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Report From "Get The Facts"
Richard W.M. Jones writes "Huw Lynes wrote an interesting
report from Microsoft's
"Get The Facts" show in London
(earlier
Slashdot story).
Along with the report he provides some
analysis of their apparent strategy, which
includes equating "Shared Source" with "Open Source"
and making out that Linux isn't free."
first first post eva?
hope so
fp
Microsoft believes in free software too. Ever use Internet Explorer and see how fast all the free software shows up on your computer?
Who would have thought??
Bill Gates, you asshat you.
if your time is worth nothing
now where is my compiler, i need to post another comment
making out that Linux isn't free
This is one of the few ways that Linux will ever be associated with "making out"...
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
From the article: He quoted heavily from a Meta analysis which shows that Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for linux and windows is comparable.
Microsoft must be suffering if they are going at Open Source head on. I remember taking an advertising class once, and we studied the Coke/Pepsi Cola War. Essentially Coke was the biggest cola company on the block, until they acknowledged Pepsi as a competitor. By doing so, Coke gave Pepsi the kind of credit they needed to gain significant market share, and obtain lucrative endorsement celebrities, who may not have supported Pepsi if Coke had held the "one true cola" stance and simply ignored Pepsi.
The bottom line is that Microsoft is taking a page from Coke, and they are going to lose out bigtime in doing so, because their math is voodoo math, and they charge exorbitant license fees, so their cost of usage will always be much much higher than Open Source, no matter which spindoctor tries to make it look and taste differently than it is.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
bleh, it says it all about MS bloat that they use images for the text headings....
Even worse, does Airbus (or Boeing for that matter) manufacture every single of a million parts in a plane themselves?
Hell no! Certainly not. There's an abundance of suppliers supplying parts for a plane, from the altimeter to the leather chairs in first class.
You don't even have to go so far as to look at the airplane industry. Car manufacturers make only a miniscule percentage of the components themsleves. The rest is manufactured and delivered by suppliers.
Otherwise the cost for a car would be comparatively so outrageously high like the cost for some uh! software...
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
"Linux training costs were 15% higher on average"
Well that's because training to fix windows is "just hit reset"
Haha... so Microsoft's strategy of pushing the idea that Linux has an equal or greater TCO than Windows basically ignores the fact that Linux is free and that any businesses wanting to use it will naturally go for the most expensive possible distribution (i.e RedHat uber deluxe professional platinum addition for business).
Perhaps if they faced the "facts", their study might be worth something.
And as for the comparison of Linux to a DOS prompt... Microsoft seems to think that adding a huge bloated GUI to a server OS is going to improve things. Well, I say that any half-decent system administrator should be able to do his job completely from a command-line interface and should not need a GUI.
slashdott'ed already...
damn low capacity servers...
Anyone got a copy of it?
It seem MS is pretty scared with all this linux popularity to start making campaigns that make you think windows is *TEH* best and has less vunerabilities. I dunno, i'm using linux for years and after each instalation i didn't get any msg saying that my system is going to reboot automatically after 60 seconds..
Fucking a fat girl is like riding a scooter... it's fun 'til someone sees you.
It is perhaps free as in beer, but free as in speech?
If it was, then I'd be able to take parts of it, mix it with my own proprietry code, and sell it without having to oblige recipients to distribute the source if they want to distribute the compiled code.
View source on the page. They've part commented out. Wonder why they did that.
It's pretty easy to come up with something like this. Here is how it goes. Someone comes up with a conclusion they want then they write something to get there. It's like with stats or polls. You know the outcome you want to so manipulate the "data" to show that. Then you promote the hell out of it and people believe you.
They do it because it works.
Evolution or ID?
Realistically, at the enterprise level, Linux isnt free. The maintenance/administrative of Linux just becomes costly in my experience. Im sure I am in the minority when saying this, but it has just been my experience that even though I have to continuously do Microsoft refreshes, their software works better ouf of box. ;)
OSX is the best option
Aj
GroupShares Inc. - A Free and Interactive Stock Trading Community
-------
artlu.net
MS has $40,000,000,000 USD in cash still before all the lawsuit dust has settled. Certainly they are not going to spend it all buying schools new computers. The noise is only going to grow louder about TCO from them. The open source distro community has to pull together and face them head-on. Eroding into the AIX, HP-UX, and Solaris market share is going to help MS because these companies all have big marketing dollars too.
Have you Meta Moderated t
The overall tone of this event makes it fairly clear as to Microsoft's anti-Linux strategy.
:P)
1.Claim that linux isn't free.
2.Pretend that Shared source is the same as Open Source
3.Make a big deal about the migration costs of moving to Linux
4.Use the forrester report to claim that Linux is insecure
5.Belittle the quality of the toolset available on Linux
Point 1 and 2 I won't dignify with a reply.
On Point 3 - Yes, there are migration costs... but that is a dumb argument. There is ALWAYS a migration cost when upgrading (horse and buggy to car - airtravel - spacetravel etc)
4. Yes, linux can be insecure ---- so can windows and anything else (except OpenBSD!!
5. On this point, I dont' care who says what - Microsoft has better (and I mean this in all respects) tools available for Rapid development.
...and admit that most of the "risk" in using open source is artificial, and is deliberately created by Microsoft.
First they ignore you,
Then they laugh at you,
Then they fight you,
Then you win.
I'd say that we were at Stage 3 now, we were at Stage 2 last year and the year before.
Things are looking up!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Monday morning, and we've already gotten our FDA recommended doses of vitamins F, U, and D for the whole week? OK. Let's find out where this road show is going next and show up with some boxes of LiveCD Linux distributions. I recommend the Gentoo 2004.1 CD's, which perform quite well across a broad variety of hardware. Then ask tough questions about why every Windows machine in the world shares drive C: at all times as \\IP-address\C$ by default and always, always, always re-enables it at reboot even if you explicitly turn it off, making the machine wildly vulnerable to file thefts and password based attacks to take complete control of it?
Sure, Linux training costs are 15% higher. When I get a windows upgrade at work there is no training. It's just figure it out. There are no training courses on windows at all here.
But, if you convert over to Linux you would have to give some basic training. Answer some employees questions. Seems a small price to pay
Evolution or ID?
How they can call this "Get the facts" is beyond me. It reminds me a lot of IBM vs. Data General. When DG first got going IBM started calling allot of its key customer's saying "you don't want to deal with this nasty upstart company data general." Said customers promptly phoned data general (a company that, at that point, they'd probably not even heard of, and got their sales people in. I would have thought MS would know better though. They've pulled basically the same stunt with .NET by getting the J2EE community to talk about how terrible it is thus assuring all enterprise decision makers look at .NET seriously...
Don't you know the secretary is supposed to be the administrator of a Windows server? If you are hiring additional staff to maintain Windows servers, you are doing something wrong.
I think there should be a system where all business PC's get linux instead of windows, and all home PC's continue to use windows. Surely all the business software would then be available for linux.
