Windows Cheaper When Studied by MSFT Analysts

richdun writes "Here is a study done by an independent research firm which claims that under certain circumstances, it is cheaper to develop applications and enterprise solutions for Windows than for Linux. They cite costs from more education, time developing, etc. Of course, the story is quick to state that the whole study was funded and commissioned by our favorite Redmond, WA based software giant. "

Comments

Taking aim at the server end.

[grub]

(from the article:)
The study compared applications built to run over the Internet on Microsoft's .NET platform to applications developed with J2EE, a development platform backed by Sun Microsystems Inc. favored by the Linux community.

That speaks volumes: the study is aiming at J2EE and Sun. Granted these are the "certain circumstances" mentioned but MS is taking direct aim at its diminishing server market share with this. They know the desktop is still pretty much a lock-in for the time being.

Here's a clue: don't trust studies. They are generally paid for by people with agendas.

Time Spent

[kannibal_klown]

While I agree with previous posts that Linux is cheaper than Windows in just about every respect, I'm glad that his article touches on something.

With the current development tools available for Windows, as well as all third-party utilities/db drivers/etc, development on Windows goes by much quicker.

I'm not talking about little apps that could be banged out as a perl script in a few minutes, but more robust applications that companies need internally.

However, this is just for the present. If/when more people adopt Linux as desktops then more people will learn how to develop for it and more/better tools will become available. Say what you will about Visual Studio, but the recent incarnations work exceptionally well, and they have a large user base. If we could see 1 or 2 similar development IDE's for linux that are HIGHLY ADOPTED (I know there are some nice ones out there, but the use-rate is still rather low), then things could change.

Re:Wait a minute...

[Anonymous Coward]

By accepting open ideals, linux-friendly companies tend to be more open and include more detail. We like detail, it means more information and reproducability. With enough information, we can make our own conclusions. Of course, some 'studies' do resort to petty name-calling, but there are good ones too. The key is to ignore /. editor comments and make up your own mind.

It's J2EE, not Linux

[consumer]

This article really has nothing to do with Linux. It's about J2EE vs. .NET. No surprise that J2EE is expensive. The best Java developers on Linux use much better tools than J2EE and EJBs. A good open source stack with Struts, Velocity, and Hibernate will beat the stuffing out of straight J2EE for productivity. Of course there is also the fact that lots of web development on Linux is done in much more productive languages, like Perl, Python, and PHP. Amazon and Yahoo (on FreeBSD) do it, so it's probably good enough for your lame little site too.

Re:They could be right.

[molarmass192]

Finally, it is quite obvious that stupid people find it easier to program in Windows. This is not true on linux. Linux requires knowing a lot of intricate details and knowledge of ...

Right, but this is irrelevant in Java. Also, Java suffers from history hangover. It had some growing pains but most of those have long since been corrected. Also, MS seems to have a penchant for comparing unoptimized Java code with highly optimized C# code, hardly unbiased. Finally, with Java 1.5 due out in early 2004, current comparisons between .NET and Java will all become dated. I'm not particularly worried about .NET but Microsoft appears to be particularly worried about Java.

Re:You can't beat free!

[brlancer]

This study is sponsored by Microsoft, so it's probably biased as hell, but a Linux system is never absolutely free for a corporation.

No, but most of the "costs" that are assigned to Linux presume an existing greater knowledge of Microsoft Windows; it never includes the money spent training these people to use Windows originally nor does it try to compare costs of complete training: how long does it take to get an admin for *nix and Windows (respectively) to go from 0 to 60?

Despite what people say about the "learning curve" of *nix, I believe most of that is due to breaking bad habits they learned in Windows. I picked up Unix exceptionally quickly, in part because I never knew Windows very well. So, if one were to remove the costs of Linux training that they have ignore WRT Windows training, the cost is significantly less. Realistically, the costs should be counted for both, not discounted for both...