Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Rolls Out New Anti-Linux Ad Campaign
Anonymous Coward writes "Microsoft has launched a new ad campaign that purports to give 'objective third-party information' comparing Windows to Linux." See the ad campaign website for more, uh, facts.
> httprint -h http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/facts/default.asp -s signatures.txt
banner reported: Apache/1.3.28 (Linux) mod_perl/1.28 mod_ssl/2.8.15 OpenSSL/0.9.7a
banner deduced: Apache/1.3.27
Looking at the first PDF file, it says "an IDC Whitepaper Sponsored by Microsoft." Exactly how is a study sponsored by MS considered to be an objective third-party study?
At least they didn't compare Linus to Karl Marx.
Happy GNU Year!
In 2001, me and my partner were hired by Microsoft to do a "third party test" over which OS scales better, FreeBSD or Microsoft. We had a bad feeling about it from the get go, but decided that we needed money. And believe me, Microsoft pays plenty of money.
That is, of course, if the results go the way they wish. They didn't, and we argued and argued, and then were shown the NDA which clearly stated that if they aren't happy with it, we can go shove it up our arses. We were told we could "re-run" the tests, see if things changed, they suggested we made a mistake and so on. I just stood up and walked right out of the office while an exec was explaining this. I couldn't believe it. So, a warning:
YOU GET ZERO MONEY UNLESS YOU DO THE TEST IN THEIR FAVOUR.
What kind of objectivity can you expect?
Here's a little NDA violation:
We found out FreeBSD scales 3 times better than windows 2000 advanced server.
Fuck you Micro$oft.
Campaigns. What is it all about... is it good, or is it whack?
A study of total costs of ownership over five years for working corporate infrastructure shows that lower staffing expenses are a large part of an 11-22% cost advantage for Windows...
Where was Linux in 1998? Not even close to where it is today. If you compared Linux and Windows over the next 5 years, the TCO would favor Linux over Windows hands down.
I for one will sleep better at night knowing that Microsoft is out there looking out for our best interests and performing impartial research for which OS is better for us the consumer. With benevolent corporations like that we hardly need to research or even think for ourselves.
"Anything is possible with enough programmers, time and pizza." (Substitute caffeine for time as needed.)
Can't we all just get along?
Linux Mainframe?
This is just more FUD from the master. "Please sir, may I keep just 1 PC that runs DOS"?
Ads are never objective. The try to sell you something, convince you of their truth.
.Net development costs 25% lower than Linux .Net developers are out there? And how much information from those in the field is there about .Net
Even if that were true, to develop cheaply, you need some developers familiar with the language, and an established corpus of ideas and methods about how to get the language to work.
So. How many
Ask the same questions about C
Exercise your right not to vote. thinkoutside.org
No, really, unbelievable. Infact I'd say this website could rival theonion.com
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
..as much money as Bill Gates does, I could pay a lot of people to say that I'm the best looking, smartest guy around!
;)
But since I don't have that kind of money, I'll just have to keep those secrets to myself.
---
"There are three principal ways to lose money: wine, women, and engineers. While the first two are more pleasant, the third is by far the more certain." -- Baron Rothschild, ca. 1800
"See the ad campaign website for more, uh, facts."
Instead of making stupid comments like this why don't you try to refute the facts presented? If the tables were turned and this was a Sun or IBM site promoting Linux over Windows I'm sure your comment would be more like "See, more proof that Linux and OSS is better."
There was a time not too long ago when Microsoft barely recognized the existence of Linux.
Now they are actively trying to steer customers away from Linux.
To me, that speaks volumes!
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
If MS didn't take Linux seriously, it would not need to pay for such studies. Corporate execs are smart enough to do their own research and will use independent reports to make a decision - just as they do with their hardware, or car buying choices.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
As others are sure to point out, a few years ago Microsoft wouldn't have bothered saying anything at all about Linux, then they dismissed it, and now they are trying to produce evidence against it. So clearly they are becoming more and more worried by the competition, although interestingly their advertising is all aimed at the server market, they are not yet mentioning Linux on the desktop. Is this to do with just where its been hurting them so far or is this indicative that they are not worried by Linux on the desktop just yet?
Fitting cartoon.
In Soviet Russia, the television watches YOU!
The MS site says that the cost of staffing is cheaper for windows over a 5 year study; I wonder if this study was done over the last 2 years would the results be a bit different? Seems the linux community has been growing exponentially, and major corporations have thrown their complete confidence in linux (hp, ibm).
.net stuff i would tentatively agree with, though, as I think its a great api/dev platform.
The
Here is where he began...
libertarianswag.com
Fact #1: Linux is Free!
Fact #2: Linux doesn't lock you into license agreements.
Fact #3: Linux is Free!
Fact #4: Multiple venders means if one company charges too much for support, go shopping.
Fact #5: Linux is Free!
And, from what I've seen in various offices, that's pretty much the argument. And guess what? Most often, I've heard "Well, let's just put a Linux box in there, and maybe replace it later when we have to."
"Replace is later" often becomes "never" after a few months anyway.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
that the documents are in .PDF instead of .doc. Of all the document formats to put it in, they put it in one that they don't support in their OS or office suite.
I have blog like everyone else
"WinTel Servers 10 times less expensive to operate than Linux Mainframe!"
"Microsoft delivers 25% lower development and support costs!"
"Window is 11-22% more cost effective!"
Did you know that 90% of all statistics are made up?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Ever do the taste tests and find out they are biased as well? Ever go to a Pepsi booth and they say, taste test our Pepsi vs. Coke! :-) Only to find out the Pepsi is ice cold and the Coca Cola is room temperature. It's Fud I say! Fud!!!
I'm sure there's a formula, but I'm sure M$ isn't factoring RISK into their calculations.
Can I bum a sig?
What's missing in the 'lower TCO' factor, assuming it's true, is what effect this has on a local economy.
Yes, many businesses will feel good about 33% lower labor costs. That's over a 5 year cycle tho. So, you've generally got higher first year costs with most of that money leaving the local economy (unless you live in Redmond). Then, year after year, you can pay people in your area (employees) less money. Paying somewhat more to employees over 5 years ensures they've got money to spend - primarily locally (usually within the state at least) as well as pay more taxes (not just income taxes, but taxes on the local services).
Effectively, MS is arguing to simply extract money from local economies and pay people less. Short term, that may be fine. Long term, it only hurts. Schools/governments/etc should be *vary* cautious about this, if not downright hostile.
creation science book
say goodbye to your karma and modding ability. Little Mikey don't like being outed like that.
I don't know why, but this continues to be funny. What is its origin?
but higher OS costs ;) but to a point, how true is this? Im payed pretty little but know more than any mcse certed windows admin... I think if your buisness is strategic enough to employ people with actual know how over a peace of paper(mcse) that says someone can remeber some facts; that the costs for staff will be greatly reduced. Then again Im problery just a gullable tw*t ;)
moo
It's called "SCOrched Earth".
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
MacroSolid
The Nemesis of MicroSoft.
The only people who will believe this are the Microsofties and their sales team.
I used to work for a large corporation that was failing. It was being taken apart and broken up by the banks and its creditors. Every week we had the same press releases.
"Business is better than ever" or Profits are Up over last year".
We had those till the last guy in the press release department was finally canned.
It does not make them sound better, only scared.
They can't even get the Microsoft logo looking right and they want me to trust them with a complete OS
Here's my favorite...one of the papers is called:
"Lower Windows Staffing Costs Provide a TCO Advantage over Linux"
I'd read it, but it'd probably give me a headache. I mean, how in the world could they possibly tell me that having to have MSCE guys in the building 24-7 just to keep the net up and worm free is less expensive than Linux?
I don't think staffing costs are the best argument to demonstrate windows superior TCO. Kinda like using Little Big Horn to demonstrate Custer's tactical ability.
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Yeah, and these guys don't know WTF they're talking about!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
i still feel it runs better without windows
It seems pretty critical of Linux. It also seems to talk about migrating from UNIX to Windows. They dont state the difference between UNIX and Linux. Linux being free, and most UNIXes being just as expensive as Windows.
So, they are using the Linux name, but comparing (some of) the costs of migrating from UNIX.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
Nothing screams quality like a browser-scaled GIF for the company logo!
It seems just a few months ago, the Iraqi media would have you believe that in a blind taste test, Saddam Hussein was preferred 10:1 over George Bush.
The "I Want To: Migrate to Linux" image with link on the right-hand side is really, really fun.
Now. Comparing Linux and MS servers...
Isn't that a real Troll?
I remember reading excerpts of a report last year (I believe from a marketing firm to Microsoft) basically stating that the ethical attacks on GNU/Linux were actually hurting Microsoft, while people were responding to the TCO arguments.
Taking one look at that site, M$ sure took notice of that report.
-t
http://unmoldable.com W:"No one of consequence" I:"I must know" W:"Get used to disappointment"
I used to work for Worldcom doing monitoring of
their worldwide data center. We kept logs of server
outages. Windows-based servers had at least 10
times more failures than any non-Windows servers.
I didn't see that fact listed on the Microsoft site.
Nope! Slashdot wins, as always...
&*Bah*& zealots...
Do you think this ad campaign and the SCO letters below could possibly be related...?
From the "Get the Facts" site:
A study of total costs of ownership over five years for working corporate infrastructure shows that lower staffing expenses are a large part of an 11-22% cost advantage for Windows. For file-server workloads in particular:
Staffing expenses were 33.5% better. Training costs were 32.3% better.
Heh.. translation... Micromonkies are a dime a dozen because they don't actually have to know anything to get their "certification". I'd love to see somebody try to price out a clueful Microtech once. I'm sure the prices aren't too much cheaper than a *nix admin. One time, I actually had to sit and explain how a web server works to one of our "affordable" Microsoft certified admins here. That was probably the most pathetic point in both of our careers...
Another tasty quote from "Get the Facts":
Microsoft-sponsored benchmarks prove...
I don't understand this at all. How can people take this crap seriously? That's like having McDonald's sponsor a study on the overall health value of its food. Are there actually people so monumentally STUPID in this world that they would believe a study sponsored by an organization with a vested interest in a certain outcome? We must find these people and run them down like animals before they breed!
What amazes me most, I believe, is that there really are people that horrendously dumb and, yet, we've managed to evolve to this point.... now these people are managers and they tie our evolution in red tape, so the human race is pretty much fucked from this point on....
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
But can I just say something really quick? This won't take long, and I believe it is completely relevant to the MS vs Linux ordeal. Okay here goes:
! !
! !
AHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA!!
BLAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAH!!!!
BEAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
Another IDG anal-ysis pulled from their M$ lined anal orifi. Anybody feel like sponsoring a study I'm going to do on Linux' monetary benefits over Windows? I promise I'll rig the results to favor linux.
Jean Bozman, Al Gillen, Charles Kolodgy, Dan Kusnetzky, Randy Perry, and David Shiang IDC
A study of total smells of delevopers over five years for working corporate infrastructure shows that lower staffing smells are a large part of an 811-922% cost advantage for Windows. For teams of 4-8 developers in particular:
"Let the dogs bark, Sancho, it's a
sign we're going in the right direction."
Microsoft-sponsored benchmarks prove that multiple WinTel Web servers perform better than a Linux mainframe acting as a Web server consolidator.
Hmmm. Windows on Intel vs. Linux on Mainframe?
It seems as though costs associated are skewed by the cost of the hardware and hardware support. Run Windows and Linux on identical hardware. THEN compare the cost differences between the two.
Wintel is less expensive to run than a Linux mainframe? Last I checked, it was just a little cheaper to run a small cluster of PCs than a mainframe, no matter what you ran on it.
This sig no verb.
Microsoft will spend all it's billions on advertising and lawyers instead of programmers and innovation.
Because there doesn't seem to be the referenced file http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/css/mscorp.css. Oh well, now I'll never know what they were lying about.
1. They ignore you.
2. They laugh at you.
3. They fight you.
4. You win.
5. Profit!
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
Hmm. Last time I saw some anti-Linux "facts" from Microsoft, they were like "Linux doesn't have journaling file systems" and "Windows is technically superior". (Note that this was just one-two years ago, when journaling filesystems already existed for Linux)
;-)
So it looks like Microsoft learnt their lesson and chose a different strategy here. They're more about the costs now. Still, I doubt if the facts are true, but at least they seem a bit more credible.
Wow. You mean a Microsoft ad campaign is saying that Windows is better than Linux? I'm shocked. Shocked and appalled.
No warranties? Where's Laura Didio when you need her?
Oh, and don't use so many caps Microsoft, it's lame.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but wasnt Samba 3.x shown to "blow the doors" off of Server 2003???
Funny, our experience here at the office is that the only time we have had to do anything with the Linux box is replace hardware when it fails. The windows users cant even tell any difference between the Linux server (running Samba) and the XP domain controller, nor the aging Netware box.
Besides, what cost of ownership is less than FREE?
you are the best looking smartest guy around!
cheers,
nathan
Please stop stalking me, bro.
"WinTel Server 10 Times Less Expensive to Operate Than Linux Mainframe" Its a mainframe! not a Intel box! No wonder its 10 times less expensive!
Another good thing with this is that when Microsoft starts to talk about Linux, more people will investigate Linux. Perhaps not exactly what MS wants but I think that might be the end result.
More expo for Linux. We win!
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
shouldn't it be Microhard?
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win."
-- M. Gandhi
It looks like we're in stage 3 already. Any takers on when stage 4 can be confirmed?
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
I would like to know what development software packages they compared. Did they compare the most advanced offerings from Sun with all the bells and whistles to a copy of C# .Net standard edition? Did they compare full blown Oracle database with an access database? This is an exageration but it would be way to easy to skew numbers in Microsoft's favor (and vice versa).
For TCO, I have to comment on where it says that the total percentage cost for IT salaries is higher using Linux. Well duh... you don't have to spend as much on hardware and software which means IT salary will take a larger percent of what is spent.
An interesting thing happened in my Object Oriented Programming Class for IS majors -- a discussion about open source software. In fact, the professor said that from an education stand point, OSS is much better. He went on to say that the reason that the Department choose to teach Java over .Net is because of the cost to students -- in other words, they felt that using OSS would allow students to fully explore Object Oriented Programing beyond the scope of the class. Further, the teachers (yes plural) pointed out that Linux is a better web server. The other interesting thing today was that the teachers said that they want to teach us IS and programming independent of platform by using Java. That way we would not be locked into a certain platform for solutions and make us more marketable.
Just an interesting thing to point out. Because if Microsoft is to succeed in their FUD, they are targetting the wrong people. When education circles are embracing OSS, it is only a matter of time before it gets trickled down to buisness. Also, when people get farmiliar with an OSS solution, when they are employed they are more likely to deploy something that they know.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
It's called mono. Of course Microsoft forgt to mention that in their "facts".
It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well. - Rene Descartes (1637)
Only TEN times less?!?!? It's a freakin server vs. a mainframe, regardless of the operating system.
did they take into account all the "billions of dollars lost" due to all the Microsoft security vulnerabilities found in the last 5 years? i don't recall hearing any big press announcements stating that a virus which was spread through a Linux security vulnerability was causing any widespread panic, EVER. if you're going to do an impartial cost study, you have to include ALL the data available, impartially.
ninja monkeys are meeting as we speak, plotting my demise
Check this here: http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/facts/default.asp
It says that analyst "confirm" how Linux isn't as good. The "confirm it" quote is a staement very similar to a certain anti-BSD troll. How appropriate.
From everyone's favorite "Fair and Balanced" OS provider...
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
Or you could have just made that up. This is a story folks, posted anonymously on the internet. Congrats on getting modded (+1, Slashdot wants to believe). There is no accountability if he is outright lying. If it can be proven MS is outright lying on their webpage, they could be sued. I am disinclined to believe the parent and you should be too.
They actually used "WinTel" to describe themselves? Interesting how they used such a demeaning phrase to their advantage. Since we (/.'ers) coined it to mock them. Notheless the correct capitalization of "WinTel" (as found on their site). This is undoubtedly the funniest site in a while... although the pointy haired posses (dilbert reference) might actually fall for the flashy moving font and all that eyecandy.
