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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
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
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.
"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.
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.
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?
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/
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
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
Female Prison Rape in NY
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.
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.
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.
- Remote Desktop/Terminal Services (you don't even need a RD client, just a browser, which nearly every modern machine has, unlike ssh
.NET development tools, to quickly code up anything you need that can't be covered by the above.
.Net is hardly quick to learn or code in. It's a bloated OOP framework in the Java tradition. Fine for applications, sux for writing sysadmin tools.
Bzzt. Every modern Linux machine comes with ssh.
- VBScript (horrid, but gets the job done most of the time)
VBScript compared to perl/bash etc.? lol.
- WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation, do damn near anything remotely, but be sure to properly secure your network)
Compared to UNIX instrumentation tools like SNMP? lol x2.
- The MMC tools (ADUC, etc etc), which fully operate remotely, as well.
MMC tools vs. UNIX remote admin ? hahaha
- The
$1000 IDE license for the above vs what you get for free in Linux? You don't have a clue as to what you are talking about. And
I really love watching Windows admins paging through dialog boxes looking for incorrect settings. It's hilarious.
Try remote admining your Windows box from a PDA on a train on your way to work, fella.
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."
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.
- 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.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
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.
-
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.
user (555410) calling user (19622) a noob. Yeah.... That's why I love Slashdot!
Put identity in the browser.
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
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.