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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).
Netcraft now confirms: Linux is dying...
I, for one, welcome our new 2003 server overlords.
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.
I was on the elevated the other day, and a guy next to me was reading a magazine in English, so I was peeking at him reading an article about VB.net. I lost interest until he turned the page to another article, but that was about .Net servers. I felt like asking him snidely if it was a .Net magazine or what, but it was too early to quip, so I just stayed quiet. Imagine my suprise when he finished the mag and closed it, revealing the Asia.Net cover!
Tears welled up...
Put identity in the browser.
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!
Well, since Sitefinder is running Linux, wouldn't Linux now be running an infinite number more sites than Windows Server 2003?
On the other hand, how many (desktop) Linux converts used to run Windows?
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
You don't leave a battlefield just because the enemy takes some ground.
Unless it's "Battlefield Earth." In that case just run.
Escape Pod Films: Sketch Comedy and Web Series
What the Microsoft spin doctors do not mention is the continuing market share loss to Apache overall.
When your boss told you to replace your Debian webserver with Win2k3 server, did you...
1[] Capitulate to the microwenie with pleasure.
2[] Change the ID strings and pocket the money.
3[] Install Win2k3 but leave Linux doing the real work (dynamic pages etc).
4[] Tell him to f**k off.
5[] Electrocte the boss with a waffle iron.
So... only 5% chose 1, although some may have done 2 or 3 instead - so call it 2%. Me? My boss knows better than to tell me to install Win2k3 - the previous electrical burn marks attest to that.
Beep beep.
So, there are five new Windows 2003 servers, one of which used to run linux?
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
This doesn't look good for Linux, in my opinion. Maybe we should all start to think about jumping ship?
Newsflash: I use linux because I like linux. I like the way it organizes things, and I like compiling my own programs. Its my primary desktop, not running on some rackmounted datacenter box. 2k3 doesn't help me. Oh and I'm a broke ex-university student so unless someone is going to give me enough to cover a copy of 2k3, I'm not going to run it.
The last two lines of this submission are nothing but flamebait and add nothing to the story. At least he said it was his opinion.
IMHO, and for someone who has been running Windows 2003 server beta on a dev workstation for the last 9 months, I been extremely happy with it.
I have got tons of tools/utils that could bring an XP box to its knees and outright destroy the damn thing. 2003 server has so far been gracefully handling the pressure with no blue screens till last week.
Last week, I came across from first core dump when I was playing around with the Cisco VPN tool and it core dumped (it was due to bad drivers, couldnt find native ones) giving a BAD_POOL_CALLER error a bunch of times.
I thought Xp was way decent than the shitty 98SE and the unbelievably piece of crap ME, but 2003 server has proved that theres a lot of room for improvement. I think they still have a long way to go to capture the server market.
Disclaimer : I have been running a server operating system on a workstation, I admit. Theres guides available to tune the OS to make it run as a workstation and for gaming.
Also, Microsoft has finally shipped an OS with most of its services disabled (including sound) rather than running in to a "gotcha" moment down the line.
Rapid Nirvana
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
5% of What?
The netcraft web survey shows that there are about 42 million domains, 28 million of which are hosted on Apache systems, 10 million on Windows.
Of that 42 million, 325 thousand are now running Windows 2003. Of that 325 thousand, 5% were running Linux, or about 16 thousand. Now that 16 thousand actually accounts for a transition to Windows 2003 for 1 out of every 2,000 Apache domains.
What is doesn't show is what the overall change in Windows vs Apache is - in the same time frame that Windows 2003 was growing to 385,000 sites, Windows overall actually lost 3% domain share to Apache, or 1.2 million domains. So the transition of ex Apache sites to Server 2003 is equal to about 1% of the switch away from Windows to Apache that occurred during this same time period.
On a global basis Windows is losing market share to Apache based web serving at a rate 100 times greater than this supposed switch from Linux to Windows 2003.
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
...100% of web servers run Apache on Linux, thanks to VeriSign's DNS wildcard being hosted on Apache/Linux.
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
If you ever worked at an ISP that hosted both Windows ASP/Front Page sites and UNIX PHP/CGI/DreamWeaver sites you know first hand how much of a royal pain in the ass managing the Windows sites is. Windows accounted for only 10% or so of our hosted sites but consumed about 65% of our support budget. It's simply too hard or even outright impossible to automate administrative tasks.
I've heard from several sources that Windows 2003 makes this *much* easier, so it's very possible that the major hosting companies that have to deal with all of these ASP/Front Page sites that once moved as many sites as possible to a Linux platform to cut their costs have moved back now that they have Windows 2003.