Live for the present, learn from the past, and dream of the future!
However, one thing I'd bet for sure, is that PIRATING windows is cheaper than using Linux (even though Linux free).
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
"10 times less expensive" compared to Linux, eh? Well, ignoring the fact that they are comparing mainframes to intel boxes, you just have to love their wording. Ten times less expensive? What the hell does that mean? Perhaps it's 1/10th the cost, but even for marketing droids, that's a pretty stupid thing to say.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, consider this. If it's 20 degrees outside, and it's twice as cold at your friend's house, how cold is it there?
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
For whoever said "Linux is Free:"
Linux is *not* free. I think the numbers from MSFT are surely skewed but LINUX IS NOT FREE. It is true that linux admins make more then win admins
For the network that was down for 2 days "because of microsoft":
GET BETTER ADMINS! Sure, blaster shut down companies and governments all over the country but most of them were back up the next day. That's to say nothing of the MILLIONS of servers that were only affected slightly
To the person saying switching to windows will hurt the local economy by depressing wages for Unix admins:
Do you really think that Unix admins make up such a large chunk of wage earners in a community that lower demand in that industry would actually cause a widespread wage depression and economic recession? If you do, you're an idiot, plain and simple. Starting tomorrow the wages for every Unix admin in the country could drop to $5.35/hr and the economy will keep humming along. Dolt.
Who do they think they're reaching with this site?
Your average PHB has no idea what these words mean. Anyone in a position of power who knows what these systems are obviously had a reason for going open in the first place. Not to mention the cost of migrating to an M$ system from an open one. I think they're trying to piss off some open source people and stir up a little FUD for ye ol' stock price.
Step away from the Molson you knob!
"The first thing we must do is kill all the lawyers" - Henry VI, Wm. Shakespeare
I like having to freedom to do whatever I want to do with Linux. Being able to modify the source is a huge advantage to me over windows. But if you like to be spoon fed then I guess windows is the way to go.
Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they hide is vital.
Everyone knows that if you want objective, unbiased information, you find it in articles at places like Slashdot, ESPECIALLY in the comments after each article.
What's the big deal? A company is making their own products look good. It's not the company's job to give an impartial, or even fair, review of it's own products - it's going to publicize and advertise what makes it look good, and ignore everything else.
Anyone buying a product, including a CTO, should understand this. Are there going to be some dumb CTOs who fall for the hype? Probably.
So what? If Linux *IS* really better, the people who are smart enough to realize it will save a buncha money, and their competitors who don't realize it will be spending a bunch of money, and businesses who run Linux will have a better chance at prevailing. That's what free enterprise is about.
If someone doesn't run Linux, that's no skin off anyone's back but their own. Let them pay for their poor choice and move on with your life.
Unless, of course, Windows DOES have a lower total cost of ownership, in which case if you're a Linux zealot, you might be pissy. But we all know that's not true, right?
paintball
How about MacroHard?
an ill wind that blows no good
... does that mean I'm sexier?
- sigs are for wimps.
You should check out episode 5 of the Ali G Show ("science").
"The client system used for both operating system deployments was a Compaq Evo D510 SFF system with a 2.266 GHz Pentium 4 processor and 512MB of RAM running Windows XP Professional SP1."
Another words the linux folks probably had to remove Windows, 1st before installing a fresh copy of red hat, which I think probably negated that extra "hour" it took for step 1 (installing OS)
when I was a student, I worked part time in a survey agency, calling people on behalf of companies who wanted to know public opinion on whatever topic interested them, their products and whathaveyou.
one day I was having lunch with one of the disillusioned mid-level execs, who flatly admitted that companies will go from survey agency to survey agency until they get the survey results they expect, so it was common for him to ask his clients what results they expected from any particular survey.
the old saying "the customer is always right" holds true. give him what he wants, and he'll keep giving you his money.
Microsoft outlines three reasons for Windows being cheaper than Linux.
These are:
1.Lower staffing expenses
2.More efficiency per dollar with WinTel than with a Linux Mainframe.
3.Reduced development costs on Windows.
Number one may or may not be true depending on your circumstances. However, it has little to do with the technical performance of Linux and more to do with people's familiarity with Windows over Linux. However, as I'm still downloading the PDFs I can't comment on their sources for this. I will say that if true on the whole, then it is certainly a situation that will change rapidly even over 2004. I will also say that it is very specific to the company involved. There are plenty of companies out there that are more familiar with *NIX than with Windows and for these people the situation would be reversed.
2. I can't comment on this one too easily either until the report is downloaded, but this seems a flawed reason. The summary on the Microsoft report states
--- $40.25 per megabit of throughput per second.
---$1.79 per peak request per second.
I don't know if these are averages of different systems or what, but to give a figure like this, with no comparison figure for the Linux system (or specs on the Linux system, was it Apache, how was it configured etc) is of dubious value. I would have thought that the areas limited by cost on your server were in the bandwidth / network infrastructure against which server speed was unlikely to hold you back. Please also note that these are using Microsoft benchmarks.
3.This is an equally dubious claim. I have developed on both Windows and UNIX platforms and I can testify to the ease of use of Visual Studio, but not
To summarize, there is a lot of 'it depends,' involved in these tests.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
The Mainframe Linux study put the following machines against each other in a file serving test:
1) IBM Z900 (AIX,fully loaded), $470,$899
2) IBM Z900 (AIX,half the memory), $244,416
3) IBM Z900 (Linux pricing), $393,163
4) Windows Server 2003 (2 x 900 MHz Xeon), $25,440
And then proceded to examine a cost per request table. Which showed the Windows 2003 Server clearly winning. Of course the Win2k machine will win a benchmark where the other machines are clearly designed for a different purpose.
So why would anyone still run mainframes?
Oh, that's right - downtime on a WinTel server is still 100 times more expensive than Linux Mainframes.
Where I sit, the average cost of staff is around $45/hour. With 100 people in our organization dependent on mainframe access, when our mainframe goes down, it costs us $4500 per hour.
If we were using WinTel servers for our datacenter, even a single hour of downtime would double the TCO. Even 5 minutes of lost productivity would cost us $375 - and double the cost of Windows. The weekend the Blaster worm hit, for instance, cost a certain well-known local insurance company $50,000. And that was just over the weekend. Total cleanup is expected to cost more than a million dollars!
We can't afford viruses. We can't afford mandatory updates. We can't accept arbitrary updates which change the EULA. Even a single hour of downtime per year is one too many.
Microsoft just doesn't get it. Hardware and Software licensing costs, and even staffing, are far from Total Cost of Ownership. System downtime is the single largest factor in the "real" TCO - something that Microsoft conveniently forgets.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
If MS are benchmarking win2003 server vs. Linux for performance, should the hardware not be the same. Its a winTel box vs IBM Z900.
This does not make sence to me. Sorry if this a point repelication.
> Kinda like using Little Big Horn to demonstrate Custer's tactical ability.
Yeah, but it DID reduce his staffing costs by a significant margin
Actually, Rob & Co. are doing a pretty good job controlling the trolls around here. The S/N is still pretty poor at low thresholds, the editors still aren't too careful about dupes and grammaical errors, and trolls still hang on in the trenches, but the community has only gained in strength since the rbtl troll wipeout last year. It's K5 that seems to be having trouble these days... --M
I, for one, clicked on the link and signed up for my FREE windows server evaluation kit! Shipped via express once available! Maybe I'll sign up my friends too....
WARNING: The above post provides irrefutable evidence of the existence of "Weapons of Ass Destruction" or WAD's.
their servers are still working....
how long until
... it just means that you are older than most :-)
When they come to you, just give them the facts, and eventually we will convince some of them to give it a try, and that's enough.
In conclusion: Go Microsoft! With your help, we will bring linux to the masses faster! ;)
Right. Only in Redmond's newspeak. This from the same company wanting freedom to innovate while at the same time pushing embrace and extend. I suppose that at Microsoft, objective, third-party information means information that only tells the story we want it to tell. Bah.
Aren't UNIX jobs historically higher paying than Windows jobs? Even pre-bust, I could get a mildly experienced "windows admin" for $30-40k who could essentially click through the Windows GUI and do basic Windows admin tasks. I wouldn't trust them to do any more than that, but they could do it.
UNIX jobs went for much more 50-60k easily for small installations, and although you had to be careful not to get a piker, they were far more intelligent -- could do scripting, perhaps some basic perl scripts, and often had some basic experience with networking kit.
I'm not sure how the "new economy" has effected unix salaries, but I'd wager the fact that any idiot could and did get an MCSE and would work for $30k is why the staffing costs are so low.
Note to frothing MCSEs: I admin a mixed FreeBSD and Windows environment, and I think there are probably some really smart Windows admins, particularly in large enterprise-class situations. But I do think that most of the low-end smaller office environments have your commodity MCSEs.
Why is this new "anti-Linux" guy Taylor trying all the same "anti-Linux" PR campaign tactics that didn't work before? I'd even swear that some of these were the same white papers MS released last year.
New campaign,
Old campaign,
Still sounds the same,
BURMA SHAVE.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
More like comparing Apples to Orangutans I'd say. Not even the same species of hardware.
I think microsoft is just starting to realise now that the penguin is out of the bag, there is nothing they can do to stop linux spreading. Normal people have at least heard about linux, and they can't change peoples memories (yet). They are trying their hardest to stop it, but there is nothing they can do now, short of just going away completely (heaven forbid, who would ./ flame daily then?)
95% of all computer errors occur between chair and keyboard (TM)
Thanks /., for providing an equally biased header:
...as the linux zealots start to look more like M$oft, i expect more of this unobjective banter.
Microsoft Rolls Out New Anti-Linux Ad Campaign
-- not anti-linux, just a comparison
from the fear-the-penguin dept.
-- biased that linux is some kind of threat
Anonymous Coward writes "Microsoft has launched a new ad campaign that purports to give 'objective third-party information' comparing Windows to Linux."
-- purports? it DOES give a comparison, more spin
See the ad campaign website for more, uh, facts.
-- "uh, facts", biased tone, there really are facts on the site.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Oh, people... c'mon!
Do you really belive that a company as pure-hearted, caring, good-willed and innocent such as Micro$oft would do those reports based on a conflict-of-interest???
I think if that were to ever happen that mr Bill Gates would interfere and fairly punish the ones responsible for such atrocities.
Someone needs to set up an alternative site which counters this one, like was done with the Unisys/Microsoft www.wehavethewayout.com web site. Something that demolishes their points, one by one, in a professional manner.
Actually, a good humorous spoof site might be even better. Don't try to demolish their facts, just point out the ridiculous nature of a company trying to say prove it is better than the competition with paid for studies. There is a lot of potential humour there. If someone wants to do this I don't mind contributing ideas and some text.
... then they fight you ...
The Micro$haft document in question uses these figures to
show that their stuff is cheaper.
"$40.25 per megabit of throughput per second."
"$1.79 per peak request per second."
Am I just too stupid to understand what the above quoted figures mean? Wouldn't that mean that you'd be paying $300,000+ dollars a day for throughput??
Are they nuts?
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Back during the "Take the Pepsi challenge" commercials, Pepsi's entire ad campaign was focused on how much better they are then Coke. A sure sign that Coke was beating them in the marketplace.
So is this the equivelant of Microsoft doing a Pepsi?
Sure its all Fud, but which body , if there is one.. can produce counter fud "Reports" saying the opposite about linux. Reports such as these Mean nothing .
A) because they are funded by the company selling the OS in question.
B) They are not presented side by side to anyone elses report.
People are tired of Microsoft now, so it'l be largely ignored.
The only thing this report shows is how shit scared Redmond are and how seriously they see the threat Linux is.
It may be negative towards linux in its statements. But as a whole the report is basically saying. "We know linux exists, Its a significant threat to our revenue stream, and we are scared"
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
ACHTUNG!: PARENT IS FUCKHEAD
You really shouldn't talk bad about your mom like that.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
shouldn't it be Microhard?
Just in your case....
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
"First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win."
-- Ghandi
Reminds me of what Mahatma Gandhi said
"First they laugh at you, then ten they ignore you, then they fight you and then you win"
First they laugh at you --- Linux 0.** huh? that's funny.
then they ignore you -- Linux 1.** Who cares it is only for geeks, and it is only replacing othe unix
then they fight you -- Linux 2.** We can prove that windoze is better
they you win -- Linux 3.**???
Their main points are
1) Linux admins will cost you more than Windows admins.
Well, duh. I guess you get what you pay for. They don't say much about downtime costs, though.
2) Windows is cheaper than a mainframe
Well, duh again. That one is sooooo obvious.
3) Java programmers cost more than VB.Net programmers.
Yeah, but what about code maintenance costs?
What a bunch of crap.
-- Home is where you eat your heart out.
Sure, Microsoft can make those claims, given the expense of RedHat's server products and the new Novell-SuSE-Ximian thing.
Microsoft can't compete VS the better BSD based products of Mac OS X and FreeBSD, thus they are not mentioned. BSD code is SO good, Microsoft itself uses it.
Note that a lot of the criticism involves non-open source technologies. J2EE, for example, manages to be as bloated and proprietary as anything from Microsoft. And, well, it's not exactly surprising that mainframes are expensive to buy and operate compared to Intel boxes no matter what they run--companies don't buy mainframes to save money on hardware or IT staff.
Most of the Linux successes involve humble, cheap little PC servers running no-frill software like Apache, PHP, or Perl. Microsoft and Sun need grand strategies, new APIs, and "breakthrough" technologies to get the job done, not to mention upgrading every other year, while Linux just gets the job done with boring, old, but proven software. Of course, you won't find that in any corporate-sponsored comparison.
We need to start our own website where we can talk about how we use linux and it would haul m$'s a$$.
In the next 6 months( duration of this campaign ) we should have a resource were people can turn to, for the real M$ vs Linux facts. If M$ comes out better in any performance aspect, then lets code and beat them.
All this talk about performance on windoze is just incredible and incredulous. My 3 year old personal webserver doing ssh/http/webmin/postfix/mysql running linux would choke and die if it were exposed to windoze.
Just my 2 cents
stage 4 is when:
massmarket cutting edge games are released on Linux first.
people start writing tons of viruses against Linux.
people start mass-distributing Linux versions before they are approved by Linus.
Darl McBride is sent to Federal PMITA Prison.
I think the path of the Facts Against Linux document is very interesting.
Doing a pseudo-Google like analysis you see that the main site is of course the Microsoft.com Then is a major folder MS Corp. Then, BAM - the facts.
No sub directories under MS Corp like misc, or not-really-important, or small-fry, or oh-by-the-way, and neither is this one of their numbered documents. The first document on FACTS under MS Corp is comparison with Linux.
It may be reading tea leaves but as someone who likes to design directory structures with some logic - What does it mean to me ? It means M$ is paying big time attention to Linux. And I am sure if someone in the near future did a search in Google on "Facts about Microsoft Corporation" - this will be the first document that will show up in exclusion to almost everything else about M$. Linux is now officially in the Crosshairs of the biggest guns at MSCorp. Amen.
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
is that once again, Microsoft isn't comparing apples to apples. They're running a specifically Wintel system for Windows, and a mainframe (?!?) for Linux.
Next.
Why I ax'd ferve peoples up n dem der barn n they tol me dat Windows more better dem those small birds that ain't able ta fly.
Ave Molech Setting
"WinTel Servers 10 times less expensive to operate than Linux Mainframe!" sigh okay now if we wanted a real comparison how much would linux cost on that same hardware as well as performance benefits based on that. LOL windows probably wouldn't want to compair on an equal footing wouldn't give them the cost head start they need to come out ahead. Linux = pay for support Windows = pay for OS & support weee ;)
Yup, yup. Linux people focus on technical babble that upper management neither understands nor cares about. The question to these management types is wholly total cost and ROI. Intelligent and knowledgeable Linux people need to put out more material that addresses these issues in a "management overview" format. I think many people get lost on the point that IT professionals do not normally have final say on these issues in an "enterprise" business environment.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Microsoft better? Sure it is. I did not bet on baseball either...