That way the businesses have all the good things of linux but the Joe sixpacks in the world could still use the stuff they know best. Most important, virus/worm writers still focus on windows for there unbreakable security and the fact that most average users don't care about security anyway. Virusses can spread better through home PC's than (secured) corporate networks anyway.
That way, everybody's happy! (I know I sure am...)
Dependency hell? =>
Microsoft Starts its "Get The Facts" Campaign So I sat with about 150 other "technical decision makers" in a very plush hotel in Holborn while representatives from Microsoft tried their best to convince me that I should not be considering moving to Linux. To run the discussion Microsoft had employed a fake-tan horror who had clearly escaped from daytime TV. He was by turns chummy and condescending. However being a reasonable man I will not hold Microsoft responsible for his failings. First up was Phillip Dawson who leads Linux research for analysts Meta Group. He quoted heavily from a Meta analysis which shows that Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for linux and windows is comparable. This study has been widely reported in IT press but I can't for the life of me find a link to the original. He made some interesting points about where the datacentre is going to be in a few years. His basic thrust was that everyone is moving from proprietary Unix with its expensive platforms to Windows or Linux on x86 platforms and that it this hardware move, rather than linux versus windows, that will drive all the cost savings. Dawson believes that in a few years the only place we will see proprietary Unix is in very large enterprise databases. After a promising start, Dawson then got into the territory of why Windows makes more sense for enterprises than Linux. He introduced what was to become a running theme for seminar, Linux is not free. It turns out that the TCO statements made earlier were based on the licensing costs of SuSE professional and Red Hat Enterprise versus Windows. They had refused to consider that people might run a business on something that they could download free from the Internet. Later in the Q and A session Dawson got quite aggravated when people pointed out to him that many Linux-based businesses run quite happily on free linux (this was shouted by the scruffy-looking Debian hackers in the back). I can only assume that businesses that are brave enough to save thousands of pounds per unit by moving away from expensive hardware platforms are meant not to care that they can save another couple of hundred pounds on Microsoft licence fees. Later in the presentation he said "Don't compare to the free downloads. They are not free". Precisely what he meant by this escapes me. One area the Meta study didn't look at was Linux on the desktop. Phil claimed that linux was not ready for the desktop because it lacked administrative tools. He was carrying on in a similar vein when he said "Management tools on Linux are nearly as good as a DOS prompt". Nick Barley, business and Marketing Director for Microsoft UK took to the stage to baffle us with market-speak. There was lots of talk about strategy and leveraging which I didn't follow. He talked a bit about Microsoft's shared-source program and tried his hardest to make it sound like open-source, mainly by refusing to say Open-source and talking about shared-source instead. Continuing in Phillip Dawson's footsteps he repeated the mantra "Linux is not free" several times. Although he was at his best when talking about business models amongst Linux distributors claiming that "Linux is moving to the same model that Microsoft has been using". My absolute favourite part of the talk was when Barley started to extol the virtues of Windows because everything in it was made by one manufacturer. A fair point which would have been well taken had he not gone on to draw an idiotic analogy. He asked us to imagine an aeroplane where different components were made by different companies. Apparently he's never heard of Airbus. Next up was Nick McGrath head of platform strategy for Microsoft UK. The main bulk of his talk was taken up by a demonstration of a document sharing system based on Microsoft Sharepoint. Very boring for those of us running heterogeneous systems that Sharepoint will not run on. McGrath was much more technically clued up than Barley, and seemed to be aware that the audience was not entirely on his side. He made mention of the Forrester report that claimed more vulnera
Cost of setup of Windows:
Windows itself for each computer
Microsoft software for windows, eg Office
Big server with enterprise software
Cost of setup of Linux:
Linux for each workstation
Open-source software, eg. OpenOffice
Big server with free software
I dunno about you guys but the second option looks a little cheaper to me. As for that report about linux being having more vulnerabilities - if the backbone linux servers of the world had as many issues as the Microsoft-based ones the internet would break down completely.
I appreciate both linux & windows for what each is. I know it is Linus Torvalds' plan to get Linux onto the desktops. This is not necessarily bad news for Microsoft - they might just have to do what everyone else does and sell their software for competitive prices. You can't beat free, but they do have a market for people who are used to windows. It's worth paying for stuff you already know how to use - it's more productive - unless it's several hundred dollars per machine more than what it would be for linux.
--Methynutnut
Microsoft Starts its "Get The Facts" Campaign
So I sat with about 150 other "technical decision makers" in a very plush hotel in Holborn while representatives from Microsoft tried their best to convince me that I should not be considering moving to Linux. To run the discussion Microsoft had employed a fake-tan horror who had clearly escaped from daytime TV. He was by turns chummy and condescending. However being a reasonable man I will not hold Microsoft responsible for his failings.
First up was Phillip Dawson who leads Linux research for analysts Meta Group. He quoted heavily from a Meta analysis which shows that Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for linux and windows is comparable. This study has been widely reported in IT press but I can't for the life of me find a link to the original. He made some interesting points about where the datacentre is going to be in a few years. His basic thrust was that everyone is moving from proprietary Unix with its expensive platforms to Windows or Linux on x86 platforms and that it this hardware move, rather than linux versus windows, that will drive all the cost savings. Dawson believes that in a few years the only place we will see proprietary Unix is in very large enterprise databases.
After a promising start, Dawson then got into the territory of why Windows makes more sense for enterprises than Linux. He introduced what was to become a running theme for seminar, Linux is not free. It turns out that the TCO statements made earlier were based on the licensing costs of SuSE professional and Red Hat Enterprise versus Windows. They had refused to consider that people might run a business on something that they could download free from the Internet. Later in the Q and A session Dawson got quite aggravated when people pointed out to him that many Linux-based businesses run quite happily on free linux (this was shouted by the scruffy-looking Debian hackers in the back). I can only assume that businesses that are brave enough to save thousands of pounds per unit by moving away from expensive hardware platforms are meant not to care that they can save another couple of hundred pounds on Microsoft licence fees. Later in the presentation he said "Don't compare to the free downloads. They are not free". Precisely what he meant by this escapes me.
One area the Meta study didn't look at was Linux on the desktop. Phil claimed that linux was not ready for the desktop because it lacked administrative tools. He was carrying on in a similar vein when he said "Management tools on Linux are nearly as good as a DOS prompt".
Nick Barley, business and Marketing Director for Microsoft UK took to the stage to baffle us with market-speak. There was lots of talk about strategy and leveraging which I didn't follow. He talked a bit about Microsoft's shared-source program and tried his hardest to make it sound like open-source, mainly by refusing to say Open-source and talking about shared-source instead. Continuing in Phillip Dawson's footsteps he repeated the mantra "Linux is not free" several times. Although he was at his best when talking about business models amongst Linux distributors claiming that "Linux is moving to the same model that Microsoft has been using".
