) that is bullshit. The migration to other office suites is easy for anybody who can use a word processor or spread sheet. If they insist that it is too difficult to use anything other than MS office, just start writing out a pink slip then watch how fast they learn!
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
If Linux or UNIX with Java does what you need today, why would you wait two release iterations and possibly several years for
Open Source is beating Windows in the space where it competes for same functionality at cheaper deployment and lifetime management costs. That is, lower capitalization costs on initial deployment, plus the added benefit of lower management costs across the lifetime of the deployment.
For example: there's no doubt that even commercial RISC UNIX is better secured and cheaper to manage in large deployments than Windows, just as there's no doubt that the original MacOS was cheaper to manage in small departmental deployments than Windows and the PC - yet Windows and the PC won out because of the lower capitalization costs associated with setup, plus the network effects that resulted as deployments increased across the macro economy. So, the higher management costs over the lifetime of Windows and the PC were trumped by the far cheaper initial capitalization costs associated with setting up an infrastructure from scratch; most of these actually evolved at the departmental level and weren't planned as such.
Open Source offers an even cheaper initial deployment, plus if you're big enough to hire competent staff and deploy in large numbers, it offers even cheaper management costs than Windows. This is a double win. But without the cheaper up front costs, Open Source would lose to Windows, or any other proprietary solution. It wouldn't 'get throught the back door', so to speak. This is JMO.
The rest of your post I largely agree with. I'm certainly not going to debate the value of the UNIX security model or its scalability compared to Windows, though I'm sure both of us could find examples of better secured (and now dead) OS's from the distant past which would trump 'NIX.
Cheers,
Maynard
Abiword or perhaps AbiWord but not ABIWord.
Abi is an abbreviated form of the spansish(?) word abierto meaning open.
It is unrelated to the common acronym ABI meaning Application Binary Inteface.
Abiword is pronounced as you would pronounce the English word Abbey, like what Monks at a monestary have.
Posting as AC,
no intention of losing Karma for this.
Let me start off by saying that I run gnu/linux exclusively. Also, let me state that because of the incredible snowball effect of the "buzz" on gnu/linux, because of the current economic situation in the US and other technology dependent nations, because of shotgun licensing by the Borg, because of other nations' jealousy and/or hatred of the US, and for many other reasons, gnu/linux is taking the world by storm. It just hasn't been as pronounced in the US yet, and because it is working from servers to desktops, it isn't in the faces of the commons yet.
Also, Gartner and other analysts, have their head in the sand. Especially the stock analysts. Because there will come a day in the next couple of years, when the Borg will no longer be able to juice the numbers of their latest quarter. And at that point, it will become at least partially clear to the larger shareholders, that Borg revenue and profits are decreasing, instead of increasing. And that profit margins are decreasing. The shotgun licensing will pump numbers higher for a handful of quarters, and then what? That is the day that Borg stock will implode.
Remember that stock analysts still had buy ratings on Enron all the way down to bankruptcy.
That being said, there is a lot of misinformation being spread on slashdot for this story. That is because the average slashdotter is misinformed on the actual situation on software audits.
Will the average slashdotter be subject to an OS audit while sitting in the basement running a p2p app?
No.
Who is normally subject to audits? Corporations. Not normally soho corps, but mid to large size corps. Those that are most likely to be running red hat's advanced server.
Is a corporation running Oracle? Then they are running red hat advanced server, not the download version.
Ever take a look at the licensing behind red hat advanced server? No? Then maybe it is time. Especially before slashdotters spread more misinformation.
Because last time I checked, if you run red hat advanced server, you are 1. subject to short notice audits. 2. are required to pay per server. 3. are subject to fines if the audit numbers don't jive. 4. prohibited from going to any outside source for your patches. Or sharing patches. Or fixes. Or maintaining any outside blog/board/whatever regarding support, even with employees of any other company. Or discussing support issues with any other company or outside consultant.
Most of the above was in the license for advanced server last time I looked. The part about outside support/patches/fixes I picked up in some posts by a couple of techs that were discussing advanced server, and after checking the part of the license they were referring to, it was clear to me as well.
So let's not spread misinformation unnecessarily. While the audit compliance costs was one that I touted as well in earlier (prior to finding out about advanced server's restrictive licensing) posts, it no longer is as big a selling point anymore. Because red hat is pushing advanced server so hard that they are even trashing their own download version to sell rhas. And as I stated earlier, you want Oracle on linux? Then it is rhas (or suse in europe) or nothing. Same for other enterprise apps. They are supporting rhas, not the download version, or other distros. Only the enterprise server versions of red hat or suse in europe (possibly even suse in the US, but red hat owns the market).
So stop misleading. red hat has audit compliance costs. Whether they are a member of the bsa or not, I couldn't tell you. But they have short notice audits, and penalties, ala bsa style.