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InformationWeek On Windows-Linux Interoperability
prostoalex writes "InformationWeek magazine has a lengthy article about the issues that enterprises face when vying for Linux+Windows interoperability, as most of the corporate infrastructures are seldom monocultural. What's also interesting is the InformationWeek surveys of the IT professionals. The following questions are asked and the responses to them are nicely graphed: 1) Reasons for choosing Windows, 2) Reasons for choosing Linux, 3) Top Windows concerns, 4) Top Linux concerns, 5) Top interoperability issues."
How can people say BSD is dying when it has a mascot like this?! Linux needs to get its act together if it's going to compete with the kind of hot chicks and gorgeous babes that BSD has to offer!
You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. Would you buy software from them? I don't think so!You Linux groupies need to find some sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. I mean are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?!
With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you will have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin! Don't you wish you could get one of these? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!
Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!
I believe the primary issue in Linux+Windows interoperabiltiy is Windows operability, actually.
This side up.
They would port Office, etc. to Linux.
Peace and love, y'all
One of the most interesting things about the article is that when they surveyed on the interoperability issue.. MS scored dang low... geez surprise.. and also Linux/oss projects scored fairly high..
Also, InformationWeek did a good job of presenting the results in a professional manner... hey helps oss's cause.. especially when I show this stuff to my manager.
One of the biggest issues, however, is not necessarily intra-office compatibility, but inter-office compatibility. If you're sending out Word documents and Powerpoint presentations to a company who only uses Linux it causes some problems.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
According to the graphs in this article, security is the #3 reason people use Linux, behind cost and reliability. For people purchasing Microsoft stuff, even "Other" scores higher than security, which came in dead last.
I guess we should be glad that most people are apparently not falling for their "Trustworthy Computing" horseshit. The numbers in this poll show that this summer of worm after virus after worm after virus has really put Microsoft under a cloud. It will probably take them at least five years to even begin to win back security mindshare, and that's assuming there's not another SQL Slammer or Blaster waiting to happen in that time.
~Philly
I remember reading in Byte magazine years ago a quote from microsoft that went something like this.
"As soon as a Unix get over 1,000,000 seats, we will port Office over to it"
"Keep your friends close and your enemies closer." This is an old saying everyone is familiar with. I would be more concerned if/when they openly embraced Linux as opposed to them openly denouncing it. I do not look forward to the day when someone says to me, "Have you the new Windows? It now runs Linux!" Just my .02
"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy - Benjamin Franklin"
The price of Microsoft's newest version of Windows, released last week, is aimed squarely at Linux. With Small Business Server 2003, Microsoft knocked 60% off the price of its previous Small Business Server, introducing a standard edition for only $599, right between Red Hat's $349 basic edition (software only) and $799 standard edition (software plus phone support).
With RedHat wouldn't you just have to buy one copy of their standard edition software and be able to install it on multiple servers? Would this be a breach of their license? In any case this would be a definite no-no with Microsoft...
Will Longhorn have a Linux sub-system that will allow it to run all XP apps as well as all Linux apps with a built-in X server? That will make it just like the Mac? Hmmm... Anybody else think Longhorn delay is just a bit too much? Wouldn't that violate the GPL?
+2
Interoperabilty needs help from both sides. Both involved parties must decide on a standard then write software to adhere to it.
eg. all mp3 players play the same mp3s. One mp3 can play on all players because of the standard.
In order to sell an mp3 player it either has to have better features that the standard implements or have more human=friendly features eg. its smaller, better looking etc.
Here microsoft coes out with a system. Then the OSS teams try to reverse engineer it and create a compatable system. Then microsoft changes it.
Therein lies the problem. Microsoft is not trying to interoperate. OSS is trying to be compatible. They are always following, and not creating. Mainly because they don't have a market base to force products onto to get a lead.
OSS needs a killer-app style product/system/something to get the lead, so that microsoft will have to try to be compatible.
True interoperability cannot happen without support from bothsides. OSS just needs to make microsoft want to help. Easier said than done.
The second point, accountability, is where managers, in my experience get concerned. While it was great that the company didn't get mugged on licenses, the learning curve for the admins is relatively steep compared to Monopolized Systems that are managed at the crayon level.