My absolute favourite part of the talk was when Barley started to extol the virtues of Windows because everything in it was made by one manufacturer. A fair point which would have been well taken had he not gone on to draw an idiotic analogy. He asked us to imagine an aeroplane where different components were made by different companies. Apparently he's never heard of Airbus.
Next up was Nick McGrath head of platform strategy for Microsoft UK. The main bulk of his talk was taken up by a demonstration of a document sharing system based on Microsoft Sharepoint. Very boring for those of us running heterogeneous systems that Sharepoint will not run on. McGrath was much more technically clued up than Barley, and seemed to be aware that the audience was not entirely on his side. He made mention of
1.Claim that linux isn't free.
2.Pretend that Shared source is the same as Open Source
3.Make a big deal about the migration costs of moving to Linux
4.Use the forrester report to claim that Linux is insecure
5.Belittle the quality of the toolset available on Linux
Missing point:
6.PATENT EVERYTHING
Has anyone else noticed that in the metagroup TCO analysis, they compare a windows server running on a two processor intel machine, and a linux server running on (one or two - can't remember) MAINFRAME processors.
I mean - cm'on, perhaps they should have pitted a walmart PC with windows installed vs Linux running on a Cray server... The TCO takes into account the entire purchase of hardware, and in the Mainframe case - you probably looking at 16 processor machine to begin with, which kind'a spikes the price up...
But - the graph looks very convincing - and isn't it what it's all about?
Just a little food for thought...
In the glossy brochure they give out at the event they have a file of 'case studies'. Several are from organisations (such as Newham Borough Council) who were about to transition to Open Source but were then bought off^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H convinced that, in fact, sticking with Windows would cost them less(!).
:)
The truth is they are terrified. They've got wind of what's on its way over here in the UK.
Relax, don't panic. Wait and see what us Brits have got coming for MS over the next few months
I was at the Edinburgh event last week which was the 2nd event in their roadshow.
Here's some advice for people who'll be at their next two events (Manchester this week I think, and Wales the week after (Newport, IIRC)):
- Plan in your coffee break questions to ask them (be careful about providing them with the question on paper as they reworded mine - try and ask it in person at the end).
- Ask more about IBM involvement in Linux, they tried to claim that IBM were trying to lock people in to Linux, try and provide counter examples as to how it'd be easier to escape an IBM stranglehold than an MS one.
- They cite interoperability as one of Microsoft's main aims, people mentioned the office file formats and recent patents, but they hedged around the question, someone needs to seriously challenge them on this at the event.
- Talk to the other delegates in clear concise language why you think Linux should be considered as a serious option. Don't sound like a zealot and accept there's many times when Windows would be more suitable than Linux.
- Point out to people that open source doesn't always mean Linux, in fact doesn't always mean changing an OS at all. There's some quality open source software for Windows - promote Firefox and OpenOffice as examples
Moreover, it exposes the degree to which Microsoft is engaging in "Not Invented Here" self-delusion for them to try and compare a DOS prompt (command.com and its standard utilities) to a real shell (bash, tcsh or zsh) and the standard set of utilities (the GNU file utils, find utils and text utils) that ship with most linux distributions.
Personally, I'd reverse the comparison and say the DOS prompt is "almost as good as a Unix shell."
utter rubbish
Linux is more expensive than Windows and worth every penny.
If you can't afford Linux, then you deserve your crappy cheap-ass Windows server.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
I haven't had such a good laugh in ages. I love MS BS. I'm reminded of a factious piece of software in Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently which allowed you to enter the conclusion you wanted and the starting point. It would then construct a logical set of arguments to justify going from one to the other and was used to justify the original Starwars project....
any businesses wanting to use it will naturally go for the most expensive possible distribution (i.e RedHat uber deluxe professional platinum addition for business).
/. Sadly many who are called sys admins don't really know a whole lot.
Many companies like the one I work for require you to be able to get a service contract for any software. So, to use Linux they have to be able to get a service contract. That's why they go for those expensive ones. They have the service.
Well, I say that any half-decent system administrator should be able to do his job completely from a command-line interface and should not need a GUI.
You're figureing on half decent sys admins. Many of the ones I know can't do anyting outside the GUI. And they don't even have half of an understanding of what is really going on. Some have never even herd of
Evolution or ID?
Not in an enterprise network environment. MCSE admins are a dime a dozen, you can practically pay them minimum wages and have them run servers. Linux admins demand a very high price - at least 2-3 times that of the average NT admin. Why? Running a Linux server requires more than point/clicking your way around. A linux admin is required to have at least basic programming skills.
...
I don't understand a few things about this. Why do people believe this type of thing when Microsoft brings absolutely *NO* proof of any of these claims? Can any of this be considered slander? They're trying to throw mud on Linux's image with no real proof.
And why did this guy sit through this entire "seminar" in the first place?
When I get a windows upgrade at work there is no training. It's just figure it out. There are no training courses on windows at all here.
.If you "figure it out" at you work time,your employer effectively pay for your training cost,as they have to pay your salary for your work(i.e. learning Windows skill)
SOMEONE must pay for your training
Free as in "The damn code is Free and remains that way" not Free as in "Whiny little bitch freeloaders like you arn't free to do as you please". Freedom of the code is nothing to do with your freedom. Get the fuck over it and write your own damn code; stop trying to rip off mine all the damn time you telentless code monkey.
anything after is not free. i value my time, and so does my employer. i wish i could have put mandrake or suse on the companies new boxes that every employee got... but winxp pro and ms office it was.
Really, Well, I just installed mandrake 10 this weekend to replace w2k on an old pc. My first linux. And it was, free.
I downloaded it, burned it, and installed. I had minimal help and everything went very smoothly.
Er, right.
"linux ISNT free?" "really? heres 10 free copies of mandrake right now." "youll have to pay to support it." "ah, then dont you mean linux SUPPORT isnt free? Is windows support free?" *insert adhominem attack they are trained to do here*
I imagine the best thing you can do at these is hand out free linux install cds, and allow people to make the choice for themselves.
Again, mandrake 10 was SUPRISINGLY easy to get working.
no
Essentially Coke was the biggest cola company on the block, until they acknowledged Pepsi as a competitor.
You say this as if they aren't still the biggest on the block. Coke is still (as it has always been) well ahead of Pepsi in both global market share and global market value. Their stock price is higher, and they still ship many more units / yaar then Pepsi. Sure Pepsi may have more flashy ads in the US, but that doesn't mean squat to their international presence. Just do a Google on the cola wars.
This said, if Linux ever got to the point that it was as much of a competitor to MS as Pepsi is to Coke, I'd be damn happy.
From what I've seen companies spend about $0 on Windows training, so a 15% increase is still $0.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Once you factor in the costs of viruses and worms (for a timely example, see the article from earlier today on being unable to pull down updates fast enough to avoid having your XP install infected before it can be updated), MS-Windows is danged expensive.
The only time I use a compiler on this machine is to build software for other people, and it's stuff like a tweaked KDM for an Internet cafe. Let's see you tweak MS Windows Login like that at any price, sucker.