-Pete "Charlie Hustler" Rose
I think Microsoft saying that Windows Admins are usually underpaid by 25% to 28%.
SPAM solution made easy: 1 spammer, 5 cords of rope, 5 hourses, and fireworks. Be creative.
Forget about the servers! The real cost is desktops! Linux has to beat them at their own game. They invented the damn thing, after all!
"The first thing we must do is kill all the lawyers" - Henry VI, Wm. Shakespeare
Does Microsoft's TCO figure for Linux include the $699/CPU SCO license?
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Like all arguments by MS, it's true but useless. What MS is saying is that on the average a MSCE admin costs less per year than a Linux admin in terms of simple dollars. It doesn't factor in other criteria like the fact the Linux admin can manage more Linux machines (I think another study put it at 2-3x as many machines) than a MSCE can manage Windows boxes and has fewer all-night virus and worm clean up sessions that a MS admin. Remember most admin are salaried so working extra hours doesn't get them extra pay. The true metric should be something like admin staffing $ / operational server hours or admin staffing $ / admin hours By that comparison, MS looks bad.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I think I just read an ad.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Could you imagine the exec who makes a decison based on a study that resides at Microsoft.com. He\she wouldn't last very long.
Okay lets do the math, Linux cost Zilch, $0, Windows
Ah the wonder of Open Source!
--Joel
If MS is claiming any sort of meaningful result from a 5-year study, let's see ...
;)), and the X Window System was happily doing what X did on Suns and SGI machines. Some google searching finds that January 5 years ago is when the "The first 2.2 prerelease kernels appear, starting the final push toward the release of the long-awaited 2.2 kernel."
c e.org/MPlayer/MySQL/etc etc. That is, systems running software to do stuff.
... I'm looking at an over-simplified black and white world for the purposes of illustration :)
5 years ago, it was early 1999. Linux existed, and more than existed -- it was already nicely stable and robust, had inspired some print journals and ongoing festivals (ok, we call them "conventions" and "expos" but c'mon
Now, not that the curves are easy to define, but if you could match up (in your own domain, naturally) the Windows curve of improvement vs. the Linux curve, what would you find? Has Windows gotten better as quickly (for your uses) as Linux has? Do you believe that in another (1,3,5) years that Windows will either remain or have become "better" than Linux for your application?
And Yes, I mean "GNU/Linux" and more to the point GNU/Linux/X/Apache/Perl/Python/KDE/GNOME/OpenOffi
This ignores Mac OS X or other Unix varieties of course, and does not get into the fact that "Windows" describes a gurgling sea of related, slightly different operating systems
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
...and M$ missed it.
The priceless bit about this is that each and every time M$ mentions Linux, they effectively clue newbies in to it's very existence. AND, since it is 'free' there is nothing stopping readers of the ad campaign to d/l a copy and play with it, probobly becoming enamoured of Tux before long.
Hey, Microsoft, thanks for advertising Linux!
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
WinTel's superior performance costs:
$40.25 per megabit of throughput per second.
$1.79 per peak request per second.
PER SECOND PEOPLE!
when does the counter stop?
That's right; it doesn't.
-- No Sig is a Good Sig
You mean MacroHard, which is what MicroSoft lets happen in all of it's MMO offerings?
Not that I'm bitter.
Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
I'm sorry but before I trust the "third party" results I wanna see these results on the third parties website-not Microsofts.
Second I like the whole "No single analysis of Windows versus Linux provides definitive answers for every company. These reports use different infrastructure models, transaction scenarios, and quantification methods to provide a multifaceted comparison between the two platforms."
This leaves the option to use biased methods, or a report on certain computations. Like putting a boat on the street at full throttle and saying it is not as good as the car cuz it doesn't go fast enough? Any how when a company make a huge deal over this is almost sounds like SCO drumming up more claut.
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
Tastes like chicken.
everyone knows macros are hard. Linus admits to getting is_digit wrong in his origional ctype.h.
The most important criticism of Linux -- the most honest, the most brutal -- the one that you all know in your hearts is true but can't bring yourself to admit for fear of slowing adoption -- is in that PDF, on page 23.
Check it out, it is surely going to be Microsoft's biggest gun.
Most people (other the CEOs) are smart enough to realise that `studies' are sponsored and so unreliable, and similarily that anything that appears in a M$ sponsored advert is not to be trusted.
So decision makers will look elsewhere.
What you forget is that the ``leading IT publications'' get a large part of their revenue from advertising. Very often when you see some full page adverts you will see ``editorial'' on a closely related topic in the same issue - surprisingly the views of the advertiser just happen to be supported.
It is this more subtle ``information provision'' that will have the bigger impact. The up front adverts are a distraction.
Did anyone expect MS to come out with a campaign that stated "Linux is better than Windows"?
It's advertising! Ford Ads claim Ford has the best Cars. Coca-Cola ads claim Coca-Cola has the best soft drink. Linux Company Ads claim Linux is the best OS. If you beleave ANY Ads without checking them out you deserve to get taken.
Caveat Emptor
let the buyer beware
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
In other News
Comparative adds don't work!!!
These Microsoft adds give strenght to the the thought that "Linix has arrived". Microsoft is giving Linux much more publicity than ever, and anybody who reads these adds will come away with the idea "Microsoft is *REALLY* worried about Linux!!!"
That's why you don't see comapative adds for cars or any other industry that's figgured out that "basing your opponent only give them attention."
Thanks Microsoft - you're putting Linix into the mainstream one add, and one white-paper, at a time.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Let Microsoft do all the Linux Advertising for the Open Source Community !
No one believes anything that Microsoft Says anymore, and hardly anyone of the general population knows of anything else to use, until Microsoft's Ad campaign goes into full effect!
This campaign gives me all the advertising / evidence I need to let my customers know that Linux is enterprise ready and here to stay, and a viable alternative to virus/adware/reboot ridden Microsoft Products.
http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/internet/security/0,390 20457,39116671-2,00.htm
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
a friend of mine is a sql server consultant. his client is paying him very large sums of money to tweak their kludged distribution of sql server machines so that they can achieve something resembling scalability. in fact, he is making significantly more than me, and i am an oracle/unix specialist.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
Naah, i would go with MegaSolid!
yush
No, MacroHard
Microsoft's claims courtesy of Sterling Ball, CEO of Ernie Ball Guitar strings.
Looking at the first IDC PDF they make available for download, the research claims that the second-highest contributor to TCO is downtime.
Now here's what I want to know. Without knowing specifics within any given company of how much business is being lost; and thus, how much money is potentially being lost, how can they even make such a claim?
The point is, even though the IT/Technology press seems to be pushing "TCO" as a major factor in deciding platforms, reality has shown that many IT decision makers simply just don't care about TCO.
They know, as well as most of us lowly admins do: TCO is wildly inaccurate, and impossibly complicated to calculate, and generally is a waste of time. Business dollars spent trying to figure TCO are better utilized on Admin skill and probably marketing.
Microsoft is just to justify their high prices against something that's essentially free. My suggestion to Microsoft is to try another approach altogether. Perhaps promote the Clown-influenced color scheme of Windows XP as "modern".
-brain
I'm sure I can't be the only one thanking Microsoft for the free Linux advertisement. These studies can only be good for Linux, I think.
but my small ( 3 people ) group manages a linux cluster of > 4000 CPUs fairly easily as well as the servers directly related to it's and operation ( and a hell of a lot of other sidework as well ), and we have 3 *nix admins who handled everything from desktops to large Netapps filers.
On the other hand, for about the same amount of desktops in the Windows side of our operation, we have 3 people just to handle the them ( no server work, no production support, handling of data transport to remote sites, helldesk staffing, etc. ).
I'd laugh my ass off to see how many people it takes to handle that many Windows cluster nodes, or server-level functions ( some of which Windows can't even provide ).
PC moderators can suck my White pierced, tattooed dick. If you think pride == hate, s/dick/Aryan meat mallet/g.
What I would love to see is is specification for several different types of applications and then have several independant teams implement them on several different platforms.
1) file server
2) databse server (say standardized around SQL)
3) workstation
4) entertainment system
Then let the teams put their impementation on 1) a standard configuration, and 2) a configuation of their choosing that optomizes their implementation.
Now run a battery of tests of throughput, licensing cost, estimated cost of implementation and maintence.
Now, get some group like Consumer Reports to organize and run the thing...
This seems more reasonable:
J ul 2002.pdf
http://www-1.ibm.com/linux/RFG-LinuxTCO-vFINAL-
The general public barely knows that Linux exists. Here we have _the_ major OS vendor not only spreading the name Linux in a major advertising campaign, but actually acknowledging the fact that they view it as serious competition!
1996 called, they want their browser back.
Mozilla
Training
- Linux/J2EE - Staff trains for 10 days
- Microsoft - Staff trains for 7 days
StaffingLinux/J2EE
Development team: $1,364,000 Includes 9.25 full-time equivalent (FTEs) for one full year at an average fully loaded cost of $105,000 each. Team includes: one project manager, one architect/lead technical, one database administrator (DBA), four software developers for development and integration, two developers for testing and documentation, and 0.25 FTE for deployment. Thereafter, 1.25 FTEs for annual maintenance and integration in years one through three.
Microsoft
Development team: $1,023,000 Includes 9.25 FTEs ($728,250) for nine months at an average fully loaded annual cost of $105,000 each. Team includes: one project manager, one architect/lead technical, one DBA, four software developers for development and integration, two developers for testing and documentation, and 0.25 FTE for deployment. Thereafter, 0.90 FTEs for annual maintenance and integration in years one through three.
Well, anyone who believes "the facts" about the advantages of one product over another as given by the manufacturer of the product that is better is just plain stupid.
/. posts about why linux is better. I'll make my decision based on my experience and my needs, not what other people tell me. I think this goes for most of us here.
Thats why I don't believe MS when they say Windows is better and cheaper, and why I don't believe most
The bad news... All of our bosses soak this shiat up!
Whenever I read anything like this and see the words "...funded by Microsoft...", I replace all instances of fact with FUD.
This is not the sig line you are looking for... -- Old Jedi Sig Line Trick
While this may be true of Microsoft's customers, it is definitely not true of IBM's. For many years, IBM distributed software in source form, which was then compiled and optimized by the systems programmer for the particular machine installation.
Of course, I didn't expect a study funded by Microsoft to be objective, but I can't help but think that this study is going to do them more harm than good. Any mainframe programmer reading this is going to laugh at the naivete shown - no custom compiles? On a mainframe?! What were these folks smoking?
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Whaddya trying to do, be the troll with the lowest UID?!!!
MegaHard! (girls let me know if you want a date!)
He tells me they have a portal for their employees that is dedicated to Linux and news about Linux in the market places. I bet that all major installations that are covered on Slashdot turns up there as well
They have some kind of program going which intends to change how people perceive Microsoft. They have told every employee to interview a friend or family member on how they perceive Microsoft. My friend chose to interview me, since he knows I like Linux. He didn't take this interview really seriously, but during the interview, to some of my comments he told me: "Now I am supposed to say this and this". They have had many meetings where they have been told how to respond to claims about Linux and Microsoft.
This summer there was some really big Microsoft event in New Orleans. Some 10000 people or so attended. In it Steve Ballmer hold a long talk for several hours. My friend's estimate was that about 90 % about this talk was about the threat of Linux. There were special awards given to people who had done good things in the fight against Linux.
There are more things that I don't remember right now, but I am somehow flattered on the behalf of all open source hackers that they really have accomplished so much.
Posting anonymously since I was not really supposed to tell anyone about this...
From the report at: plan 9 company Because open-source communities develop most Linux modules, earth9 found bug fixes and problem resolutions difficult to obtain, and updates slow to arrive. So they now target not just linux. but the whole open-source community?
but rather they are marketing to the upper managment and accountants who need to focus on costs
True. But wanna know what convinces these people more than a Microsoft-funded study and website? The stock market.
These guys pride themselves in tracking stocks and predicting trends. They get the WSJ and join stock clubs. They brag over their portfolio at the gym with their buddies. The market is their self-definition of their sophistication and competence.
When dot-bust happened, Microsoft bought itself time by using the tech bubble collapse as "proof" that shaky companies were too dangerous to rely upon. They worked hard to spread disinformation that Linux somehow had something to do with the collapse (and with the demise of so many Linux-related companies, it didn't help. SCO may think it's pal'ing up to Microsoft by its assault on Linux, but Microsoft is only using SCO as further proof that 'one does not bet his/her career on the UNIX ilk').
If you want to get the executive in your organization's attention, point to what's been happening to Redhat's stock (RHAT). I recommended this stock to a bunch of the PHB's last August. They bought between $6 and $8. It's now just under $20. Any time you can double someone's money in just a few months, you'll get their attention. I had a presentation last month about open source to them all - now that they're believers - and they were diligently scribbling notes and believing in the message (Granted, I've become concerned about Redhat's move per RH Linux, but that's too esoteric for the PHBs).
If Redhat is taking off, the PHB will assume there is something significant happening. Combine that with Microsoft's flat revenues and you'll scare the crap out of them. Make them believers in Linux real fast.
Try it... it works.
For those who want to avoid hitting a Microsoft website, here's my summary of MS's "claims", and my own interpretation of them:
...which is just a fancy way of saying "Windows admins with no more paper behind them than an MCSE will work for low pay".
A set of PC servers costing less than a mainframe? <sarcasm> Say it isn't so! </sarcasm>
What's next? "Honda 10 times less expensive than Porche"?
I'll let the following paragraph from the study speak for itself for a moment:
In other words -- it isn't Linux that is driving the added costs, but the cost of the commercial database and application server applications they decided to investigate:
This study also doesn't address the impact of needing to retrain existing staff with Unix/J2EE experience over to Windows/.NET:
A few other interesting points on this study:
I'll stop there. Obviously, Microsoft is once again revving their FUD machine into high gear. Is anyone truly suprised? Will anyone truly be sucked in by it?
Yaz.
MacroSolid: Large and Hard
MicroSoft: Small and Squishy
Please mod: +1 Inapropriate(sp?)
/* * pope1 */
What's more, many of Microsoft's defecting customers are governments, who have larger issues to worry about than TCO. TCO for Linux in the government is difficult to measure. Government TCO isn't like business TCO, because governments can influence who gets trained on what in the schools. But let's just suppose that Windows TCO IS lower than Linux as claimed. For a government, it may still make sense to go with Linux, as it puts control of the technology in local hands, not in the hands of some big foreign corporation, and that is priceless.
Linux training in the schools: $30 million.
Difference in TCO between MS and OS: $10 million.
Jumpstarting your high tech economy: Priceless.
For Big American Corporations, there's Microsoft. For everyone else, there's Open Source.
Microsoft is scared, and if this is the best they can do, they have NOTHING with which to combat the (open) source of their fear. The free market will do it's thing, MS will lose market share, and neither MS nor OS will be able to rest on their laurels. Computer users everywhere will win big from this increased competition.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I filled in the Facts evaluation kit information. Got to the end and found out this kit is going to cost me US$ 15.55 "Shipping and Handling". Not so "free" after all.
Down the bottom I see
At this time, we cannot accept order cancellations or returns on this kit.
I'm thoroughly unimpressed that a "free" information package should cost more than my last OS upgrade. I am incensed that I cannot cancel the order. I am happy I didn't click the submit button.
Thanks but no thanks. I see enough Heebie Niggers in my neighborhood.
As soon as you saw the quarter-million dollar machine being compared in a cost analysis to a dual obsolete Xeon, you should have been thinking, "If I argue with idiots, what will I look like?"
For another opinion:
http://news.com.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html?tag=l h
"The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates." - Tacitus
Sounds like my poo yesterday.
They left out one BIG fact. They use Linux.
Here is a link from Netcraft.