Businesses want to know that, in the event of the bus flattening the admin, they can get a replacement, and not here some line like "uhh, I'm a vi user, and my predecessor, apparently an Emacs LISP fetishist, (ran (the (whole (network (with {these (crazy (macros))))))))".
IANAT. In fact, I've reached a state of total agnosticism about platforms, languages, and licenses as a result of
Ulitately, I hope the market does, too, in favor of what really matters: standards.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
IMO If Microsoft really wanted to be Linux Friendly
they would port Visual Basic to Linux (not that I am a Visual Basic fan).
Someone else will eventually do this.
Let the flames begin.
They list 'Management tools could be better' as a problem with linux. What, do the admins not like vi? (or emacs)
Here's my response to some of the linux 'problems':
Lack of an integrated software environment- What is that supposed to mean? Does it mean that I can choose what stuff I want to use? With MS, there's one choice. With linux, there's multiple choices for software to use. I don't quite get what they're saying with this one. If someone knows, then I'd like to understand better.
Lack of a clear roadmap- Well, the idea with linux is to make it more stable, faster, and more secure (not necessarily in that order). What more of a 'product map' do you want? MS isn't going to come up with the next killer app of the internet. All of the other big applications have come out of open-source groups.
Accountability if problems arise- This means that the top IT person wants some one else to take the blame if something bad happens. Everyone knows MS stuff doesn't work perfectly, so if it screws up, it's not the admin's fault. With linux, if it screws up, most people (correctly) blame the admin.
I bet a lot of problems come up becaue when a company switches from windows to linux, the admins expect it to work the same, which couldn't be farther from the truth. Linux uses different programs, and often times, the best way to configure it is vi and a man page or two. With windows, it's all point-and-click.
Just my 0.02
Forgive the gramatical errors, it's been one of thos days. :)
"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy - Benjamin Franklin"
Farmers Insurance agents were given a free Dell with windows 2000 and Office XP. Many of my agents want to be able to use exchange with outlook and linux has yet to give me a workable clone of exchange that works with outlook.
Yes, Ive tried suse slox and ive tried the outlook connector -- but when an address book sorts by company and creates a bunch of blank entries for an entry with no company -- it does not work.
If someones could get on the ball in that arena, I would think a few more people would be switching over.
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
I brought the various graphs up in different windows for side-by-side comparison, and at first missed something interesting -- the scale on the graphs is different. For example, the "Linux Concerns" graph goes from 0-40%, while the "Windows Worries" one goes all the way up to 80%.
A quick visual comparison makes it seem that people are as worried about "Lack of a complete and fully integrated software environment" and "Accountability if problems arise" on Linux as they are about the top MS Windows issues, "Software quality or vulnerabilities" and "Cost of ownership is too high". Not so -- in fact, the top concerns with Linux are down near the middle of the MS Windows scale.
I have one big concern with Open Source. Most of the applications existing were mostly programmed by volunteers who have a different work in real time. They often come home, sit down for a few hours and hack around their program and as soon as they get bored the software is not being maintained anymore. Or the software lacks usability or quality from professional programs offered e.g. on Windows. There are a lot of 'dead' software floating around on the net where people lost interest, there are a lot of duplicate efforts (e.g. Desktops).
I know this is all about choice, this is all about Open Source and you can take and fix it if you are not happy with its progress. But we also need to face the reality here. People on a Linux plattform usually likes to use the software whenever they need it. Using software is always depending on the circumstances e.g.
You got an important job to do for university but you can't find a matching program on Open Source, or the program lacks compatibility to the commercial alternatives offered on Windows or use a propritary incompatible fileformat to store the informations.
The commercial companies who make a living of such software e.g. on Windows (because they see their customerbase there) concentrate on this software because they depend on every customer they get. This software is their life and bread giver.
On Open Source no one really cares whether you find the program usable or not, they hack for the fun on it, they do fix bugs in case there are some or they simply shift or ignore all bugreports because they have no time, no motivation, or other private reasons.
Let's look at GNOME as Desktop alternative to Windows for example. Even with the 2.4 release the Desktop is still HALF in many areas, Mime doesn't work correctly, Nautilus often crashes and the apps do not work together. I'm not able to use my Evolution addressbook in AbiWord because the apps are totally independant. I can't use my Nautilus Bookmarks in Firebird and stuff like this.