Now... let's have some more facts from Microshills, shall we? Big heaps of steaming facts, coming right up! Mooooove over!
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Microsoft certainly does not make all of the components in a running Windows system. First of all, I'm pretty sure that most people running Windows are not running any Microsoft hardware except for perhaps a mouse, keyboard, and/or gaming peripheral. So your setup is not 100%-microsoft - it's not even close if you take hardware into account. It gets a lot closer when you look at macs, but nowadays even they use (modified) versions of commodity hardware, such as nVidia and ATI graphics cards. Also, last time I checked, commodity hardware was a good thing, seeing as it drives competition over price and quality. Now, as for your software department - just take a look at drivers. If you're using an nVidia or ATI card, you are probably using their drivers. Microsoft, as far as I know, did NOT write those, and yet they are an integral part of the system (so integral, as a matter of fact, that nVidia drivers have been known to bring X on Linux to a screeching halt). Also, if I am not mistaken, Windows uses BSD's TCP/IP stack. True, today the code is maintained by Microsoft coders, but I can't imagine them having needed to completely overhaul it - they are using a modified version of a product (piece of code) that was manufactured (written) by someone else. And last but not least, a major factor keeping people on Windows is software that is written for it, which they can't do without or find a replacement for which runs on their target OS. Guess what? Most of that software isn't written by Microsoft either. Many people swear by Adobe Photoshop, and don't switch to Linux because they find The Gimp inadequate. Others want to play their favorite computer games, which simply do not work [well] on Linux. And even if, say, their favorite computer game is Microsoft Flight Simulator or Microsoft's Age of Empires - yep, that's right. Microsoft didn't make those. They just bought them. A large, complex product is best manufactured by multiple specialty manufacturers which adhere to well-known standards. F/OSS supporters know this. Microsoft knows this as well.
If it weren't for fog, the world would run at a really crappy framerate.
Free from the dead hand of Microsoft!!!!
I dread getting that bill from Stallman then, I've been running Linux for five years now! I knew it was too good to be true.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
except it's not. anywhere near :)
Well, anyway... in at least 30% of businesses I visit, a secretary or near equivalent is Level 1 Tech Support. Some of the "dumb blonde" mobile accident catalysts I've seen know an awesome amount about resuscitating MS-Windows.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I can't confirm this for certain (as it didn't happen to me).
One of my colleagues who also went to the Edinburgh event was talking to one of the speakers there (one of the Nick's from Microsoft I believe) and I Microsoft guy admitted his niece had thousands of viruses on her machine last time he checked it!
I wish I could confirm it, but I don't see he has any reason to lie
No matter how much Linux people like to think that Linux is free, it is not. If it were completely free then Mandrake, Red Hat, and the others could not exist. If it were Free there would be no way for them to make money therby allow a product to continue. There are support costs to be paid and if you do not download the software then the retail box costs money. If you do not pay for support contracts then you are limited to the knowledge base or group forums. While this is great for alot of people, sometimes you have to call the vendor. I certainly agree that there will always be migration costs, but I would expect the migration cost to Linux will be higher. Migrating users from what they know and use at home and at work to something completely different is not cheap. I developed for a while in PHP and MySQL. Prior to that I was developing in ASP and SQL 2000. I was able to make the transition without much difficulty but found that my development times and the quality of product was not as good. Mainly because tools and features that I found very usefull in the MS products was not there. If I wanted those tools, I had to find another company that charged for them. In my opinion the time that could be saved by using the proper tools to begin with is well worth the initial investment. If you were a carpenter and there were several companies that delivered FREE Hammers but they had some catches. 1. They were of good quality but did not have the ability to remove nails. You had to buy an add on to do that. 2. They could work with any board, but you had to buy special nails. Those nails were not compatible with Hammers you had to buy and were not always compatible with other Free company hammers. 3. Almost anybody can use the Pay Hammer, but most workers do not know how to properly use the Free Hammer and special Nails. So, if you were a contractor would you rather have the Free Hammer or Buy a Hammer?
I jumped in to the "Desktop Linux Consortium" back in the Feb 2003 to offer some thoughts about direction for the forming DLC and the linux desktop in general. If you have any interest in what I said back then:
l c-discuss/2003-February/000002.html
http://www.desktoplinuxconsortium.org/pipermail/d
I think that the crucial missing application and management pieces are staring us all right in the face. It is not enough to have an easy install. It's not enough to have a slick desktop and functional apps. Those are important, certainly, but if we are really doing well at them, why hasn't the momentum shifted?
I've worked IT for fifteen years and the number of systems I've imaged with their OS and software loads dwarfs by 100 to 1 the number of times I've used any OS installer, even if you count the last five years of Install Parties at the Melbourne Florida LUG! The things most developers and non-corporate users think are important don't apply to corporate IT like people outside of IT would think.
The typical larger IT department has to deal with things like corporate software policies, locking user account profiles, automated application and operating system patches/updates and remote helpdesk. How can I enforce the corporate software policy against instant messengers when every distro except debian bundles all the stock KDE applications (including instant messenger apps) in a few giant RPMs? KDE 3.2 will be doing more profile locking features, but what about applications that don't use the KDE libs? What about Gnome?
I know people point to things like Red Carpet and the Red Hat Network for updates (still not 100% in my opinion), but I think corporations will need to be able to build or rebuild apps with different attributes or patches for distribution to corporate clients. SUSE is using 'autobuild' internally and Red Hat wants you to buy a Red Hat Network Proxy, but again, no-one other than Debian provides access to the build architecture to be able to modify certain stock bundled apps like removing parts from larger RPM's like KDE.
Remote helpdesk and other IT-friendly features are available in most distributions at this point, but they aren't really bundled and configured for that role in the context of the distribution. This needs work and attention. VNC is great, but a distro focusing on corporate desktops needs to have that puppy configured for easy remote desktop support by default.
I've spoken at LinuxWorld and other conferences, but every time I try to submit a topic that addresses some of these kinds of issues, I hear crickets and we get 10 more 'How to install Samba' sessions. We need a focus on what all the "Ticket System Cowboys" know about desktop deployments before some of the spectacular Linux desktop announcements turn into craptastic failures.
Just my $0.02.
DaGoodBoy
My God! It's full of Voids!
Exactly!... same in Munich - not everyone in the council has l33t sk1llz
Why shall I believe any of them?
If you got a bunch of linux users to play "devil's advocate" and come up with reasons to explain advantages of using Windows over using Linux, they would have done a better job than these infomercial drop-outs mentioned in the article. Seriously, for company that has such deep pockets, they seem to manage to blow all their money on the worst there is, from programming quality to advertising and PR. Either they're being stingy and are holding back on spending for quality, or they don't care that they're throwing money away hiring people who just take the cash and do a half-assed job.