Scott
Who include IT decision makers and IT buyers for the 7 largest health care providers in the US. They have all been making noises about Linux, but nobody wants to be the first to take the plunge- I've been keeping a short mailing list updated with news items, like Israel asking for Thai pricing on MS office. This is the email I sent:
s p
----email below-------
You've been wondering when Linux will become mainstream enough for you to use it extensively in your organizations: I think you'll be interested in this recent response by Microsoft. When you have to buy research that says you have a better product, and the research companies need to skew the comparisons so heavily that it's obvious an apples-to-apples comparison would reflect unfavorably on the product you're pushing, the market has already made its choice; and then it's only a matter of time.
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/facts/default.a
My restatements of the "facts:"
1. FROM IDC: it's cheaper to hire someone straight out of college who earned an MCSE in an online training course than it is to hire someone with 5 years of real-world Unix/Linux sysadmin experience. Especially if all you consider is the direct compensation those people recieve, and you don't include the costs associated with systems downtime, security breaches, and the ratio of sysadmins to machines, which is typically lower than 1:20 in windows environments and 1:50 or higher in unix/linux environments.
2. FROM META: it's cheaper to buy 5 or 6 $5000-per-box commodity 4U windows servers than it is to buy a $470,000 proprietary RISC 42U mainframe, even if the software that runs on the mainframe costs you nothing extra. Especially when you don't consider the costs associated with downtime, redundancy, security, or the cost of buying new software for your six commodity boxes every 3 years. And never mind comparing the performance of free software on those same six commodity boxes- that's beside the point.
3. FROM GIGA: you can save development money by forcing all of your customers to upgrade so that their systems are compatible with yours. And if your customers don't want to upgrade, they don't really need to buy your stuff anyway.
all of these so-called "market research analyst" jokers should be ashamed to have their names associated with such obvious distortions of reality. I hope we never have to resort to this kind of chicanery to prove our value to our customers.
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
You suggest people like in that show actually exist?
You sir, do not frequent this site too often. "Candle Truck" and "Speaker Bracelet" were some silly search terms that came up in some even sillier /. "story".
Keep it real, homes.
Most of the readers on /. are assuming that the information presented in these reports are bogus. But are the CFO's and CEO's who are responsable for finding corporate cost savings really going to think in the same way? Who is it who will make the choice between Linux and Windows, in large corporations? The IT geek peon who does the work, or the CFO who needs to reduce a budget, or at least ensure it does not inflate?
The only way that the Linux community can successfully ensure that this media campaign is false and does not spread incorrect information is to obtain metrics that can truly be seen as 3rd party, and have more industry respect than those provided by the Microsoft studies. And then ensure they are published widely and given strong media attention.
Ignoring this campaign, scoffing and laughing it off is a mistake. I'm sure the CFO's and CEOs who are going to make the decisions arn't /. readers who think the way that all these forum posts indicate we think.
-Lokatana
You're absolutely correct. You can teach any moderately computer savvy person to be an administrator in a matter of days, especially if they only have to maintain a system that is already in place.
I do Windows administration for a small company (~35 people) and I've never had any formal training in it. I got my CS degree in May, programming jobs weren't exactly plentiful, and I had some windows administration experience from working on campus in college.
Really though, the bad windows administrators are just really really dumb, this isn't rocket science. You just put a patching scheme in place, and then look at a few help files or maybe do some google searches whenever you have a problem you've never seen before.
it's a blank page.. please- no mod ups.
keep the spoiler down
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Interesting that one of Microsoft's top examples is a comparison of TCO between wintel servers and an IBM z-series (formerly known as s/390) mainframe running SUSE. Of COURSE mainframes cost ass-loads of money, and people who buy IBM mainframes are more likely to be using them for their reliability than flat-out performance per dollar. Let's see a comparison between Win2K3 and Linux on the same Intel boxen, guys.
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
I count 7 case studies. Those case studies are for 7 companies. 7 companies that are for the most part unknown companies that are small players. 7 companies that are MS partners and sometimes vendors. 7 companies that had compatibility problems merging Windows technology with (surprise!) Linux and chunked Linux instead of Windows. 7 is not a large sample size no matter which way you slice it. If these are your best 7 to present, then MS has problems.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Five year study? Of Win2k?
Here's a clue...
My NT install is almost 5 years old.
It's no longer supported, however. I expect that when it turns five years old, it'll be in the garbage, meaning I get to spend the entirety of my initial hardware and the bulk of my software costs, ALL OVER AGAIN.
How about a TCO study of five years and one month?
Pricks.
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
I would have had an even lower ID, but I thought the registration system was bunk when they first came up with it.
Smart people don't read the trolls except when we turn our filters to -1 to moderate. I don't troll because I don't get a kick out of aggravating people, I like discussing things with them. There are still a bunch of us low ID types around, and some of us are still fairly active, too.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I prefer *nix or windows any day of the week.
.. Some of doze appls have better Devtimes, but when your rebooting the server all the time.
Someone show me any OS more stable then *nix with better uptimes.
Sure
It seems that some governments are waking up to this idea. 5 Euros shipped overseas isn't necessarily better than 10 Euros spent locally, especially when that 10 Euros goes toward developing the local technology industry.
The enemies of Democracy are
The best diplomat I know is a fully activated phaser bank.
-- Scotty.
I also believe that a wintel server running Linux is about 50 times cheaper than running a linux mainframe...
-L
Don't Panic.
Imagine having to shut down the OS side of the business if the report came down on the other side! He would have had no choice but to take Windows off the market if it had turned out otherwise. At least until they caught up, and how would they catch up after distributing all that cash in refunds?
Imagine his relief!
Well, can't read every crap that comes up here, eh?
So, big up yourself. Whatever that means.
No wonder this moderation system is such a joke.
This is a foolproof plan by Microsoft to keep Linux zealots tied up arguing and angst-ridden, thus slowing development of software for Linux. And you know, it is working.
(note: this would have been a lot easier if they hadn't made the text on their site *images*)
.net development platform delivers 25% lower development costs..."
"lower windows staffing costs provide TCO advantage over linux"
in other words, windows network admins are a dime a dozen (not to mention flooding the marketplace, as they've all gotten layed off in the last year). and in my experience, you get what you pay for...
"wintel server 10 times less expensive to operate than linux mainframe"
in other words, "fleet of mini coopers more fuel efficient than schoolbus." let's compare apples to apples, shall we? how about linux vs NT on the same hardware? or actually *doing the same job*: "multiple WinTel Web servers perform better than a Linux mainframe acting as a Web server consolidator"
"microsoft
or ".net developers are also a dime a dozen"
it's this kind of thing that makes me glad i drank the Apple kool-aid years ago (there is no god but Apple, and Steve is Its prophet)
sorry... where was i going with this?
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
This is Microsoft burning the candle from both ends, again. Microsoft admins are a dime a dozen. This is true. I know many, many MCSE's who can't find jobs anymore, because of market saturation. There are just too many.
Of course, that doesn't mean there are many good ones, which means you have to look harder.
OTOH, while you may be able to pay one $30k, while a Unix admin is $60k, this isn't the whole story either. One Unix admin will be able to manage an order of magnitude or more *nix boxes than a Windows admin will Windows boxes. So, while on the small scale you may have $30k vs $60k, throw 1000 boxes on your network and it'll be more like $300k vs $60k. Now who has the TCO advantage?
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
What a crock! The only way that assertion could possibly be true is if the Windows shops staff with nothing other than dime a dozen MCSEs. In a linux shop your staff actually has to know something...
(Light goes on) - Gee, I never even considered that, but this seems likely to have some effect on the frequency and impact of Windows Security issues. After all, your damn MCSE probably didn't take the specific course which gave him a regurgitatable step by step plan to deal with exploits (I think it used to be called NT in the enterprise ;0)
In any case, this is fluff, the whole category is pretty much fluff. TCO is the single most misinterpreted statistic in modern computing. TCO is only a valid comparison between products that have comparable capabilities. IE doing TCO analysis on brown eggs and white eggs is valid, doing the TCO analysis on brown eggs and dishwasher detergent is not.
Until M$ puts up a product comparable to Linux, doing TCO comparisons are misleading. After all, your lower TCO isn't much of a comfort when the latest malware offering has your data center on its knees.
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
I first read that as ..Microsoft is sacred.
"AD" = not objective "MICROSOFT"=what are you smoking if you listen to these guys? THE LAST TIME MICROSOFT WAS OBJECTIVE IS WHEN THEY SAID THAT WINDOWS [98](or any other for that matter) STILL ISNT COMPLETELY STABLE (at the win98 presentation by bill gates)
-------
1. Enjoy your job
2. Make lots of money
3. Work within the law
Choose any two.
By starting an ad campaign, Microsoft is doing two things 1) Lending credibility to Linux by making people aware that its an alternative which can be considered. 2) Pointing out the "purported" gaps in Linux, which will be filled more or less by the open source community.
I'll have you know that our "objective third-party information" was the best that money could buy.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Fair and Balanced analysis eh? I'm glad there are so many big companies out there today that are so objective about their own products and viewpoints.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
"Smart people run Linux. What to you run?" "Linux are you intelligent enough to use it?" "Oh yes, I want a smart ass man in blue tights with wings walking around my house..."
In order to realize these putative 5 year savings (assuming I make a decision this year), I have to run Win2K until 2009. Hmmm... NT 4.0 only lasted 6 years.
All Microsoft needs to do is find some scenarios where their products provide the best solution. And, all Linux zealots need to do is find some different scenarios where open-source products provide the best solution.
It all comes down to application, and some situations are best served by one product, and others by others.
Nothing new to see here, move along.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
If you just want a Linux-admin on the same skill-level as an ordinary Windows-admin, i.e. able to install the system, install new software, keep up with secuity patches and after reading the manuals configure things like a mail-server (Postfix or the like, not sendmail!), you could get one for nealy nothing straight out of uni - there are loads of people with a new shiny exam, seeking for a job in today's cold IT industry. They'l settle fo anything you want to offer them, just if they can survive...
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
there was an article recently on CNet that basically stated MySQL has been making a noticeable impact on MS Sql Server sales. MS would be stupid to just let this slide by without fighting back. The best part is, the more they fight, the worse it gets for them. Had microsoft focused on fixing things back in 98, OSS probably wouldn't have made any difference. By ignoring OSS for so long, they brought this on themselves.
Instead of jumping right in and converting boxes over to Linux and FreeBSD I quietly received permission to build a couple of FreeBSD servers out of PCs slated for the recycle bin.
Reciently I was involved in some meetings to look at network and server monitoring tools which included Deep Metrix's IP Monitor and Ipswitch's What's Up Gold. Both are pretty "entry level" but we only needed to monitor 25 servers for (mostly) non mission-critical reasons.
I took it on my own to install Nagios on one of my "play" servers over a long weekend. The following Monday I pulled the people together from the previous meetings and showed them what Nagios and FreeBSD could do...monitor everything they had defined as being critical to be monitored and send notifications via a TAP gateway to our IT pager.
Everyone was thrilled, the cost was about 8 hours of my time (they gave me a freebie day off!) and there was no MSFT tax paid.
Now that open source solutions have a) proven themselves in our organization and b) reduced some of our IT costs management is much more interested and much more flexible in investigating and implementing alternative solutions.
As long as Microsoft keeps charging us an arm and a leg for the privledge of implementing their systems (and sometimes they do have a better tool, I can admit that) Linux will have a strong ally in cost-concious managers everywhere if we can tone down the rabid fandom that scares a lot of "normal" people away!
Be polite and political about Linux and alternatives in your organization, and just show what it can do and you'll find people are more receptive to the idea!
Windows [Server System] has a lower total cost of ownership and outperforms Linux."
Windows *does* have a lower TCO. Win2k/XP is definitely a more productive desktop than 95/98/NT. Updating Windows servers (I don't know about 2003) is definitely worth the licensing costs too. What I'm saying is that the TCO for using windows has gone down! It's true.
And for some measurements, Windows does outperform Linux. Some of that is because of better third party drivers, or in kernel processing, but it is true none the less.
It (that one statement) doesn't specifically claim that Windows has a lower TCO than linux, although for some uses, that may be true as well. Specifically if your options are to use an application that exists on windows, or write and support your own for Linux.
FUD "Fucked Up Data" :-)
See, this is the best part of free software, and free comments. I don't have to spend a million bucks to get someone to agree with me! :)
---
"If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars."
-- J. Paul Getty
Trolling the low-id-ers, I mean. Looks like you got a bunch of bites... including me. Shit!
The enemies of Democracy are
Looking at the style of writting you'll notice that throughout the paper they use quality, professional writting. But as they get to Appendix A, they start discussing "rules" of Linux publication, how the growth of Linux comes in "Waves", and how people run "Beowulf" clusters and write "custom" software. Look. Either it's the right word or it's the wrong word, but placing quotation marks around it significantly reduces the confidence the reader has in what is being said. The "rules" of Linux publication is interpreted as 'Linus wakes up and emails it to some people. or not. whatever'.
Regardless of what is said, the style speaks volumes.
Chris
TCO is a total cost number, meaning, overall microsoft is cheaper. Also your making the assumption that linux is safer, or somehow more secure for data than Microsoft Server software. This isn't necessarilly true. Using the idea that Microsoft gets hit by viruses and Linux doesn't is really more a matter of Microsoft representing 95% of the desktop market and therefor 95% of the virus makers are coding to affect Microsoft. Server 2003 is an excellent product, quick and reliable. Also very easy to use and maintain. I have no complaints at all. It takes a minute to boot, but once it does, the OS only occupies about 1% of my processor usage, which isn't bad. These are independant partial studies, believe what you like, but it's in black and white, Microsofts TCO is cheaper, and if redhat had a study proving otherwise, don't you think we would have seen it by now.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
This has got to be the first page I've ever seen on Microsoft.com that looks the same in Mozilla as it does in IE.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
Surely you don't distrust common sense..."Wintel server 10 times less expensive to operate than Linux mainframe"...and that's only counting the hardware! When you throw in the software, that brings up the mainframe cost another $80! And it is irrelevent to consider the cost of the Windows software, just ask them. Leave it to Microsoft to discover that mainframes cost more than servers.
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
I do love this quote from MS website,
.NET platform delivers 25% lower development and support costs than J233/Linux"
.Net has 25% of the functionality of J2EE/Linux.
"Microsoft
but of course it does. It delivers these because
Jeezus. Do the math, folks, do the math.
"There won't be anything we won't say to people to try and convince them that our way is the way to go."
-- Bill Gates on Microsoft marketing
"Linux is no threat to Windows"
-- Bill Gates
The Optimist says the glass is half full The Pessimist says the glass is half empty The Marketing Manager says you need to resize your glass. Dumbed down for the Trolls to understand. "Smart enough to understand Linux...but not smart enough to comprehend common sense." -Linus Torvalds
"The first thing we must do is kill all the lawyers" - Henry VI, Wm. Shakespeare
"First they ignore you,
then they laugh at you,
then they fight you,
then you win."
Mohandas Gandhi
I read this quote the first time about three years ago in a Slashdot Comment on a article where Microsoft was laughing at Linux. It's pretty clear now that Microsoft isn't in the laughing stage anymore - they take Linux very seriously now. I think the fight just started and it's still a very long road until we get to the last stage.
*sigh* why do they do that!?! that's like comparing umm... compact cars to luxury/sports cars of course it's cheaper to maintain a desktop-sized machine with 1 or 2 processors running a 2000$ OS than it is to run a 2 million dollar machine running a free OS
www.necroticobsession.com
But a lot more believable.
First, IBM didn't lie in court and didn't fake evidence.
Then, IBM stands for reliability and predictability, which is exactly what the industry wants today, after years of constant worm-attacks. Microsoft on the other hand stands for unreliability, unsecurity and arrogance.
IBM's position is quite easy: Just ask the manager how much money they lost last year on Worms/viruses and sell them the Worm-resistant Linux. (Yes I say resistant, all morons please note that resistant does not equal proof)
Microsoft became big offering products that were cheap and "good enough".