There aren't even programs such as AutoCad, Rational Rose or stuff like this. DIA for example is an alltime bug. Often fonts are not rendered, saved data results in being written corrupt to disk and more such things.
Even one year later DIA hasn't changed much, same brokeness and things like that even after trying to help with patches (as good my time allows me) are mostly rejected, ignored or still making it's life on the bug reporting system.
Well it's just a few examples here. What I like to explain is not dependent on one application. This is going through the entire Open Source world. Well Open Source has advantages but also a lot of disadvantages. We have seen a bunch of really quality softare but also a lot of unfinished hacks. Or programs that used to be good but then got turned into useless crap. Or patches that only changes half of the entire function of a program.
I think you saw such things yourself every now and then.
Borland ported Delphi to Linux and called it Kylix. But I am not sure how well it sold.
> One side choose Monopolysoft because there software integrates with other monopolysoft software.
> The other side chooses Linux because it's cheap and reliable.
Nothing new here.
This is oddly appropriate.
If you are having a problem importing an Office Document, submit a bug report with the file attached. This way the developers can see whats wrong and fix it for the next version, so help the Abiword, Gnumeric, OpenOffice, Koffice developers.
Those results are in line with my own belief and experience.. except this graph.
I don't get what "intellectual property concerns" there are with Linux.. do they mean the license? Is the FUD from SCO and others working? Are people just confused about what to do once the shackles come off?
The easiest thing to do is just treat Linux like Windows, except you can copy it to multiple machines. Does some financial services company really care if the software is GPL? They just want Red Hat to come in and get it working.
I'm surprised so few people are concerned about the Windows EULA. In the small business I work for, we really couldn't care less, but a big business is ripe for abuse by Microsoft (oh, you have 100,000 hits per day? Well, due to a change in the EULA, you'll can't use your software any more unless you upgrade it...)...
Oh well, people will figure it out eventually. It's our job as "employees" of "Linux Inc" to spread the anti-fud.
Microsoft's Taylor said "I want to jump out the window." Take Bill with you, Please
Heh, yes I caught the scale thing on the way through, but what I really checked for was the "No Concerns" bar in the 'Concerns' graphs. At a rough estimate, Windows = 9%, Linux = 27%.
No worries!
Last week, we had trouble restoring an Exchange box from a backup. The difficulty was due to Exchange being integrated with Active Directory. What caused Exchange to go down? We ran forestprep and domainprep on Active Directory.
The integration of the two products makes it difficult and more costly to administer.
"Others include the different skills required of system administrators, incompatible applications, differing management tools, and a lack of cooperation among Microsoft and Linux vendors.
"But, Powers says, it could cost more to manage a mixed Windows-Linux environment, given the need for two skill sets and, possibly, extra management tools, and that will factor into the decision."
As this comes up as reason #1 multiple times I think its important this be debunked. What they are suggesting here is that in a mixed environment it really takes a relearning of the administrators to deal with this. This is also MS's main reasoning behing the "Linux is not really free" statements. While this has a GRAIN of truth, the fact is that of the many people I personally know that are capable of administrating a *nix network every one of them is equally capable of running a windows/mixed environment. The fact that this rule does not hold true in reverse suggests that the real issue here is that ppl need to stop hiring because someone holds an MCSE and start hiring ppl that have real working knowledge and experiance. God knows there are enough of them unemployed at the moment.
With many companies and government agencies trialling or converting to Linux if Microsoft sabotage Samba etc.. then many such organisations are likely to cut out Windows from their networks than cut out Linux.
Anyway, isn't it part of the DOJ settlement that they provide information on their protocols?
Others include the different skills required of system administrators, incompatible applications, differing management tools, and a lack of cooperation among Microsoft and Linux vendors. ... "Those things are gating factors keeping us from bringing Linux in-house," says Rich Plane, chief technologist for information services at Harris Corp.
... on the matter of interoperability at least, customers pin most of the blame on Microsoft. Almost nine of 10 respondents--88%--say Microsoft hasn't done enough to support Windows-Linux interoperability. Nearly an equal number believe it will be the Linux community that works out the interoperability problems.