Then you would, IMHO, be lying. The DOS prompt has never been even close to a match to a proper Unix shell. Even running bash with the full gnu toolchain in a Windows XP cmd.exe prompt (thankyou cygwin) is still much worse than using the real thing (even their mouse selection stuff is retarded. OK they cannot have X's nice selection style cut'n'paste, but at least make the default selection tool line oriented, rather than block (I cannot remember even once needing the kind of selection you get in cmd.exe, if your text is not neatly on one line)).
But despite their apparent terror, they've still managed to maintain their market dominance. I don't really think Microsoft is as scared as some Slashdotters would make themselves believe they are. Show me where Linux has taken a significant bite out of Microsoft; then you might have a case.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
15% higher. Not a chance
If I took a Unix course back in 1989 (before Linux even had emerged) most of what I learnded then would still be somewhat useful in Linux of today. How much would 15 years old windows knowledge help me in manageing windows XP of today. Not much I think. Most likely I would have to have more frequent retraining if I run windows.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
ICAT classified 67% of Microsoft's vulnerabilities as high severity, placing Microsoft dead last among the platform maintainers by this metric.
God. They're going to get carpal tunnel syndrome before the system is running.
They're also playing to the GUI developers gallery...except they seem to have overlooked glade, kdevelop and a bunch of commercial offerings like coldfusion and kylix.
In that case, it reduces to a question of paradigm: IDE's or text editors. Even MS has programmers who will only work in emacs.
Face it, if the major attraction of a platform for you is the pretty toolset then you're no great loss to the real programming world.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
Sir, I applaud your comment. For almost the first time on Slashdot, I have come across a post that I agree with in its entirety!
Well said!
Hate to break it to you /.ers, but Linux isn't free in a corporate setting. I don't know if the TCO is mroe or less or equal than Windows, but it definitely isn't free.
Sure, you can get Linux for free off any website. However, a company is probabl going to want support for the OS. That costs money. In addition, a company is going to need people to administer the servers. Again, this costs money, both in saleries and training costs.
The only time is Linux is free is when you use it on a home machine and it is your hobby.
I'm one of the lucky ones who successfully made the transition away from Windows to Linux. What was my TCO? I'd say I've spent around $300. That includes the cost of books (most of which were of less help than I hoped), and a copy of Lycoris and its Productivity Pak. (It's a nice distro, but it feels constraining.) Ultimately I became a Mandrake user, and it is installed on all three of my PC's.
Had I stuck with using MS Windows, I would still have spent about $300, and two of my PC's would not be "Kosher" according to MS's EULA. Of course if I were to get "picky" I could toss on the cost of all the additional software (Norton's, Office, etc...) and watch the TCO plow through the roof, but then, I don't want to stoop that low.
I just wish MS, and even some Linux zealots out there would get it through their heads: There are places to use MS Windows, places to use Linux, and even places where either will do nicely. (OK, I'll even include Mac's as having a place as well...)
But to make broad claims that draw illogical conclusions based on a pile of inequitable features-- Well, it's just not very professional, and I'm once again disappointed in Microsoft.
Microsoft is at least partially right on this one. While any given distribution of Linux may be free, any process based on Linux will have costs associated with it.
However, given that you've got to spend money (and/or time) one way or the other, do the benefits of a Linux based (open) process outweigh those of a Microsoft based (closed) one? Everyone has their own answer to this. For me, it's worth the up-front investment of my time to put my data into a format that is not exclusively controlled by an outside interest. YMMV.
I'm kind of heartened by it, as a matter of fact.
What this shows, more than anything, is that Microsoft clearly doesn't understand the enterprise market. What they fail to recognize is this:
Microsoft just doesn't get it. Corporations could care less about streaming video and DirectX. And they aren't fooled by marketing hype - Microsoft can say all they want about "trustworthy computing", but sysadmins know better.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I guess http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/facts/default.asp could be moded up as "funny".
Could it be just loads of fud (http://fud-counter.nl.linux.org/) ?
Its looks like Microsoft may be falling foul of UK law with some of their claims.
The CAP Code (Ed 11) : GENERAL RULES
SUBSTANTIATION
3.1 Before distributing or submitting a marketing communication for publication, marketers must hold documentary evidence to prove all claims, whether direct or implied, that are capable of objective substantiation.
Relevant evidence should be sent without delay if requested by the ASA or CAP. The adequacy of evidence will be judged on whether it supports both the detailed claims and the overall impression created by the marketing communication. The full name and geographical business address of marketers should be provided without delay if requested by the ASA or CAP.
3.2 If there is a significant division of informed opinion about any claims made in a marketing communication they should not be portrayed as generally agreed.
3.3 Claims for the content of non-fiction books, tapes, videos and the like that have not been independently substantiated should not exaggerate the value, accuracy, scientific validity or practical usefulness of the product.
3.4 Obvious untruths or exaggerations that are unlikely to mislead and incidental minor errors and unorthodox spellings are all allowed provided they do not affect the accuracy or perception of the marketing communication in any material way.
http://www.asa.org.uk/index.asp
BSD... anyone remember hearing that BSD networking stack code ended up in Windows?
It's the same Rolls-Royce. They are one of the oldest aero engine manufacturers still in business. Ever wondered why the V12 engines in classic Rolls-Royce and Bentley cars looks a bit like a Merlin?
whats ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H mean?
i see it often but dont understand what it signifies?
thanks
Well... don't run cygwin in the XP terminal. Just install sshd for Cygwin and login with your favorite terminal emulator.
Slightly off topic, but someone could bring it up with the MS guys at the next event (Manchester)
t m
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3798393.s
Wimbledon switching to Linux
thats going to be a growing problem for Microsoft 'cause the market is already saturated w/ MC**s that making them a dime'o dozen. Hell, I would hire a dozen for that price (they could replace heatsinks and install desktops and stuff). . . leaves more funds for hiring one or two seasoned multiplatformed techs.
MS *should* be worried. I've tried Mandrake since I picked up 8.0, and it has gotten much better with each distro.
I just installed version 10.0 this weekend, and it was up and running, burning CDs, surfing, email, the whole nine yards, in much less time than it takes to install (and patch) XP.
Everyone has their favorite distro, but I think Mandrake 10 will definitely give MS screaming fits, once we get enough people to try it.
I agree, start passing out free CDs at all the shows and conventions. Make as many converts as we can. I've already passed lots of 10.0 on to friends, and they are impressed.
Some have never even herd of /. Sadly many who are called sys admins don't really know a whole lot.
How is /. the measure of a decent Sysadmin? Unless you run a public website, slashdot is but one of many sources of gossip and invective (and occasional useful info).
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
who doesn't know of the socket handle leak that MS can't fix because otherwise they'd break 1000's of apps
My sympathy levels for Microsoft engineers skyrocketted after reading this and this, detailing the horrors they have to deal with in the name of compatability.
From the Microsoft website: Thoroughness: Microsoft was the only vendor to have corrected 100% of the publicly known flaws during the study's time period.