Microsoft told the managers for YEARS how much money they can save in hardware costs by dumping Unix and going for Intel. Now all of the sudden Microsoft changes it's mind and proclaims that initial costs (like hardware and licensing costs) are irrelevant and starts to put forth dubious TCO-studies?
This campaign will backfire, it will just encourage managers to get more information about that Linux-thing that gives the previously thought invincible Microsoft so much grief.
I admit it, I'm a strictly Micro$oft developer using C++/C# for over 12 years. I'm not gonna bitch if microsoft is promoting Windows/IIS etc. It'll keep me gainfully employed and food in my kid's bellies. I guess I'm just a selfish, self-involved bastard. I'm happy that Microsoft wants to throw their marketing muscle at Linux.
Before you start flaming me - isn't that what everyone else who is bitching most concerned about as well? If (God Forbid) Linux starts to lose market share slowly by slowly by some miraculous event, isn't the REAL reason you'll be upset is that your livelihood would be threatened - not the fact that Linux is the best fricken OS on the planet and it deserves to beat the bloated Windoze down.
If its the latter you're kidding yourself.
Once upon a time (August-ish of 2003) there was a duo of worm/viruses that only affected windows 2k and xp machines. This terrible two-some pretty much shut down the internet internationally for days/weeks. The ISP i work for is still trying to eradicate Blaster. Welchia, of course, doesn't exist in quite the same way anymore.
How does this affect the TCO of Windows?
Microsoft has borked the ad campaign in the same manner that it did the MSN.com homepage. The content of the right-hand column in set ~5 characters to the left of the left-margin. Thus, "Independent" becomes "endent" when viewed with Opera using anything but MSIE 6.0 as the User-Agent. I'm using Opera 7.23 on Windows XP, btw.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Is it just me, or does the whole ad sound like the marketing department reworked a "Netcraft confirms it: BSD is dying" troll?
philcrissman.com.
Interestingly, that's what I call my wang.
It's free for any (chick) to use, got pretty good support, and runs smooth as hell.
Don't worry, I don't have FreeSTD, I have Red Hat for you protection (for preventing spawned child processes illicitly).
Eh, I've run out of material.
Notice that the page acknowledges the Windows trademark, but not the Linux one (which belongs to Linus Torvalds).
What was that Ghandi said?
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win."
I think we are at the attack stage. The next one is the win stage.
Linux box
1 used Edge FX U2 $200 (384 megs 30 gig hd PII450)
SuSE 8.0 Proffesional $80
total = $280
Windows box
1 used Edge FX U2 $200 (384 megs 30 gig hd PII450)
Windows 2000 Server $999
total = $1199
Hmmmm... let me think, guess I'll take the first option
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
IT people are used to seeing vendor ads claiming high performance and low TCO. I doubt that these ads will create a groundswell of professional enthusiasm for Microsoft or against Linux and Open Source. The community of IT peers MS is trying to discredit is growing, not shrinking.
What's significant and encouraging is that Microsoft has moved from worrying about servers to worrying about *everything*.
From a related article: In his platform-strategist role, Taylor succeeds Peter Houston, senior director of Microsoft's Windows Server Strategies, as chief Linux watcher. "Pete was more focused on server, but I'm more cross-group focused, and focused on the whole Microsoft software stack," Taylor said.
I other words, they are realizing they are in more trouble than they thought.
This whole Linux/MS cycle was inevitable. I'm no expert, but its how these situations seem to evolve: ignore, attack, embrace.
First Microsoft ignored Linux a few years ago, hoping it would just go away.
Now, MS is attacking Linux. When this fails, the only thing left is for MS to accept Linux.
Can you imagine? Now introducing (gasp) MS Linux 2008...
Oh, the horror. I think Slashdot would self-destruct.
Despite the lies that Microsoft keep buying and spreading around, I have completely different results here and recently have happily switched from a healthy company where about 85% of all systems were Linux systems to another healthy company where 100% of all systems are Linux systems, secretaries' ones included.
he could make a movie by the same name....
I don't comprehend trolling.
Are there really people so miserable that the most entertaining thing they can think of to do is to write misleading messages in what is essentially the fine print on a news site? Talk about a total bunch of losers.
And with some of them it seems like it's all they do all day long!
-- laws are the opinions of politicians --
First we heard the allegory of Linux being the "free puppy". Now MS is spending their hard earned money to stop people from getting the "free puppy". The true is that MS dog won't learn new tricks. So the only option you get is to buy another MS dog. Future cost to acquire Linux 64 bit = 0. Future cost to acquire Linux w/SMP support kernel = 0.
- these are not the droids you are looking for -
Look at this as free advertising for the GNU/Linux community. Maybee some of those seeing this campain don't even know what Linux is? Maybee all they know of is Windows and then get interested in Linux. Maybee they want to see what Linux, that can compete with the biggest software company in the world, really is.
On the other hand. The big companies that are about to decide wether to use MS or GNU software decide to go with MS software instead.
I don't know. What do you others out there think about this?
I really HAD another userid
If Microsoft really believed what's in the ad, they wouldn't be running the ad. The existence of the ad says, "Linux is a strong competitor for Microsoft products. We are willing to pay millions to try to prevent that perception." The ads don't sell Microsoft, they sell Linux and BSD and Open Source, by showing that the 800-pound gorilla takes them seriously.
Remember this about Windows XP and Windows Server 2003: The file system is crippled. You cannot make a working backup of your OS installation using Microsoft tools. (This has been verified many times by Microsoft technical support. Don't tell me about Sysprep; it is not a backup tool. Yes, I know about third-party tools; they are all buggy, not supported by Microsoft, and may cause problems that remain hidden for a while. See Experiences w/ Drive Imaging Software? No, NTBackup does not back up the operating system. See the comment, There are many limitations to Sysprep, for Microsoft's notification of hidden problems.)
That's all you need to know. If you can't make operational backups, it isn't sensible to use the software. By crippling its file system, Microsoft has made it imperative that you choose some other operating system.
Also, any government that allows the use of proprietary file formats owned by someone else is not really an independent government, is it? You can't reliably work with your intellectual property created with Microsoft products unless you pay Microsoft money! Microsoft's international government customers are under the control of a foreign company controlled in part by a foreign government that runs the biggest spy organizations that have ever existed.
Who was using the more than 60 serious security vulnerabilities found in the last two years in Microsoft products before they were fixed?!!! Foreign governments? Your competitors? Hackers?
Microsoft can change the license terms to which you are bound after you have made your purchase and agreed to the terms!
I'm definitely not anti-Microsoft. I want Microsoft's top management to take these limitations and problems seriously and fix them. Until then, Microsoft products must always lose, unless a feature at present available only with Microsoft products is needed.
Microsoft has a policy of assisted suicide for its products: Windows Desktop Product Life Cycle Support and Availability Policies for Businesses. This enforced software death is different from the support schedules of Linux companies. Microsoft's software death involves being forceably pushed to an entirely new operating system, with new hardware requirements and many, many new bugs and training problems. This has certainly been true of the switch from Windows 98 to Windows XP. It certainly appears likely to be true of a switch from Windows XP to Windows Longhorn. In contrast, a Linux upgrade is to something very similar. It is likely that no hardware upgrade and little or no new training will be necessary. And, since you have the source code, there are many companies who will be glad to support old products, and even update them where necessary.
Do you want Microsoft as a business partner? Here are three articles about Microsoft:
I want to know how "informational" ended up becoming a word that people tolerate.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
No.
Microsoft my friends is about to die, it will be looked at like IBM in 1987.
Out of touch with trends and reality.
Like the IBM PS/2 for IBM, Windows is to become irrelevant.
I do 99% of my work on Linux.
And a message for proprietary vendors, start shipping Linux editions or die!
Hey, M$ found a new way to advertise. Will we promote our own web site with real results (but please, just _one_ web site) ? When I mean _real_ results I want to say that I've read some of the pdf's and there are many false points there, like when measuring the number of steps to install linux: ... could not open ...slocate.db /dev/hdd /mnt/cdrom /mnt/cdrom/...
step 37 - locate
step 38 - updatedb
step 39 - locate pop3 - not installed
step 40 - mount
step 41 - rpm -i
(It is easy to see that only 2 steps are required)
I don't mention obvious things like comparing file throughput on Windows 2003 server with RedHat, but using RedHat 2.1 AS (gcc 2.9x, old samba, no NPTL) instead of the new version.
Is so. ready to create a web site / wiki where we all will be able to tell the _real_ facts ? Can we promote it ?
This makes /. sound like a stuck record (duh), but
Do you wanna tell that to IBM? (TCO propaganda at the bottom BTW)
when they can't even make it display correctly in my non-M$ browser (opera)?
Yep. MS created Linux. Or more accurately, they created the environment for it to succeed.
First, Win31x and Dos were heavily pirated. AKA Free as far as the consumer goes. Bill himself realized that marketshare > profit margin, and even tried to tell apple that back when they made $$$ selling excel for mac. This was back in the days when mags compaired win pcs $2000 to $6000 macs. The same PC was even cheaper for hobbyists, who could get a free copy (pirated) of windows, dos and doom and maybe still use their last computer's case, floppy drive, etc. Sound familiar? MS was built on free software. Alot of why MS succeeded 20 yrs ago is also why linux is succeeding now. It's cheap. It allows hobbyists to do something. MS has lost all of those advantages.
Second, MS killed their competition. They were either better or cheaper. If that didn't work they bought the company (or just broke the competition's software in windows). They can't undercut Linux. They can't buy linux. They can't break linux. That leaves them to only be better, which is only one way to fight.
Competition & monopolies is a lot like germs -- if you kill off the weak, eventually what you face will be immune to the techniques that you killed everything else off with. Pay software couldn't compete -- MS would undercut them. Regular companies couldn't compete -- MS would buy them. The traditional software model didn't work against MS, so something evolved that could. This competitor is been specifically crafted/evolved to resist many of the attacks MS has used in the past.
It's just natural selection at work...
Using the idea that Microsoft gets hit by viruses and Linux doesn't is really more a matter of Microsoft representing 95% of the desktop market and therefor 95% of the virus makers are coding to affect Microsoft.
Tell that to your boss after your Windows servers get hit with the next big virus attack.
So long and thanks for all the FUD.
Microsoft does not have their eye on the ball.
The real threat is not Linux. Linux is a long term threat.
The more short term threat is the cross-over software such as OpenOffice.org and Mozilla.
Organizations and people looking seriously to switch to Linux are already contemplating a much larger hurdle to jump.
Much smaller of a hurdle is the installation of, say, OpenOffice.org onto a Windows computer in a school, or church or non profit, or a business. The more cross-over applications Windows users are running, the lower the former hurdle becomes when they seriously look at Linux.
Many more sites can seriously consider doing a pilot trial of OpenOffice.org than can consider switching everything to Linux.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Uh, don't you know Ali G is jewish? His real name is Sasha Baron Cohen. See here.
I found this little quote interesting . . .
Custom kernel building was not performed since most customers would not be willing or able to perform or support such a customized environment.
"The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw."
I hope any of you that filled out the Microsoft survey a couple of weeks ago about what makes Linux better than Windows are happy. This is the kind of crud they make with the results of those surveys.
Let's see....Windows server hacked 12 times in 2 months resulting in 5-10 hour clean ups each time until they finally released a patch (no joke, this actually happened to me and yes I know how to lock down a winderz box). 20 minute MINIMUM reboot time atleast once a month if not once a week for patches.
Linux boxes....never hacked, never down for longer than 5 minutes for kernel reboot every 6-12 months.
Doing some quick math.....
Windows
5 * 12 * $35/hr = $2100
20 minute reboot = $4000 lost each reboot * 12 = $48000 in 1 year.
Grand total = $50,100
Linux
5 minute reboot = $1000 lost * 2 = $2000
No hack clean up.
Grand total = $2000
Training is nothing more than a lame way to make the numbers go up. You need MORE training to make MS products even somewhat secure than you do Open Source.
IT staff? Actually you wouldn't need to have all these Highly trained MCSE techs around since 1 Linux tech can maintain 3 times the machines a windows tech can simply because there's less issues.
Why wouldn't smarter people make more money?
This is exactly why the first round of MS Anti-Linux FUD from a couple of years ago didn't work. At least some PHB's saw the FUD for what it was and it backfired on Microsoft. Some clients of mine might have never considered Linux on thier webservers if thier MS rep hadn't spoken out against Linux in such an overzealous way.
Microsoft uses statistics like a hooker uses a lamp post. They use it as support instead of illumination.
does anyone find it interesting or funny that the comparisons are between a BRAND NEW(relatively speaking) Windows OS and very old Linux OSes?
I mean AS2.1, RH80 vs. 2k3?
Try those vs 2k, and AS3.0 vs 2k3.
Cmon, plan the tests a bit better even.
While it is true that Windows 2000 is less than 5 years old, it is still possible to complete a 5-year test run in the alotted time. By simply overclocking the test machines, the computers are able to do the equivalent of more hours of computer work per hour. Therefore, with sufficient overclocking and cooling, the tests have been completed in three real years with five years of computer time.
For a lesson in RIAA math, refer to this article.
Well I work part-time for a small local company with ~40 Windows clients, 1 GNU/Linux-samba server and 1 firewall running GNU/Linux. There are also 2 expensive Windows 2000 servers. The windows 2000 servers are there because of one person in the management wanted exchange, and he would not reason with us. All computers, except the windows servers, are home built.
:) And results in several hours per year to keep all the licenses "in sync", etc. Total hidden cost for license management: 5 x 50 USD = 250 USD. (we charges per hour).
/year (for managing licenses)
HARDWARE:
1 x samba server (hardware): about 2000 USD (2 x 73 GB RAID (mirror), 512 MB RAM, Athlon 600 mhz.)
1 x firewall (hardware): about 400 USD
The management in the company contacted "windows experts" regarding the windows servers, and we just bought those that was recommended. Total cost: 10'000 + 8'000 USD
So this far:
Linux servers, 2'400 USD
Windows servers, 18'000 USD
Well, you say, we could have run windows on cheap home-built systems too so that should not count into TCO. Well I agree a little, but it is important because of the expensive system WAS recommended by Windows Experts - and according to them it was impossible to run at home-built computers at the same performance. (The computers in question was nothing special, with 2 x 36 GB RAID discs, 512 MB RAM, intel 1200 mhz CPUs). We, as Linux-experts, "recommended" cheam home-built systems.
(a side-story; the home-built systems has now after 2 years of operation been much more reliable. The Dell servers had some hardware problems (due to bad motherboards, according to dell) wich resulted in the erasing of the Raid configuration)).
SOFTWARE LICENSES:
2 x Windows server licenses + CAL + Exchange licens: About 10'000 USD (and on top of that there are some yearly fees, and fees when you have a total of over X GB of emails, etc etc).
2 x GNU/Linux installations, debian, cost: 0 USD.
So on the license front, Windows is infinite more expensive
Now I also wish to add that before exchange we had the email system running on the samba server. Even though the GNU/Linux hardware was not as good as the shining Dell servers, and even tough this GNU/Linux system also ran (in addidtion to qmail) Samba, apache (internal webb), lpd, and a few other maintenance stuff, like backup (backup of the other servers goes thorugh this server), windows virus program updates, and with all these services running, the email system could handle more load than the new exchange servers. The windows servers feel a bit slughish actually, compared to qmail+GNU/Linux, and exchange is extremely inconvenient to configure versus qmail IMOHO.
ADMINISTRATIVE COSTS:
Overall we put most of our administrative time to the windows clients. Often there is someone who has done something (for example accepting to install programs they get via e-mail) wich often makes the computer or the software to behave strangely (or crash), wich often results in reinstall of windows (this is especially painful on those laptops where windows does not have drivers for the LAN, etc). (on the client side Linux would be a winner with an "if"; if the users could adapt to Linux well enough to not need help all the time. OTH training of the personel can be seen as a investment).