And it only took Microsoft 6 years to start addressing this market, and of all of the people who said Windows 2003 was way better, they still have a lot of complaints.
> 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>
Must've been all those commercials with the office execs line dancing, because supposedly they "saved" money with 2003. Although I do think the second part of their slogan is correct: "...with less." Anyone got a better replacement for the "Do more" part?
I've had exactly the opposite experience. Once I got rid of all MS servers and moved to Debian, life has been, comparatively, a breeze. I'll take apt-get over hfnetcheck any day! And in comparison, Linux is way, way, way simpler than Windows. Oh, yeah -- and have fun running around to every server in you site to do updates because Windows doesn't support remote admin!
The worst thing that microsoft has done for our industry is to breed a whole generation of check-box programmers and admins -- if they can't tick off some checkbox to perform a task, they don't want to be bothered! What they don't realize is that you can only get 90% of the way there, then you're stuck.
MS has been running this Try Windows Server 2003 FREE for 6 months. Those stats probably reflect people using the free trial. Linux has always been free. The stats will be very different in 6 months. Some will actually kepp Windows Server 2003, some will crack it and keep it, but hopefully, most will return to Linux. Just my 2 bits.
If it can go wrong it wnetscape: Segmentation Fault, Core dumped
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
The original Pentium II was code-named "Klamath". It ran at a paltry 66 MHz bus speed and ranged from 233MHz to 300MHz. In 1998, Intel did some slight re-working of the processor and released "Deschutes". They used a 0.25 micron design technology for this one, and allowed a 100MHz system bus. The L2 cache was still separate from the actual processor core and still ran at only half speed. They would not rectify this issue until the release of the Celeron A and Pentium III. Deschutes ran from 333MHz to up to 450 MHz.
From A CPU History. Can't find anything decent on Intel's page.
You sure you're not using a K-6(-2)? Because unless Intel decided to arbitrarily cut their clockspeeds by half, they never released a 200Mhz Pentium 2. I thought this was common knowledge, just as the highest end Pentium 1 was 233Mhz. *shrug* Who knows, maybe it's a regional thing, like hot grits.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
The 5% is coming from business gained by running Microsoft advertisements on slashdot.
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
I say this constantly and get modded down for it because I'm not supposed to criticize a "volunteer effort." That attitude right there is problem #1. I don't care if it's a volunteer effort, and neither do most users. We just care about what's sitting in front of us on our screen, the net output.
My point all along has been that people really need to get out of this hobbyist volunteer mindset and realize it's time to create actual results. There's no need to become corporate-minded slaves, but I do wish people would be more professional about things, from project names to interfaces to--and this is the major one--the ridiculous mindset, which you must admit, Slashdot contributes to on a daily basis (usually through "Microsoft hole" articles, when meanwhile my sig shows that distros have more exploits per month anyway...it's all ridiculous).
Professional people admit faults and correct them. We still have some of the same Linux desktop problems as we had five years ago, and people are still complaining about them. Heck, real professional people would zero in on problems before the users even notices them. Professional communities have friendly and courteous tech support, newsgroups, and so on. They have to, because it's all about the customer, i.e., the user. Linux has zealots, trolls, and fanboys. It's not all about the user when it comes to Linux. Mostly, it seems to be about adding enough cool features to be able to take great-looking screenshots for the back of distro boxes, but when you actually grab the mouse to use the thing, it is a disappointing experience (I still remember when GNOME under Red Hat 9 had a stuck taskbar that wouldn't stop moving around with the mouse, and when all else failed and I killed X, of course, that screwed up the boot sequence for some reason...and it was a completely stock install!).
I'm tired of Linux being a hobby OS. Let's face it, outside of the server market (where it is still considered an "alternative OS" despite the fact it has the slight majority), Linux is a hobby OS. The desktop environments are just attempts to SIMULATE a desktop. They don't feel like real, seamless, responsive desktops, but they are written to LOOK like real, responsive desktops, so that people can pretend that they're cool because they use Linux in that way. I wish someone would come out with something so slick and professional that people would have no choice but to switch because of its uber-coolness and usability. This, of course, would call for a complete rewrite, because it would demand things like hardware acceleration, a sane programming API, and so on. I won't hold my breath for it, though. As a matter of fact, the only real uber-cool thing I've seen is Slicker. Its card idea is unique and innovative. Too bad it's tied in with the godawful KDE, but maybe in another few years we'll see things really shine.