Well of course! Microsoft has been known to not admit to flaws publicly. It is only AFTER a virus starts trashing systems they come out with a fix. It is like "oh, yeah, we were getting a round tuit".
For you old enough to remember, this is just like the Ford Pinto where Execs concluded it was far cheaper to settle lawsuits than to fix the thing in the first place.
Were Microsoft to be liable for all the damages caused by their lack of adequate Q/A and Q/C you might see a better product.
IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
with the same comparison charts. But not sponsored by MS.
I have seen a few slide decks from Microsoft
employees claiming some security failures with
Linux vs Windows.
For the couple of samples I saw, it seems like they
have been very selective about what information
they show. The latest version of Windows Server 2003
vs Fedora Core.
They also plot the number of vulnerabilities
independently of the risk, the impact, or the fact
that some of the security updates are lumped together. Then there is a section on viruses,
they list from some Virus web site about 30
Linux viruses. Never seen a single one of them
in a machine of mine or a server of mine in the
last 12 years.
I would like to know if there are good articulate
responses to those claims. I have been out of the
security loop for a long time, and my constrast
against the Microsoft claims was limited to a few
bits of my own experience.
Marc Cox from Red Hat is quoted by the report,
has he written anything on the subject?
Miguel.
It's a slam dunk!
sincerely,
George Tenet
"His basic thrust was that everyone is moving from proprietary Unix with its expensive platforms to Windows or Linux on x86 platforms and that it this hardware move, rather than linux versus windows, that will drive all the cost savings."
Linux has been more widely ported than an other OS in history. It is certainly more portable than Windows. When the next, cheaper hardware platform comes around, I expect that by the time it is a commodity, Linux will already be running on it. Furthermore, the cost-effectiveness of particular hardware depends on what you are running on it. Windows doesn't scale up on high-end server hardware. Linux does. With Linux, you have a choice.
Furthermore, the switch from proprietary Unix to Linux is a porting effort that is not particularly difficult. It is certainly easier than making the transition from Unix to Windows. And once you port to Windows, Microsoft has made it very easy to suffer vendor lock-in.
Linux is not free.
This has been a standard Microsoft argument for several years. If they failed to articulate that downloading Debian is not free because of the time and effort involved, then it is their fault for not making that argument clear in their presentation. It is worth noting that there are several costs associated with Windows that have no counterpart with a free Debian download. No licensing costs. The Debian project has never sent the BSA to do an expensive audit of any of its customers. If you reconfigure your hardware with Debian, there are no hassles with reactivating the license. No effort is required to keep employees from taking a copy home. Linux doesn't have a history of viruses and worms. If Microsoft changes the licensing terms of Windows or MS Office, you're stuck. Debian can't change the terms of the GPL. You are always free to use the old terms with the old version and the recent X Windows saga is proof that open source software resists licensing changes very effectively.
"Management tools on Linux are nearly as good as a DOS prompt"
First, every major distro, including the free ones come with some GUI management tools. Second, there is always Webmin. Third, the Linux shells are scriptable in ways that the DOS prompt was never able to match. Finally, remote administration of a Linux box can be done very easily. You don't need a GUI. Headless Linux boxes have been around from the start. GUI administration is not cost-effective when you are trying to administer as many boxes as possible.
"Linux is moving to the same model that Microsoft has been using"
The GPL won't permit Linux distros to own the code. No matter how many people Microsoft shares their code with, to them sharing means that you can look at it. You can't touch it, play with it, change it, or share it with others. Additionally, Linux and open source have resisted restrictive license changes a couple of times recently. As I said earlier, X Windows is an excellent example of this. If Microsoft wants to make this claim, they have to explain what they mean because several obvious interpretations are clearly not true.
My absolute favourite part of the talk was when Barley started to extol the virtues of Windows because everything in it was made by one manufacturer.
Microsoft will stick to this claim as long as it is absolutely convenient. They are quick to blame others when there are buggy third-party device drivers. And as soon as there is an anti-trust suit, they are even quicker to claim they are open to competition.
He made mention of the Forrester report that claimed more vulnerabilities in Linux than Windows.
Name one exploit that had a widespread effect on Linux boxes. Now, name three that hit Windows in the past month. You can't install and patch a Windows XP system without either a firewall or cleaning up the malware that infects it between the time you connect to the net
Linux is free, gratis (and most importantly Free, but I digress), but comapnies want somebody to scream at when things are not working.
That privilege comes at a price. But to say Linux is not gratis is to be either misinformed or a misfit (like perhaps some people that have broken the law are: did you hear me MS?).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
fix windows is "just hit reset"
you forgot to add, "and just take the revenue/productivity loss from the down time"
Can the same really be said for linux?
The sad truth is that most companies don't run on best, they run on cheapest. Oh and they will much rather spend the money on licences than staff, they actually get to own the licences (subject to terms and conditions. milage may vary), staff may wander.
The reason TCO of microsoft is lower than linux is that monkeys are cheaper, (and more plentiful) than penguins.
Microsoft... an infinite number of monkeys can't be wrong (now with free copy of complete works of shakespear)
First they ignore you
Then they laugh at you
Then they lie about you
Then you win
"Hear ye, Hear ye, total cost of parsnip ownership far outweighs that of turnips" proclaims a sonorous voice. A silence descends as the proximate bumpkins consider this... Suddenly a crabbed voice heckles "You might well say that, you sell turnips!" "Yeah," heckles a second voice "Show us some proof". The turnip advocate considers this for a moment then produces a small, sweetly perfumed bag of gold from the recesses of his garment, "This is the total cost of owning a turnip, "And this" he says triumphantly producing a considerably more weighty bag, reeking of sweat and smeared with bile "Is the total cost of owning a parsnip."
Two problems:
1) Most people DIDN'T take a UNIX course in 1989. So they will require UNIX training now. If you're looking at the TCO of Linux, you'll have to include this retraining, because if you tell your CFO "we did not include the cost of training because it isn't fair," he won't listen to anything else you have to say.
2) There's knowledge of functionality, and then there's knowledge of how to learn a new function in a given philosophy. 15 years ago, you would click on the Control Panel icon in your Program Manager to change display settings. Today, you click on the Control Panel icon on the start menu to do the same. It's evolved a bit, sure, but so has UNIX. The only thing that's stayed the same are locations of config files and the context of the command line...just like the only things that have stayed the same in Windows are how to MANIPULATE Windows (left, right clicks, application bars, etc) and the names of functions.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
No kidding. I can't tell you how many people were totally confused the first time they saw the Windows XP start menu for instance.
But here I think by training costs they mean it is less expensive to train a Windows 2000 user on Windows XP than it would be to train the same user on a linux distro. At least initially. Microsoft, as usual, is probably trying to spin numbers in their favor. And what company wouldn't? It's all about PR.
When talking about training a linux user how to use new linux versions or different distros versus different windows versions, I agree with your argument. Microsoft, however, is probably not talking about that.