However, if we are going to compare windows servers vs. GNU/Linux servers, we put about 80% of our time on managing the Windows servers. This means that (if we exclude the firewall) that the windows servers costs about 0.4x USD ea and the GNU/Linux maintenance cost about 0.2x USD ea. (where x is the total server management cost, wich is about 350 USD / mo).
CONCLUSION:
GNU/Linux:
Hardware: 2'400 USD
Software: 0 USD
Maintenace: 70 USD / month
Total for three years: 4'920 USD
Windows:
Hardware: 18'000 USD
Software: 10'000 USD + 250 USD
Maintenance: 280 USD / month
i don't see what all the big fuss is about. this looks like common practice to me. you're competitor tries to gain ground, you then set out to destroy them. some may call it "corporate america", others may call it "the way we do business". either way no one should be surprised. **shrug**
You need people like me so you can point your fuckin fingers and say, "That's the bad guy." So what that make you? Good?
I've only scrolled through one of these so far, but there is very little mention of the costs associated with closed source (ie: Windows) -vs- open source (ie: Linux) solutions?
.NET -vs- J2EE you would have saved $350K if you had used an open source app server, development tools and database server.
Clearly this report is biased towards closed source commercial solutions running on Linux, and did not consider an open source equivalent for many aspects of the project. For example, in
Furthermore, the open source nature of Linux was not considered in this study. While you may choose to accept support from a third party, you may also opt out and support the operating system (and all aspects of your open source platform) with internal IT. What happens at EOL with the W2K solution?
Fortunately, I don't believe that development staff are ignorant of these facts. Quite honestly, these numbers indicate that a commercialized Linux solution (RedHat, Oracle, BEA Weblogic) will perform on-par with a Windows 2000/.NET platform and cost about the same.
Eric Sarjeant
eric[@]sarjeant.com
You can get a free trial of Server 2003 or at least make MS pay to ship you two FREE CD-ROMS!!! Go to msgetthefacts.com No one here can argee against getting free (as in shipping) from MS.
Items:
1 The Essential Facts Kit with Windows Server(TM) 2003 FREE
1 Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition 180-Day Evaluation FREE
There is a simple, legal, commonly used technique to get the results you want in a study (or survey):
1) Contract several separate outfits to conduct the study.
2) Require each outfit you commission to keep the results confidential, and to give you the rights to decide what to do with the results.
3) Tell each outfit you commission that the study or survey should be honest, but write the terms of the contract so that a smaller fee is paid for results that are NOT eventually used in public advertising. This can be easily justified by saying that the firm conducting the study will have extra work to do if it is published in an ad (i.e. dealing with public inquiries as to the results) which will require additional (generous) compensation.
Following these three steps lets you pick which result you broadcast and which you supress, and also puts subtle economic pressure on the contracted firms to come up with publishable results.
I'm waiting to see whether over the long-term, corporate strategy can win out over a product which has gained wide exposure. Does the Microsoft ad campaign more resemble the efforts of homeowners who built on the beach to hold back the inevitable erosion of the tide? Alternatively, does it represent a comet heading for earth that will put up a dark cloud that will wipe out most "life" on earth?
It's petty simple, demand for Linux employees is high these days, while the supply of Linux workers comming out of universities is very low, hence the higher price of the employee. Too many microsoft fan boys in the market means cheaper microsoft labour.
MacroSolid already exists...
Thus he's a heebie nigger.
Microsoft didn't lie! They um... just showed us the wrong tape... They left the right one at home! Yeah that's it! The same exact excuse they used in the DR-DOS debacle IIRC. Oh we didn't mean for that error to show up! We just left the copy of the software in which it wouldn't show up at home! Yeah, that's the ticket... Their excuses would sound lame from a college freshman, much less a multi-billion-dollar company. If I'd been the presiding judge on that case I would have beaten their lawyers severely with my gavel.
Also keep in mind that this is not the first (not even close!) study funded by Microsoft that promotes their products over their competition. And it's not even the first OS they've pulled this with -- Folks who were in to OS/2 back in the day will recognize these tactics. Microsoft is really a one-trick pony and their trick is marketing. They use their trick aggressively against anyone they view as a threat, and that's currently Linux and the OSS movement. Better get used to it.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This will kill them where their real bread and butter are - Office and its' add-ins.
I was looking at theri (Sun's) full-page add in this weeks' Computing Canada - impressive AND simple. Easy enough that even a PHB will immediately grasp it as a way to save $$$.
Here's a link for those who haven't heard about it yet. Here's a quote regarding $$$ and support for those too lazy to click on the link:
PHB summary:
Near my apartment is a place called MicroSemi, with a distinctly MS look to the logo... Check out the website
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
Decision makers will decide about Linux later. It is a predictable path to continue riding with WinTel for the moment, but you can bet that the management club is watching the early adopters out there to see what problems they have with operating and migrating. It's one thing to read advertisements, but another to hear what your collegues are saying.
So far, there are more governmental bodies in the news in relation to Linux than business. If you want to get more word out about Linux, get these early adopters' stories told rather than publish a bunch of statistics. (Recall that there are lies, damned lies and statistics... that lesson was taught in Management 101.)
I could probably write up studies that Linux makes a better chocolate shake than Windows based on various statistics but what creates lasting impressions and strong motivation to migrate from Wintel? Peer opinion!
When someone writes up a story with a collection of interviews from people who have made the switch at varying levels and documenting their satisfaction and success, then you'll have an ear-bending study that will cause some effect.
I get outage notifications at work that the Windows Servers have to be rebooted to install a patch. Guess what that patch is? It is a patch for Internet Explorer and "workstation services". It is a fucking server WTF is a non-removable program doing on a fucking server?
Lower TCO my arse.
I think this problem was mentioned before. hmmm?
I finally get some clear, unbiased information on which to hang my hat! I had a sneaking suspicion that I should have replaced all of the Solaris machines with Windows 2003 Server instead of RedHat AS. If only I had this information sooner...
Looking at the benchmarks about web servers (pg 6): "The IBM z900 two-processor LPAR achieved 14 percent less performance than an Intel-based server with two 900 MHz Intel Xeon processors running Windows Server 2003." If you were to have a true comparison, shouldn't both OSes be compared on the same machine? AFAIK, Linux runs fine on Xeons...
Here's a question for the /. crowd: in your experience, how much do development tools/environment affect "development costs"? I'm working on replacing a billing application for a large utility, and very little of my time is spent *coding* and a lot of my time is spent in meetings and gathering requirements.
Microsoft is losing sales, they see UNIX servers getting replaced with Linux. Nothing new for the Slashdot community, but MS is starting to feel it. The bad reports on their ever backdoored, virus spreading Windows servers isn't helping sales too much either :) It takes less time to exploit a windows server than opening a can of beans.
Point is; they're going to start making their own reports from now on so expect more of this crazy stuff.. I mean.. "The second factor is that many of the Linux sites deployed their
servers in clusters, which did not decrease the incidence of downtime
but did lower the impact on end users. Failover systems shield the
end user from experiencing drops in availability."
Good grief! :D
I'm a windows developer *ducks* and thank good we have atleast 3 failover servers in our datacenter!
All with their very own Windows Server License, mind you; each of them with a nice couple of thousand bucks a license..
At least linux doesn't cost extra for an extra failover server!
I don't see why IBM couldn't be objective -- they sell both Windows and Linux systems, and to be honest, they probably sell more systems with Windows installed. IBM has the technical competence and the experience with both technologies (and more -- AIX, OS/390, OS/400, OS/2, ...) to reasonably compare the two.
A reseller that sells two product lines, even if somewhat biased, is going to be a whole lot more objective than the manufacturer of one of those product lines.
Thank you for saying what goes through my head whenever I see headlines like that. Arg, that drives me nuts!
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
He must have written this - after all who else could come up with this page of crap AND keep a straight face.
...but I have to say it. Who Cares?
We all realize that the success of Linux has not been because Linux has a large marketing arm that allows Linux Open Source Developers to produce a weak product and make up for it with pretty little catch-phrases like "Do more with Less!" (Windows Server 2003...I kinda though it was less too).
Allow me to admit something (Without being lit on fire). I was a huge Microsoft Advocate up until about 2 years ago. I argued with all of you "*nix People" until my keyboard wore out. I laughed at all of you who said it was better, faster, more reliable, and scoffed at the notion of Microsoft being an indestructable Monopoly. But yet, today, I sit in front of my Gentoo Linux based OS, running KDE, viewing Slashdot on Konquerer (something just couldn't get me away from browsers integrated into operating systems). Why? Because it works better, I can run my one copy on all of my computers without paying for it, and I genuinly like the Linux Experience over that of the Windows Experience (Hey, I can run an FTP server, mail server, file server, and still browse the internet without paying for a server based license).
Linux *never* provided me any kind of candy coated marketing slogans or white papers. Microsoft did. And they're only doing this because they realize that Marketing is the one place where they can over-power Linux. Too bad marketing doesn't run my computer.
Honestly, from my perspective the learning curve was difficult (still is, actually), and it is harder to find lower-wage technical staff that can troubleshoot Linux...but that's only because Microsoft has the operating system that is on most peoples' computers. It's not always going to be like that, and it appears to be trending in a direction away from MS. What in the heck are they going to do when they can no longer depend on support staff being unfamiliar with Linux?
When people realize that their next Windows is going to give more control to the Software Vendors and Content Providers than it gives to the user as it "Checks in" to ever-more-common Activation Code systems on the Internet to make sure you're not stealing crap that isn't worth what they want to charge you for it in the first place...how is Microsoft going to market their way out of it? It's doubtful that they will be able to depend on their "Hey, what other choice do you have?" attitude anymore.
But from my perspective: I don't treat my OS with any more reverence than I treat my toaster. I don't care who runs it, I don't care who doesn't. There's plenty of software for it, plenty of reasons I wouldn't run anything else, and I think others would agree regardless of what a Microsoft Sponsord report from IDC says. Linux is like a virus. We got the "brass" to allow us to install one of them into our shop about 2 years ago. Everyone was so happy with its performance that now we have several and are planning to move ever more important enterprise based functions in that direction.
"God is dead!" - Nietzsche
"Nietzsche is dead!" - God
I learned a long time ago not to listen to the advice of those who are out to con and screw me.
Funny thing is, whether or not it is objective (though I think not), it's not like I give a damn. Linux gives me a CHOICE, and that homie is a damned good thing. And, guess what, there's absolutely NO risk to go with Linux, and contrary to what Micro$oft wants the average fool to believe, Linux is not just free but Free as in liberating to me and that's DAMNED GOOD TOO.
If you want to get fucked my MS, go ahead. But the choice is clear to anyone that knows what's really going on.
Always wondered where he got that nose from. Makes sense now.
... where I can go into a small business staffed by complete computer illiterates (that part is actually easy to find), and offer them a complete system that will handle all of their word-processing, spreadsheet, AR, AP, payroll, and CRM without a lick of MS software anywhere in it. Of course, as part of this dream, the total cost and effort of the installation is practically nil, and I get a lucrative maintenance contract to do the stuff that the staff can't or won't figure out how to.
So far, I have been unable to do that, but the solution to this appears to be fairly close at hand. When it is, MS will have competition that it can't effectively deal with in any way except to improve the quality and reliability of its software.
But for now, I keep running into problems where things simply don't work. OpenOffice is great for techies, but when it acts up, it's enough to piss off a saint. Techies put up with that because they can come up with workarounds easily, but little old secretaries with blue hair are going to be utterly confounded when something doesn't work as expected, or an import doesn't quite keep the same formatting, or the margin just won't go where you want it, etc.
I'm still working on it (suggestions welcome).
Concealed Handgun License Courses in Plano, Texas
With that said, we need a benchmark system that can be run under Linux and Windows.
Anyone got one? If so, post here, I will run the test on the same system for both OSes and will post the results I get in my journal. The rules are really simple. The benchmarking application must run identically (no fudging figures or "cheating" under either OS), and must be cross-platform (I'm not going to install WINE or any of that--it has to function as-is on all OSes.) And it must encompass one test...I'm not going to run the thing for hours on end as I don't have that much free time to screw with it. Something simple like file-access and read/write should suffice.
I will compare the following:
Microsoft has out of the box centralized authetication that nearly anyone with a heartbeat can set up. When was the last time you had a 40k a year tech who was able to set up SAMBA LDAP and PAM?
A single unix admin can hold down more computers than an MCSE so it's not unusual that they command a higher salary. It's a simple matter of efficiency.
At the last "all Microsoft" shop I worked, the six or seven MCSE's spent all of their time trying to keep the company's Windows-based servers limping along. They never looked happy, worked 12 salaried hours a day, and no matter how hard they worked, at least one monitor in the server stacks always had a glaring BSOD or startup failure message waiting for dismissal. Failure was endemic, and resetting production servers midday was a weekly occurrence. On at least two occasions, none of the 500+ employees could login for 6 or more hours because ActiveDirectory took a dump. I genuinely felt for those guys because not only was it not their fault, but they had absolutely no way to diagnose the problem more or less fix it. The repository had been continually corrupting itself for over a month, so even after restoring from backups, ADS refused to read the data. In the end, we paid Microsoft a lot of money to send their own people out to repair things.
At my current job, we have one guy managing a comparable number of unix/linux servers under considerably higher load, and because the systems require so little attention, we've been able to put him on other projects as well.
In total, my previous employer was spending almost a quarter-million a year in wages, just maintaining their internal servers. We spend about $50K and have surplus resources available. In fact, we could easily double our capacity without hiring another admin if the need arose.
-Hope
Other than what Uncle Bill pays them for these written to order screeds?
FWIW, IDC is the research branch of IDG, the people who put on innumberable conferences around the world. Insert conspiracy theory here.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Never trust any survey that quotes figures like
'Staffing expenses were 33.5% better'.
Any manager with any experience of market research or statistics is going to be amazed at how they came up with that decimal place. I mean, saying '1/3 better' is one thing, but '33.5' is a sign of numerical ignorance.
Maybe we should reply with 'Linux saves 98.68263123% of software costs'.
And I thought that poll from last week was looking for how they could IMPROVE windows. Silly me, they just wanted to know what bullsoft to give out. And here I thought MS might want to compete on a features basis...
Sarcasm aside, has anything other that this trash come out of the survey I took the time to fill out last week? Anything?
What the heck is a 'sig'?
Obviously you haven't seen the ads that IBM has released in the last few years. Ever since they hired Ogilvy and Mather as their ad agency, IBM's advertising has become much more creative and interesting. Their commercials are usually worth watching - even after you've seen them before.
I'll admit, however, that their older ads were nothing to write home about.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
- Evelyn Beatrice Hall
If they are so good and well, why not publish in Word DOC files?
Wait.. most people can't or won't read those .DOC files. Sort of disproves their point altogether.
how one would not use TeX to make .pdfs with so many [70] pages?! unbeliveable!
I can see it at a glance, it is not TeX it is not even LaTeX!
world is steadily falling down and down, since the time our ancestors descended the tree....
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
Microsoft is 50% more likely to be using FUD than a presidential campaign. GNU/Linux kernel is 33% less likely to steal your personal information and share it w/o asking you. Microsoft is 99% likely to use arbitrary, biased, and intellectually dishonest figures in a FUD campaign to smear the competitors. I'm surprised they haven't waged an ad-hominem attack on Linus et al. and anyone else using *nix systems. It's funny, the Microsoft accounting robs Peter to pay Paul, because you shift budget requirements between license fees and IT staffing, and then they dont mention the added costs of licensing fees. Also, they might assume you need 2 IT people per Linux server instead of 1 on a windows box, when in fact you could end up w/ fewer IT people if you have enterprise-wide, instrumentated server management. BMC and friends make lots and lots of money on server management... example: i know of a case where the state of california paid about $25K / server for windows server management software (incl labor) for about 50 servers, about a $2M project. That doesnt count the client license packs or the server software or the app software or the future IT staffing. From what I heard, it never got finished and it was not ever utilized. Tell me that all the incidental costs of Windows are as much as Linux, on average. Mileage may vary, but trained *nix admins can do alot for very cheap (you only have to pay them, they know what free software to use), otherwise for totally legit setups, you'd be spending upwards of $50K per Windows server vs $20K for a Linux server (not including IT staffing, which would be comparable in most cases). Support costs are around the same, maybe even less w/ Linux because of the ease of installing / upgrading / management due to the exposed programmitic interfaces and wide availability of free tools.