But I know that won't happen because people are too busy making yet another toolkit for X or another extension or another weird project with a weird name written all in lower-case on Sourceforge. Meanwhile, in August of 2005, Longhorn is due out, with hardware acceleration, vector-scaled widgets for resolution-independent resizing, a yet-to-be-revealed photorealistic user interface, and even the ability to add and remove RAM without rebooting. I'm sorry, but I don't see all that coming in two years, because two years ago I thought we'd have stuff like that, and two years before that, and so on. It just never comes. And if you request it and wish for it, you get flamed because you're not "doing it yourself." Sometimes it's really easy to despise this community because they refuse to listen unless you're some hero programmer like Linus or Stallman. If you're a user or designer, forget it.
"Sufferin' succotash."
This really just points to the continued commoditization of software infrastructure. As one commenter points out. Microsoft is letting people run a free trial of Windows Server 2003 for six months.
To actually run Linux in an organization actually costs money. You can use the price of support contracts as a proxy to figure out average costs.
Given the availability of sofware that runs across the two platforms (apache, tomcat, open office) and the use of open file formats available on either, at some point your choice between the two just becomes a question of costs.
Sounds like Microsoft may be bringing their offerings down near enough to the commodity price point that people do not perceive a difference.
I seems that alot of people would love to understand why people arnt moving in the linux direction. While I personally think linux is great and all i just cant switch over the company i work for to linux at the moment. It has NOTHING to do with ease of use. I could easily configure linux to be easy to use. I do all the installs and config not the actual user.
The reason is that i just cant get the commercial software i need for Linux. For example AutoCad, our accounts system.
It would be nice to be running on linux, for stability etc. However the continuing problem is that our company is developing custom software for use only in house, on windows platforms. We cant afford to have users running two platforms. This will of course increase our reliance on MS.
I think the linux community needs to focus on making applications easy to port. And perhaps encourage 3rd party commercial software. I think the recources of open source programmers would be better used creating NEW and inivative products rather than making copies of existing software.
It is possible that there will be less reason to switch to linux in the future as MS is definatly getting their act together with stability etc. For example time spent doing general maintenance etc, would now be about one quater since moving from a win98 to XP enviroment. (our company did not suffer from any of the recent virus issues either). Moving to win2003 is a very real prospect for us in the coming months, perhaps even dumping our linux mail/file servers.
Well thats just our real reason for sticking with MS at this stage. I hope that in the future our company will be operating exclusivly on linux. But this really seems to depends on weather the community embraces 3rd party developers or scares them away because they, heaven forbid, are trying to make money.
Cuz I can't imagine him posting this obvious bit of trollbait. Neil Stephenson should be more (in)famous for a paper he did called "In the Beginning was the Command Line", which does a better job of explaining the social factors driving the contemporary O/S "Religious Wars" than anything else I have ever seen. Go read it and and come back with a clear head. As for "jumping ship", well, I think I mentioned trollbait...
Death Dances Only With The Living
Switching to Linux is Hard(TM)....
It's kind of difficult to explain why, but it has something to do with the documentation being difficult to use.
There is plenty of Linux documentation, man pages, HowTos, and all kinds of other stuff in newsgroups/forum postings.
But often times, it is very difficult to find a simple, step-by-step instruction list to accomplish a task that I know LOTS of other people have done.
For example-----I do not know how to make my own initrd. I run Suse 8.2, and wanted to test the 2.6.0-test5 kernel. Couldn't get it installed properly. I was running Grub, and the make install script was not configuring Grub correctly. For some reason, the mkinitrd script was not producing the right file either (quite possibly I was not using it correctly).
All sorts of little issues like this, that thousands of you power users out there have been able to do correctly, I have not be able to get around, since the documentation is often indicipherable.
Maybe I'm an idiot, but I spent hours, and hours, looking through man pages and searching on google. I didn't bother posting to a newsgroup, instead, I gave up, and started using Lilo.
2.6 couldn't find my root filesystem. Don't know why (probably mis-configured my initrd). Don't care. 6 hours invested? Better off reverting to 2.4.
I have similar problems---My fonts in mozilla are not anti-aliased properly, and I can't figure out why. I've configured it the same exact way as I did in Mandrake, but the fonts are butt ugly.
All sorts of other minor, nagging issues too. I won't go into them now, but it pisses me off the way forum posts will refer to man pages which refer to man pages which refer to 'common' knowledge, which I'll have to google for, and which won't apply to my distribution.
