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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."
Microsoft believes in free software too. Ever use Internet Explorer and see how fast all the free software shows up on your computer?
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.
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.
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.
View source on the page. They've part commented out. Wonder why they did that.
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.
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.
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 me
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?
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...
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
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
Linux is Free and Open Source. Freedom with restrictions is a fact of life. You have Free speech but you can't yell fire in the theater. You are Free to Vote for who you want to but you can't vote over and over. You can do whatever you want with the Linux kernel. But if you redistribute it you have to make your changes public thus keeping the code Free,Open and accessible. Your analogy of Free as in beer is wrong. Internet Explorer is Free as in beer. Linux isn't.
If that's what you care about, use BSD.
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.
You are in the minority because you offer not a shread of proof for your statement. The reality is that I can admin 3x as many linux boxes as you can your windows machine. Not that I would have to because linux unlike windows is way more efficient in the data center. I do not have a single linux machine at work that does not run to nearly full capacity. I can do this because I can run more than just a email server, or database server on a single machine. How often do you see exchange running on the same machine as a sql server?
In my opinion you are nothing more than a astroturf for MS.
Got Code?
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
How comments like this get modded up as being "interesting" is one of those unsolvable mysteries of life for me.
.. Not to mention the TCO of breathing air if there's a risk of breathing poluted or contaminated air.
You don't mention if you mean using linux in the desktop or server space, neither what kind of applications or services your refering to when you say "in my experiance". Basicly you give no foundation at all for this comment to be taken seriously at all; Nevermind give the impression that you have any notion of what "Enterprise level" is.
And just saying that Linux isn't 'free' is stating the obvious.. Even breating air takes time and thus costs money
The question is not 'is linux's TCO free', it's 'how does linux's TCO compare to a similair microsoft based solution'.
if only i had mod point's today you would've gotton a -1 flamebait or overrated from me..
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.
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
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!
Why shall I believe any of them?
Their software, out of the box, runs Sobig, Bagel and Blaster as well as it does IE or Office.
A large part of the cost of administering desktops in a business environment is repairing the damage done by users who have been given excessive system privileges because their applications require them to have them. Linux/Unix apps, as a general rule, don't do that. As a result, it is possible to lock a n*x box down to the point that a user can still do his/her job but he/she cannot wreak havoc on the machine or the network. When the user can only install "goodies in his or her $HOME where they also store their precious data, and pr0n^W other irreplaceable information, they are MUCH more careful about what they click "OK" on. This reduces TCO dramatically.
Just my USD0.02
utter rubbish
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)).
Let's just say then Linux is free if you want it to be. A lot of people like boxed sets, they may need support contracts and indeed may need certain proprietary software (e.g. Oracle) to run on Linux.
The doesn't stop Linux being free and legal to those that are comfortable downloading Linux and supporting it themselves possibly using Google and newsgroups for help.
With Windows you have to pay for a licence just to install the software, you could download it for free but that's illegal, you can't even pay to download it as far as I can see. Then if you need support you have to pay extra for that.
Name the number of personal users and small businesses who have made use of MS support? There'll be some, but not many.
For personal users people usually rely on their friends for support and so they're bogged down fixing the viruses and spyware problems on a regular basis if they're not that savvy.
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.
You forgot that to access that Big server with enterprise software, you will need CALs for the windows machines. Also you will need a CAL to access your exchance server and one for each of your file servers.
And while you are at it, don't for get the warehouse to store all those CALs in so that they don't get lost.
br.
I have no sig, does anyone have one to spare?
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.
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
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
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.
In computing, ^H is often used jokingly to indicate a spelling mistake or deletion. This is because some operating systems print ^H when pressing the backspace key if the keyboard is not configured properly.
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.
"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
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)
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?
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.
Microsoft administrators are often cheaper and come with less brainpower than their *nix counterparts. This makes it cheaper to retain MS trained staff. It is also (generally, thus far) cheaper to outsource Microsoft-based network management.
Because, of course, no corporation which can consider millions of dollars on licensing fees 'cheap' would be willing to spend a paltry few extra hundred thousand a year to get administrators with more brainpower and a genunie dedication to the technology which they use, versus having gotten into computers 'for the money' as most MS-only types do.
Enterprise development is also, thus far, cheaper on Microsoft platforms. These platforms have all the tools to develop large systems quickly and effectively. Few organisations are writing their enterprise systems in C anymore! In this respect Java is providing a lifeline to Linux. An equally important consideration is the available of enterprise platforms off the shelf, most of which support *nix (but not Linux) or Windows platforms.
Erm, last time I checked, there were more programming languages available for Linux than for Windows, although to be fair, Visual Basic and Visual C++ provide very easy-to-use IDEs, unless,of course, your interest is in writing business-critical applications; Visual Anything is much more suited to finding the right shade of beige for your buttons. Serious business tasks shouldn't even require a GUI; they should just get the job done, and be easy to fix if they break.
These are not the hallmarks of a Microsoft solution.
The real biggies in productivity are avoiding downtime, having the right applications for the job (i.e. productivity applications), and having the right skills to use the application. While workstation failures are irritating (and, frankly, Linux has at most a 10% lead in stability in that environment), network outages (not an OS consideration) and server failures are where the problems lie.
You are obviously talking out of your arse here, and have switched from the server to the desktop, where we all agree Windows is generally the better choice, especially for calendaring. However, software-related workstation failures are a problem, especially if they kill your ability to work for the day, or if they expose confidendial data to the outside world through security holes. When a single virus can kill your entire network *and* take out your nicely integrated Calendar/Email solution, it's time to find another vendor.
Finally, in terms of productivity applications and available skills and/or training, Linux can't touch Windows. They are literally hundreds or applications for every purpose out there that are smooth and polished and do what a business wants. More importantly, you'll easily find staff that are experienced with that package, and that's a huge cost saving.
No, these applications aren't smooth and polished; they're generalized. That's how shrinkwrap software works; you spend less on the software than you would for a custom-written application, but you must accept that said application will not be perfectly tailored to your needs. For some things, like word processing, this is fine, but for critical pieces of your business, this is not.
So yes, Linux is free and cheap and all that, and has tons of applications, and can do amazing stuff. But it doesn't do it out of the box, few people know the desktop environment or the applications, and it takes a less common skillset to configure, administer, maintain and develop in a Linux environment. All of which push up the long term TCO, and allow you to make a very valid cost comparison with Windows.
Yes, but only if you ignore Windows' shortcomings in these areas as well, including things like security, yearly hardware and software upgrade costs, etc. You also have to make the assumption that all of your employees have had their brains replaced with pieces of Silly-Putty, as anyone with more than ten functioning neurons,
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
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...
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.