Microsoft should send cars w/ loudhorns to every neighborhood in the world, bleating out:
"Microsoft good, *nix bad. You dont want that free system, it would require a speck of intelligence to operate. Use Microsoft, it will give you wings. Be patriotic, use Microsoft; Linux is an evil Communist plot to steal intellectual property!"
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
They don't take into account the cost of downtime. There's many environments where each hour of downtime - due to either scheduled maintenance (which occurs more on systems that need to be rebooted to apply security patches) or crashes costs tens of thousands of dollars an hour.
MS, and most of the other TCO phonies, ignore this.
are cheaper than linux boxes.
At a purely head count level.
To get a decent linux admin you are probably looking @ 50k a year or more.
To get a win admin straight from IT Tech you are probably looking @ 35k a year.
So it is cheaper.
But what microsoft DOESN'T tell you is that you will need at least 5 of those admins compared to single one for linux.
Hheehheeh. i laugh every time i see that post.
Anyone who runs Linux in a mainframe to run webservers is an idiot. Except for some very specific and isolated applications that I could not even dream of right now, but I'm sure someone could cost justify.
... let's see them take the same study and use the same servers that ran M$ and load them up with Linux (or any other *nix they want) and see the results.
.. I almost forgot. IDC already said that in the other Windows 2000 Versus Linux in Enterprise Computing document.
.. nothing more to see here...
Intel/Sun/Apple/HP boxes are a hell of a lot cheaper and provide more CPU, memory, and network horsepower per buck.
Now
And make sure they include the cost of applying patches.
Oh
Sorry
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Yay! Time to make some Doom/Doom 2 maps!
.PAK/.pk3 files in the Quake series. When someone made a map for Doom, the file extension used was .WAD)
(For those whos not old enough/just dont get it: WAD files for Doom/Doom 2 (Heretic too?) are the equivalent for the
"...a generation of kids has grown up thinking Trance is the shittiest music since country and western." - Paul van Dyk
Purported: Windows has lower staffing costs and thus lower TCO.
.NET programmers have with .NET, so they can afford to charge a seniority tax. Also, a few years down the line, .NET might not just be a windows thing (I'm an applications developer who recently evaluated mono for our team. It is mostly ready to go for our needs [C# interface to MySQL]). And Microsoft was so kind has to release the standard as open, so they wouldn't really have a legal foot to stand on in court if they tried to stop mono (IANAL, IMHO).
While people only trained to handle Windows servers do cost less to hire, this might not be much of an issue depending on your server/staff ratio, the amount of student labor you have (:), and what applications you need. Linux also has more places in the datacenter than just servers. Linux machines could be used on commodity hardware for firewalls, load balancers, etc. Not to mention that for some companies, the downtime from a major crash w/ data loss might be worth several employees for a year. That's to be debated later.
Purported: WinTel servers are cheaper than linux on mainframes.
Um, ok. Newsflash WinTel servers cheaper than a cluster of 1,000,000 SPARC machines running PalmOS. How about a WinTel/LinTel server comparison?
Purported:.Net cheaper to develop for than j2EE.
Probably so, as Java programmers are going to have more experience with Java than
====
Crudely Drawn Games
You'll notice that the Linux data "typically" uses standard distributions like SuSE, RedHat, etc. I wonder what the atypical Linux data was, and how it contributed to the overall results.
NOBODY ever got fired for buying IBM. On the other hand, we just fired a whole bunch of guys that bought into the iplanet/microsoft solution for email and replaced them with TWO admins and two IBM Linux servers....
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
...my fingers with ya.
Ceiling NT4
MS-Door
...
Any ideas?
"...a generation of kids has grown up thinking Trance is the shittiest music since country and western." - Paul van Dyk
Microsoft benchmarks clearly show that an IBM Z900 mainframe has the same performance as a Tandy Color Computer 3 running Microsoft Extended Color Basic when used to control the company's alarm system. But the Microsoft solution costs a thousand times less!
Think about this next time you think about buying that mainframe!
Sure, IBM hasn't always worn a white hat, but there will always remain one huge difference between M$ and IBM. IBM didn't get to where they are by making and selling crap.
I shouldn't have to go into too much detail about IBM's technical superiority over the rest of the industry. We all know that OS2 kicked the snot out of Windozzzzzzzze. Microchannel architecture was superior to ISA, etc.
IBM continues to advance current technology. I will never forget seeing in the newspaper a photo of (I believe this is right) mercury atoms on a nickel plate arranged to spell "IBM". Or how IBM was the first to store 1GB of data in 1 square inch of hard drive space. Or how IBM discovered how to store 7 layers of data on one CD by changing the angle of the laser.
Sure, IBM may have charged a lot for their stuff, but I think that for the most part, you got what you paid for. If I'm not mistaken, IBM used more precious metals in their PC's than their competitors did. Better components == higher cost. Worth it? Apparently the public didn't think so.
Finally, we have IBM backing Linux BIG TIME. Given IBM's track record of backing technologically superior products, I think that speaks volumes about where Linux is, as well as where Linux is headed in the future. And for what it's worth, given the fact that IBM has, over many decades, earned (IMHO) their industry position, I'm inclined to believe their Linux TCO studies are less FUD than Micro$haft's. After all, didn't IBM only resort to FUD to keep from losing their market share, not when trying to create one?
Just my $.02.
Disclaimer: IDNWFANHWFIBM (I Do Not Work For And Never Have Worked For IBM)
This isn't the sig you're looking for...
Linux to the rescue... The Register - M$ update hides behind Linux during M$Blaster attack Never seemed to make the news, but none-the-less is worth a read.
Hey! Isn't that the same proof that SCO has offered up in THEIR war on Linux??? Hmmmmm... Two independent companies with the same damning proof... I guess us penguin lovers had better get the hell outta Dodge!
The number 1 problem of working in a cubicle - 23 power cords, 1 outlet...
Be sure to tell everyone in your lug about this site- we'll see what their servers can take.
The same way Slashdotters consider IBM-sponsored studies supporting Linux to be objective third-party studies.
Now for all the posters to act like this ad campagin is some big deal when it's just business as usual, as companies have been doing for decades. How you can fault a company for advertising that it is better than competitors is beyond me.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Ability to track down problems via *SOURCE*, community or support: PRICELESS
*CHOICE OF SUPPLIER* PRICELESS
Not to mention they ignored all the open source development tools for Java:
JBoss (okay so it doesn't have a J2EE label)
Postgres
Eclipse
XDoclet
Ant
etc... That would slash Software, Maintenance, Development significantly....
Even if the people posting the numbers might. Either way, Windows is cheaper AT THE MOMENT because Windows trained IT people are a dime a dozen, where as Linux-phites are much harder to come by, and can demand more money for their "rare" skills. In the future, this inequality will balance out, and the cost of Linux versus Windows will balance out also. At that point it will all be about who actually has a better operating system all the way around.
Gee, imagine that. A comparision based on true performance merit and everything that goes along with it. What a strange concept.
Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. DUDE!!!! Duuuudde. Yeah, I guess you have a point there. (Baseketball)
Man....microsoft must be using a signed integer....and it overflowed.
And don't they know that though the salary for a linux sysadmin is more, they typically can do more work (and more 1337), primarily because they have to do less "routine maintanance" like fixing crashes, and patching crap that shouldn't happen in the first place. Much like the different between a reliable car like a camry (linux) and a fancy car like a ford excursion (M$). Sure, the excursion has fancy features and maybe luxurious but it's a gas guzzler....(and it's a Ford, known for "mysterious fires and explosions"), while the camry is reliable and alot more fuel efficient (and easier to drive and park).
Did you know it's an AD CAMPAIGN? What did you expect?
Chill out. Why do Slashdotters take things personally over an ad campaign? All companies have them (including IBM...).
"Sufferin' succotash."
I don't know, maybe I'm crazy. As far as I can tell, there's really no need for Microsoft to go around advertising against Linux. What part of the market is Linux, the kind of Linux that can really compete with Windows on the *desktop* market (the market that I happen to think is most important considering businesses are still blowing $8,000 on AIX servers from IBM) is left completely unaddressed.
Let me put it this way: if you're on Microsoft.com reading this website, chances are that it's not going to convince you to switch from Linux to Microsoft. Businesses that are already running Linux aren't going to have CEOs seeing a Microsoft.com website that says they'll save some mysterious percentage of money if they switch over to something new.
The average citizen is easily duped, but businesses are not. Most businesses that use Linux, UNIX, and variants realize that it's the better choice *already*. This Microsoft ad is basically designed to prevent CURRENT Microsoft customers from switching over to Linux, basically. Even so, that would be pretty silly. Businesses would be better off switching to BSD if we're talking about servers, security, and reliability, but that's a completely new can of worms.
This truly is, as many others have said, a measure that Microsoft clearly felt it had to take before it lost MORE of the market share to Linux, UNIX, and variants rather than actually convincing anyone who's already spent the money to change.
Sorry if that's a little long and drawn out.
...Linux has never needed huge advertising campaigns to get the penetration that it has got so far.
Consequently, Microsoft mentioning Linux can only serve to bring Linux into the minds of those that don't already know about it's capabilities.
Surely, a lot of CEOs reading their IT publications with "Microsoft vs Linux" advertisements in them are going to be intelligent enough to realise that if Microsoft are scared of Linux enough to place the adverts in the first place, then Linux must be worth investigating.
Maybe Microsoft will succeed in spreading some FUD about Linux but I don't see them achieving much overall with the ad campaign.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
...there are 40% more letters in the word "Windows" than in the word "Linux"... ..."Bill Gates" sounds like your friendly, neighbourhood policeman, "Linus Torvalds" sounds like a pillaging and raping viking... ...You can get an MCSE just by doing a few CBTs while sitting in a chair with a nice coffee and the answer sheets, you have to actually make and fix a dirty grubby server to get an RHCE... ...Windows always reminds you of what year you are in (95, 98, 2000, etc,) while Linux uses dirty, smelly dotted decimals that only mathematicians with poor sanitary habits can understand (2.4.22, 2.6.0)... ...Windows was written for families by the Microsoft family, Linux was designed by dirty, smelly, pot-smoking, conscietious objector hippies...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Truly trustworthy!
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I run a (very) small ISP. My main servers are Linux.
.. Code Red - Nimda - Windows Messaging service spam - Email Viruses - Email Spam - remote exploits (keep it patched!).
.. Linux is FAR cheaper to run than a M$ server.
Let's - for a second - look at costs involved.
First off -- hardware. My main web/mail/dns/doitall server is a P4 1.9ghz with 512mb ram. It cost in the neighborhood of $650 (SCSI drives, the P4 1.9 was the fastest thing around when I bought it). That's a non negotiable cost.
Due to the nature of the startup funding, I only have software protecting my box (that runs ON the box).
So - let's look at the costs.
If I ran Windows (anything) I'd have had to deal with the following: Windows Messaging service spam / Code Red / Nimda / Email viruses / Email spam / possible hack opportunities with whatever remote administration tool I use.
Since I run Linux - I avoided the costs involved with
I have not had to invest in an expensive hardware based firewall (i.e. if I was running a NON M$ shop I wouldn't have a smooth wall or anything, right?), couldn't run open source virus scanning / spam checking (exchange doesn't support it natively, or didn't at least when I started up), can anyone say Blaster ??
M$ is and always has been full of it
= Grow a brain...
9 out of 10 Script Kiddie root kits run better on Microsoft servers.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
Another operating system competing with windows will do microsoft a little good. After all a company without any competition will go bad with bill gates in charge or not. We've seen it done long ago when big businesses started and "standard oil" was created. Or AT&T with their phone company. Every company needs a little competition, microsoft to win will need clean up their act and actually secure their operating system to stay in competition. Even if windows does win, they'll have to create a MUCH better operating system to do it.
Frankly, this is no more biased than what we hear from the Linux zealots here on Slashdot.
Updates are freely available, therefore more readily applied
The last time I checked windowsupdate.microsoft.com was free.
You can install Linux as often as you want. Therefore you are not forced to keep the old bugs. If there is any problem (HD dies, hacker attack, mobo burns out) just use the newest version, not the old for which you happen to have a license for. This also means that on average Linux-installations are much more up to date than Windows.
In a huge production environment "installing Linux as often as you want" is not always an option.
Linux programs feature version numbers. It's much easier to keep track of problems that way. Just check if program x is version y or above. On Windows you have to remember which patches you have used. With the number of patches that can become quite problematic.
Windows and every other OS on the planet has version numbers also.
Linux offers alternatives. If sendmail has a problem, use procmail. If Apache has a problem you can use Roxen. There is an alternative for almost everything on Linux.
There is an alternative for almost everything on Windows.
Linux programs just doesn't have that many remote holes.
What?!?! Have you checked the Packetstorm exploit listings?
Linux and Windows both have their strengths and weaknesses. When it really comes down to it both of them suck ass.
Sssshhhh! Don't shout it out or they'll all want one...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
If your are looking to obtain a business degree you are trained in several aspcts. First there is lies, then damn lies, and next statistics.
Numbers can be fiddled with until they convey story you want to be told. So If the initial numbers don't work out for the customers favor thats when you use the same numbers to tell a different story by comparing apples to oranges.
people are simply lower in number than the high ID number people....
So, what is a 'high' ID number anyway?
Blogging because I can...
I think you've missed the point (and you're not alone). They're shooting at who they see as the big gun in the Linux world - that's not Red Hat, it's IBM. And one of the things IBM sells is big iron servers that let companies run dozens or hundreds of virtual Linux machines, all on one box.
:)
Ooh! I hadn't thought of that. That could be a pretty insightful comment
A calorie is a measure of heat which even further confuses the issue.
How much heat is required at your house to give a temperature of 20 degrees, and what temperature would you read at your friends house, given there was truly only half of the heat that there is at yours? (Air temperature only, please account for environmental differences including variations in humidity and air density between the two locations.)
Read, L
open and for business and all of that using closed file formats isn't it?
Blogging because I can...
Microsoft: Our software is so easy, any 2nd world programmer 1/2 a world away can manage it . . .
In the end, there is only so much value in a solution. Decision makers can give that value to M$ or to the integrators. As long as the IT staff makes the decision and there are no "check box" features missing, Linux will win.
Now, while people are not looking, I'm going to make it theirs as well. Thanks :-)
This TCO crap is really really starting to get annoying. Who cares about TCO when your locked into proprietary software that is probably not standards based that crashes all the time. What about cascading network security meltdowns. Did they factor in the costs of the network being taken over by Virii and Trojans once or twice a year because Martha open up a bad email attachment?
What these studies always mention is that its going to cost you quite a bit more to find Linux people than Windows people. What they fail to mention is that a good Linux person will normally have the knowledge and skill set that makes most MCSEs look like pre-schoolers. Don't you want the best people possible? Isn't investing in a competent employee worth the extra 10k to 20k per year? It is, here is why.
A typical Linux guy is going to be versed in network security, advanced firewall techniques, databases, multiple programming languages, a solid grasp of computer science concepts, how to leverage the outdated hardware and old systems, how to basically do more with less, NOT just what he learned in MCSE class. They usually have experience with a very wide range of enterprise level software as well, simply because its always been free for them. They are very good at thinking on their toes and have a knack for gluing different systems and interfaces together using simple scripts and programs they write.
So, the point being, one good Linux guy can start working at a small business and completely change they way they do business by using open source software, possibly saving the company huge amounts of money in the long run, not just on the current project but everywhere in the company.
To a very large extent, what you just asked for is already reality.
The only weak point is games... The Wine ports (DON'T call them rip-off, they aren't) that support games well are the only thing missing.
95% of Joe Sixpacks could boot a Knoppix disc today and be done with it.