Perhaps, what needs to happen is more and better contextual help. Maybe an interactive --help switch in most programs? Or just redesigning man pages---This is a project that I would definitely love to participate in, but I just don't have the knowledge---If other people were willing to contribute suggestions, I would love to help organize an 'alternative' comprehensive man page set.
Not that I'm going to switch to Windows anytime soon---I only use Windows 2000 for eve-online, 'cause WineX doesn't support directx 9 yet, and i'm an addict (savage battle for newerth is native linux, though).
I just will have to keep fighting the nagging issues (easier than fighting the giagantic issues that Windows has (more sort of inconsistency and instability problems))
Cheers,
WhiteWolf
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
- The version you're running is more than five weeks old! Upgrade!
- You wouldn't have this problem if you were doing everything exactly like I do it.
- It's open source. Get hacking!
All perfectly valid, yet equivalent to "Go away".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!
Now I will admit that I still have 2 Linux boxes I host client's web sites on, but most of my boxes now either run FreeBSD or OpenBSD and I have an iBook as my main computer.
Why? It's been my humble opinion that Linux has been a bit of a bastard child. Is it a desktop OS, or a server OS? Its flexablity is its greatest strength and its achellies heel at the same time. With no standards between distros on simple things, like the path to PERL, can cause headaches for software developers. I once work on a project where we had to code three different versions of an app, one for RH, another for Mandrake, and one for Debian. After that expirance, I got fed up with the Linux Platform about the same time as Mac OS X.1 came out.
FreeBSD was/is designed as a server OS first, and if you want to toy with it, it can also make an effective workstation. However this is where Mac OS comes into play: There are companies that are publishing commercial software for the platform. So I can interface wtih 90% of the web design/graphics world that use Photoshop, dreamweaver, QuarkXpress, and other such programs where as due to the pain in the ass Linux is to port across distros, commerical companies WON'T port their products. I will even admit to having MS Office, and I actully LIKE it on mac. It works wonderfully.
While the OSS community has developed some kick ass apps, like the ERP module OSSuite (NOLA I think is the sourceforge project) is what I use to keep track of our business's accounting needs including payroll, W-2's, inventory, etc., there is still a vast void of software needs outthere. GIMP is certianly not a photoshop killer. Back in the days of PS 4 and 5, GIMP looked like it was on the track to possible create a much better product, but as now it seems as though GIMP has made very few improvements over the last two years and it still takes a lot more time and effort to get the same results as Photoshop. Photoshop 7 now blows GIMP away in my book.
The two Linux servers I have still are Sun Cobalt Raq servers and I still use them because of the ease of maintance, but all my ecommerce sites are on FreeBSD machines and I have had very little problems with these boxes. Hell two are still running FreeBSD 3.4 and had uptimes of like 250 days until I patched OpenSSH and several other updates two weeks ago.
RH and SuSE are getting closer to getting Linux from Geekdom to mainstream as SuSE is large in Europe. I used it when I studied over there for semester as the school had a windows lab and a linux lab, but that is mainly a result of GUI installers and KDE & GNOME.
At our new business, I have FreeBSD on both of the terminals (we inheirted two PIII 700 Dells & 3 PIII 550 Gateway's when we bought the business) and instead of paying $2500 for four new computers, I slaped FreeBSD 5 with KDE on there, install mozilla and linked them to the office server which is configured as a local webserver with no outside pipeline and we use OsCommerce as our POS system.
Now this article is a bit trollish about jumping ship. I stats and as Mark Twain wrote, "Lies, Damn Lies, and Stats". Approach with caution. OSS software is starting to get looked at, I work as a independant tech consultant, and Linux gets the press thanks to RH and SuSE providing what Linux needs to get into main stream: commericalization. There is a number you can call for support, if you need it.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
*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.
Over at some dedicated server providers I see that linux servers with the same hardware as windows server cost more then the windows version. I just sat there wondering how the hell can windows software be cheaper then free software.
Note that these servers are unmanaged so the provider has no personnel costs related to that at all.
Hmmm... Pie...
Have you quit using Linux yet?
- Yes
- No
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
I don't run GNU/linux because I'm lazy.
I love the politics and ideas behind the free software movement, but can be arsed to put my deeds where my heart lays.I enjoy not having to think what I do, that is why MS thinks for me.
Linux is at a disavantage becuse people act like herds. Or lemmings.Choice is intimidating. Give me back my fetal position inducing, womb-like user interface.
Another issue is that I am messy with controling my software and have not hear about Knoppix.
I am a Windows pirate, I am not a programmer, the Linux community should devote themselves to make Linux as niche as possible so neither your mom or the Man use the software.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.