So there you have it. M$ loads is crap with barbs so that lazy admins can't just use other software and have it work with M$. Because they never use other software and spend all their time memorizing M$'s forest of tabs and other inconveniece features, they never learn "other" management tools. M$ people, used to "ipconfig" would never try "ifconfig". I don't even want to think about why a right click to "network neighborhood" is where the GUI IP configuration is hidden. The nix world of /etc is so much easier by compairison. It's no wonder M$ admins are to taxed.
The constant chase forces M$ to break it's own implementations, print methods and what not. The net result is that Windoze gets more complex, less stable, and less functional every year. Why do people put up with such shit?
Microsoft is the source of your pain and 9 in 10 people realize it. The sooner you get away from Microsoft, the quicker your life gets easy.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I've recently been attempting to get a 'Linux Desktop' working for some of our phd students. A requirement is that they are able to mount their windows home directories. Problem is, that our windows homedirs are of the //server/firstinitial/username syntax. Which of course smbmount can't cope with.
Both sides need to work together more...
----- Documentation is worth it just to be able to answer all your mail with 'RTFM' - Alan Cox.
Why are all of the AC fanboy MS trolls posting today?
Must be all the *NIX Admins with mod points are off enjoying a good game on the TV and all the MCSEs are stuck at work patching the latest feature and waiting for reboots, so they come here to whine.
Me? I'm not a sport's fan, the SO is PMSing, and there is noting to tweak on my servers, so I read SlashDot.
It's an interesting article that prompted some thinking on my part. Before Microsoft was so prevalent in the server world they touted interoperability with other systems through products such as SNA Server. ODBC was about interoperability as well. Somewhere along the line they gained enough market share to have no need to operate with other technology so they put fewer resources into working well with others. Instead they decided to spend more to make their products the prominent technology for *EVERY* computer need.
That brings us to today. Microsoft does not seek interoperability for the sake of its customers. Instead, they speak as if they believe in interoperability so the Justice Deparment believes they play nicely. They seek to give enough interoperability to competitors to keep them alive but not enough to make them a viable option in the marketplace. The only thing Microsoft desires is to have enough competition to complain about publicly but not enough to be forced to change course to give the customer what they want.
Of course we torture people, we need the information --Gen. Pinochet
Sounds similar to "Mac OSX is now Unix-based".
When MS has every business possible converted and locked in to Office technologies will it say "Oh, now we have Office for Linux, go ahead and support the OS"; for the most part as an office machine, noone will care WHAT the underlying OS is. At that point, the OS geeks will rule and will have what they asked for; OS ownership.
Here is the evidence:
Pos. Requests Site name Average Max Latest OS Server Netblock Owner
1 13458 www.microsoft.com 51 202 43 Linux Microsoft-IIS/6.0 Level 3 Communications, Inc.
2 4098 www.netcraft.com 24 319 7 FreeBSD Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) mod_perl/1.27 Netcraft
3 2839 www.google.com 73 172 11 Linux GWS/2.1 Google Inc.
4 2623 www.daiko-lab.co.jp 1613 1660 1661 FreeBSD Apache/1.2.4 Daiko Corporation
5 2356 www.yahoo.com 44 229 79 FreeBSD unknown HotJobs.com, Ltd.
6 2287 microsoft.com 11 137 24 unknown Microsoft-IIS/6.0 Microsoft Corp
7 2250 www.ebay.com - - - NT4/Windows 98 Microsoft-IIS/4.0 eBay, Inc
8 2148 www.hotmail.com 18 198 4 Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0 Microsoft Corp
9 2116 www.apple.com 8 69 25 MacOSX Apache/1.3.28 (Darwin) PHP/4.3.2 Apple Computer, Inc.
10 2012 windowsupdate.microsoft.com 68 242 206 Linux Microsoft-IIS/6.0 Level 3 Communications, Inc.
Maybe they got hacked. What do I know?
To which I reply, Go ahead.
harmonious design
Did anyone else notice that respondants expected innovation to come from the Open Source community, not from Microsoft?
Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
You've used the assignment operator in your posting. It doesn't make sense "Bush gets lies" wtf? or "Bush receives the value of lies". Fix your title for people to start paying attention.