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/facts/default.asp
Can anyone figure out how they got these figures?
is that from the day DOS was released to today is the total amount of time the computer industry has been set back because of MS. Before Bill it was considered absurd to sell a computer to an end user without an OS, that is where the "Selling a computer without an OS is like selling a car without an engine comes from". But being the gullible, trusting and greedy nerd we are, we had to let the MBA's take over and now look at the mess we are in.
it is perhaps a sad fact that most of the poeple doing "real" programing are actually not that good at it, they are however good enough to get the job done.
granted it's not the best job, but it works
a lot of business is about just getting something that works, as much as we'd like to think it was about getting the best solution it really isn't.
so yes a lot of these "fake" programmers, like the pretty toolsets, and they get something that mostly works. And in less time than it would have taken them to go and get a "real" programming education.
Hmm right. so linux ain't free. Well apart from the fact that it is, what about it? Linux ain't free vs Windows ain't free. At worst this makes it equal to windows.
Right, just get the company lawyer to study the differences. If they can't find any you need a lawyer who can read.
A really dangerous one. You see there is only migration cost from windows -> linux same as there is for companies going from unix -> windows. From unix -> linux, NO MIGRATION WORTH SPEAKING OFF. Certainly no massive retraining. You might be suprised but starting to use linux might mean you can use all those 40+ employees that learned computers on unix systems. MS is saying that people are moving from unix to windows and linux so it is saying that in those cases linux is the better option because of the lesser migration costs?
Oh please. The only comment possible is hysterical laughter. Must have been the comic relieve bit.
The only point that can make sense if your ms. After all MS believes in its own way of doing things and since Linux way != windows way of course they are going to think linux does it wrong. Some people prefer the unix way, some prefer the windows way. These two are never going to meet in the middle except to have a fight.
So a bunch of idiotic claims and 1 that is about taste. Not exactly going to convince me. In fact all this kinda roadshow might do is give linux free advertising. Consider this. How many people will have seen the name linux first in a MS ad? People who never knew there was another OS?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Really? Eight hours downtime a year? I routinely achieve that with hardware for which the designation "commodity" should be considered fulsome praise. And that's with Mandrake Linux, a distribution hardly noted for being conservative.
Hello? MS-Windows is non-proprietary? I think when you last reached for the paracetamol you got the 1-phenyl-2-amino propanol instead.
Yeah, like IE and Outlook - which is why so many people are switching away from these free programs. The fact that Opera has a market should be all the evidence you need that Microsoft are falling short on something as basic as a web browser.
As for specific, vertical-market applications, that's not an MS-Windows advantage, that's all to do with the applications themselves, and that's precisely what WINE is for. WINE will tide you over until the application vendors come to their senses and abandon platform-specific development environments. dotNYET apparently had "complicating WINE's life" as a subgoal, but it doesn't appear to have been a very effective one, in the end.
Amen. I learned UNIX back in 1984 under BSD 4.1. (Actually, did some work earlier under 2.9.) The system calls are still pretty similar (although I miss MPXIO :-). Device drivers look almost identical in their basic structure. The password file is the same except for the obvious improvement of supporting longer hashes. libc has some more functions in it, but all the old ones work. Etc, etc.
Biggest change is we have X now, but even that is pretty darn similar to X of 1990, except that we have (a) much better HW to run it on (no more 8 bit pseudocolor---yay!) and (b) much better toolkits to run on top of it (no more Xt---yay!).
Probably 80% of the C code I write today would run on the first boxes I worked on with only trivial modifications.
On the administration front, similar. Probably the biggest change has been the introduction of NIS and NFS, but to anyone who knew the old stuff, this isn't a big learning curve.
One of the cool things about UNIX is that improvements tend to be incremental in their learning curve, and unimpactful on existing knowledge. This is evidence that the design was right in the first place...
Personally, I'd reverse the comparison and say the DOS prompt is "almost as good as a Unix shell."
Then you haven't actually used both (at least not as a "power user". *nix had real pipes from the beginning. DOS offered you a poor substitute (pseudopipes). Where's the tab completion, line history with command line editing, job control, aliases, `' and $() command quotes, the ~ shortcut for the home directory, procedural constructs that are actually useful for scripting etc. ad nauseam? Granted, doskey fixed at least some of this, but still, compared to e.g. bash, command.com (or cmd.exe as they now call it) sucks goat balls.
What's rather funny is that they finally plan to offer a decent shell bundled with Longhorn (MSH), but then they deride said powerful shells as "DOS prompts". The irony...
I love C++
But I know you Brits are averse to such rude practice :-P
You have enough ammunition on this site to debunk the claims they present as a matter of fact when in reality it is just their interested opinion.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
And who exactly causes the migration costs to be high? Could it be that some software vendors purposefully try to make it difficult to migrate?
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
;-) In German, it would read
Erst ignorieren sie Dich,
dann lachen sie Dich aus,
dann bekämpfen sie Dich,
dann siegst Du.
I love C++
> Running a Linux server requires more than point/clicking your way around.
First time I read this, I thought you had written ``Running a Linux server requires more than politicing your way around." Still made sense though: every use of Windows in the datacenter seems to be due to business politics, rather than a careful analysis.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
Why not re-write that stuff to throw up a big warning box saying that whatever application tried to do something stupid?
Oh, sorry. That might mean that another platform (like OS/2?) might get some converts.
Microsoft's management decided that it would be better to fill their OS with cruft rather than risk losing any marketshare.
That is what happens when you focus on "user friendly" above all else.
Microsoft programmers can blame the stupid 3rd party app coders for hacking away through the Microsoft code to use UNDOCUMENTED features (which other Microsoft apps have used in the past) but the real problem is Microsoft management not telling the 3rd party app management to get the 3rd party coders to fix the code and then telling the Microsoft coders to clean the cruft out.
And why don't they mention in their facts how costly it can be if you install windows while pluged into the internet. 9/10 users would likely get a virus in 5 minutes.
No kidding. I can't tell you how many people were totally confused the first time they saw the Windows XP start menu for instance.
Okay, first up, mods, this is NOT a troll.. but brace yourselves.. I'm about to imply that windows might not be as bad as all that..
I really don't understand what's to be confused by in the XP start menu. Sure, for a new user you open it, and a load of stuff pops up at you, but regardless of whether you're using fischer-price or classic mode, it's pretty straightforward.. I mean.. there's a bit marked "All Programs" - and all your programs are in there. There's a bit marked "My Recent Documents", and your recent documents are in there.. there's a bit marked "Control Panel", and the control panel is in there.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I've never once had a user be confused by the start menu - in fact, it's about the ONLY part of windows most of them find straightfoward, and I'm talking here about people who have close to zero computer knowledge (i.e. don't know terms like "icon" or "minimize")
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
How the Open Source world treats SCO...
First they fight you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they ignore you.
Then you lose.
I would say we're at stage 3 right now, just like with the Ghandi quote applied to Microsoft vs. Open Source.
The price of freedom is eternal litigation.
