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Windows 2003 takes 5% away from Linux
ZuperDee writes "According to Netcraft, the number of Windows 2003 servers has doubled since July, and 5% were running Linux before, which is consistent with the trends they've been observing for some time. This doesn't look good for Linux, in my opinion. Maybe we should all start to think about jumping ship?"
Jump ship? Why jump ship? Because others have done so? If I decide to jump off a cliff and fall to my microsoft death will you follow just because you can? Jeez, whats up with people these days.
The article heading is rather misleading. It's not like 5% of all Linux servers converted to Windows Server 2003, or 5% of all servers in the world suddenly run Windows Server 2003. No, of all new Windows Server 2003 installations (which still isn't that many), five percent used to run Linux. It is definitely not time to "think about jumping ship" yet...
/* Steinar */
(This comment is of course GPLed.)
IMHO, if these viruses keep coming around, one is BOUND to attack 2003 servers. Then the 5%'ll feel bad and then revert back.
It's only a matter of time (and trial and error).
Perhaps some Linux servers were deployed which were destined to be replaced once Win2003 was released, like as an interim measure. Personally, I think anybody running a website on anything other than Apache on some *nix like OS should be shot. IIS... ugh .
Like tinyurl, but one letter less! http://qurl.co.uk/
"Perhaps we should all think about jumping ship", eh?
What bollocks. Linux's worth as a server is not judged by its popularity, or its market share. It is, however, judged by how well it performs as a web server, and as a matter of fact it performs very well.
If you're happy and you know it read my blog
And they're replacing the old. No big deal. This is one of the same reasons that Linux got big into the market. Big claims about cost savings, more with less, etc.
If MS new server is a good product, then it should keep the 5% and grow. If it doesn't live up to the hype (replacing 200 servers with 20, saving millions of dollars per annum), its marketshare will dissappear. Initial cost doesn't figure entirely into this either. The software costs for some customers have been subsidised by Bill, and the hardware costs for the upgrades are both minimal, and bugetted because some equipment is becoming EOL'ed by companies three-year plans.
Its like a new toy, Every new OS gets to be played around with a bit. We have a few 2000/nt4 boxes that are in production that we are slowly moving to 2003. While the move is going on (2 months per box) that means we have a 2003 server and a nt4/2000 server doin the same thing. Lets see what the numbers state after the rollout cycles are complete, and lets not jump to any conclusions (like jumping ship).
Besides if SCO didnt convince you to jump ship yet (we cant afford 700$ per copy can you?) then your a lifer!
Hey SCO I guess that means im using the WaReZ copy of linux!
What the Microsoft spin doctors do not mention is the continuing market share loss to Apache overall.
To extrapolate anything from 185K installs is silly.
Further, the opposite statistic should be considered...the number of Win 98, Win NT, Win 2000, and Win XP boxes being converted to Linux. I'm pretty sure the rate will end up much higher than 5%. ;-) And that will be applied to the hundreds of millions of existing machines out there.
Certainly not time to cut and run, Taco. :-P
(Maybe I should set my house on fire today...nah.)
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Of all those upgrading to windows 2003, 5% previously used linux. So what?
Compare that to all those upgrading _to_ linux, and look how many of those were previously running other versions of windows? It could easily by a lot more than 5%.
This all looks like a pretty desperate attempt to discredit linux and make win 2003 look more popular than it really is.
Oh, and it's old news anyway.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
Windows 2003 does so badly that it runs only about 0.4% of webservers half a year after release.
Overall IIS loses about 0.2%/month to other webservers.
And now 8500 domains (= 0.002% !) throughout about half a year (= 0.0003%/month) switch from Linux to Windows and people start to get wet their pants.
And then the FUD gets modded as insightful...
This is similar to newpapers in China quoting articles from the Onion as the truth.
Must be attributable to hangovers!
Whoah there... I dislike MS quite a bit, but Win2k3 is pretty impressive. For almost a year now I have been testing a beta version in my lab. The box is a lowly PII-200 with 256MB RAM and runs Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, PPTP,and IIS very well. I have been nothing but pleased with it, to my shock and horror. For MS this is a *major* accomplishment.
I recently attended a technology conference with my CEO. We're a typical medium-sized company, running one mainframe (VMS), some IBM stuff, and quite a few Windows servers. We're in the financial services industry.