Also true for 90% of offices once Knoppix updates to OO 1.1+.
(Assuming they could figure out how to boot off a CD---There has to be SOME minimal entry threshold;-)
But I respectfully disagree when you state that Microsoft can be a secure system. I challenge anyone to show one person that understands everything about the Microsoft kernel and how it works from the source code. I may be wrong, but I do not believe that anyone at MS can claim that dubious honor. When your kernel grows to be over 25 Mb in size, there is seriously something wrong.
I beleive that Open Source Software -- when properly managed can be more secure than a system that no one understands how it works because its source is closed or because of the sheer size of it.
I prefer to look at real world proof. How often do you read about Microsoft vulnerabilities. Granted, they get more press and Linux is just starting to make the mainstream press. But how many virus infections are possible for the Microsoft operating system? May be outdated but last I saw was over 50k individual virus infections possible. How many for Linux? 2 At least that I know of.
Simple mathematics tells me where to put my data. On a Linux box! Why? Because less chance of getting infected by a virus just by the sheer numbers.
Microsoft has always used FUD since the beginning. But I do not think that it will work this time.
Beleive what you want. Me, I vote and use Linux. I make my own mind up, I don't listen to marketers.
...small for the trolls to bother with. But yeah, now 'days it's gotten so out of hand a good chunk of the userbase has been blow'n outta there.
First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.
Who's that tripping over my bridge!
Overly Critical Guy has yet to put forward a coherent or logical argument for his tired and continually discredited views. He sure hates Slashdot, but he continues to post here!
Word.
Lower maintenance costs?
I really doubt it. To fully automate system operations you need considerable freedom to customize it, otherwise you waste all of your time on repetitive tasks. By definition Linux systems are more customizable than Windows and therefore better automated. Linux wants to be understood and modified, Windows doesn't, except within well defined boundaries.
Also, Microsoft has many non-technical interests in their products, which often results in technical tradeoffs being made which all increase maintenance hassles. They're no different from other proprietary software companies in this respect.
Cheaper than a mainframe running Linux instances?
No doubt it is. The question is, who the hell does this? Very few people, this is a comparisen to an IBM offering, not Linux on x86 servers.
25% faster development time?
It always bothers me when people try to deterministically measure software development. I'd completely disregard this point as irrelevant.
IIRC, Tracy Kidder's 81/2 book 'The Soul of a New Machine' relates how IBM actively warned their customers against Data General's business practices. One of the execs from DG is quoted as saying how well this worked...
(quoting from memory -- not exact)
Yours might just be 'really high' compared to just 'high'. I think we have a ways to go on this question :)
(Sitting here in the middle of the worst storm to hit Portland, Oregon in a *long* time...)
Blogging because I can...
If you just substitute out the crap like Weblogic and put in JBoss it blows MS out of the water.
OR
Just don't assume that I need 10 days of training to figure out how to do my job on Linux instead ot he 7 you assume on MS, and don't assume I need to be retrained all the time - and MS loses again.
I watched a documentary about this, and the Pepsi Challenge was actually one of the better campaigns Pepsi did. Even among people working at Coca Cola Company, the majority liked Pepsi better than Coke.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
Windoze 2003 server just sucks itis slow and scalabilty is horrible.
No wonder MS website is running on linux.
I'm risking valuable karma :P here but sitting here, staring at the thousands of comments with Win users argueing against Linux users, and the Linux users writing pages and pages about why Linux is better, and the windows users doing the same... I realize somthing...
Slashdot users are a bunch of idiots.
And they for got how much to upgrade their server os each year... Costs to patch/fix problems with worms and viruses...
If not, go study more. Most of your statements are ill informed. Want an example?
For example a webserver with no user accounts, the elevation of privileges exploits couldn't be used here
If there are no user account, the httpd is running as root. What (other) kind of privileges do you want?
Really... it costs more for a mainframe than a wintel server. Duh... how about taking the same box with Win and Linux on it and see which handles more of a load?
Rose: Did anybody come to you and say, Look, you can be as rich as Bill Gates? /*rest of the interview at
d =75234&ID=44749&ListID=44694&public_view=true&kbns =1.html
(quote)
Linus Torvalds: They have. Later. Not during the first version. Because, it was a very limited system at first. But, sure, people did later on--especially when Linux started taking off. And people really hadn't gotten the idea of open source. People said, "Why did you do that?'' Especially in the United States, but also in Finland. People just did not understand the concept of creating a program because you like programming, and they did not understand the concept of Hey, sure, I like money, but on the other hand I'm a programmer, I will get paid.
It's not as if programmers go hungry in this world. So, I wasn't worried about money and making money. At the same time, I'd done this project for myself. I didn't want to commercialize it because I didn't want to go through the headaches. And I had no incentive to.
(end quote)
original link
http://business.cisco.com/prod/tree.taf%3Fasset_i
my b.s.
This is a perfect example of why this whole thing is totally irrelevant. We arent in it to beat microsoft thats just a by product of what we are doing. Coding because we love good well written functional code. and giving it away because that way we get what WE want. What the techies love and use. Good clean secure peer tested code. Coded for fun or the challenge of it. M$ can spread fud all it wants the proof is in the pudding and we CANT lose any market share. More of a movement than a market.
/ my b.s.
Panel F, Relay #70
Procmail is not a replacement for sendmail. Postfix and exim are two of the most popular replacements for sendmail although there are many others.
War is necrophilia.
Windows vs. Linux on the Server and the Desktop :->
Co-operation beats competition
So precisely why would it be an important goal to have Microsoft kicked out of it's dominant position to be replaced by Linux? Would it make linux any better? I loathe MS myself in a lot of ways, but market share is hardly a strong reason to adopt an operating environment.
As I see it, this will create a set of companies that follow marketing blather and hamstring themselves competitively, and another set that will use what works and works most efficiently and thus be more competitive. Since I know linux, I'll be well positioned to be a part of the group of companies that have an advantage over those that buy MS TCO arguments.
In a word, Profit!
Keep in mind just how behind-the-times *most* companies are in this respect. It's not uncommon to see small/medium businesses using SCO Unix replete with dumb terminals and everything.
The question for them isn't switching *to* Linux, it's trying *not* to switch to Windows, because that's all the MCSE monkeys at the local computer repair shop can support.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
from trusting Microsoft. More security update patches, more worm attacks, more spyware/adware, more trojans and viruses, more unstable system crashes. All of these are hidden costs of using Microsoft software and do not happen on Linux. Funny, I didn't see that in the reports on TCO? I wonder how much a few hours of downtime is worth? :)
:)
One day, after getting tired of scrubbing all the workstations in the office of "junk" that I decribed above and applying the upteenth millionth patches to try and prevent it yet again, some PHB is going to think "I wonder if there is an alternative to this Microsoft mess?". That day will be like in "2001: A Space Odyssey" when the pre-human throws the bone up into the air and ponders the possibility of space flight.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Tech skills and leadership abilities are two separate realms where congruency is wonderful but vanishingly rare. A good leader is good enough, and those aren't that easy to find.
From one of the report making company's websites:
.NET and Java's J2EE architectures, because we believe they offer companies the best opportunity to build high throughput and low cost enterprise systems."
"ObjectWatch is an information transfer company, specializing in classes and workshops for Software Architects and Executive Briefings. We focus on Microsoft's
They wouldn't be _biased_, now would they?
Spreading lies while getting the media to place them in positive light. With enough money, even the most ridiculous fibs can be given credit.This will improve their reputation with casual computer users and newbies while permanently damaging their reputation with long-time users and geeks.
Windows 2000 Versus Linux in Enterprise Computing: An Assessment of Business Value for Selected Workloads
I'm guessing 'selected' means that they put linux on a 500MB HD w/ an i386 and tried to use it as a render farm, while the windows machine's task was to find the conundrum that has puzzled MS for so many years, but eventually calculated that 2 + 2 = 5.
WinTel Server 10 Times Less Expensive to Operate than Linux Mainframe
Gimme a fricking break, you're not kidding anyone Billy G.
how much money can you save by dumbing down software? a lot, because unskilled labour is cheap.
then again, computer professionals can be as well, i guess
Microsoft-sponsored benchmarks prove that multiple WinTel Web servers perform better than a Linux mainframe acting as a Web server consolidator. An independent review by Meta verified the integrity of the results. WinTel's superior performance costs....
Does that kindof hint at bias to anyone else? And how about comparing similar offerings? (Mainframes aren't always the answer)
"Yes, because after all, IBM's "history" is flawless, right? "
In fact, IBM's history is bloody:
see http://www.guerrillanews.com/ibm/
... when they make 5 year averages of TCO with an OS that hasn't existed for 5 years.
The RIAA is no longer a website defacement target, lets all target "Get the facts" now.
The defacement? Put the -real- facts and not the biased ones, of course.
What do you do about new zero-day exploits (e.g. the first I Love You worm), for which there are no anti-virus signatures? Even the best run Windows environments get hit by this and other worms, which are increasingly destructive. Only through forcing Office and Windows to be more secure, which Microsoft is slowly beginning to support, can you begin to make this more robust.
The fundamental problem is design decisions such as 'let the email tool execute code embedded in an email', 'preview HTML emails without even opening them', and 'auto-execute macros when opening a Word document'. Until Microsoft chooses security over ease of use, it is likely to continue to make the wrong decisions, requiring painful security hacks to paper over them.
Windows may be easier to administer at a basic level than Linux, but ONLY if you discount the huge expertise needed to set up a scalable anti-virus system (including server-based email scanning) and you're able to make sure everyone runs virus updates frequently (including Fred who just got back from 2 weeks' vacation and plugs in his laptop for the first time).
microsoft1 is registered to
> Remember when we laughed at their attempt to
> combat Netscape in the Internet browser market?
> Take a look now...
AOL buying Netscape and driving it into the ground was not necessarily related to the development curve of IE. Also, when I take a look now I see Mozilla, open source child of Netscape, kicking IE's ass. All it took was one halfway-strong (and standards-compliant instead of standards-creating) competitor and IE falls over like a dead monkey. Take a look in six months.
A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg. -- Samuel Butler
Cause its a known fact that Linux people are better at everything than Windows people.
Seriously, back up your crap with facts, then I'd might be tempted to believe you.
= 9J =
Shortly afterwards I thought I'd check the MS anti-free-software site at http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/facts/ to get my blood pressure up, and to laugh at their reasons why free software is more expensive than proprietary software.
The homepage took more than 2 minutes to load -- I went off to talk to someone and came back and it was still loading! When it loaded I read the first news item on the page and ROFLed.
The news item (at the forementioned URI) says that, and I quote, "Microsoft-sponsered benchmarks [by an] independent review by Meta [a company]" show that "WinTel web servers perform better than Linux".
Need I say anymore...
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
I think you got the wording quite right.
Great Book !
However, I think it was DEC, not IBM, that did this blunder.
Last time I checked 'Linux' was owned by Linus!
Perp walk for even suggesting this! OK, I got a cell right next to Martha Stewart for you. one prison bitch next to another.
"The first thing we must do is kill all the lawyers" - Henry VI, Wm. Shakespeare
Some of us got bitchslapped for arguing too vehemently with "sensible" pro-Microsoft self-styled experts and other pointy-hairs. Now we lead an amazing double life with excellent karma and lots of fans...
I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
Forget cost. Forget evil empire. Forget performance. Forget all that left wing, liberal dribble, rage against the machine bull shit. All you long winded gasbags out there, take a collective breath and listen! It's nothing but usability. When Linux makes a consumer interface people will use at home...then, and ONLY then, will Microsoft feel the pain of competition. Step away from the browser and start writing code boy! Linux...been there...then I grew up and picked a operating system I can build a business on. Makes a great OS for servers and web pages though. Wow! OoooH! Long live bricks and clicks! dot com's are dead forever! Rest in pieces!
"The first thing we must do is kill all the lawyers" - Henry VI, Wm. Shakespeare
Now I do my smart-Alec quips anonymouse-ly.
Wonder why there were so many black cars in the first part of the 20th century. Henry Ford said that you could get a Model T Ford in any color as long as it was black. There were people wanting to get them in other colors but couldn't. They could not afford the other automobiles of the day. Therefore they did not want a black car but to get a car they had to have black.
This is analogous to the way MS products end up in users hands. If you want a personal computer but don't have a great deal of money to spend on it you end up with Intel(or similar) hardware and MS Windows OS. Why? Because that is the way they come.
After all the snide comments I've made, I think maybe a serious discussion about what MS posted. Firstly, with all due respect to Mr.Tovalds, Linux was just as much a social engineering experiment as it was computer code. I venture a well educated guess that if Linus was trying to build a company with a profit motive and share holders, Linux would not have been a commerically viable product. Indeed, its taken years of open source to make it so at any level on any platform. The motive purely makes Microsoft do and say things the Linux community had no motivation to say. No one's livelihood hung in the balance. Let's not forget feeding yourself with the work you produce vs. feeding the common knowledge. A HUGE difference in motivational karma. Everyone is getting their cyber-panties in a twist over data MS published. Folks, Look around you...you're bombarded with this sludge every day in every facet of your life. Why should MS suddenly be expected to produce research that would denigrate it's product offering? Please see the first paragraph on motive. Short of a flower made with only a Supreme Being's hand, there is nothing flawless! MS, Linux, Apple... It's nothing but relativity. The tools are relative and take on value to how you evaluate and use them. No one sets those rules for you! The Business School prophets theorize and speculate based on historical business models. Ones that worked vs. ones that didn't. So they try to "predict" future performance based on past success. The quintessential "what have you done for me lately" paradox. Your chosen platform is only as good as your ability and resources to exploit its benefit! So the Windows vs. Linux comparison is totally absurd based purely on the varibles one has to master in order for any of them to achieve usefulness. So please... Relax. Don't believe the hype. Think and do the research yourself. If it works for you... then that's the better solution. Over and out! You truly need to appreciate the functional appreciation of the marketing function of organizations
"The first thing we must do is kill all the lawyers" - Henry VI, Wm. Shakespeare
Open source is not free. Some freeware is free but not open source. Symantical difference but crucial to the point.
"The first thing we must do is kill all the lawyers" - Henry VI, Wm. Shakespeare
I once worked at a company that bought PCs from their mainframe supplier. Cost a bloody fortune each, but when I asked why we weren't buying Dell or Gateway, I was always told "support". I even pointed out that those companies had support contracts.
A lot of companies were like this. Over time, they realised that actually, Dell and so forth were just as good as their overpriced suppliers (better) and switched.
When I started working about 15 years ago, there were a lot of old lags in business who were scared of computers. The people who were project managers then are now running companies today. Perhaps 15 years from now, people from agressive companies using Linux will be taking over blue chips, and knowing full well that the shit works, and that it's cheaper to run (particularly once set up and not requiring new licenses).
I want to buy a car. I'm thinking of buying a Ford. But before I do, I'll ask Chrysler's opinion on it...
http://www.cs.umd.edu/~francois/Papers/UIST03.pdf
That all changed when the idiots ran the company into the ground, and got booted out by disgruntled stockholders. To be replaced by management that is always looking for the next big thing, and looking to cooperate with everybody in sight -- Java, Linux, whatever. For those of who grew up with an IBM that wouldn't tolerate aftermarket add-ons in any form, this change in philosophy seems unreal, even after all these years.
Now IBM is making noises about totally replacing Windows with Linux for in-house work. If this happens, I will be forced to take back every pessimistic post I've ever made about the future of desktop Linux. Which I will do with extreme pleasure!
"Whaddya trying to do, be the troll with the lowest UID?!!!"
That would be us. Anon UID == 0.
I'd like to sum these couple of messages up:
With Microsoft products we can NOT talk about TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) since you can't really own any MS products. You just own the license to use the software and that's not much. Especially when the price of the license is as liquid as it is with Windows. There's no way comparing the cost of `ownership' when the software you use is rented.
- Voice of Ambience -
- Voice of Ambience -
We should just do the anti microsoft campaign :).