As somebody who is available for hire to make apps (any apps) work on Linux via Wine, I must point out that this is just blatently not true. I (and many others) have been hired before by companies wishing to move their infrastructure to Linux. For custom software, the job is often reasonably straightforward as the source is available, but even for 3rd party apps the company uses it is still possible.
So, to say there is no interoperability is not true. Typically, if you do the math, you may find it is cheaper to hire a Wine developer for a time to make your apps work on Linux than continue to license Windows for all the machines needed.
One of Mono's sub-projects is to port VB.NET. It seems it is not very actively worked on at the moment, though...
Scored close to 30% on Linux Concerns.
How much is due to SCO? How does this fit with existing countersuits by RH et al?
I agree.
I still remember the days Of OS/2. M'Soft's answer was Windows NT. Advertising support for OS/2 and Unix built right in. What they didn't mention, it was support in the barest sense. The main objective was to get people using NT.
We all know what happened there.
"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy - Benjamin Franklin"
'Getting better' might be a good statement, but 'it works' is just wrong.
Part of the problem is getting people to agree that ctrl c/v should be supported, so many programs don't get tested for that. GAIM, up until about 8 months ago, had ctrl+c bring up a color wheel!
I can still reliably *NOT* have copy/paste work in KDE 3.1.3. Copying something WILL put it in Klipper, and it's got a checkbox next to it, but won't be 'active' until I select it from the Klipper area anyway.
Little crap like that just isn't tested continues to annoy the heck out of me and many other people. I suspect it'll be at least another year before the stuff really does work *reliably* and is implemented properly in all of the (probably dozens) of required libraries.
The whole 'just highlight something then middle click' thing is REALLY something that should be able to be shut off altogether (easily - I don't mean by recompiling and reinstalling everything). People need *one* way of doing basic stuff like copy/paste, and using key controls (or menus) should be adopted. Why? Because it's and *explicit* command. You can't accidentally lose the stuff in your clipboard buffer by highlighting over something else. Giving the computer a command like hitting two keys simultaneously is much less ambiguous about what you meant to do.
creation science book
Red Hat has per-server licensing now. If you buy a copy, you are allowed to install it on one server only, unless you buy more support seats.
No, if you buy support for one machine you can't "install" that support on multiple machines, any more than you can buy insurance for one car and "install" it on multiple cars. This isn't a GPL issue, you just didn't understand what they were saying.
-- MarkusQ
1) Reasons for choosing Windows, 2) Reasons for choosing Linux, 3) Top Windows concerns, 4) Top Linux concerns, 5) Top interoperability issues."
Where's "Bill says I should. I MUST OBEY!!!"
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
We did a study into the state of calendaring on
l ts /calendaring.pdf
l ts /summary.html
Linux (specifically for cross-compatibility in
mixed Linux/Windows environments). It shows
that calendaring is the achilles heel for Linux
currently, presents some analysis of several
commercial and open source packages that sort of
do it, and outlines what is really needed.
http://www.osdl.org/projects/cmptblclndrng/resu
Additional info available at the website:
http://www.osdl.org/projects/cmptblclndrng/resu
No, it doesn't. OpenOffice is good for personal use but you obviously never tried out OpenOffice in a company setting for anything serious. OpenOffice has serious problems with MS bullets. MS Word also uses different page margins and spacings. This doesn't even include cases where you have more complex formatting.
That being said, MS Word import in OpenOffice is far better than MS Word import in WordPerfect. And OpenOffice's feature set is at least as comprehensive as WorkPerfect (sans reveal codes).
So despite it's so-so MS Word import, it has definitely reached commercial quality.
The goal for OSS (as I see it at work and at home) is to function well. The goal for Microsoft is to make money, and so far they have used "integration" (what they label "innovation"), exclusivity and counter-interoperability to achieve that goal.
Each system has its place. I've set up a Win2k workstation for my wife, a Linux workstation for myself, and a Linux server for her database back-end. I will not "move up" to XP due to my concern for interoperability with my Linux systems, Microsoft's increasingly onerous restrictions on how I use my computer with my (non stolen) data.
They're quite right to worry, and it's very nice to see that message getting through. I wonder if there's any platform in which the vendor makes a binding promise that the product will work?