To be honest, why is that a problem. If your Win2k machines goes down as rarely as a Linux machine. (It doesn't, but they're getting there.), is Win2k's ability to pick itself back up, really an issue?
"I like people. They're like little Happy Meals with legs" - Spike
I'm tired of this whole acceptance of "Linux isn't free" bullshit. It is a straight lie, and we need to point out that it is.
Firstly (but not most importantly), Linux - the product - is free of costs. Of course Linux is just the kernel, but often you get full distributions free. Debian will always be free. You can get it without paying for it. Yes, you may have costs involved in maintaining it and running it, but that does not mean it is not free. Those costs are "support costs", not "Linux-costs". If someone give you a car for free, you are not right in claiming the car isn't free to you just because you have to buy gasoline to go places.
Secondly, Linux is free as in freedom. You are free look at, change, and do mostly whatever you want with Linux, as long as you distribute it under the same fredoms.
I understand that some people agree to the fallacy as a way of acknowledging that there are costs associated with running Linux, but the fact is it is wrong, Linux satisfies the requirement for both meanings of the word "free".
(sorry, didn't mean to rant on parent, I have just seen too many people not contesting Microsofts spin here)
The first thing I thought when I visited MS' "get the facts" page was that I'd seen it before - they did exactly the same thing about 5 years ago, the page layout, the wording and (obviously) the findings are identical.
I seem to remember that they did a performance comparison of an out of the box install of NT server and an out of the box install of redhat. The servers they chose to use were 4 CPU Dell machines.
NT beat the pants off redhat because the out of the box redhat kernel didn't support symmetric multiprocessing, so the 4 CPU NT box was effectively competing with a single CPU redhat.
Unless you control for how much the trainees learn and how useful they are after training the comparison is meaningless. I don't expect they did that. In any case it would be real hard to measure with any accuracy. For example, how do you compare being able to bring up Windows explorer and being able to use its limited functionality to being able to do wizzy things with "find".
Squirrel!
Funny that...I'm deploying Linux servers at a small company where Windows Server 2000 was the server platform of choice and so far we've saved money, headaches, and made better use of our hardware.
Funny that...
Succinctly put.
WINE has to deal with official horrors as well as unrecognised ones. They even go so far as to implement workarounds for specific bugs in specific applications, which is something Microsoft won't do (sometimes does the opposite of, think Lotus-and-MS-DOS, DR-DOS-and-Win-3.1) except for their own products. But they're not a monopoly, snerk, snerk, snerk.
You left out the squillion other features (like "for" loops that are actually useful) which really round out BASH and make it - ugly as it is - absolutely sing compared to its poor crippled MS-DOS cousin ("as far removed as possible").
Excellent nick, by the way, I think the real de Tocqueville would go absolutely postal ("completely Bursar", to quote Nobby) if he were alive to see what they were touting in his name today, but Torquemada's methods do parallel those of AdTI quite closely. False claims, confusion and denial du jour.
If meatheaded Meta are going to study only people getting service contracts, then they need to include the cost of those contracts in the study for MS-Windows as well, and explain what they're doing. Unless and until they do, Meta are lying, and by extension Microsoft are lying too (even if it can be considered a lie of omission, it's a pretty important one).
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
>> Funny how MS advocates always debunk myths
>> that no one even claimed to be true in the
>> first place
You "can't remember" said myths? Check back in your flood of trollings in this topic.
--- "Alexis de Torquemada" --> PROLIFIC TROLL.
I thought the same way too. By the time I finished my first shell script, a script that used ftpcopy to mirror ftp sites (I'm sure it could hav been done a million other ways) that were listed in a .conf file of my own creation, I changed my mind. COMMAND.COM/CMD.EXE batch files can't even begin to approach the bash shell in terms of awesomeness.
And this is from a relative newbie to Linux (Tried it back in the RH 5.2 days, then again in the RH 7.3 days, now with Fedora Core 2, they've finally been able to dumb things down enough for a Windows power user for me to make the switch)
In short, once you bash, you'll never go back.
I'm the guy with the unpopular opinion
First you said a WWW server was an apple, then you said it was a peach.
Which is it?!
No-one suspected that when Microsoft means 5% to 20% higher training cost for Linux, they mean training people for Linux after they've been trained for Windows. They didn't state it, but it can be inferred from two facts from Julie Giera's Forrester report. First fact: second of the two reasons that companies report higher training cost is because "customers adopted a more conservative approach to training." Second fact: "Linux-only deployments are also less expensive ... There was no legacy environment to migrate from and no requirements for multiple operating systems to support."
Fact one tells us that companies who train Linux administrators like to play safe with their current infrastructure, which is Windows. Of course, in order to do that, they must be trained for skills on both Windows and Linux. The second fact confirms that if you just train for Linux, then you can cut cost significantly.
Since according to the report, training for both Windows and Linux costs 15% more than training for only Windows, we can say that training for Linux only costs only 15% than training for Windows. This is a fact hidden in the report that Microsoft is not willing to point out.
I once had a signature.
If that's the case, Bill, you won't mind handing the source over to the community to patch, port and recompile freely, will you?
Ok, valid points, it may seem straight forward, but I've worked tech support for years, and it does take people I've dealt with a while to realize that "My Computer" is now in the start menu, that "Programs" is now "All Programs" and in a different location, that the control pannel is missing options and you have to hit "classic view" to see them, etc. Maybe I'm just dealing with a different user base.
I'm not trying to flame Windows either, I'm a windows user half the time myself, and have learned to deal with its temperments. I'm just saying that there have been a lot of layout changes in between windows versions, and that requires retraining.
This isn't necessarily true. It seems to me that if a company does what Coke did and acknowledges the presence of their Pepsi, it's "preparing for battle" - a good business tactic. If the whole Pepsi thing hadn't exploded and Coke was still "the only one", then surely their preparation strategy would have been praised. Now what if Coke hadn't done anything to prepare and Pepsi got huge anyway? People would say that Coke didn't recognize a threat and therefore didn't prepare properly.
Obviously, hings can go either way - that's the thing about markets and strategies. Hopefully the teacher of the class wasn't focusing on "look what happens when you admit there's a threat" but rather on "either way you play the game there's still risk involved".
But if you know of any cmd.exe replacements, that don't require me to either log in through ssh or run the terminal under X (I run a root-less X server, but I would rather not have it involved in my terminals, since it seems slightly less stable than the native terminals (mostly when remote machines crash or hang and such)), I would be glad to hear about it.
i have a 100MHz server with linux on it ......
and i didnt pay a cent for software (or hardware)
but i have 12GB of hdds and a speed of about 7 M bits s^-1 ..... so that 868$ dollars ? or 280$ for windows .... well it (my server) wont run xp , it could run 2k but bearly ..... so i put on a "lite" linux distro rmed all the gui stuff ...... so for 0$ on hardware and 0$ of software i have a legle file server for my backups ....
sorry about the spelling and fragmentions im not to good at spelling ...