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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.
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?
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.
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
"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?
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
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!
"Let the dogs bark, Sancho, it's a
sign we're going in the right direction."
Yeah really. What the hell does that mean? A 'consolidator'?
... I set up 4 Wintel boxes to run as a 'web farm' with some sort of load-balancing between them (on my DNS?), or I use a single Linux box and put all my web sites on it... nope, that doesn't make sense.
So, lemme see
This leaves a big fat "eh?" taste in my mouth.
Maybe they're talking about IBM's VM-based system, which puts 'virtual linux boxes' in their mainframes?
From this article, I can only conclude that Microsoft are about as good at PR as they are at writing software. Convoluted, confusing, irrelevant, and frequently non-sequitur...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
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.
"Microsoft-sponsored benchmarks prove that multiple WinTel Web servers perform better than a Linux mainframe acting as a Web server consolidator."
This is a pretty fun quote, and implies quite a lot. Note that the "multiple WinTel Web servers" weren't compared to multiple Linux/Intel Web servers, which implies that no matter how the results were fiddled, and no matter what the distribution of Linux used, the benchmarks showed Linux outperformed Windows on Intel hardware.
So instead they compare the Windows setup to a "Linux mainframe acting as a Web server consolidator", because they can't get the results they want, any other way. Why else would they compare apples to oranges, unless there was no way to make the benchmarks favour Microsoft?
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.
Well, IBM is hardly any more objective than Microsoft. They're rooting for an alternative to Microsoft, which makes them just as biased.
A disinterested third party probably don't even exist, but don't pretending IBM is unbiased, and that their whitepapers, etc. aren't filled with marketing bias as well.
A Good Intro to NetBS
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
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.
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 $50,000. And that was just over the weekend. Total cleanup is expected to cost more than a million dollars!
We can't afford viruses. We can't afford mandatory updates. We can't accept arbitrary updates which change the EULA. Even a single hour of downtime per year is one too many.
Microsoft just doesn't get it. Hardware and Software licensing costs, and even staffing, are far from Total Cost of Ownership. System downtime is the single largest factor in the "real" TCO - something that Microsoft conveniently forgets.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
If MS are benchmarking win2003 server vs. Linux for performance, should the hardware not be the same. Its a winTel box vs IBM Z900.
This does not make sence to me. Sorry if this a point repelication.
How do you come up with a summary that concludes that something is "3 times better" than something else? I want to know the formula that produces such a result.
Yes. It's somewhat telling that someone who makes up a story about 'having done a study for Microsoft' has a goatse.cx link in his sig. That gives what he says a lot of credibility.
Not that it matters. People will now snowball on it and quote him as their reference to make the same claim over again. That's how 'credibility' is built online.
A Good Intro to NetBS
I think the path of the Facts Against Linux document is very interesting.
Doing a pseudo-Google like analysis you see that the main site is of course the Microsoft.com Then is a major folder MS Corp. Then, BAM - the facts.
No sub directories under MS Corp like misc, or not-really-important, or small-fry, or oh-by-the-way, and neither is this one of their numbered documents. The first document on FACTS under MS Corp is comparison with Linux.
It may be reading tea leaves but as someone who likes to design directory structures with some logic - What does it mean to me ? It means M$ 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$. Linux is now officially in the Crosshairs of the biggest guns at MSCorp. Amen.
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
Yup, yup. Linux people focus on technical babble that upper management neither understands nor cares about. The question to these management types is wholly total cost and ROI. Intelligent and knowledgeable Linux people need to put out more material that addresses these issues in a "management overview" format. I think many people get lost on the point that IT professionals do not normally have final say on these issues in an "enterprise" business environment.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Most people (other the CEOs) are smart enough to realise that `studies' are sponsored and so unreliable, and similarily that anything that appears in a M$ 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.
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)
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.
A disinterested third party probably don't even exist, but don't pretending IBM is unbiased, and that their whitepapers, etc. aren't filled with marketing bias as well.
Perhaps, but any respectable IT professional will recall Microsoft's "history" and lovely business practices, especially with their hate for Linux and keep that in consideration when reading this FUD (or should I more appropriately say: BS)
However, as akedia has previously mentioned... the problem lies in the advertising to upper management.
# fuser -v
#
You're right, Linux is NOT free.
You should instead buy Microsoft Windows, and employ MS-certified technicians to take care of your installation.
Of course these techs *can't* really know ANYTHING about the solution they are providing support on, because Microsoft never documents adequately, but they CAN perform repetitive tasks, like rebooting the server when it crashes.
On the other hand, if you start to employ Linux professionals, who have access to newsgroups, developers and the source-code for the system they are maintaining, they'll only become MORE knowlegeable as time goes by, because of Linux's transparency.
When the chips are down, who do you want around? A monkey that can only say "I'll call MS-tech support, and they *might* get back to me" or someone who REALLY understands how the system works and can dive in and fix the problem?
How long before we start investing in solutions that will profit US, not just Microsoft?
My apologies if I have lumped all MS-Certified technicians in a pile labeled "monkeys", but for the majority, it is true.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
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
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
Yes, because after all, IBM's "history" is flawless, right? I mean, no one has ever gone after IBM for being an abusive monopolistic player. </sarcasm>
Note: I'm not saying that this study funded by Microsoft and published by IDG is definately unbiased. I'm only saying that Microsoft isn't the first (and I doubt it will be the last) company to promote "research" such as this.
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
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.
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.
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.
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 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 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.
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.
You're right of course, but in IBM's case I think it's fair to say that it IS actually "history", whereas M$ seems as abusive and underhanded as ever.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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
Well, IBM is hardly any more objective than Microsoft. They're rooting for an alternative to Microsoft, which makes them just as biased.
Erm, actually no. IBM is the most objective, and provably so. IBM makes money selling all sorts of software. They make a buttload selling Windows based servers and desktops. They also made teh MS monopoly possible.
IBM makes their own operating systems. AIX, OS/390, and they used to make OS/2. Every one of these systems is replacable by Linux. That makes Linux a competitor to IBM. IBM has spent billions and billions of dollars developing these systems. Thay have expertise and patents at every level of computing from the pc to the supercomputer. They have a lot to lose.
And yet, they chose to pump billions of R&D and marketing dollars into Linux. Why? Because IBM is fundamentally and engineering company, and engineers try to find the best tool for the job. Linux turned out to work best, so they are touting it for their customers.
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)