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
They are imbracing Linux the same way that they imbraced OS/2, the port of office/IE to Mac OSX?, and the port of C++ api to Unix. Like, not a chance in hell.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Something interesting about "Accountability."
Take a look at the graphs on page 3 and 4, listing the concerns for Windows and Linux, respectively.
The scale for the two graphs is different.
Even though accountability is the #2 issue for Linux, it comes in at between 35%-40% of respondents. For Windows, even though it is fourth on the list, it comes in at right between 30%-40%.
In other words, it's no more significant an issue for one than for the other.
In a Windows environment, cut/copy and paste just plain work, using the same key shortcuts and options from the pull-down menus, on every single app.
Two important points:
1) Of course, continuity in user interfaces is important. But let's not forget about the advantages of diversity. If *every* system works the same way, how will we ever discover new (and potentially better) ways of interacting with machines? The best example is the QWERTY keyboard: Everybody uses it (and that is the only reason for its existence), although it has been shown many times that there are much better keyboard layouts (e.g. Dvorak).
Think about evolution.
2) I'm pretty sure that copy'n'paste doesn't work in windows' "command line" the same way it does in windows-gui-apps. Tried pressing c-v or c-c there? I don't think it works. Also, you cannot highlight text in windows' command-line and right-click it to get a context menu (like everywhere else in windows).
I honestly can't think of any recent linux gui app where c-c and c-v doesn't work as expected.
This upfront price of $599 is meaningless
since they make up for it in CALs.
The CALS have been increased from around $69
to $99 according to an article I read on news.com.
I never hear people take into account CALS
when talking about the $599 price.
I guess MS knew that most people would gloss over
that triviality until they are too far into their
purchasing plans.
Maybe that is a statistically insignificant figure, but I am surprised that anybody expects MS to be compatible with anything (other than MS software, of course).
These managers are either stupid or way ahead of their time. I am hoping for the latter.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
I like how you got worst and word confused.
This is really no problem. Anyone can have one dinky M$ box in the corner when confronted by such ignorance. Most companies will take a pdf or text file. Proposals are, after all, text rather than type set publication. The person sending them out can be trained in Microsoft pain if the lost business justifies buying a $500 Dell preloaded with Windoze and Word every two or three years.
That one box is not a reasonable justification for going all Microsoft stupid. Free software is much better for everything else, especially email, web browsing and other forms of information sharing. The actual worst case scenerio is some stupid Microsoft Transmitted Disease comes in and blows out ALL of your proposals, inventory, customer lists, vendor lists and every other record you have. Even if you have backups, you will lose information and you have no idea when the net will once again be a safe place for you poor little M$ boxes. The last wave of viruses took out huge companies with competent staff and enough money to have the very latest and greatest M$ cruft. Microsoft has a place in games. Everywhere else, they are defeated and second rate. There's no reason or excuse for using Microsoft for corporate infrastructure anymore.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The most interesting statistic coming out of this survey from the POV of an OSS advocate is certainly the "Confidence in open-source development model" option that was a tad below 40%, while "Confidence in Microsoft's business model" was a tiny little natch below 20%. Interesting conclusion could be drawn from that figure about the relative perception of the OSS vs CSS development model.
... Especially when the next ad for MS claimed "Download free code and boost your productivity". Well, ok, I might just do that by downloading Debian.
Also, one of the ad displayed while I was browsing the article was quite ironic IMHO. It was a Microsoft ad claiming that Windows 2k3 provided "UNIX Level Reliability. Without a UNIX-level budget". The irony being that if you are looking for "UNIX-level reliability" at lower cost, you may as well stay in the family and go with Linux
:wq
Wow, the graphs from the article are kind of scary. The Windows Worries graph's first item is 80% of "business-technology professionals" are concerned with software quality issues or vulnerabilites in Windows. However, on the Linux Concerns graph, the first item is only 40% of "business-technology professionals" are concerned that Linux lacks "a complete and fully integrated software environment".
While anybody would agree that 40% is less than 80%, the two charts are the same width, and a casual glance would certainly give the impression that people are more concerned with Linux problems than with Windows problems. This is disturbing since there are no Linux concerns that exceed 50% with the interviewed "business-technology professionals" while there are three concerns that exceed 50% of the same group with Windows.