My CEO has known for a long time that I'm an Open Source advocate, and he expresses interest in getting away from Microsoft. He enjoys seeing what I can do with Linux and older hardware that would otherwise be mothballed, and he even consented to purchasing Redhat ES 2.1 at full fare recently. He has been amazed at the uptimes achieved on "worn out" servers running various flavors of Linux.
At the conference, our core processing company briefly touched on Open Source software and the remote possibility that they might, one day, port their software to, say, Linux. At lunch that day, I listened closely as various CEO's, CIO's, and other higher-ups discussed this possibility. Overall, I am sad to say that the overwhelming reaction was one of disbelief and/or fear. I saw clearly that Linux is still considered by many, if not most executives, to be unproven and unsupported technology. The same people who speak disparagingly of the Microsoft monopoly and the high cost of proprietary software still would rather pay ransom than go into uncharted waters. Those having a more technical understanding were quick to point out that Linux still does not scale as true enterprise-OSes are expected to. These people expressed the view that, while such Open Source software as Linux and MySQL were "interesting" and "have potential," no one was remotely interested in seeing their core software ported to a non-proprietary operating system.
I came away feeling a little depressed, but I resolved to continue, one server at a time, showing my CEO what Linux, Apache, PHP, Open Office, etc., can do and ARE already doing. Those of us who advise executives MUST continue with this kind of approach if we want to see better software running on our core servers.
It's only funny until someone gets hurt. Then, it's hilarious.
I don't use Linux because it's an unneccessary pain in the ass to do things with it. I use Win2K Pro. However, all the software running the server components are Open Source (Apache, GuildFTPd) or just well respected freeware like Mercury Mail.
Using Apache just demonstrates what a great product Apache is. It has nothing to do with Linux. I'm not going to abandon the simplicity and stability of Win2K just because Apache can faithfully serve up HTTP requests.
Nobody is debating that IIS is feature bloated hacker friendly piece of garbage. But that has nothing to do with Windows.
I have better things to do with my time (like actually building up the web-site) than dicking around with an OS.
The high quality of one open source product has zero to do with the quality of another.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
> I don't use Linux because it's an unneccessary pain in the ass to do things with it.
Maybe this would be a good time to get specific about what's hard to do on Linux when you're using it for your Web server.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
A piddlingly small percentage of the even more pathetic percentage of sites that chose to try .Not ... er, I mean 2003 Server, we previously using Linux. The meat of the story (such as it is) is that so few sites are even bothering to try 2003 Server.
And I wouldn't be surprised if the story behind the switches from Linux to .Not are mostly cases where a company had their site done by a hosting service (who, sensibly, used Linux) that had grown enough that some twit manager decided they should bring their web presence "in house". Their internal IS people only know Windows, so their obvious choice was 2003 Server (it being perhaps the least bad of the Microsoft stable of shite).
<sigh>
The bias on this site is amazing... and so, so stupid.
A single story about a single company moving from Windows to Linux warrants a few hundred messages in the vein of "This is it, Windows is dying, Linux is king" but a story that goes the other way is immediately "Poor journalism", "The figures are wrong", "It's troll bait".
It's this lack of attention to THE REAL WORLD that has already doomed Linux to a niche market a la Mac.
God's sakes... you people are pathetic.
Never played with RDC or MMC have you?
Windows doesn't support secure remote shells (Out of the box), but it certainly has remote admin capabilities. In some ways (RDC especially) they are better than anything Linux has, in others (MMC), I'll take SSH and vi instead.
"You've got an invalid haircut" -Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
On both Netcraft and /. the news is presented as a loss for Linux. Anyone with any statistics knowledge and most without will recognize that the absolute numbers are insignificant, plain and simple.
Poor journalism that should never have made it's way to Slashdot.
That the 'News' is 4 weeks old (or 8 if you count the first time Netcraft ran it) adds insult to injury - this thing is not newsworthy - it's not even news at all.
I'm in a Unix state of mind.
but I would have thought that you could have added something to the debate since you are the target audience for such an "Ask Slashdot" question.
For myself. Before I was recently retrenched, at work I worked on a Win2K box, with X sessions to a Redhat server and a Linux test machine. The Win2K was because the mail network used Lotus Notes, marrying Linux and the Notes stuff just didn't work. I would guess for many people it is the groupware that keeps them on Windows, I would once have also said Office but I find that OOo is now pretty good ... well good enough for developers.