It appears that "business-technology professionals" are more concerned with Windows than Linux, but the graphs are set up to give the opposite impression. Is this another case of spin-doctoring? Or is Linux just a casualty of aestheticism?
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Your admin was run over by a bus? That's rare for two reasons. First, I've never heard of a M$ shop with a ratio of boxes to admins much better than 20:1. Second, 95% of all admin deaths reported in the last two years have been due to email worm induced exhaustion. Deaths from busses must be someware down around 0.0001% You must have a five 9 shop! Nice work.
On a serious note, any scripting that has bad or no comments is just as good as any other. The same can not be said about scripts with good comments. Lisp has been around for 30 years. Something dumb like M$ BASIC, now VB, has had dozens of incompatible incarnations. The old LISP will work next year, VB, dos.bat, or M$C# might not. In two or three years, the M$ stuff will not work at all, no tragic, low probability accident required.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
someone else please chime in
Equivalence has been apparent for about five years, superiority of free software for two years or so.
Perhaps some more details on exactly how it will become "more stable, faster, and more secure", and perhaps a rough idea about when it will be available.
The future is indeterminant and you should use what's available now, but the trends are all in favor of free software. Free software already is more stable, faster and more secure than any Microsoft based software. The development model is better and the divergence in quality is going to grow faster unless Microsoft gets it's head out of it's ass. All of Microsoft's promises to break other people's software show that they are still wasting resources trying to harm others. They should be using those resources to improve their own offerings. In the mean time, the faster you get away from Microsoft, the better off you will be.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
No they don't. They want some of the features those two programs have to offer. What exactly are the features that you don't know how to replace with free software? Viruses and worms are about all I can think of. Give a list and I'm sure someone here will fix you up.
If someones could get on the ball in that arena, I would think a few more people would be switching over.
Get hopping man, after the last two years of Blasters, Slammers, Red Codes and other blow outs, the person who needs to be on the ball is YOU. You should have a detailed list of real functions your software provides, where it could be improved and how you are going to get those improvments. Exchange should be just one choice on your matrix of functions desired, costs and why the company wants to buy that function. Does that Outlook contact list, clumsy in my opinion, really justify M$'s costs and the risk of further worm inflictied downtime? You should have that chart ready to post.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Unfortunately, [and I hope I am wrong] Microsoft will lock out Linux/*BSDs/Solaris with Longhorn in a couple of years.
For years, MS has had to support backward compatibility, and the OSS/Linux/*BSDs/etc communities have been largely successful leveraging this. Sadly, MS will probably lock out everyone INCLUDING their own users with Longhorn and will require everyone to eventually use Longhorn. It will be in the form of SP releases that slowly and incrementally perform the lockout.
Another option, available since 01/10/2003, is to use the OpenGroupware server and the SKYRiX ZideStore(TM) server and the SKYRiX ZideLook plugin to let Outlook clients communicate directly with the OpenGroupware server.
The SKYRiX products are not free, though. They charge from ~$300 for 5 users. How much is Exchange?
A different solution is to use the kroupware server (kolab) and the InsightConnector plugin from Bynari to enable Outlook to talk to kolab (the groupware server).
This plugin is freely available as a test version.
This is also explained in the FAQs at kroupware.org.
I actually knew a guy who was a Windows groupie. He went to a Windows 95 presentation. The presenter booted it up, and it crashed.
Anyway, we shouldn't pass judgement on Windows fans. We just have to accept that their preferences and thinking patterns are as non-deterministic as the operating system they favor.
Well I'll be darned. I took it to be for the service contract, but the way that's written your interpretation seems at least as plausible.
-- MarkusQ
The MS man: Taylor, predictably, wasn't impressed. "The Linux stack is more of a cobbled-together set of things," he concludes. "They do their integration through people."
Damn right! Linux gives jobs back to people, where it's supposed to be. Linux doesn't outsoursce your job to someone in India who answers your problems only if he can find the answer on a list.
It's like this: there were very few native OS/2 applications because first, the operating system had a pretty good win32 emulation layer for the day, and second, it didn't particularly encourage development of free software (not to mention that GNU/Linux hadn't really taken off like it did in 1996 at the time).