At home I have a box running a Win2K partition and a RH9 partition. I use Win2K for games (mostly BF42) and one other closed software proggy that I occasionally use to fit in with other people. On the desktop for me Win2K is a secondary system.
Bitter and proud of it.
they get tagged with serveral Win2003 viruses.
If that doesn't do it they'll sober up when they realize the total extra cost of re-buying Office and all the other software they used on XP or W2K or Win9X but won't run on Win2003. Oh, and the new client side licenses for their existing WinXXX. They'll especially love those naggling little DRM micropayments that suddenly appear in their mail box each month. Bill said he was movng toward the subscription model. He meant it.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Why aren't I switching to Linux? Perhaps because it's virtually unusable.
I am like many people, I don't want to have to learn (too) much to use my computer. I certainly don't want to have to fight with my computer.
Confusing interfaces, appalling (or nonexistant) help, lack of constistancy and lack of (real, not confusing) support are some of the reasons that I don't switch.
Linux is not about mainstream acceptance, it's about geek pride - which is why, in it's current form it will never go anywhere other than servers and geek machines.
*I* am in business. I balance what the customer wants against security against their budget against their needs. I can usually talk someone out of using old ass redhat/plesk and switching to either my homegrown FreeBSD/webmin solution that is easy as hell to keep secure or my Gentoo/webmin solution that is easy as hell to keep secure. I offer them a support contract and I keep the machines up to date and patched for a tiny fee monthly. Some customers are SICK of linux/apache because they aren't smart enough to know how to update it, and have no desire to pay someone to do it. They just want it gone. They DEMAND a Microsoft solution because it's what they got rid of in the first place and they miss it. That's when I bring up Windows 2003 Server Web Edition and I mention it's 400 bucks with unlimited license. I bring up the fact that if they are a commercial webhosting provider, they will not be able to get nearly as many customers per machine as they used too. But most of the people in this category aren't. They usually have a single T, and someone thought it would be a great idea to run their own website off of it. Sometimes it's a consortium of business people that are all owned by the same parent company that need something to server about 200 unique domains. Once again, if it simply MUST be Microsoft, it fits the bill nicely here also. I'm sorry, but the price is decent, the product isn't that bad (probably because it's the most UNIXlike Windows to date) and the performance, while still nowhere near *NIXville, isn't too bad either if you take the time to tune it and pick your hardware carefully. The most important thing from my perspective is I offer NO SUPPORT for it so once I set it up I don't have to care anymore. Seriously though. If it simpley HAS to be Microsoft, and it almost never does, you can't beat the licensing and pricing with this particular edition.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
Linux has achieved tremendous actual results already. Your complaint is that these actual results are not the actual results you're looking for.
Well, I'm sorry, but Linux can't be everything to everybody at all times. I use Linux as my primary desktop and server OS, but unlike you I am not under any delusions that Linux will ever stop being a hobby OS. It is largely written by hobbyists, after all.
This so-called hobby OS of yours still beats windows hands down in areas like multiple virtual desktop support and basic features like including a C compiler. Even the third party virtual desktop managers available for windows (e.g. nvidia deskview, winxp powertoys) have much poorer performance than GNOME and KDE because of the limitations of the windows frame manager API.
That attitude right there is problem #1. I don't care if it's a volunteer effort, and neither do most users.
Frankly, I don't care about your attitude either. Volunteers write software for themselves. They don't write for other people. Let's suppose hypothetically for a moment that the volunteer community were to drop all of their work and concentrate on satisfying your expectations. What tangible benefit would that bring the volunteer community? Answer: nothing. In all likelihood the result would be worse than what we have now, because the motivation is just not there when you're scratching someone else's itch instead of your own.
We just care about what's sitting in front of us on our screen, the net output.
That, my friend, is exactly why volunteers write for their own sake instead of your sake. We're just as selfish as you. We want software that fits our needs, not your needs.
You may try to argue with me on the grounds that Linux somehow "needs" non-developer users like you in order to obtain a sustainable userbase, but what you don't understand is that Linux is not like other commercial operating systems. Because Linux is so volunteer driven, it does not need a large userbase or commercial support in order to thrive in its niche role. The fact that a broader audience might find Linux useful is certainly a nice bonus, but it is not so essential to platform survival that we should sacrifice the core hobbyist nature of Linux to attain it.