So, yeah, this emulation layer is precisely what we want to discourage. Me, if I had any kind of clout over the driver interface layers in the Linux kernel, I'd go out of my way to technologically kneecap this perverse little project of theirs. I'm sure many kernel developers share this sentiment (after all, I got it from the LKML, originally), being that it will be their work that is put in a bad light once a Volish binary-only crud driver craps all over some critical file system structures and completely, totally, entirely fucks up your pr0n filesystem.
...underbridge dweller!!
Can't get into www.opencap.org
Is opencap dead ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
There is such a thing as FreeCAD Version 8
Although it's far from being in the same league as AutoCAD, it's a start, nevertheless.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
http://www.informit.com/content/index.asp?product_ id={73B9911C-62FF-4FA5-8275-C0DB842BC4FF}
Freedom in our Lifetime www.freestateproject.org
Another thought - if it's the virus engine that you want to be rid of, a GroupWise backend with a correctly locked down Outlook frontend is still amazingly more secure than the Microsoft server.
Also, remember that with a Novell solution, you get the eDirectory, which makes all that information available to all sorts of other programs and across the network.
Main problem with Novell is that for now it isn't very interoperable - you need NetWare. Expect this to change soon, as they are abandoning the old NetWare in favour of linux. They also produce software like DirXML which is a single directory for all your programs and databases - neat!
Yeah, I think the author may have read Darrell Huff's "How to Lie with Statistics", my favourite reference to slip into technical papers.
We already have one. It's called Apache.
But because Apache developers (it seems) are not making "politics" like Microsoft, we do not see things like "all users of MS IE 6.0 and earlier are not able to access Apache web servers with latest 'sevice pack'" (where by 'sercice pack' I mean some bundle of a critical bugfix and also some tweak which breaks the interoperability of MS IE with Apache). Goal may be good (to get all those known security holes in MS IE get fixed and also all those realy bad incompatibilies - say CSS - resolved) but ...
... as a "good guys" Apache developers have smaller range of "weapons" in "competition wars".
hany
On a warm September day at Manhattan's upscale St. Regis hotel, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates stepped onto a makeshift stage with IBM senior VP Steve Mills to demonstrate what Mills would describe as a "breakthrough" in software engineering. With the Windows operating system and Microsoft's SQL Server database running on one computer and a Linux operating system and IBM's DB2 database on another, the competitors showed how Web services could be used to conduct secure transactions across their disparate systems.
I don't see what the big deal is - heterogenous distributed transactions have been available for decades using something like Tuxedo or anything that supports XA. It has been possible to freely mix Oracle and DB2 for far longer than the 8 or so years I've been working with industrial-grade databases for a living, and I'm pretty sure Sybase too. This so-called "breakthrough" is trivial with any self-respecting middleware. Not only that, but databases like DB2 and Oracle and Sybase (on which MSSQL is based) completely abstract the underlying OS - the client or the middleware don't need to know, they just need to use the protocol. MSSQL, like Sybase, uses a protocol called TDS, Tabular Data Stream, which is well documented (there's even a free software version) which again completely abstracts the underlying OS. So what is the big deal here?
Hmm. You mean like Kerberos and LDAP? Or Samba? Or OpenAFS?
For instance, none of the Linux concerns were held by more than 40% of the respondents, compared to about twice as many Windows worriers. A visual-only comparison is likely to mislead.
Of course, by bringing up only the most pleasant correction, I'm doing the same thing. Hey, maybe we could get the PATRIOT act renamed the PHLEGM act.
In terms of interoperability, Linux is the only*. The windows features that "interoperate" do so with Novel or SCO and generally cost extra.
Linux is all about interoperability, why shouldn't it? It's a "free" OS. It doesn't have all of it's income tied to being the only solution.
feeware like MSW has to maintain market share, they'll do it any way that they can.
*If you want a truly interoperable Solution: Go Novell, but it'll cost you.
You can, however, buy only one copy of Advanced Server, install on many machines as you want, download the patches from Red Hat and distribute internally for the other computers. However, imagine that the OS that you bought is a webserver, and you have a problem on MySQL that is in another machine: you can't cry for mommy and call Red Hat. It is also not wise to call Red Hat for on-site support, as they would see that you have hundreds of computers without support contracts and that would give them the right to cancel your only support contract and direct access to RHN.